Introduction

Digital publications are on the rise. In our daily lives we read more material than ever on electronic devices, while paper books – once everyday objects – are becoming collectible design objects. For publishers, visual designers and artists it can be difficult to keep up with these developments; few possess the knowledge and resources to develop a digital publishing practice of their own. For arts and design-oriented books, going electronic can be an extra challenge because form and content are deeply intertwined, while electronic book formats were not engineered with visual publications in mind.

The Digital Publishing Toolkit initiative – a network of two applied universities and art school research departments, four Dutch art and design publishers, and several graphic and media design bureaus – worked on a straightforward ‘how-to’ guide for electronic publishing in the arts, along with a collection of Open Source software tools for editing and designing electronic books.

The findings obtained in this research over the past two years have been documented on the blog http://networkcultures.org/digitalpublishing. Digital Publishing Toolkit: the Blog Posts collects all these blog posts. This EPUB consists of texts, images and links to video files. The videos themselves have been omitted, to prevent the EPUB file from being too memory intensive to load on some reading devices. It includes reflections, reports and tools. The blog posts are arranged in reverse chronological order, with the exception of the earliest post, as we thought it would be most appropriate to begin the collection with the original first post.

On http://networkcultures.org/digitalpublishing you can find more information about this two-year research project. Such as registration videos of the three conferences we organized, a direct link to our GitHub repository, and various resources related to hybrid publishing.

Not only we have researched digital publishing, but we have also conducted various digital publishing experiments - such as this Digital Publishing Toolkit: the Blog Posts publication. In addition to the physical book, we have released this work through several different channels: Lulu, Issuu, Scribd, PDF and in EPUB.

The approach we have adopted suits our main conclusion, namely that the best strategy is a publishing workflow that utilizes a variety of output formats - i.e. a multi-channel form of publishing. Developing a hybrid publishing strategy, which is open to new digital forms, is an on going focus for the Institute of Network Cultures.

Colophon

Digital Publishing Toolkit: the Blog Posts

Authors: DPT Collective and guest bloggers
EPUB design: André Castro
Cover design: Medamo
Publisher: Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam

The EPUB edition of this publication is freely downloadable from: http://networkcultures.org/publications/

Contact:
Institute of Network Cultures
Hogeschool van Amsterdam
Rhijnspoorplein 1
1091 GC Amsterdam
The Netherlands
http://www.networkcultures.org
books@networkcultures.org
t: +31 (0)20 595 18 65

This publication is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

Amsterdam, February 2015

A wrap up of the Digital Publishing Toolkit – Florian Cramer and Geert Lovink

By Katía Truijen, December 7, 2014 at 3:33 pm.

Geert Lovink and Florian Cramer conclude the afternoon by looking back on two years of researching digital publishing; a succesful collaboration between designers, schools, researchers and publishers. Which lessons can we take from the research?

1. Digital publishing is still in a phase of transition

When one compares reading and publishing to other media that have been digitized over the past decades, one will see that publishing has followed a different path. Indeed the field is changing, partly even in a disruptive way, but it has not changed like the music industry, newspaper industry or online video where one can see a consolidation of business models.

In general, the publishing industry is still somewhat conservative compared to other industries like those of magazines and journals. In these fields there is a lot of experimentation and the Netherlands can even be considered to be a pioneer with projects and business models like Blendle and de Correspondent. In other countries one can already find some examples of distribution platforms for small publishers, like Minimore.de in Germany.

The fact that digital publishing is still in a transitional phase, is at the same time very interesting. We may say that we are in the ‘Napster moment’ in the printing industry. Geert Lovink states that when you compare it to the rise of the Internet, it feels very much like 1995. The systems are not yet working, but there is a lot of experiment and research into different standards and platforms.

2. The electronic medium is often still (used as) a poor medium.

Maybe digital publishing will remain in transition for the next couple of years. Although there are no ‘solutions’ for the industry yet, a lot has been achieved in the last two years. Effective working approaches have been developed that work well in this transition phase. As an overall conclusion one can state that much of these working methods actually defy the expectations of what is paper and what is electronic. The findings often have been counter-intuitive. For example, the main expectations with electronic media is that they allow for rich media, but there is still not much experimentation in this field. Video is not often integrated into books to enrich the reading experience. Why are multimedia books still rarely made?

Universities, art academies and applied universities still don’t combine their expertise so much. In the field of filmstudies there are still books on films instead of multimedia books. Another barrier is that multimedia books would easily become multigigabyte files. Moreover, it is very hard to get all the rights from film studios to include their movies. But some of the obstacles also bring new opportunities. For example, digital publishing allows for the creation of very small formats that would never be printed as a book, like a one-poem-publication.

3. The publishing triangle has become a square

In the triangle of authors, designers and publishers, there is now another role to take into account. In digital publishing, the role of the programmer has become very important. This means that people have to collaborate in new and different ways. All traditional roles have to be redefined to a certain extent.

4. We need more research on business models

The project of the Digital Publishing Toolkit mainly focused on design and production questions in collaboration with publishers. More research has to be done on distribution and business models. These issues are highly important for authors and publishers.

5. Sometimes we need to temper our (magic) expectations

In the Netherlands there is an urgency to develop new formats for  journals, especially because there have been serious budget cuts in this field. Very often there is a magic expectation that digitization will solve all problems. Indeed, more readers can be reached with digital publishing, but the idea that it is cheaper than a printed version is a myth. Often it is very hard to make money with digital content. A compromise to simply export a print version into an epub often doesn’t work at all. Different media ask for different workflows and specific approaches.

6. Digital publishing has physical impact

The two main places for books – the library and the bookshop – changed dramatically with the rise of digital publishing. It has an enormous impact on these environments, that are forced to reinvent themselves. It would be good to extend the research on digital publishing and take the wider urban context into account. The transformation of the bookshop and the library have a direct link to the developments of e-books. What would be the future of the bookstore and the library?

Libraries may be redefined as centers for digital literacy. After all, there is a lot of expertise to be found in these environments. Another interesting development to research is social reading. What tools can we use in classes to combine deep reading of a text with discussion?

7. We need to develop alternatives

The dystopian version of the future electronic bookmarket would be an iTunes or NetFlix model. In the future there may be big commercial providers that will offer full education packages that give access to all books and publications. If schools subscribe to these kinds of licences, libraries will be shut down. We should be aware of this kind of neoliberal optimization of educational resources. If we don’t develop alternatives, it may be too late.

A leap into the future of (digital) reading

By Harold Konickx, January 27, 2015 at 2:09 pm.

On the past event Showcases Digital Publishing Toolkit I read the following text:

The Canadian mediatheorist Marshall McLuhan said in his famous Playboy interview in 1969: ‘Most people, as I indicated, still cling to what I call the rearview-mirror view of their world. By this I mean to say that because of the invisibility of any environment during the period of its innovation, man is only consciously aware of the environment that has preceded it; in other words, an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world.’

The next ten to twelves minutes I’d like to talk about the way readers and designers (who are also readers) relate to books, now that books are becoming digital (a lot of them not all them). As you can see in the title of my talk the page is my point of convergence. The main question is: are we ready for a different kind of page or it is impossible to see it. As McLuhan predicted. Are we indeed trapped in a rearview-mirror view of our world?

My name is Harold Konickx and I work as a researcher and teacher at a school for interactive media, Communication and Multimedia Design, which is part of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. My talk is not free of some nostalgia, a bit of frustration, but will be mainly good spirited and hopeful.

The KickOff for my research on the relation reader/designer/book, about a year ago, was the work of Willem de Kooning graduate Megan Hoogenboom. She is a graphic designer who specializes in Epub design. Hoogenboom made a transformation of Paul van Ostayens Boem Paukeslag for epub. Working with this kind of poetry in epub seems like an impossible task as is relies on ‘witruimte’, visuality en different fonts. What you see here is not easy to transfer to epub so Hoogenboom had to read the poem carefully and interprete it. In doing so she invented a book that is ‘digitally born’; she uses epub to reinvent the original page and she didn’t limit herself but overcame the so called boundaries of epub. If you would like to hear more of Hoogenboom and her ideas on digital publishing you can find an interview with her right here.

To me she touched on the true core of the ebook. What is that core if a book is not a collection of physical pages – the page as you know it – anymore but an epub which is actually html which is the DNA of the World Wide Web. I decided to interview experts and professionals in the the field of digital media: (interaction)designers, publishers, developers and even a writer of modern fiction. I asked them about the future of the book, about ‘a spotify for books’ (or should I say ‘Blendle’) and I tried to fish their idea out of them what will happen to the page as we know it. Just like a did with Hoogenboom. Some of these interviews are on video and are also to be found on the vimeopage of the Institute of Networkcultures. I’ve picked some interesting quotes for my talk.

She or he who wants to make a leap into the future of the (e-)book needs to look at the past of the book. Doing so I discovered how strongly intertwined form and the content of the traditional book are. In his A history of reading, first published in 1996, Alberto Manguel explains that the origins of the book as we know it lie in the 4th AC with the invention of parchment. Parchment made it possible to collect pages in a codex which had big consequences on the user experience of the reader. I quote Manguel: ‘The codex gave readers the opportunity to leaf through pages almost directly; doing so they kept an idea from the text as a whole –an idea intensified by the fact that the complete text rested in the lap of the reader.’ So as a reader you keep the whole world in your hands. Judith Stoop, Paulien Kreutzer and Joost Kircz researched changing reading habits among students and found out students prefer to print the subject matter they have to acquire. By the way: this a clear argument against going all digital with our schoollibraries. In one interview Miriam Rasch said: ‘What I don’t like about a digital book is that It doesn’t give me a good idea of where I am in the book.’

So reading a physical book can be a such meaningful and for me also a pleasant experience because of a form and a substance working together. This is the nostalgic part of my talk I guess. Manguel forgives me for that. I quote: ‘It’s interesting how technological developments – the invention of the printing press for instance  – often support the things they seem to chase away. Technological developments make us even more aware of old fashioned qualities we otherwise would have overlooked and would have dismissed as irrelevant.’ Only have a look at the revival of vinyl in the music industry to see a lot of truth in this quote. Designer Frank Kloos, articulates the qualities of the physical book like this: ‘I might be a Romantic but I would have trouble with the disappearing of the physical book. A book is quite a casual thing you carry around easily. ‘A book is a thing with character where a tablet [or another reading device] is a dead artefact.’ Kloos somewhat appologizes for his opinion. We don’t want to be held backward or old fashioned. And this talk promised to give us an idea on what a digital book can be instead of putting the physical book on a pedestal. So let’s move to the digital world …

I can’t help wondering what Marshall McLuhan would have thought of some of today’s popular practices in the field of digital publishing. What would he for instance have thought of Apples Ibooks software as it is displayed on an Ipad, mimicing the leafing of pages. This is the frustration part of my talk. McLuhan surely would have brought the horseless carriage syndrom to our minds: the first cars looked like horse carriages. It helped users to get familiar with this new technology. The writer of the blog who presents this image says there’s also a positive side to that.

But still… Technically an ebook is nothing but a book, the technology behind it could offer us a user experience that is really different from the reading experience we know from the physical book. In the main stream of things at the moment ebooks may offer us accessibility, ease of use and convenience. But I would dare to say that a significant lot of readers, just like Frank Kloos, secretly still prefer the old fashioned book, despite the weight, and even despite the risk of being held as old fashioned.

It might have a lot to do with this quality of keeping the whole world in your hands.

I started my talk with Megan Hoogenboom who didn’t want to make a horseless carriage. She asked yourself the question: how can I keep the poetry of this remarkable poet from the twenties by using the unique features of the electronic book. I figured out I wanted more examples of this. What is it that makes the digital book stand for his own I asked myself. The beginning of an answer I found in Between Page and screen; remaking literature through cinema and cyberspace, a collection of essay’s edited by the Utrechtse Hoogleraar Kiene Brillenburg and published by Fordham University Press in 2012.

For now I’d like to focus on the essay ‘Intermediation’, written by critic/scholar N. Katherine Hayles. In all of her body of work she makes a point of showing how closely humans and computers are related. ‘Literature in the twenty-first century is computational’, she says. In her essay Hayles focusses on digital literature, work that is ‘digitally born’ (I used this term before as you might remember). I said the reading experience of a digital book can contrast with the reading experience of the physical book and in Hayles view that’s because of the constant flux of words and images. They change as a results of our deeds: ‘Recombinant flux, as the aesthetic of such works is called, gives a much stronger impression of agency than does a book. […] Because the computer’s real agency, as well as the illusion of its agency, is much stronger than with the book, the computer can function as a partner in creating intermediating dynamics in ways that a book cannot.’ (p. 108-109)

The computer can function as a partner in creating intermediating dynamics in ways that a book cannot … Hayles therefore consequently speaks of a player instead of a reader. In Hayles view a player has another kind of control over the work he or she is involved with. One of the examples she gives is an online work by Judd Morrissey, The Jew’s Daughter. Hovering over the page – although I shouldn’t use that word – the letters change giving the reader/player a sense of interaction. I quote Hayles again: ‘[digital literature] is possessing a fluidity and mutability that ink durably impressed on paper can never achieve, it stimulates the illusion of a coherent stream-of-conciousness narrative (and by implication, a coherent self producing the narrative).’ (p.123)

I would like to leave you with this idea that an electronic book can posses ‘a fluidity and mutability that ink durably impressed on paper can never achieve’. Please keep in mind that a digital page is not a page. It might be ok to use your ereader for reading novels as most people seem to do but there’s really more to it. Physical books have irreplaceable qualities, but electronic books have an interactive potential I at least am looking forward to discover, by experimenting and research through designing and prototyping.

