[Bookreader] Sharing books and Gnubook

[Samuel Klein]

Alternately, if you are using a Browse shell to read books in gnubook
format, as long as both you and a friend store the book in its default
named location, you should be able to share a [local file] URL and
have it display properly on both machines.  In both this case and the
pdf use case, you have to solve the problem of exchanging the file
being shared before sharing -- either a pdf or a zipfile or an xo[l]
bundle.

For the WP activity, you exchange the entire xo bundle before sharing.
 Note that we want to merge xo and xol bundles asap; as with
activities, collections require both parties to have obtained a copy
of the bundle before sharing a collaborative session in which you use
it with others.

SJ

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Sayamindu Dasgupta
<sayamindu at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> I was looking at the books in the
> http://openlibrary.org/static/olpc_bundle/openlibrary.xol, and the
> interface looks cool :).
>
> However, one of the central concepts in the XO software which always
> manages to fascinate me is sharing, and I'm not sure how books in the
> xol bundle can be shared.
>
> Has there been any thoughts on how this can be achieved (especially,
> if we consider reading the books in the bundle with something, like
> for example, Read)
>
> From what I understand, each of these books are already available as
> PDF files. In that case, does it make more sense to include PDFs in
> the bundle, instead of what is being provided currently? This would
> mean that we will not be able to get of the superawesome interface,
> but kids will be able to share the books if they want (Browse at the
> moment does not share files, it shares URLs, which I believe, is fine,
> considering its usecase)
>
> Another option may be to have a gnubook activity, instead of a bundle,
> instead of a library bundle. This would be something like the
> Wikipedia activity. This means that the exisitng "flipping" interface
> is preserved, but at the same time, the activity can have an option
> "Keep book to Journal", which would keep the book being read to the
> Journal as a single object, in a format which can be opened by Read,
> and can be transferred to/shared with other kids as well. It sounds a
> bit clumsy at first, but it would let us keep the best of both worlds
> (the traditional book like interface, as well as support for sharing).
>
> Does this make any sense ?
>
> Thanks,
> Sayamindu
>
> --
> Sayamindu Dasgupta
> [http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]
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