[Bookreader] Sharing books and Gnubook

[Samuel Klein]

That said, a standalone gnubook reader would be excellent, and Raj
suggested it might be on the horizon.  Raj/Anand, any thoughts on how
easy that would be?

SJ

On Sat, Jan 24, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Samuel Klein <sj at laptop.org> wrote:
> 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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