Harold Konickx

Out Now: From Print to Ebooks: a Hybrid Publishing Toolkit for the Arts

By Margreet Riphagen, December 23, 2014 at 2:22 pm.

From Print to Ebooks: a Hybrid Publishing Toolkit for the Arts.

This Toolkit is meant for everyone working in art and design publishing. No specific expertise of digital technology, or indeed traditional publishing technology, is required. The Toolkit provides hands-on practical advice and tools, focusing on working solutions for low-budget, small-edition publishing.

It includes answers on questions like; Is electronic book technology really the way forward for these types of publications? Or does the answer lie in some hybrid form of publication, in which both print and electronic editions of the same basic content can be published in a parallel or complementary fashion? And perhaps more importantly, what are the changes in workflow and design mentality that will need to be implemented in order to allow for such hybrid publications?

Everything in the Hybrid Publishing Toolkit is based on real-world projects with art and design publishers. Editorial scenarios include art and design catalogues and periodicals, research publications, and artists’/designer’s books.

Download the EPUB here.

Marije ten Brink: ‘Blendle is a promising idea’

By Harold Konickx, December 18, 2014 at 11:11 am.

HvA-teacher and designer Marije ten Brink wonders why Dutch entrepeneur Alexander Klöpping has come up with the invention of Blendle; a platform that combines ‘the best of newspapers and magazines’ as it claims. The video is in Dutch.

Video: http://vimeo.com/114679505

Presentation of the Toolkit in Brasil

By Miriam Rasch, December 11, 2014 at 11:34 am.

The Digital Publishing Toolkit was presented via Skype at the Simposio Literatura e Informatica, with a focus on the INC project. You can find the program, blog and videos of the symposium here.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DxW20_hbZo

Rose Leighton: ‘The craft of publishing is future-proof’

By Harold Konickx, December 9, 2014 at 4:48 pm.

Rose Leighton is a lecturer at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam and projectmanager publishing for the Centre of Expertise ‘Amsterdam Creative Industries’. She thinks that as the craft of publishing is getting more and more digitized publishers should reconsider their role to keep pace with the changing times. The first step in this process could be to scrutinize the book sharply. Is a book still a book if you digitize it? Or does it become something else? And íf a book for instance becomes something like a game does that make a publisher still a publisher or a producer of media?

Video: http://vimeo.com/108984162

Silvio Lorusso ‘The Post-Digital Publishing Archive: An Inventory of Speculative Strategies’

By Katía Truijen, December 6, 2014 at 10:07 pm.

Silvio Lorusso is an artist and desiger and PhD Candidate in Design Sciences at Iuav University of Venice. He investigates experimental publishing informed by digital technology and has created the Post-Digital Publishing Archive. During the Digital Publishing Showcase, Lorusso presented an overview of speculative strategies and best practices of experimental digital publishing.

The Post-Digital Publishing Archive is a research and curatorial platform aimed at systematically collecting, organizing and keeping trace of experiences in the fields of art and design that explore the relationships between publishing and digital technology.

Lorusso explains that experimental practices emerge in the fields of critical and speculative design, critical making, e-literature, artists books and digital humanities. The critical design project The DRM Chairby Les Sugus for example, has only a limited number of use (8 times) before it self-destructs. The project refers to digital rights management, a system that is often used for digital books to prevent unlimited sharing. Projects like the DRM Chair expose the inner workings of (digital) systems.

Video: http://vimeo.com/60475086

Lorusso explains that according to Mike Shatzkin, digital publishing has becomes a function instead of an industry. Some artists and designers play with this idea. James Bridle for example automatically generated the publication My Life in Tweetsthat simply contains all his tweets of two years. Another example is FOMO by Space Caviar, a selfgenerated magazine that contains social media interactions based on a hashtag.

Lorusso wonders how we would characterize digital publishing if we understand it as merely a function. How can we  escape a generic service model? And how to take advantage of the opportunities that digital publishing allows for? ‘If digital publishing is indeed a function, let’s actually perform this function’, he states.

Why not playing with the tools that we are already familiar with? Lorusso argues that not many people are aware of the fact that Microsoft Word is not so much a software product, but it can actually be understood as a language. Microsoft Word 2008 even has an ‘AutoSummarize’ 10-sentence function that examines the document and ‘picks the sentences most relevant to the main theme’. Lorusso refers to the project of Jason Huff, who has summarized the 100 most downloaded free books including Metamorphosis and the Illiad. It’s interesting to ask who would be the author of this book. Is it Kafka? Microsoft Word? Or Jason Huff?

Just in Time, or A Short History of Production by Xavier Antin

There are more artists that reflect on the tools that are used for publishing. Xavier Antin for example has created an installation that consists of four printers from different periods in time that all print one colour. By letting the tools express themselves it shows that tools are never neutral. They all bring their own constrains, systems and aesthetics.

Lorusso argues that because of digital technologies and software, there has been a paradigm shift in publishing from creating to curating. Kenneth Goldsmith explains this process in his book Uncreative Writing.It explores how techniques like word processing, databasing and intensive programming have influenced the act of writing.

More and more artists and designers experiment with publishing through collecting and filtering. Roger Ebert for example has created The Collected Wikipedia Edits by publishing all edits by Wikipedians on specific articles. A rather hilarious example is Working On My Novelby Cory Arcangel, who has created a book with tweets that include “working on my novel”. Interestingly enough Penguin has actually published the book. According to Lorusso it shows that these kind of strategies are becoming more and more mainstream.

The issue with digital publishing is often that it requires a lot of labour to do it well and to make it work for every single format. This way compromises must be made in terms of functionality. The examples of Lorusso show that many artists play with existing formats by taking advantage of their specific features. By exposing these features through art and design, we may create a better understanding of what digital publishing will look like in the (near) future.

More speculative strategies can be found in the Post-Digital Publishing Archive.

Video: http://vimeo.com/114339867

Towards a hybrid workflow: editor, designer and developer UNITE!

By Becky Cachia, November 30, 2014 at 5:48 pm.

In the final showcase of the Digital Publishing Toolkit event in November 2014, Michael Murtaugh presented on behalf of the rest of the Institute of Network Cultures subgroup – that includes Joost Kircz, Silvio Lorusso, Miriam Rasch and Kimmy Spreeuwenberg – to answer the question:

How can small edition, low budget publishing houses edit, design, and develop a new, hybrid workflow for editing, designing and developing?

The INC subgroup has developed and optimised a workflow for print and digital publications to make the process of publishing on different platforms and in different formats easier and more efficient. Murtaugh gave a concise overview of their “hybrid workflow” by firstly explaining what is meant by “hybridity”. Within the publishing process, hybridity refers to a multitude of different things, including different screen sizes and technologies as well as print vs. digital.

Murtaugh stressed that “hybridity” also denotes the diverse dynamics of different reading practices. People read in an increasing variety of ways and therefore associate different devices with distinct reading situations. For example, along with people believing that the physical book can never be replaced, there are those that feel that reading off a phone is ideal in some situations whereas using an e-reader or a tablet is appropriate in other contexts. Therefore, it is interesting to think of e-readers not only in relation to the conventional idea of “a book” but also in relation to other electronic devices.

The dynamics of different reading practices and print or digital devices therefore demands hybridity in the practices of publishing and the goal of the INC subgroup was to connect the existing publishing practices and to suggest new ways of working. Rather than regarding roles in isolation, e.g. viewing the author, editor, designer and developer as separate entities, the aim was to build bridges and connect the different roles through the tools being used and through a feedback system of “talking back to each other”. In this way, could new ouptuts then influence and be fed back into, for example, new ways of writing?

Through their own workflow for this project, the INC subgroup organised monthly work sessions in order to create situations where team members could look over each other’s shoulders to fully understand what each person was doing and how they were doing it. The group could experience first hand the benefits and challenges of fine-tuning a hybrid workflow, and could create a system that addresses the challenges of a dynamic publishing process through being both structured and yet flexible.

The creation of “How-to & Style Guides”:

How-to and Style Guides, and running workshops in which the roles of editors, designers and developers overlap, the digital publication is not simply added onto the end of the existing print-centred publishing workflow, but can already inform each step of the process. The idea of constant feedback and output influencing each step of the process breaks down the linearity of the workflow and creates single source, multi-format publishing. By bridging practices, each member of the workflow can work using the same standard set of style features or even avoiding certain formatting features that would make the process easier in the long run.

Using a set of hybrid tools:

a set of tools was put together (namely, Markdown, Git, Pandoc and Make). These are tools that come from a long history of programming practices and are therefore very robust. In addition, because lots of different programmers work with them, they are very flexible. For example, the choice to use Markdown means that the text is reduced to the very core of what it is. There are no stylistic enhancements or automatic rendering of the text (as is common in word processing, for instance). The text is a ‘clean’ source that can then be interpreted by the designer for the medium specific elements of, for example, different devices for reading.

Looking ahead

Murtaugh ended the showcase by looking ahead to where the development of a hybrid workflow and EPUBs can be taken.

– An EPUB player is currently in development, which is a way to look at an EPUB online in a browser without having to generate a different html version. Through the player, an EPUB can be embedded into a website and pages can also be bookmarked and then exported as a separate EPUB. Murtaugh referred to this as being “kind of like a photocopier for the book”, whereby the EPUB you export is not a perfect publication, but it is still very useful for yourself (just like the pages of a book you photocopy).

– Secondly, Murtaugh gave a brief overview of having a hybrid editor, which is an attempt to make something that is in between the different kinds of working/publishing interfaces and tools we normally see. It is an integrated tool whose different parts come from somewhere else (e.g. from other open source tools), but they are all brought into the same interface. Murtaugh, ended the showcase by claiming that it is exciting to think of interfaces that can offer this kind of hybridity and functionalities.

Showcase nai010 uitgevers | My Collection

By Rose Rowson, November 30, 2014 at 8:55 pm.

Mark de Bruin of PuntPixel

During the showcase for nai010 uitgevers, we were shown a new mobile application developed by PUNTPIXEL and Medamo. My Highlights lets users create their own, personal ePub from the collection of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. The application allows users to search by genre, period, artist and so on to assemble their own personal impressions from the collection, and prioritise content. Presenters Marc de Bruijn and Barbara Lateur noted that this form of curation could be used, for example, by a layman wishing to plan their visit to the museum, or a student planning for their thesis. Moreover, the model could easily be transferred to any practice with diverse and structurable data requiring this type of cataloguing, such as a stamp collection.

When demonstrating the application via an iPhone projection, Marc de Bruijn showed how to navigate the interface of My Highlights. Information on different pieces in the collection is available for free, while users may choose to pay a small amount for additional material such as essays on artists and individual works. This aspect of the application is still in development; when it is fully operational, users will be able to compile their ePub, pay for any additional content using an inbuilt payment gateway and export their final product, to be viewed online within My Highlights, or offline in the external application of their choice.

The mock-up version of the iOS application de Bruijn showed us was created using Phonegap and WordPress to mimic the functionality of the final version. As an application concerned with creating ePubs, de Bruijn noted that the final versions of user curated ePubs may well be viewed in an external application. With the wide range of these applications available, this is arguably a concern for any group in the business of producing ePubs. Upon its launch, we shall see how successfully content from within My Highlights can be viewed outside of its sleek interface.

Video: http://vimeo.com/114339866

Showcase BIS Publishers | Phone gap & multi-channel publishing

By Rose Rowson, November 30, 2014 at 8:51 pm.

Presenting on behalf of the design agency Essense, Arjen de Jong began by positing the essential question for working with BIS Publishers to create an ebook: (How) can we make rich media, highly interactive publications, accessible on multiple devices at a reasonable cost?

Arjen de Jong presenting for Essense

As a publishing house, BIS is renowned for its innovative approach to graphic design and visual culture as a whole; in order to fittingly represent their brand in the field of digital books, it was essential for Essense transfer this rich media approach. But how can this be achieved in the digital realm, especially when combined with additional characteristics such as interactivity and cross-device compatibility? The inclusion of these specifically digital elements to a book allows greater scope for creativity, while simultaneously causing potential problems of executability.

One interactive element de Jong identified was the potential non-linearity of digital books. On a “page” level, they could include individual interactive panels, but beyond this they could also allow readers to jump in between different sections of the text, while still maintaining a sense of wholeness of the book. This potential flexibility of the medium is demonstrated and hindered by readers using multiple devices. While this allows greater levels of portability and multichannel engagement for users, it also creates a greater level of complexity for designers, who must ensure that content translates well across devices.

While multiple device use is common, de Jong and his team made the decision to focus their ebook development on tablets. He cited a reason for this as, firstly, the inability for e-reader hardware such as a Kindle that uses e-ink to show the kind of rich media that was required for the publication, and secondly, that the e-reader has been transforming into a more tablet-like device, shown, for example, by the Kindle Fire. The focus on tablets furthermore allowed access to open, flexible and sustainable formats: ideal conditions for developing a new way to view e-publications.

After trying to work with various different developing tools and identifying their shortcomings for tackling the task at hand, Essense settled upon PhoneGap, due to its usability, integration of web code and compatibility across platforms via the Cloud. Experimenting with Markdown to write their code on multiple channels, transforming it into HTML and then transferring it into Phonegap, de Jong and his team were pleased with their results but nonetheless acknowledged that there was still some way to go towards perfecting the kind of e-publication they were setting out to make.

