This has been a really fun project to work on, and many thanks to Xavier for making it happen. And a huge shout for JDs outstanding visual design work on the project.
At the beginning I was actually rather pessimistic about the feasibility of the central challenge of seamlessly scrolling through a book with hundreds of pages. Xavier had confidence that we could figure something out, and it turned out to be surprisingly straightforward to create a mechanism to wrap content in a “reveal” widget that is triggered when it is scrolled into view. The dynaview plugin has been available for some time. There are a number of demos here: https://tiddlywiki.com/prerelease/#%24%3A%2Fplugins%2Ftiddlywiki%2Fdynaview <https://tiddlywiki.com/prerelease/#$:/plugins/tiddlywiki/dynaview> Xavier’s vision is not just that we emulate the functionality of an existing ebook, but that we embrace “active reading”: part of which is making highlights and notes that become part of the book. Our first attempt involved modifying the text of the book to add annotations as macros: for example, <<highlight green “the river”>>. There are several challenges with this approach, so we ended up with the Dynannotate plugin that is built around a widget that displays overlays over the content that it contains. You can try out the Dynannotate plugin here: https://tiddlywiki.com/prerelease/#%24%3A%2Fplugins%2Ftiddlywiki%2Fdynannotate <https://tiddlywiki.com/prerelease/#$:/plugins/tiddlywiki/dynannotate> We’ll release the other two components, the “Epub Slicer” and “TW Book Wrapper” plugins shortly, Best wishes Jeremy. > On 11 Mar 2020, at 10:33, Xavier Cazin <xca...@immateriel.fr> wrote: > > Hi everyone, > > TL;DR: Go to > https://www.7switch.com/fr/ebook/9783962558772/great-expectations-serapis-classics > > <https://www.7switch.com/fr/ebook/9783962558772/great-expectations-serapis-classics>, > click on "Read an extract" and play with it. Then come back if you'd like to > know more. > > I have been working in the publishing industry for the past 25 years, > including the last 10 years as the co-founder of a French ebook distribution > company, immatériel.fr. Among many things that got me frustrated in the > course of selling ebooks is the fact that ebook formats have never been in > phase with how we have linked ourselves to knowledge in the two last decades. > > > > The main reason for this particular failure is because ePub and Mobipocket > were initially (around 2010) imposed to publishers by Apple and Amazon > respectively, and became soon the only digital formats that publishers could > sell to the main vendors (actually, Google Play Books also sells PDF books). > > While there are other reasons to rant about the current state of the ebook > market, I gave some thought about what could be a likeable modern format for > eBooks, and as you guessed, TiddlyWiki checked all the boxes: > > the book should be easy to open: the reading app could be the same browser > that you used to buy the book, whether you are on your mobile or at your > desktop; > it should be readable both offline or online; > it should open at the same place where you stopped reading last time; > typesetting should be as beautiful and complex as a website can be; > content should be truly multimedia, including live content from anywhere on > the network. Audio books should be a mere byproduct of this feature; > authors should be allowed to multiply standpoints on its content; > readers should be able to reorganise the initial content, and also write > above and around it; > for the paranoids out there or those who missed Tim O'Reilly's famous piece > on piracy > <https://www.oreilly.com/content/piracy-is-progressive-taxation-and-other-thoughts-on-the-evolution-of-online-distribution/> > back in the days, book content should be easy to encrypt. Ebooks lending to > libraries might actually be a good use case. > So we at immatériel.fr considered that this territory was worth exploring and > we dedicated our 2019 R&D efforts into building a TW5 alternative format for > customers who were regularly buying ePubs at our experimental bookstore > 7switch.com. We had to move forward on two fronts in parallel: > > Converting our full catalog of 80K ePubs from more than 1000 (mostly French) > publishers into TW5 > Figuring a way to display books in an homogeneous way, yet familiar enough > for both people reading content on the Web and people used to ePub reading > apps, while showing off their new TiddlyWiki nature. > So I asked Jeremy if he'd welcome a sponsoring for such a project through his > company Federatial and, to my awe, he said yes of course! Parallely, since I > wasn't sure of how we should render the typical book elements nor the typical > features of an ebook reading app in a TW5 interface, I asked JD, one of our > gifted community contributors to TW5 user interfaces, for ideas and > preliminary tests. > > > > Soon enough, the three of us had regular meetings, that eventually led to a > preliminary release of several great open source products that are now > embedded into every non-DRM books and extracts that you'll find at the > 7switch ebookstore: > > The first one is already included in the current prerelease of TW5: the > dynaview plugin > <https://tiddlywiki.com/prerelease/#%24%3A%2Fplugins%2Ftiddlywiki%2Fdynaview> > allows content to come into view dynamically in response to familiar gestures > like scrolling. > Next comes the dynannotate plugin, which will soon make its way to 5.1.22, > and is already included in books and extracts that you can find on 7switch. > With it, you can annotate content in a various number of ways. > Then you'll find the ePub-slicer plugin, a tool to convert any ePub file into > a plugin that essentially contains a list of small content chunks (aka > tiddlers!) which can be revealed during the scroll as you read the book in > the browser. Thanks to their plugin nature, not only multiple converted books > can be hosted in a single TW5 file, but also one can override book content > without fear, since the original shadow tiddlers could be retrieved at any > time. Note that the HTML parsing is not yet complete, as we'd like to be able > to parse any ePub, whether their content has been well semantised or not. So > if you see spurious </li> or </blockquote> every once in a while, don't be > surprised: you're looking at a work in progress. > Finally, you'll also find JD's TW Book Wrapper plugin, which is responsible > for most specific UI elements, from annotations management to the automatic > language switching, based on your browser default language. By the way, we > started with French and English as built-in interface languages. If you'd > like to submit more translations, you're welcome! > Please have a try with any non-DRM books (or their extracts) that you'll find > on 7switch > <https://www.7switch.com/en/list/drmfree/lang-eng/new/page/1/sales>. Also try > to drag and drop your own ePubs (in so-called Author Mode) to add books in > these TW5 containers. And tell us what you think! > > > > Cheers, Xavier. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TiddlyWiki" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > <mailto:tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/cd52b470-4742-40a2-80d1-1d3a7dcf2d43%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/cd52b470-4742-40a2-80d1-1d3a7dcf2d43%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/7683E2C2-86F1-401F-9422-CEF90AC0BEAB%40gmail.com.