In this brief presentation, de Jong demonstrated that creating an e-publication to fit the specifications of a client is often easier said that done. The integration of the myriad potentials for these digital books is often as much of a hindrance as it is inspiring. Nevertheless, from the work that has been done by de Jong and his team, it is clear that this kind of e-book is certainly possible, and opens up creative doors for innovators such as BIS Publishers.

Harold Konickx | It’s not a page; new familiar ways of book design

By Rose Rowson, November 30, 2014 at 9:48 pm.

During his brief talk nearing the end of the afternoon’s presentations, Harold Konickx spent fifteen minutes discussing the changing face of the page in the wake of digital publishing. He began by quoting Marshall McLuhan, noting that “an environment becomes fully visible only when it has been superseded by a new environment; thus we are always one step behind in our view of the world”. This quote was employed as a way of asking the question, how do readers and designers of digital books relate to the page now that they are not dealing with a page in itself? As Konickx asked, evoking McLuhan once more, “Are we ready for a different kind of page… or are we trapped in a rear-view mirror view of our world?”

Reader; Designer; Book

As a means of grounding his research on digital publishing, Konickx focusses on the relationship between reader, designer and book. His first case study to demonstrate this was the work of Megan Hoogenboom, and specifically her ePub version of the poem “Boem Paukeslag” by Paul van Ostaijen. Konickx noted that while this kind of poetry depends on specific formatting, taking spacing and fonts into consideration, for example, Hoogenboom successfully translated the poem into ePub format by transcending the usual role of the page, reinventing the part it is meant to play and “overcoming the so-called boundaries of ePub”.

Konickx argued that Hoogenboom touched on the core of what a book is through this work; but what exactly is a book if it is not a collection of physical pages? The traditional notion of the book is very much bound by content as well as form. Surely drawing on Kittler’s work in Software Studies: A Lexicon, Konickx evoked the example of the codex, noting how the development of parchment allowed the creation of the book as a whole, and on the part of the reader allowing them to feel as if they were holding “the whole world” in their hands. In particular here, Konickx cited Miriam Rasch as stating that digital books do not allow one to really feel what point they are at within a book: physical books, on the other hand, allow substance and form to work together to create a pleasurable mental and tactile experience.

Harold Konickx takes us through Alberto Manguel

Konickx is well aware of the nostalgic qualities of his research. Just as with McLuhan, he nodded to Alberto Manguel’s argument that new technological developments make us more aware of old fashioned qualities we would otherwise have overlooked. A possible analogy of this, Konickx argued, is being currently demonstrated within the musical community with the rise in use of vinyl records. While accepting the love of books as objects is romantic, and books having desirably qualities in and of themselves, the session was not about putting the physical book on a pedestal.

The Digital

Skeuomorphism on iBooks

Considering the skeuomorphism present in Apple’s iBooks software, Konickx lucidly brought us back to McLuhan’s horseless carriage syndrome, wherein the first motor vehicles where designed to resemble horse drawn carriages in order to acclimatise the general public to their presence on the road. But despite the illusion of pages turning as shown in this image, Konickx argues that ebooks do, in fact, promote a far different experience than that of reading a printed book. Despite identifying ebooks as being essentially networked, Konickx returned to the description of physical books as a positive experience of allowing readers to have the whole world in their hands; I suppose that in this instance, the limits of a world – i.e., the end of the book – are more appealing than a world that is seemingly endless.

Returning to Megan Hoogenboom, Konickx used her work as an example to show that the potential success of the ebook as a medium lies in the acceptance of its own specific capabilities. What makes a digital book stand on its own? Konickx pointed us towards Between Page and Screen: Remaking Literature through Cinema and Cyberspace as an extensive collection of essays, published in 2012, as a means of establishing a discourse on the subject.

Intermediation

Coming to the end of his talk, Konickx moved to N. Katherine Hayles’ essay “Intermediation”. Throughout her work, Hayles has been drawing comparisons between humans and computers to make a claim on our inter-relation. She argues that literature throughout the 20th century is computational. Konickx believes that the reading of a physical book lies in stark difference to the reading of a digital; Hayles would agree with this, and propose that this difference lies in the constant flux of words and images that change as a result of our needs. Moreover, Hayles argues that “a computer can function as a partner in creating intermediary dynamics in ways that a book cannot,” placing more agency to a computer as opposed to its printed and bound counterpart. According to Hayles, engagers with digital books are players rather than readers, as they have more control over what they are consuming. Hayles’ primary example of this is Judd Morrissey’s The Jew’s Daughter, a form of digital literature, she argues, would be impossible when combined with the durability of ink.

Konickx left us with this example, and by finally reminding us that a digital page is not a page, at least not in the same way as a physical book. These physical books have irreplaceable qualities, but digital books have new qualities that have yet to be fully explored through experimentation and the development of new ways of creation, and of engagement.

Context Without Walls – a generative workflow with EPUBster (Digital Publishing Toolkit November 2014)

By Becky Cachia, November 30, 2014 at 5:40 pm.

The second showcase of the Digital Publishing Toolkit conference highlighted the collaborative work of the subgroup of Valiz, Meeus Ontwerpt and PUNTPIXEL: Context Without Walls – a generative workflow with EPUBster.

The aim of the project was to create a digital (EPUB) version of Common Skin, a publication within the series Context Without Walls. This series of print publications – developed by Valiz and designed by Meeus Ontwerpt – focuses on contemporary artists worldwide through both essays and images.

the process of digitalising Common Skin was very challenging and ambitious. As part of a series with meticulous and extensive design, it was difficult to do the publication the same justice in a digital format. To attempt to do so, they created an online and open source tool – called EPUBster – to create, edit and publish this particular publication as well as to enable other designers, developers and publishers to create their own digital publications.

EPUBster as a web application for the creation and editing of digital publications. The tool was developed as a general purpose tool, although it does have some specific functionalities for Valiz and Meeus Ontwerpt’s “Context Without Walls” series.

Sybesma provided a concise overview of EPUBster by running the audience through the four main components of the tool’s straightforward user interface:

its metadata editor;

the chapter editor (for the re-arranging of chapters);

the functionalities of its content editors (both visual and plain text);

the design features (to add a book cover and CSS styling).

The four sections create a very flexible workflow in which the user can switch between sections at any point in the creation process. Once the user has filled in all the required metadata and finished creating, editing and styling chapters and content, the EPUB can be generated. You can read more about the development of EPUBster here.

Common Skin to demonstrate the rich layers of text and imagery they were presented with. As an academic text, there were a lot of footnotes, quotes and index words. Therefore, they created a book that showed this rich layered text by incorporating many layers around the core text. For example, the margins contain index words to serve as both an entrance to the text and to build a vocabulary for the series.

Janne and Hilde expressed that when they originally started the project of transforming the book into a digital version, they wanted to retain and expand on these characteristics that they had developed for the print version. They started off with a lot of exciting ideas for the digital version, e.g. incorporating videos and interactive margins, but they soon realised that, if they wanted the digital book to be accessed through different devices, they would not be able to incorporate the characteristics of their dreams. The only way to retain the potential for the spread of the book was to focus on making a simple EPUB that could be read by all devices.

In doing so, they were restricted in many ways. For instance, they could only use open source typefaces, margin features where not possible, and the design elements were, more often than not, stripped from the book, by the device. They were left with the question: Is there anything left to design?

In describing the process of creating the digital version of Common Skin, Janne and Hilde showed that they were overwhelmed by the feeling that EPUBs are not controlled by people but rather by machines. Therefore, their role as designers was simply to ensure that they could produce an error-free publication so as not to disturb the reading process.

The end product had to change a lot from the print version, e.g. different colours, typefaces, and the elimination of notes from the margins. After trying to use EPUBster as well as working with PUNTPIXEL to make EPUBster suit their needs, Meeus Ontwerpt needed to look to other tools to minimise the amount of problems they were being faced with. In the end, the EPUB was created using an EPUB editor called Sigil.

Reflection

Upon completing the book, Janne and Hilde asked the question, “What can the role of the designer be in the digital publishing process, if it is not only to make an EPUB that is free from errors?” They now see the potential for experimentation and feel that there are indeed a lot of possibilities but they are at present not evident and will only be exposed through further experimentation.

Collaborative workflows

By André Castro, November 25, 2014 at 2:56 pm.

During the Showcase of the Digital Publishing Toolkit Michael Murtaugh gave a presentation entitled Towards a hybrid workflow: editor, designer and developer UNITE!, that resonated strongly with my experience of creating The Volkskrant Building ebook by Boukje Cnossen and Sebastian Olma. In a previous blogpost I half-heartedly criticized the top-down dynamic experienced during the development of that publication. Now I’d like to pick up where I left and try to turn my frustrations into constructive ideas, that might be useful in the production of hybrid publication within small, low-budged, DIY contexts.

I am critical not of a division of labor in the production of publication. I believe each of the actors involved, being either an author, editor, designer, or developer, should work in his/her area of expertise. Yet, I firmly oppose the situation where each of these actors develop his/her share of the publication in an island, only interrupted by sporadic contacts with the other actors, taking part in the collective and complex effort of publishing a book in more than one medium.

Such criticism begs the question: How can publishing workflows change into collaborative, horizontal, flexible and inventive environments, which can resolve and profit from the challenges brought by hybrid publishing? How can teams of authors, editors, developers and designers work collaboratively under a joint and self-reflective workflow, instead of a series of parallel and independent workflows?

Miriam Rasch (editor for the Institute of Network Cultures’ publications, in which I have worked as a developer) makes a good point on a blogpost where she mentions her necessity as an editor to proof-read the publication’s text in its designed form. This prerequisite is easily understandable. A carefully designed publication encourages a more focused reading experience than a computer screen or the printout of a MS Word document. Rasch further explains how the corrections’ are implemented in INC’s hybrid publication: “usually marked by the editor and then issued to the designer, who will process them in the InDesign file, and to the developer who will do the same in the EPUB”. Rasch argues that “it seems impossible to avoid multiple work on corrections, meaning both editor, designer, and developer might have to put them through in their respective files”.

Rather than calling the described approach a workflow, I would risk describing it as a workflow made of multiple workflows, which develop in parallel to each other. The figure bellow attempts to present a visual representation of a parallel workflow. Each actor works on his/her stream, aiming for a specific output. The streams don’t intersect, and changes such as corrections, have to be implemented individually in each stream, from top to bottom.

Parallel workflows

I disagree with Miriam Rasch when she affirms that “it seems impossible to avoid multiple work on corrections”. And strongly believe that the parallel workflow INC has so far followed is not only inefficient. It is a handicap, when applied to hybrid publishing, ultimately forcing publishers to exclude the possibility of publishing works in more than one format.

How to work on a single, collaborative workflow? Contrary to what Miriam Rasch argues I am convinced that the implementation of corrections does not need to be repeated for each of the book’s outputs. In my view, a collaborative workflow structured around source files and a version control system, can cut down this process, and others which would normally require an implemented across the multiple publication’s output, into a single implementation. The following figure presents a possible visual representation of such collaborative workflow.

Collaborative workflow

In such workflow the Markdown is the markup language chosen for the source files. They constitute the malleable and changeable building blocks from which the workflow’s outputs are generated. Git – the distributed version control system –, is both the project’s safety net and the link between its various actors. It keeps track of changes in the source files, and syncs them across the source file copies kept by author, editor, designer and developer. Working under this scheme allows all the actors involved in the workflow to intervene upon the source files, and be sure that their changes will be incorporated into the source files kept by all the other actors.

Like in the current INC’s workflow for hybrid publications, the proposed collaborative workflow begins with author and editor working on the manuscript in .docx format. The editor applies a style guide to the manuscript, which make for a seemingly conversion to Markdown. Once the manuscript is correctly formatted it is converted into Markdown source files, and never used again.

The next stage revolves entirely around the Markdown source files – here my proposal starts to diverge from INC’s current workflow. Whereas in the current workflow Markdown source files are only of interest to the developer and at times the editor, in proposed collaborative workflow all actors work on the Markdown source files. They all contribute to its preparation for the next stage of conversions. At this stage, among other actions, the colophon is introduced, footnotes are checked, figures placed, URLs are hyperlinked.

Once all this supplementary information has been introduced into the Markdown source files the workflow enters in its conversion stage. The source files are converted into the various output formats and the workflow splits into branches, dedicated to each of the outputs. Such separation does not mean that the actors will become disconnected, instead they remain connected through the source files. To exemplify this interconnection of production branches take the case of last minute corrections. In this scenario the editor receives a draft of the design for paper book. While reading it she finds typos and elements that need to be altered. In a collaborative workflow she can implement the necessary changes directly to the Markdown source file. Both designer and developer, being notified of such change, sync their Markdown source files to the editor’s version – a trivial process in Git tracked projects. The three now have their Markdown source files in their latest version, which include the editor’s last minute changes. Both designer and developer only need to integrate those changes into their respective projects, destined to become one of the publication’s outputs. The EPUB developer can incorporate the introduced changes by producing a new EPUP version, via a Makefile, as described in Making the VolkskrantBuilding.epub blogpost. For the designer, changes can be incorporated into the inDesign (or Scribus) project through the conversion of the Markdown source file into an ICML file – As described by Silvio Lorusso in the Markdown to Indesign with Pandoc (via ICML) blogpost, importing an ICML file into an inDesign project permits updating both content and structure, without affecting the project’s design decisions. In both cases, content changes in the source files, can be incorporated into the various design projects, destined to produce the publication’s outputs, without affecting any or reverting prior design and development work.

The advantages of such collaborative and lean working methodology for hybrid publications seems clear. I believe it promotes an efficient architecture where time isn’t wasted on replicating the same actions for each of the publication’s output. More importantly, it fosters a dynamic where editor, designer, developer and author work closer and interdependently, and the output is only one conversion away from the publication’s source. If instead, publishers choose to develop hybrid publications under the same methods they have developed for single-output publications, I am inclined to believe they wont be able to sustain the demands of such approach, and hybrid publishing will be nothing more but a distant dream, that ended up costing too much time and money.

Making the VolkskrantBuilding.epub

By André Castro, November 23, 2014 at 3:02 pm.

Last week The Institute of Network Cultures and Amsterdam Creative Industries Network launched the publication The Volkskrant Building: Manufacturing Difference in Amsterdam’s Creative City (TVB) by Boukje Cnossen and Sebastian Olma. I use this post to share the process that led to the production of its EPUB edition.

From the onset it was clear that TVB had to go from manuscript to its two output format – EPUB and paper – in little more than one week. We were starting from good position: the manuscript, a .docx file, was in its final form and had been carefully edited, with all of its text formatting accomplished through styles, as described by Miriam Rasch in the Style Guide for Hybrid Publishing blog-post. This consistency of the manuscript allows for the necessary format conversions to be performed with ease and little obstructions. Despite this advantage, the short time span available for the production of TVB remained a challenge. While UNDOG design studio worked on the identity of the book, I developed the EPUB. This meant I had to follow the studio’s lead, wait for its work to be completed, and only then could I apply the same identity to the EPUB edition. The adoption of such dynamic, in hybrid workflows, is highly questionable, given its inefficiency and imposition of top-down dynamic instead of a more collaborative and egalitarian approach between all of those involved in the production of a book, but that is in itself subject for another blog post.

In my usual method for creating EPUBs I use:

Markdown source-files: a plain-text markup language, used to do most of the work on the book’s text; It can perhaps be best described as a preparatory document for the generation of the EPUB, where all content, text-formatting and structure of the EPUB are already present, under a simpler form.

Pandoc: the conversion software, that translates between different markup languages. In this case I used Pandoc to convert the manuscript from .docx to Markdown and from Markdown to EPUB3;

Git: the versioning system which tracks the history of changes the sources files undergo during the production of the EPUB.

For the production of the TVB ebook, in addition to these tools I chose to use a Makefile, in a similar way as described by Michael Murtaugh in the Make Book blog post. The Makefile became center of operations that compiled all the source files and addressed them to Pandoc, to be converted into an EPUB.

The Makefile used in the production of TVB EPUB:

VolkskrantBuilding.epub:
    cd docs && pandoc \
    --from markdown \
    --to epub3 \
    --self-contained \
    --epub-chapter-level=1 \
    --toc-depth=2 \
    --epub-cover-image=media/cover.png \
    --epub-metadata=metadata.xml \
    --epub-stylesheet=styles.epub.css \
    --epub-embed-font=VAGRoundedStd-Black.otf \
    --epub-embed-font=VAGRoundedStd-Bold.otf \
    --epub-embed-font=VAGRoundedStd-Light.otf \
    --epub-embed-font=VAGRoundedStd-Thin.otf \
    --default-image-extension png \
    -o VolkskrantBuilding.epub \
    VK.md

This approach centered on a Makefile allowed me to narrow my focus to the source files and the Makefile. As a result it sped-up and simplified the development process. The source files – the Markdown text files, images, metadata, CSS styles – became the ingredients necessary to cook this EPUB dish and the recipe, where the Makefile was the recipe.make VolkskrantBuilding.epub. Once the make command was executed I’d evaluate the result. If I happened to dislike the dish I just created, I would very simply adjust the ingredients or the recipe. I iterates through this circle, fine-tuning ingredients and recipe, cooking, and tasting, until I got to a satisfactory EPUB.

The described approach contrasts with my default method for producing EPUBs. Usually I create a rough EPUB with Pandoc, unzip it and start working on its constituent files – editing the metadata inside content.opf, the stylesheet, or the content .xhtml files. When all editing is done I zip the files back into an EPUB and look at the result. I repeat the whole process few more times until I am happy with the outcome. If I carry on with the culinary analogies I’d say that this approach would be like cooking an already cooked dish. The EPUB is in front of me, and what I do is separate its different parts, change them individually, and then put them back together in a slightly different dish. Although it works, this approach is somehow unfocused, slow, and forces me to work with HTML files. Although HTML is a powerful, and yet simple markup language, its unrendered source is unpleasant to either read or edit. Edit large sections of text wrapped by countless HTML tags instinctively feels like a recipe for disaster.

With the Makefile approach I am spared from working with HTML. Instead I deal mostly with Markdown source files, which contrarily to HTML are easy to read and edit and can be quickly compiled into an EPUB. The feedback loop between a change and its effect on the EPUB become much shorter and direct. Even in cases of more expressive sections, which fall outside the scope of Markdown, such as the red quotations blocks that permeate TVB, can be handled within Markdown, by adding HTML snippets, which will easily do the job.

The big downside of this approach is that it leaves one at the mercy of the conversion software used. Although Pandoc is an incredibly powerful piece of software, it is not perfect, as I am afraid no piece of software is. Pandoc conversions, are sometimes, specially in very small details, not exactly what one wishes. An example of this is the way Pandoc handles footnote references in EPUB3 conversions. The conversion presents superscript footnote reference numbers by wrapping the numbers in HTML superscript tags ``, as in:

squatters movement.2` tags are a simple means to

format text as superscript. Yet it goes against the accessibility guidelines from the International Digital Publishing Forum, which state “Do not use the sup element to superscript note references, as it is redundant presentational tagging. The CSS vertical-align property can be set to superscript the a elements.” Furthermore, they compromise the responsiveness of footnote references in the iPad’s iBooks reader. All in all, it is understandable that such issue arises. EPUB3 specs are still in development and Pandoc is an open-source project of small dimensions, which probably has more pressing issues to tackle than to make footnotes respond well on the iPad. Yet, one can do something about it. The most obvious fix is to remove all the sup tags from the EPUB once it is created (via a script). The other solutions are directly related to the fact that Pandoc is Free/Open-Source software, licensed under the GNU General Public License version 2. The license clearly states that “You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it”, which means that anyone has the permission to modify Pandoc source-code, and alter the way footnote references are encoded in EPUB3 conversions. Other possibility is to visit the central repository where the development of Pandoc takes place and address this problem by opening an issue, which will be read considered by Pandoc’s developers.

In a nutshell Makefiles are useful and simple ways to optimize the development of an EPUB into recipes that can simplify the development of an EPUB and make the most out of the combination of small, simple and yet powerful pieces of software. However this approach isn’t perfect. It isn’t a one-size-fits-all recipe that can be applied to the production each and every EPUB, as it produces default behaviors and nearly invisible artifacts that in some contexts can become disruptive. Consequently the employment of other approaches and experimentation remains essential to the innovation and diversification of ebooks.

Developing EPUBster

By Marc de Bruijn, November 19, 2014 at 3:26 pm.

With EPUBster (for lack of a better name) we tried to develop a web application allowing publishers to edit and create EPUBs. We us the term ‘publisher’ very loosely in this instance, also referring to developers, designers or editors. EPUBster was partly developed for Amsterdam based publisher Valiz and designers Meeus Ontwerpt in order for them to create a series of books titled “Context Without Walls”. Their feedback at various points prompted some of the design and implementation decisions. As such the application is intended as a general purpose tool for generating EPUBs, but incorporating some very specific features, such as support for multiple indices.

The application can be broken down in a few components:

A very simple metadata editor offering just the necessary fields as defined in the EPUB standard;

Section or chapter editor, used for rearranging and deleting chapters in an EPUB;

Content editor allowing the user to manipulate the text of a section/chapter;

Options to add a book cover and CSS styling.

After creating an edition, filling in the required metadata and creating some chapters, the user is then able to generate or preview an EPUB based on the inputted data.

The same components used to build the application are represented in the user interface. The interface allows the publisher to author a publication step-by-step, from primary information and metadata input in the first tab of EPUBster to adding a cover as the last step of the process. To assist the user with the creation of a publication and provide a flexible workflow, one can switch between tabs and components of the application. This allows for a non-lineair workflow and the possibility of adding chapters to a publication or change the design by adding different CSS-files at a later stage.

The Application

At the time we decided to build the application using a PHP framework, CakePHP. Having developed multiple applications using the framework, CakePHP proved to be a familiar environment allowing us to rapidly prototype the features of the application. One of the downsides of CakePHP is the slowness of the framework compared to other offerings and the reliance on what’s often called “automagic” in Cake’s documentation. As our recent experiences with the Laravel framework, partly built on Symfony, have been very positive, the initial choice for CakePHP as a foundation doesn’t seem as straightforward at this point.

One of the restrictions that guided the development process was the requirement that the application should run on very common server hardware. As a lot of webhosting environments are of the “shared hosting” variety, making use of shell programs was out of the question. It would be relatively simple to build a web GUI on top of calibre’s command line interface or a document converter like pandoc. Instead we relied on PHP libraries for most of the generative features of the web application. Asbjorn Grandt’s PHPePub forms the core of the application and was packaged, with some modifications, as a Cake plugin in order to receive content from EPUBster’s MySQL database containing the publication data.

At first we focussed on processing Markdown formatted text as input for the various chapters/sections in a publication. After storing the Markdown text in a database this is then converted to HTML and subsequently processed by PHPePub. The conversion is done using the Markdown Extra library packaged as Cake plugin by Maury M. Marques.WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) orientated approach, while still supporting Markdown. The WYSIWYG editor is an extended version of Davi Ferreira’s Medium Editor. As the editor manipulates HTML directly, no conversion is necessary prior to generating an EPUB. Due to the fact that the editor uses HTML5’s contenteditable behaviour there is support for parsing rich text pasted from text editors and word processors. Bolds, italics, colours, etc. will be pasted as HTML in a contenteditable element. This introduces several problems however, as some word processors (notably Microsoft Word) wrap formatted text in tags with a lot of style attributes, resulting in a lot of undesirable and superfluous markup when generating an EPUB. Stripping the unwanted markup (font-families, line-height, etc.), while leaving the desirable elements (bold, italic, etc.) in place took some modification of the Medium Editor’s codebase.

In earlier versions of the application it was only possible to preview a draft edition by generating an EPUB, downloading the file to the user’s harddrive and previewing said file in an ereader like calibre or iBooks. To provide a more immediate way to preview draft editions we decided to implement a JavaScript EPUB viewer. ReadiumJS seemed like a natural choice, as the project is backed by several large publishers and the International Digital Publishing Forum, the curators of the EPUB standard. However at the time of implementation, ReadiumJS – which is still in heavy development – proved to be too unstable for production use. Instead we opted for epub.js by Fred Chasen, an actively developed JavaScript library comparable to ReadiumJS which offers a more robust experience. When a user previews an edition in EPUBster an EPUB is generated on the fly and rendered in the browser using epub.js.

The current version of EPUBster is available on GitHub. As it stands the application should be considered of alpha quality and could do with a lot more testing and polish. Testing of the EPUBs generated by the application on several ereading devices should be a priority, for example, should development on the application continue in some for or other. However, it should currently be possible to create a fully-fledged EPUB 3 without much trouble using the tools provided by EPUBster.

Building My Highlights

By Marc de Bruijn, November 19, 2014 at 3:28 pm.

This is a short overview of the process of building a proof-of-concept application. Requirements shifted during the development of the project which, combined with a lot of uncertainty regarding the datasources to be used, partly explains the technical exploratory process and the way the final proof-of-concept was developed.

My Highlights was conceived as a mobile application allowing the user to easily browse and filter a large collection of objects from Highlights catalogue of the Stedelijk Museum. After the user selects optional additional material (essay, interview, images, etc.) one is able to generate an EPUB based on the selection, available for offline use – for example on a smartphone while visiting the museum itself.

Apart from the technical development of the Highlights application, we also designed the structure of the application and provided the basis of the user interface in collaboration with Medamo. The application is split into different sections, apart from the overview of a collection, the application contains search, filters, guides and a section showing a personal selection of content from the Highlights catalogue. All of the sections are reached by selecting a series of four buttons contained in a tabbar on the bottom of the screen. A common usage scenario involves working from left to right in the tabbar, by first browsing the entirety of the collection (the leftmost button), searching and filtering the content (second and third button) and reviewing the selected choices in the last section (available by selecting the button on the far right). A basic interface design was developed based on the aforementioned scenario and further developed and designed by Medamo.

In our day to day practice we mostly develop websites and site-specific web-applications for use in exhibitions. Building native applications for smartphones and tablets on multiple platforms (iOS, Android) is a whole field entirely. There is the learning curve to consider for each SDK, not to mention the difference in programming language (Objective-C for iOS, Java for Android, etc.) and the breadth of devices to support. Building an application using the Android SDK doesn’t guarantee it will work on any given Android device and the same holds true to a lesser extent when using iOS (though the device range is smaller). For developers who work predominantly with web technologies this isn’t the most straightforward method available, so at first we examined two possible solutions; PhoneGap and Sencha Touch.

PhoneGap

The promise of HTML5 web applications packaged as native apps is an intriguing one, as it seemingly allows a web developer to ignore most of the problems related to development using native SDKs. This is the promise of PhoneGap, which gives a developer the tools to package an HTML5 application and even – with some extra work – use some of the native features of the targeted device (i.e. camera, compass, etc.) The foundation of PhoneGap is Apache Cordova and it allows developers to package HTML, JavaScript and CSS as native application binaries. In theory one would create one application in HTML and use PhoneGap to generate all the required application binaries based on that HTML master for the platforms one wants to support. Apache Cordova also gives access to device specific functions (camera, compass, accelerometer, etc.) normally only available to applications built using the official SDKs. Using PhoneGap a HTML application may interface with these services through Apache Cordova in a unified way. As an example, the procedure for accessing photo’s in the HTML context via Apache Cordova is theoretically the same, whether the generated application binaries are intended for distribution on an iPhone, Android or Windows phone or even a Blackberry.PhoneGap in itself only offers the tools to create the binaries, the actual application can be build using any client-side application frameworks.

Sencha Touch

Sencha offers a suite of tools, from a UI framework for building mobile interfaces (Sencha Touch) to a JavaScript framework (Ext JS) and an application (Sencha Cmd) which handles the packaging of the code into native binaries. Due to the tight integration of the individual components and the promise of speed rivaling that of native applications Sencha appeared to be a viable solution at first sight. As Sencha Touch is heavily integrated with Ext JS the learning curve is quite high when unfamiliar with both frameworks. Sencha might have been a viable option when developing a fully-fledged mobile application to be deployed commercially, although many other competing options – like Ionic – exist in that regard.

jQuery Mobile

As the learning curve of Sencha proved to be a little too steep, we turned to another HTML5 framework: jQuery Mobile. As the name suggests the framework is build on jQuery and therefore closely tied to the concepts used in that particular library. jQuery Mobile mainly focuses on a consistent UI experience on any platform (smartphone, tablet or desktop) and is less (or not at all) concerned about speed or integration. Frameworks like Sencha and Ionic try to mimic the native UI widgets (lists, buttons, etc.) of each platform as close as possible, while jQuery Mobile uses one style of widgets and aims at rendering them as consistently as possible across multiple platforms.jQuery Mobile is fairly easy and the integration with jQuery certainly helps. However, for the My Highlights application a custom design was created which didn’t really mesh with the default widgets of the framework. Manipulating and overriding large portions the framework’s CSS in order to support the design of the My Highlights application, combined with the framework’s many quirks, conventions and spotty documentation, made us abandon the framework after building a portion of the application. jQuery Mobile offers a lot of options which we didn’t necessarily need and the way some of the features have been implemented were more of a hassle to support than actually speeding up development.

No specific framework

Ultimately we considered a more barebones scenario using only jQuery, a library to handle URL routing (Flatiron Director) and a way to store client-side data (jStorage). The application communicates with an external WordPress installation, in lieu of a datasource like Adlib, in order to receive collection data (via the newfangled WordPress JSON REST API) and generate an EPUB based on the selections made in the My Highlights application. This barebones setup, using only relatively small, individual JavaScript libraries, allowed us to quickly develop a proof-of-concept application which may be packaged as a PhoneGap binary or used as a web application.

The code of the application and two WordPress plugins are available on GitHub.

How to Handle Corrections in a Hybrid Workflow

By Miriam Rasch, October 28, 2014 at 2:58 pm.

Read the introduction to Hybrid workflow how-to here.

Corrections form a large part of the process of making a book, whether it is in print or electronic. Handling corrections posed one of the biggest challenges to the INC research team and the ideal solution is still not found. To start with the conclusions:

Conclusion 1: work towards a document as clean as possible before sending it to the designer and developer because this saves a huge amount of work (see also our post on the style guide). This is mainly due to:

Conclusion 2: it seems impossible to avoid multiple work on corrections, meaning both editor, designer, and developer might have to put them through in their respective files.

Conclusion 3: not all corrections are relevant for all publication formats; different kinds of corrections are made in different locations. An example are hyphenations, which are specific to a desktop publishing file, and do not play a role in a digital file.

A little pre-history

Markdownworkflow how-to).

Types of corrections

spelling mistakes

minor style issues

design issues: loose lines on top or bottom of the page, hyphenation, blank pages, white space between words, …

images: quality of the image, captions, placing of the images relative to the text

et cetera

Below is an example of a standard spread marked with editorial corrections, including spelling, hyphenation, and design questions.

Corrections_INC-1WEB.jpg

Place of corrections

The corrections are usually marked by the editor and then issued to the designer, who will process them in the InDesign file, and to the developer who will do the same in the EPUB. Text corrections need to be processed in both files in the same way. Design- or lay-out specific corrections can be divided in desktop publishing corrections (InDesign-only) and design and technology corrections in the EPUB. This means a distinction has to be made. To return to the example of hyphenation: an incorrect hyphenations is specifically a problem of the desktop publishing file and needs to be manually adapted there, while playing no role in the HTML file. The same goes for white spaces that are too big or small; or the other way around, for links in the EPUB that do not work, or headers which do not appear in the Table of Contents.

Archival file

After processing corrections in the HTML file for the EPUB, this can be exported to Markdown, to keep as an archival file. Take note: on other occasions – for example when only producing a print edition or when the ebook is made in a later stage – it may be necessary to also process corrections in the Markdown file. This file can then be archived or used later on to produce the EPUB. In that case, processing these corrections can be done by the editor.

Communicating corrections

Traditionally the editor or corrector makes corrections on a print of the designed PDF file, as shown above, which is then processed by the designer. This procedure is still followed in a hybrid workflow ending in a print and electronic edition. Keep in mind that in the electronic files the specific locations of corrections can’t be communicated through page numbers, but by their relative place (chapter, paragraph).

Style Guide for Hybrid Publishing

By Miriam Rasch, October 21, 2014 at 10:47 am.

The pursuit of hybrid publishing – aiming at different output formats, both print and electronic, for a single title – means reconsidering your workflow from the first step to the last. A well thought-through style guide is essential to make this transition to hybrid publishing efficient, time- and money-wise. The style guide is sent to the authors or contributors and defines how you receive your documents or manuscripts. Adapting your style guide so it fits your hybrid publishing goals beforehand will save a lot of time in production!

The Institute of Network Cultures has worked on the development of a hybrid workflow, which is described in detail on this blog: steps for the editor to follow, for the print book designer, and for the ebook developer. In that manual we start from the point where the definitive manuscript of the author is handed in and follow as it is made into a InDesign/PDF document and an EPUB.

However, the workflow will without a doubt gain in efficiency when there is attention paid to the nascent state of a publication as well: the style guide used by a publishing house. In what follows the INC style guide will be given as an example of how to adjust your publishing style guide in such a way as to cater for a hybrid publishing workflow.

We’ll focus solely on the issues at stake in the transition to a combined print and electronic workflow and will leave other elements of the style guide aside. A copy of the style guide as used by the INC can be downloaded here.

INC books are published on paper, as PDF, and in print-on-demand and are freely available from the INC website. For more information on INC publications, visit networkcultures.org/publications.

—

Language style:

Document Formatting / Layout:

General

Submissions should be sent preferably in .docx.

Use only one clean and clear font, the same throughout.

The whole text should have Normal style as default.

The title and author should have Heading 1 style, article sections should have Header 2 and subsections Header 3 style.

Use single spacing between lines.

Text should be aligned on the left.

Do not use tabs for paragraph breaks at any time but a white space between paragraphs.

Add italics where needed (references, emphasis on single words).

Do not use underlining at any time.

URLs in the body text should not be clickable.

All headings and subtitles are capitalized. Capitalize the first word of the title, the last word of the title, and all nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives. Do not capitalize prepositions or conjunctions unless contain more than 4 letters. For example: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives.

Italicize (no quotation marks) proper names such as films, books, television series, works of art, etc. Song titles, for example, are placed between single quotation marks, while album titles are italicized.

Use the serial comma.

Footnotes and referencing

All references should be auto-inserted footnotes (in other words, no in text references that use parentheses/brackets). For example, not: Off the Press discusses the question of digital publishing (Lorusso, 2013). But: Off the Press discusses the question of digital publishing.

All references should also be collected into a Reference list at the end of the article.

Always put a period at the end of a footnote, even if it just a URL (make sure the URL still works).

Footnote numbers comes after comma/period; this is also the case if the comma/period follows a quotation mark. I.e.: ‘an alternative network’.

URLs in footnotes should be clickable.

In the footnotes and in the reference list full URLs should be clickable but not stylized as links (no color or underlining).

Make sure all references that appear in footnotes also appear in the reference list at the end of the text.

Dates in footnotes should be 19 November 2010 (not November 19, 2010).

For specific formatting of footnotes and reference list, see further on in this style guide.

Quotations

For quotations longer than four lines use blockquote. Don’t use quotation marks around a block quote. When needed, use double quotations marks inside a block quote.

Commas and full stops should be placed after the quotation mark, if they’re not part of the quotation.

All quotations should use single quotation marks except in instances of a quote inside a quote (in such cases use double quotation marks inside single quotation marks).

If ellipsis are used in a quotation because the article’s author has removed or altered text, for example for the sentence to read grammatically correctly, be sure to put square brackets […] or [has] around the ellipsis to indicate this notation is made by the author.

Images:

Authors must have copyright to the images, or permission to use them.

Images can be in full colour or black and white (note that the print edition will be black and white).

Images should be included in the text file at the right position as 72 dpi jpeg and, at the same time, sent separately as 300 dpi tiff (suitable for for print).

Files must be properly named and numbered in the following format: <Author_image1.tiff> / <Author_image1.jpg>

Include captions below the images. Start with ‘Fig. 1.’ etc. Do not put image and caption in a table, but write the caption as a normal sentence under the picture.

Hybrid workflow how-to: Making automated workflows, part 2

By Michael Murtaugh, October 21, 2014 at 10:09 am.

As part of the INC subgroup, we have been developing a workflow that allows a flexible production of different kinds of electronic outputs like EPUB, PDF, and book trailers from a sample collection of essays from the recently published Society of the Query Reader.

In part two of this tutorial, we create a shell script to compile multiple markdown sources into a EPUB-format Reader using pandoc. We then use a helper script, expand-toc.py, to use a markdown-formatted table of contents to order the contents of the EPUB. Finally, we create a makefile to fully automate the build process, and add an EPUB trailer as an output.

This tutorial is targeted for developers or people interested in creating automated workflows for producing EPUBs. It assumes basic familiarity with a commandline interface (such as the Terminal application on GNU/Linux or Mac OS X, or the command prompt in Windows).

Prepare your workspace & tools

Unpack, checkout or copy the sample files from the github repository. Open the Terminal and use the cd command to enter the "part2" folder in the developer section of the how-to-tutorial files.

git clone https://github.com/DigitalPublishingToolkit/Society-of-the-Query-Reader.git

cd how-to-tutorial/developer/part2

Use pandoc to tweak a markdown document to be combinable with others

Any filename given to pandoc on the commandline that is not preceded by an option (such as -o) is considered an input. When you give pandoc multiple input files, pandoc cuts and pastes the different texts together as if they were coming from a single file. While this will sometimes just work, it creates some specific problems for the essays from the Society of the Query:

pandoc -o reader.epub *.md

Produces a lot of warnings:

pandoc: Duplicate note reference `3' "source" (line 1582, column 1)
pandoc: Duplicate note reference `2' "source" (line 1580, column 1)
pandoc: Duplicate note reference `1' "source" (line 1578, column 1)

This is because when treated as a single document, all the footnotes (which use numeric indexes) from the different essays can no longer be differentiated (reference 3 from which essay?).

Besides overlapping footnotes, there may be problems with the hierarchy of the overall document. The individudal essays have been written with their title as level 1, and sections within the essay as level 2. This is fine, but for the final reader we may want to introduce higher level sections (at level one) to for instance group the essays thematically. In that case the essay levels should shift so that their title is level 2, and essay sections level 3. Luckily pandoc has an option to do just that called –base-header-level that (re)sets the "topmost" level of a document when outputting it.

In general, a useful technique is to use pandoc in two passes, first individually on each essay to adjust it for compilation in the larger document. Each altered essay is then pasted in a new master markdown file containing the entire reader document and it is this file that is converted (again by pandoc) to EPUB.

Try the following command:

pandoc David_Crusoe.md --to markdown --id-prefix=David_Crusoe.md- --base-header-level 2

In the resulting markdown output, note the final Notes section:

### Notes {#notes .notes}

[^David_Crusoe.md-1]: The Common Core references algebraic set theory in
    its high school appendices. See
    http://www.corestandards.org/assets/CCSSI\_Mathematics\_Appendix\_A.pdf
    for more information.

[^David_Crusoe.md-2]: Way Back Machine, 21 November 1996 archive of ‘How
    to Use Excite Search’,
    http://web.archive.org/web/19961219003220/http://www.excite.com/Info/advanced.html?aqt.

[^David_Crusoe.md-3]: Anthony Stuart, ‘Re: Boolean + Operator Removed?
    Why?’ posting to Google Search Forum, 5 November 2011,
    http://productforums.google.com/forum/\#!searchin/websearch/%22implied\$20and%22/websearch/3oIWbew9xdE/xuKBfNk5wjwJ.

First the "Notes" header has shifted from a level 2 to level 3. The "–base-header-level 2" option basically shifts each level by one (in other words what was 1 becomes 2, was 2 becomes 3 and so on).

Additionally, the footnote references now are preceded by the name of the document (and pandoc has changed the matching references in the text as well). This markdown will now combine well with other sources.

Next, let’s use a template (see essay-template01.md) to add a custom header and format the authors names:

# $title$ {.title}

&#172;
for(author)$
author$
endfor$

body$
for(include-after)$
include-after$
endfor$

Now putting it all together:

pandoc David_Crusoe.md --to markdown --template essay-template-01.md --no-wrap --id-prefix=David_Crusoe.md- --base-header-level 2

Devilish detail: Note the use of the –no-wrap option. This disables pandoc’s automatic text wrapping feature when outputting, in this case, markdown. A subtle bug we discovered was that long titles were being line wrapped which would then break the h2 header in the template (where the title variable is expanded on a line starting with ## so that only the first line was considered part of the header). Thankfully this behaviour can be disabled with –no-wrap.

Use pandoc to convert multiple markdown source files to an EPUB

Open the file build01.sh, it contains the following:

#!/bin/bash

# blank the reader.md file
> reader.md

# process all the files listed in ESSAYS in a loop
# use >> to append each output to reader.md
for i in `cat ESSAYS`
do
pandoc "$i" \
    --to markdown \
    --template essay-template-01.md \
    --no-wrap \
    --id-prefix="${i}-" \
    >> reader.md

# ensure a blank line at the end of each essay
echo >> reader.md

done

# Make the EPUB from reader.md
pandoc \
    --epub-chapter-level=1 \
    --toc-depth=1 \
    -o reader.epub \
    reader.md

Run the build01 script by typing:

bash build01.sh

Devilish detail: When combining all the markdown into a single document, all the footnotes would be merged together and displayed in one large section at the end of the EPUB. A crucial pandoc feature is the –epub-chapter-level option which in addition to splitting the source (back) into separate files (which makes the document lighter for an e-reader), it also puts footnotes back into each individual essay.

Using a Table of Contents to order the EPUB

In the step above, the names and order of the essays added to the EPUB output is set by using a simple text file (named ESSAYS).

For the INC workflow, we created a custom script (expand-toc.py) that allows a table of contents file written in markdown format to order the contents of the EPUB. The script expects the name of a table of contents file containing (markdown formatted) links to the essays in the order they should appear.

As an additional feature, the table of contents itself is output first allowing a customized table of contents display beyond the automatic table of contents feature of pandoc. To do this, the script remaps the links to the first id found in the linked-to file; for this reason it’s important that the individual files (or at least their filtered output, see below) begin with a unique heading.

To customize the output of each file to include alterations developed in the previous step (such as patching the footnotes & using a custom template), the expand_toc script has a –filter option that should point to a bash script that receives the input filename as the first parameter and which should output to stdout.

Finally, expand-toc.py has a –section-pages option that outputs separate pages for each section header in the table of contents.

Open the file essay.sh, it should contain the following:

#!/bin/bash

pandoc \
    --to markdown \
    --template essay-template-02.md \
    --no-wrap \
    --base-header-level 2 \
    --id-prefix=$1- \
    $1

Make sure to make this script is executable:

chmod +x essay.sh

Now you can use the expand_toc script to create the compiled reader.md document:

scripts/expand_toc.py toc.md --filter ./essay.sh --section-pages > reader.md

And convert this into an EPUB:

pandoc --self-contained --epub-chapter-level=2 --toc-depth=2 -o reader.epub reader.md

Installing make

The GNU make utility is a program that can help orchestrate your build scripts. See the related blog post on how make has been used in the INC subgroup.

Mac: One way to install make is to install Apple’s XCode development tools. This is either available on your Mac’s original system discs, via the Apple App store, or via the Apple developers website. On recent systems, you can simply open the Terminal (in Applications/Utilities) and type:

make

A message should then tell you how to install the program. If make is correctly installed you will see the message:

make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found.  Stop.

Ubuntu:

You may need to install the "build-essentials" package:

sudo apt-get install build-essentials

Debian:

Make is likely already installed, try running it from the commandline.

Create a makefile

A Makefile can be seen as a kind of executable notebook that helps organize ad hoc build scripts into a format that understands how the pieces fit together as targets and dependencies.

Open the file makefile, it contains the following:

sources=$(shell scripts/expand_toc.py --list toc.md)

all: reader.epub

reader.md: toc.md $(sources)
    scripts/expand_toc.py toc.md --filter ./essay.sh --section-pages > reader.md

reader.epub: reader.md styles.css metadata.xml
    pandoc \
        --self-contained \
        --epub-chapter-level=2 \
        --epub-stylesheet styles.css \
        --epub-metadata metadata.xml \
        --toc-depth=2 \
        -o reader.epub \
        reader.md

Devlish detail: The indented lines of a makefile must use the tab character (and not spaces). In SublimeText, you can select text to "show invisibles". You should see the long unbroken dash of a tab character before each command. Be careful when cutting and pasting code into a makefile that no spaces get introduced or make will starting inexplicably complaining.

Note how the two command lines from the build02.sh script have been turned into rules of the form:

target: dependencies
    command(s) to build the target

To use the makefile, simple type:

make

To trigger the build process. By default the all script will build creating first the reader.md, and then reader.epub.

In the first line, the expand_toc.py script’s –list option is used to produce the list of markdown sources in a format (one file per line) that is usable in the makefile. These sources are listed as a dependency to reader.md. If you alter one of the linked to markdown sources, make will know that it needs to rebuild first reader.md and then reader.epub. If you subsequently alter just the styles.css file, however, only the final step will be repeated to update reader.epub.

Add EPUB trailers as a target to the makefile

A major benefit to using a makefile is the ability to produce a number of different outputs by creating multiple "targets" and rules based on the same sources. In this case we use the epubtrailer script to take the epub resulting from pandoc, and create a GIF-format book trailer.

To use the epubtrailer.py script, you will need the Python Image Library, as well as the images2gif python library. If you have installed the python package manager pip, you can install both with the command:

sudo pip install PIL images2gif

Now add the following lines to the end of your makefile:

reader-trailer.gif: reader.epub
    scripts/epubtrailer.py \
        --width 320 \
        --height 240 \
        -o reader-trailer.gif \
        reader.epub

As mentioned above (see devlish detail), make sure that you put an actual single tab character before "scripts/epubtrailer.py" (cutting and pasting from the web version will be using spaces!). Now type:

make reader-trailer.gif

Hybrid workflow how-to: Making automated workflows, part 1

By Michael Murtaugh, October 21, 2014 at 11:53 am.

The first post in this series can be found here:Hybrid workflow how-to: introduction & editorial steps

As part of the INC subgroup, we have been developing a workflow that allows a flexible production of different kinds of electronic outputs like EPUB, PDF, and book trailers from a sample collection of essays from the recently published Society of the Query Reader.

In part one of this tutorial, we look at using the pandoc tool on the command line to convert a markdown source that has been edited by an editor into HTML and EPUB outputs. In addition, we will add metadata and use pandoc templates and a stylesheet to customize the output.

This tutorial is targeted for developers or people interested in creating automated workflows for producing EPUBs. It assumes basic familiarity with a commandline interface (such as the Terminal application on GNU/Linux or Mac OS X, or the command prompt in Windows). Introductions to the commandline such as the Designers guide to the OS X Command Prompt can be very useful if the commandline is still new to you.

Install pandoc

Instructions for installing pandoc on Mac, Windows, and Linux are given on the pandoc website.

Mac: From the download page, find the green button with a link that ends with “osx.pkg”. Download and install this.

Debian/Ubuntu: Pandoc is available from your package manager:

sudo apt-get install pandoc

However, the version of pandoc is typically outdated. To compile the latest and greatest, follow the instructions on the pandoc website under “All platforms”. In a nutshell:

sudo apt-get install haskell-platform
cabal update
cabal install pandoc

Prepare your workspace & tools

Unpack, checkout or copy the sample files from the github repository. Open the Terminal and use the cd command to enter the “part1″ folder in the developer section of the how-to-tutorial files.

git clone https://github.com/DigitalPublishingToolkit/Society-of-the-Query-Reader.git

cd how-to-tutorial/developer/part1

As we will be working with different kinds of code (both markdown and HTML output), it is quite important to have a good code editor to work with. A code editor (as opposed to programs like “Simple Text” or Microsoft Word) provides features like language-specific syntax coloring and helpful keyboard shortcuts for say adding comments. Many code editors exist from classical commandline editors like vi and emacs, to graphical editors like gedit and Sublime Text. Though not Free Software, Sublime Text is an excellent cross-platform code editor with many advanced features, which is free of charge to use (in Trial mode) indefinitely and a good example of the state of the art of contemporary code editors in terms of features and usability.

Use pandoc to convert a single markdown source file to HTML & EPUB

As you may have seen in Step 5 of the Hybrid Workflow Howto for Editors, you can use the pandoc program to convert from one file format to another (such as in that example from Word DOCX to Markdown). In this step we use pandoc to convert an edited markdown file as it would arrive from an editor into first HTML, and then to an EPUB.

Open the file Kylie-Jarett.md in your editor, it begins:

# A Database of Intention?

Kylie Jarrett

In his 2005 study of Google, industry analyst John Battelle describes
the company’s technology as a ‘database of intentions’, ‘a massive
clickstream database of desires, needs, wants, and preferences that can
be discovered, subpoenaed, archived, tracked, and exploited for all
sorts of ends’.[^1]

In the terminal type the following. Note that once you type the K of the filename you should be able to press the tab key to “auto-complete” the name of the file:

pandoc Kylie-Jarrett.md

By default pandoc will attempt to guess the type of the input file based on the file extension. In this case the “.md” means that pandoc assumes Markdown input. By default pandoc produces HTML and prints it to the terminal rather than saving it in a file. To save it to a file, you can use pandoc’s -o option:

pandoc Kylie-Jarrett.md -o test.html

You can also explicitly state input and output types with pandoc’s –from and –to options. This can be useful if a filename misses a recognizable extension:

pandoc --from markdown --to html Kylie-Jarrett.md -o test.html

In general the order of the parameter doesn’t really matter, as long as the options precede their values, so the following would be the same:

pandoc -o test.html --to html --from markdown Kylie-Jarrett.md

Use a web browser to open the resulting file (test.html) and check the output. It should appear as formatted HTML. However there are likely some glitches in the text. This is because pandoc’s default HTML output is merely a fragment, and not a complete HTML document, and some information (such as the proper encoding of the text) is not included. If you open test.html in your editor, you see that the file begins:

<h1 id="a-database-of-intention">A Database of Intention?</h1>

Note that pandoc automatically assigns an id to the header. This is useful when linking. Next, run pandoc again, this time adding the –standalone (or -s) option:

pandoc essays/Kylie-Jarrett.md --standalone -o test.html

If you reload test.html in the browser, you should see that the character gliches are corrected. If you look at test.html in your editor, you see it now begins:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
  <meta name="generator" content="pandoc" />

  code{white-space: pre;}
</head>
<body>
<h1 id="a-database-of-intention">A Database of Intention?</h1>

The output now contains a proper HTML doctype and head section with, among other things a character set, which tells the browser to interpret the text as encoded in the utf-8 standard (Browsers by default assume the latin-1 character set when a document doesn’t state it’s encoding which is why the characters were being misinterpreted in the fragment).

Add metadata to your document

In the HTML output in the previous step, the title tag in the document is left blank. Even though the title of the essay is in the document, it’s a level one header, pandoc doesn’t make any assumptions that that is a title. Pandoc supports adding “metadata” (data about the document itself).

Add the following to the first lines of the file “essays/Kylie_Jarrett.md”:

---
title: A Database of Intention?
author: Kylie Jarrett
---

Now repeat the pandoc command to update the test output:

pandoc essays/Kylie-Jarrett.md --standalone -o test.html

The resulting document now looks like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
  <meta name="generator" content="pandoc" />
  <meta name="author" content="Kylie Jarrett" />
  A Database of Intention?
  code{white-space: pre;}
</head>
<body>

<h1 class="title">A Database of Intention?</h1>
<h2 class="author">Kylie Jarrett</h2>

<h1 id="a-database-of-intention">A Database of Intention?</h1>

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" />
  <meta name="generator" content="pandoc" />
  <meta name="author" content="Mél Hogan" />
  <meta name="author" content="M.E. Luka" />
  Polluted and Predictive, in 133 Words
  code{white-space: pre;}
</head>

Customize your output with a template and a stylesheet

So how did pandoc know what to do with the title and author in your metadata? It turns out that pandoc has a collection of standard templates, or for each output format, which it uses to produce its output.

To see pandoc’s template for producing HTML output, type the command:

pandoc -D html

The output (in part) shows:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"$if(lang)$ lang="$lang$" xml:lang="$lang$"$endif$>
<head>

  <meta name="author" content="$author-meta$" />
endfor$
if(date-meta)$
  <meta name="date" content="$date-meta$" />
endif$
  $if(title-prefix)$$title-prefix$ - $endif$$pagetitle$

for(css)$
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="$css$" $if(html5)$$else$type="text/css" $endif$/>
endfor$
</head>
<body>

if(title)$

<h1 class="title">$title$</h1>
if(subtitle)$
<h1 class="subtitle">$subtitle$</h1>
endif$
for(author)$
<h2 class="author">$author$</h2>
endfor$
if(date)$
<h3 class="date">$date$</h3>
endif$

endif$

In the template, you can see that pandoc provides some sophisticated tools like conditionals (if) and loops (for) to provide basic handling for optional elements and lists author names. To customize this standard template, make a copy of it named custom.html:

pandoc -D html > custom.html

Open the custom.html and change the display of the title and author to:

if(title)$

  <h1 class="title">$title$</h1>

    &#172;
    $for(author)$
    $author$
    $endfor$

endif$

You can also see in the template that pandoc provides a number of ways of adding custom stylesheets. The easiest is to use the –css option. So create a new file names “styles.css” with the following:

body {
  font-family: sans-serif;
}
#header {
    text-align: center;
}
h1 {
  margin-bottom: 0;
}
.author {
  font-weight: bold;
}

And now bring it all together with:

pandoc Kylie-Jarrett.md --standalone --template custom.html --css styles.css -o Kylie-Jarrett.html

Produce an EPUB

You can easily produce an EPUB from a markdown source with pandoc by simply specifying an EPUB extension to the output file. Note that the –standalone option is implicit with an EPUB:

pandoc Kylie-Jarrett.md -o Kylie-Jarrett.epub

To specify custom CSS with an EPUB, use the –epub-stylesheet option:

pandoc Kylie-Jarrett.md --epub-stylesheet styles.css -o Kylie-Jarrett.epub

Note that pandoc places an automatically generated table of contents as the last page, to move this to the front use the –table-of-contents option.

pandoc Kylie-Jarrett.md --epub-stylesheet styles.css -o Kylie-Jarrett.epub --table-of-contents

Next time…

In part 2 of this tutorial, we will work on a script to compile a collection of essays into a single Reader EPUB.

A reading device with some character and soul please

By Harold Konickx, October 14, 2014 at 4:01 pm.

Working in the field of digital media, designer and HVA lecturer Frank Kloos regretfully admits his love for physical books. Nevertheless he fantasizes about a reading device that is as good as or maybe even better than the real thing.

Video: http://vimeo.com/108371598

Frank Kloos on digital publishing: ‘Vooralsnog vind ik tablets karakterloos.’ from network cultures on Vimeo.

EPUB Trailers

By Michael Murtaugh, October 13, 2014 at 9:00 am.

Results from the epubtrailer.py script that converts EPUB files into GIF-format book trailers. The script was originally written by Silvio Lorusso during the Public Library hackathon, and is released as part of the results from the work of the INC subgroup. Here the script is applied to a selection of illustrated public domain EPUB’s available on Project Gutenberg.

Above the title: The Divine Comedy by Dante, Illustrated

Markdown to Indesign with Pandoc (via ICML)

By Silvio Lorusso, October 8, 2014 at 5:37 pm.

As part of the hybrid workflow for the Institute of Network Cultures developed by the INC subgroup, I started a collaboration with Italian graphic designer Roberto Arista in order to write and collect scripts that facilitate the process of importing HTML into InDesign.

This set of scripts pre-processes HTML files, preserving such entities like headers, paragraphs, italics, footnotes, tables, images, etc. Some of these steps are summarised here. The scripts do so by converting the HTML files into an InDesign-friendly XML structure and employing its Import XML function.

While such procedure is pretty good at maintaining the underlying structure of the text (Paragraph and Character Styles are almost automatically generated), it still has some imperfections. For instance, an InDesign script called ReFoot was modified to generate footnotes declared with a XML-compatible markup. The problem is that footnotes’ inner styles (italic, bold) are lost. At the same time, yet no solution is provided to keep images or at least their position.

Since May 2014, pandoc, an open-source ”universal document converter”, is able to produce outputs as ICML files. ICML files are generally managed by InCopy, Adobe’s own word processor meant to integrate with Adobe InDesign.

One of the advantage of using pandoc to obtain ICML is the fact that no intermediate format is needed – HTML in our previous procedure. Therefore we can directly use our Markdown source files. Here’s the syntax to convert one document:

pandoc -s -f markdown -t icml -o my.icml my.md

-s option, which stands for “standalone”, produces output with an appropriate header and footer;

-f option, which stands for “from”, is followed by the source format;

-t option, which stands for “to”, is followed by the output format;

-o option, which stands for “output”, is followed by the output filename, my.icml in above example;

my.md, in the above example, is the source filename.

The generated ICML file is then imported into InDesign with File>Place. In order to test the output, I used this file, derived from the Society of the Query Reader.

Both Paragraph Styles and Character Styles are automatically generated.

Here’s a tentative list of preserved entities:

bold;

italic;

blockquotes:

footnotes;

headers;

paragraphs;

tables;

lists.

In addition, a placeholder for each image is created.

In this sense, pandoc seems to provide a pretty robust conversion system that straightforwardly connects the production and editing of Markdown structured text and the design phase in the Adobe InDesign environment.

Hybrid workflow how-to: introduction & editorial steps

By Miriam Rasch, October 7, 2014 at 2:57 pm.

The hybrid workflow described below is developed by the Institute of Network Cultures within the Digital Publishing Toolkit. The research into this workflow was aimed at making the transition from a print-centered publication process towards a digital and print (hybrid) publication process. We ask the question: how to handle documents so publication on different platforms is possible? This means we don’t go into appropriate styles of writing or ways of designing epublications vis-à-vis paper books.

Creating a workflow that is both structured and flexible enough to cater for the different choices made is a key step towards an efficient electronic or hybrid publishing strategy. The hybrid workflow we propose here is based on the need for publishing across different mediums, while keeping the majority of the work process in-house instead of outsourcing.

Instead of ‘adding’ the digital publication at the end of an existing workflow, based on the printed book as end result as is often done by publishers, the workflow should be adjusted and made efficient and practical towards hybrid publishing in an earlier stage. From-scratch development of each publication format is thus replaced by single source, multi format publishing.

The old, ‘traditional’ workflow is centered around the paper book production, which basically means that it is centered around an InDesign file. This file or the PDF that goes to the printer is the final document that can be archived. The new, ‘hybrid’ workflow, is centered around the archive file in Markdown, which is used as the basis for publications in different output formats. A Markdown-oriented workflow is both easy to use and open to many possibilities.

This manual is divided into three parts, one for each ‘role’ in the book production process: editor, print book designer, and ebook developer. Below you’ll find the editorial steps – the first in the process. For the print design and ebook development see the respective blogposts for print book designer steps and ebook developer steps (to be published shortly).

Please note that the description below starts at a point which in reality is not the beginning of the publication trajectory, namely when an author hands in the definitive manuscript – so after the editing and rewriting process has been rounded off. Should the author already be working in Markdown format, this will change the workflow. However, in our experience manuscripts are mainly produced in Microsoft Word and delivered in .doc or .docx.

NB: An important step preceding the publication trajectory lies in the formulation of the in-house style guide, where authors and editors can find the requirements for the manuscript. This style guide must be adapted according to the hybrid workflow as an absolute start. This issue will be taken up in another blogpost.

So how small edition, low budget publishing houses can implement the new workflow is what we will turn to now.

What is needed in preparation:

1. Install Pandoc (installation page). Pandoc is working in the so-called command line mode and not in a user interface environment. Hence you can’t ‘open’ the program and don’t see an icon.

Windows: To start pandoc type cmd in the RUN (also called ‘search programs and files’ in the start panel which can be found under the MS window icon down in the toolbar), this will enable you to start the command mode. You get a white/black window saying C:useryourusername>. There you type pandoc (enter) and the same line reappears, waiting for pandoc input (see further below).

Mac: To use pandoc open the Terminal from your Utilities folder in your Applications folder, or through the search bar in the top right of your screen. Pandoc will be used to convert files in the steps below. Note: Pandoc does not work on older Mac operating systems.

2. Install a Markdown editor. For Mac, use for example Mou or MacDown; for Windows, MarkdownPad.

What is Markdown? John Gruber, developer of Markdown, describes Markdown on his website as follows: ‘Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).’ Markdown is a way to process plain, unformatted text with human-readable formatting symbols. That means that Markdown doesn’t use HTML style tags to format, such as <b> for bold or  to mark-up the author name, but rather #, * and _.

Notes on working in Terminal

Delete: If you like to delete parts of your text you need to use your cursor and backspace. It is not possible to select parts of the text and delete it nor can you move in the text by selecting a spot with your mouse.

Go back: you can go back to earlier commands with the up arrow

Refresh: Close window and open a new one

You know that your command worked if you do not get an error.

Editorial steps

You receive a digital document containing the definitive manuscript from an author. We’ll name this file Jane_Writer_def.doc.

STEP 1: Open the file in Microsoft Word.

STEP 2: Convert the document to docx-format by saving it as Jane_Writer_def.docx.

STEP 3: Apply header styling in the Word-document. Use header 1 for title and author, header 2 for section title, header 3 for level below, et cetera. Header styling is found in the Toolbar of Microsoft Word under ‘Styles’ – click on the icon and select the right style. Or go to the menu and select ‘View’ and ‘Styles’ under Toolbox and work from the pop-up panel.

STEP 4: Save.

STEP 5: Convert the docx to Markdown using pandoc (for an elaborate user manual, see the pandoc website):

Pandoc is a command-line tool. There is no graphic user interface. So, to use it, you’ll need to open a terminal window (see above).

Create a subfolder in your Documents folder called ‘pandoc-test’. For Windows, put this under C:usersyournamedocuments (in many cases this is the default directory). This is the folder where we’ll store and retrieve documents to be converted and which are made by pandoc.

Put the docx-document you want to convert in this folder called pandoc-test. In this case: Jane_Writer_def.docx.

Go to the terminal and type cd Documents. This means the terminal will ‘change directory’ to the Documents folder.

Now type cd pandoc-test. The terminal will change directory to the folder within the Documents folder called pandoc-test. Now you can work with the documents in there.

On Mac, type ls [l as in lima, referring to ‘list’], on Windows dir to get a list of files in the current folder. The Jane_Writer_def.docx should be listed.

To convert the file from docx to markdown, type the following into the terminal: pandoc Jane_Writer_def.docx -f docx -t markdown -s -o Jane_Writer_def.md

The filename Jane_Writer_def.docx tells pandoc which file to convert, -f docx -t markdown, so from docx to markdown. The -s option says to create a ‘standalone’ file, with a header and footer, not just a fragment. And the -o Jane_Writer_def.md says to put the output in a file named Jane_Writer_def.md. (Note: in Mac you can copy-paste the command, in Windows you can’t copy-paste.)

Check that the file was created by typing ls or dir again. You should see Jane_Writer_def.md.

STEP 6: Open the Markdown editor that you installed (Mou or Markdownpad), navigate to the pandoc-test directory and open the file you just created using pandoc, Jane_Writer_def.md. The file will now be opened in the markdown editor. You see two panels. The left panel is the markdown format which we use to work in, the right panel is the rendering of the coded panel into a user-readable-form. (You can also try to type ‘open Jane_Writer_def.md’ in the terminal to open the file.)

STEP 7: Check the Markdown file after conversion: are the headers still marked, is there no funny formatting in the text, are the blockquotes and italics preserved, for example in the references?

STEP 8: We use a template document showing how the formatting should be applied in a correct way and which metadata to add. The text can be copied into this document template, the format adjusted where needed (for instance title, author name, headings, references, notes, the table and the image). Save the file as Jane_Writer_final.md by choosing ‘duplicate’.

STEP 9: Add metadata information. Below is an example of relevant metadata used by the INC:

#Metadata

Pr-id: project
P-id: publication series
A-id: number within the series
Type (formerly called Item): type of the item
Book-type: anthology or monograph
Anthology item: TOC, article, index etc.
Item-id: unique no.
Article-title: title of the article
Article-status: submitted, under review, accepted
Author: name(s) of author(s)
Author-email: corresponding address
Author-bio: about the author
Abstract: short description of the article (100 words)
Keywords: 50 keywords for search and indexing
Rights: Creative Commons etc.

STEP 12: Save the final Markdown file into an archive folder. This is the document that can be send to the print designer and epub developer to work with in the production of the print book and ebook.

Images

Check format of the images: is the quality good enough for print? Scale images to smaller size for e-book publication. Store the images and send to designer and developer.

Corrections

Corrections form a large part of the editor’s workflow. How to handle them will be the subject of a separate blogpost.

make book

By Michael Murtaugh, October 1, 2014 at 1:30 pm.

Make is a popular free software tool that helps programmers compile their code into programs. Increasingly the tool is finding new uses in publishing workflows to compile prose text into electronic formats like epub and PDF. The INC subgroup has been using make in their hybrid workflow to produce multiple formats of the Society of Query reader. While not a “killer app” with a pretty graphical interface, make represents a distillation of practice that suggests future tools for creating flexible, editable workflows where tweaks and workarounds are the norm.

make software

Make is the name of a software program close to the heart of the Free software movement. When programmer Richard Stallman founded the GNU (Gnu’s Not Unix) project in the 1980s it was in part an effort to reclaim the fruits of his own labour, and this meant rebuilding the essential tools that turn what he writes (computer code) into something usable (a computer program). According to the GNU website:

GNU Make is a tool which controls the generation of executables and other non-source files of a program from the program’s source files.

Free software is distributed as a collection of source files, text files of computer code, that typically need to be compiled into something usable (executable) in a particular situation. In Free software, heterogeneous beast that it is, there is typically no single way to make such a translation happen. And that’s a good thing. Free software is designed to work in a variety of situations of use both technically and socially determined. A software may need to run on different computer hardware or operating systems, and programs often are structured in a modular fashion to allow a user to pick and choose which components she or he needs. As a result, this translation, typically called the build process, can be in programmers parlance, non-trivial.

For this reason, free software has historically been distributed with additional programs, known as a make or build scripts, that make it easier for someone to actually use it. After generations, this practice was itself codified in a piece of software, make, a distillation of the common patterns employed in the writing of these scripts. Using make, the programmer writes a makefile that concisely describes the steps necessary for each piece of the process (known as rules) and how the pieces fit together (known as dependencies). In this process outputs are named, known as targets. Make inherently supports multiple targets allowing a software to be built in a number of ways to produce different outputs. Once the makefile is written, a user just specifies a target and make performs all the steps necessary, in the right order, to produce the result. When source files are edited, make is clever about only performing the steps necessary given what has changed.

make epub; make webpages; make trailer

Crucially make does not itself do anything particular to the compilation of code — the details are left to the specifics of each rule. In this way more like a manager that delegates the “actual” work of making to others. As the phrase other non-source files, obliquely suggests make can in fact be used to produce more than just computer programs. Increasingly, coders have been realizing the value of using make outside of the context of code and started applying it to regular texts. In a recent presentation at a Linux users event, programmer Don Marti described make as an “executable notebook” to create e-books in the epub format in a workflow based on make along with other tools such as git, markdown, and pandoc. In his talk he describes strategies for elegantly incorporating source files in DOCX (Word) format, and managing distributed writing among a team, all without a central server or “CMS”-centric paradigm.

The tools described in Marti’s presentation strongly echo the tools we have been experimenting with in the INC subgroup. We have been using make to produce electronic publications of the Society of the Query reader. In our case a makefile is used to produce a variety of outputs from the same markdown sources: epub, web pages, a GIF-format book trailer, and a (preview) PDF. In addition, we have been investigating how to bridge to a designer producing a layout in a program like InDesign. The latest version of the makefile is posted on the project’s online code repository.

Beyond just supporting multiple outputs from the same sources, what’s really significant about using a make in a publishing workflow is that it makes the various steps of a workflow explicit, including various “workarounds” and patches. By concisely describing all the steps for a particular production, the makefile becomes a legible and crucially editable snapshot of the workflow. Makefiles provide a flexibility and re-editability that means that as the needs of a project change and as tools and formats develop, the workflow remains adaptable. Of course, there are many problems with makefiles: the format, though concise, is technically challenging and often obscure. Also, make is typically used from the command line, a way of working that is alien and intimidating to many non-programmers. Still, the solutions that make offers to a host of non-trivial problems is at the very least suggestive of the kinds of features future tools for hybrid publishing would ideally provide.

Links

Nathan Willis’ post on LWN, where I originally read out about Marti’s presentation

Don Marti presentation at SCALE

Don Marti slides

GNU Make the official project homepage

Florian Cramer on “The Art of Hybrid Publishing”

By Margreet Riphagen, October 1, 2014 at 5:11 pm.

Source: Hybrid Publishing Lab

Julia Rehfeldt —  September 29, 2014 — Leave a comment

Florian Cramer is an applied research professor and director of Creating 010, the research centre affiliated to Willem de Kooning Academy and Piet Zwart Institute at the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. He also works for WORM, a Rotterdam-based venue for DIY avant-garde culture.

Hybrid Publishing Lab: What recent changes do you see within the intersection of DIY culture and hybrid publishing?

Florian Cramer: My colleagues Alessandro Ludovico and Silvio Lorusso would be the better people to ask because they’re much more in touch with contemporary practices and projects in this particular area. What I generally observe is that hardcore DIY publishers go back to print, particularly DIY printmaking including stencil presses, Risographs and silk screening. Experimental hybrid digital/analog publishing seems to be a domain mostly of graphic designers – which no longer means DIY in the narrow sense of the word.

HPL: You developed a toolkit for publishers, can you briefly explain the focus of this project to our readers?

Cramer: It’s not only for publishers, but also for designers, authors and editors. The focus is (a) on e-books and e-book technology, (b) on publishing in the arts, which encompasses everything from theory books to artists’ experimental publications but in most cases means visually oriented publishing. We found that in the field of the arts, there is hardly any existing e-publishing know-how. Yet publishers feel a great urgency to switch from pure paper publishing to hybrid paper and electronic publishing for a whole number of reasons: costs, distribution and outreach, but also new opportunities provided by the electronic publishing; even if they just boil down to a museum offering, instead of one heavy exhibition catalogue, customized e-books with a number of works selected by the individual buyer, or to a publisher selling single poems instead of a poetry volume.

Our toolkit consists of a handbook that gives everyone, regardless their level of previous knowledge, a step-by-step technical and editorial introduction into publishing electronic books. It is meant for small publishers who cannot simply outsource such work to external agencies and focuses on new editorial workflows that make it easier to simultaneously publish in different media (such as paper book, e-book, web site). The handbook covers different typical publication scenarios. Next to this handbook, our Toolkit includes a number of self-written software utilities. Very likely, it will also provide a user-friendly interface for command-line Open Source software that we recommend as a hybrid publishing document processing tool.

The development of this toolkit partly needs to be understood from a Dutch cultural context where Gert Lovink and me work as applied research professors in the system of higher polytechnic education and therefore do hands-on R&D in collaboration with publishers and designers. There is a major crisis of arts publishers in the Netherlands because most of them depended (directly or indirectly) on public arts funding; funding that has recently been slashed by the government. This urges everyone to radically rethink the way they work. Obviously, electronic publishing is not a panacea. Hybrid publishing can even make things more complicated and, in the worst case, more expensive. So we’re looking for pragmatic, working solutions – not snazzy design show-off work that may create wow-effects but will not be a workable model for real life, in an area of publishing where books rarely have editions of more than a few hundred or few thousand. Focus on showcase projects has been the achilles heel of all electronic and multimedia publishing efforts ever since the CD-ROM in the 1990s.

We eventually want to take our project beyond the Dutch context and continue our critical R&D in a wider European context. But the toolkit will be published in English and, by the way of eating our own dog food, made available in different digital and analog formats.

HPL: What was your experience when developing it?

Cramer: We greatly underestimated how little publishers are familiar with computer technology outside the established Microsoft/Adobe toolchain, and what a culture shock it was for them to be confronted with new workflows that have their origin in Open Source, scientific publishing and the World Wide Web (such as, for example, a simplified markup language like Markdown). Many designers, publishers and editors hope that hybrid publishing is an issue that could simply be resolved with an additional export button in InDesign, but this is and will never be the case. We also saw that other comparable projects, often initiated by artists, designers or media researchers, started with bold promises but failed to deliver because they had either underestimated the complexity of the matter, or constrained themselves to solutions that only work on one particular technological platform (such as Apples iPad).

HPL: Which book will you always have as an analogue copy in your bookshelf?

Cramer: Obviously, George Maciunas’ “Flux Paper Events” (published by Edition Hundertmark in 1976). And, by, implication, all artists’ books, bookworks, design books and visual books for which the medium of paper and the form of the bound codex is indispensable. – On the other hand, I wouldn’t mind getting rid of thousands of conventional paperback and hardcover text books in my home library and replace them with electronic books, for the pragmatic sake of gaining space, and always having my library with me as searchable files on one USB stick; despite the obvious usability and durability advantages of paper books.

As a matter of fact, the question of analog vs. digital publishing is not one of mutual excluding alternatives; it’s not about “either/or” (as most of the publishing industry still believes) but about “and-and”. This is why our toolkit isn’t called “electronic publishing toolkit” but “hybrid publishing toolkit”. For the same reasons, I’m convinced that we’re living in post-digital times where analog and digital coexist, and get hybridized. Just like true music lovers own their music both in digital and analog form, on vinyl *and* as mp3 files, I would advise publishers to target book lovers who want their reading material on paper *and* as an epub or PDF file. This could, btw., be good business, too.

Our upcoming Conference on Publishing between Open Access, Piracy and Public Spheres is up for registration now. You can read all Interviews here.

Read tomorrow the introduction interview with Gary Hall, co-founder of the open access journal Culture Machine, and co-founder of Open Humanities Press.

From print to what?

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, September 25, 2014 at 4:39 pm.

Changing work patterns in electronic publications

The Toolkit project aims to assist smaller publishers in the art and design sector to make their first steps in producing their books and periodical through digital means. This aim turns out to demand a fairly complicated road to final success. First of all, changing over from print on paper to digital media is not the same as, say, changing from an old-fashioned manual typewriter to an electronic typewriter. The change implies a rethinking of the whole production process from author to reader.

The first and most important new feature is that we lose the fixed page as a pivotal reference. In paper production, we can, in principle, change the book formats at will, but we are completely accustomed to a very limited number of book formats. This fact is not a plot or ruse, but the result of centuries of experience with readability, manufacturability, portability and ease of use.

Unfortunately, we cannot transpose all our current experience and knowledge about typography and layout, lock – stock – and – barrel, to a digital environment. The sizes of reading screens are not standardized, and, even worse, we can easily flip from a vertical page to a horizontal page, with all the accompanying, associated layout problems such as the position of illustrations in the text and the lengths of sentences. Readers can change the type size and even the font at will, which severely constrains the layout freedom of the designer and, most frighteningly, not every electronic reading device allows for the same presentation, as soon as we go beyond the simple text with the odd illustration.

Hence, the toolkit project strives to find common ground based on the most general but standardized and reusable techniques we have today. The project doesn’t want to show what is possible in principle and how wonderful the future will be, but to help the smaller publisher who wants to team up in the digital storm to produce decent electronic versions of their list. In our endeavour, we opted for the open source EPUB3 format as end product of the production chain. At present, it is the most versatile standard and as it is well-structured, we assume that it will become translatable into newer, more powerful, standards in the future. EPUB3 is already an accepted standard for novels, which makes it a good basis for our Toolkit.

Who wants more, or more precisely, who wants what?In discussions with smaller publishers, and in particular, with our partners in this project, it became clear that the background, traditions, demands and vistas are all quite different. These differences are a result of the level of use of and love for new technologies and approaches as well as the character of the publications themselves. A well-composed arts book with good lay-out by an artist her/himself is a pièce d’artin itself and, e.g., the format of the book, is part of the whole concept of the product. It goes without saying that we can reproduce such a book in any format, like making a postcard from Rembrandt’s Night Watch, but this is not the same thing as the creation of a digitally-born novel book type.

Thus, in order to cater for various demands from various publishers, we must make a distinction between categories of approach.

(i) The first category is the publishing house itself that simply wants their book to be readable on a standard ereader or tablet without frills, just as we see novels being easily transposed from paper to various screens. In this case, the most important issue is that the text and the illustrations are kept together and that the lay-out, as far as possible, remains the same. In this case, we have two options: do we freeze the page in PDF-format, which allows the presentation of the PDF-version into any available media, or do we translate the pages, as they are, into a simple EPUB version that allows for so-called reflowable text on an e-reader or tablet. Nothing more, nothing less. In this case, digital publishing is just the next step in the existing traditional product chain.

(ii) The second line of attack is to step into the cold waters of the endless digital data sea and try to start from a digital approach in order to be able to publish a variety of publications based on a base-set of author-created texts and illustrations. Print on paper will be one outcome, but this is not the starting point. Here, we have to rethink the production process and redefine our production chain; as well as that; we have to look more carefully into the instructions to our authors, as they will also need to change their habits by changing to new electronic writing aids.

(iii) The final category is the extension of the previous one, namely the conversion into a real database of texts, illustrations and multimedia objects from which a myriad of different products can be created, depending on demand, technological environment, level of complication, etc. Such a modular, Lego-block-like, structure demands a developed understanding of what a base- brick of information is, and to what extent the integrity of the flow of the author’s reasoning and intention is kept.

WorkflowObviously, a publisher is not always familiar yet with what can be done in principle and what the market is demanding. A multitude of software acronyms representing at least so many software products and/or protocols blows in the wind like autumn leaves. The claims are sky-high and therefor become impenetrable for most smaller publishers.

For these reasons in our Toolkit project, we start from simple standard wordprocessor files, which we clean from unnecessary embellishments and subsequently structure them to the extent defined by the demands of the end product, such as levels of headings, footnotes, illustrations, active objects, etc. From the structured files, we enable the publishers to translate their works into EPUB3, as basis for a publication on a digital device screen, as well as for the possible translation into a web-page or a printed product.

The old saying in the computer industry “garbage in, garbage out” is true here as well. For this reason, publishers must get accustomed to instructing their authors in such a way that the translation chain from manuscript to reading device is easy and transparent. Only if the publisher herself understands the new workflow, can the author understand how to submit work in such a way that the maximum of publication outlets can be reached without any too heavy editing.

Our Toolkit enables the user to start from old-fashioned MSWord files and following the correct procedures to see the light of the tablets and ereaders allowing reading well-designed pages which are fit for re-use and multiple use, without much further ado.

INC project update: Hybrid Publishing Workflow test

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, September 17, 2014 at 2:19 pm.

On the 12th of September the Institute of Network Cultures subgroup organized a meeting to test  the initial results of their research. Their project focuses on optimalising the publishing workflow for print and electronic publications – developing a “hybrid publishing workflow” that will make it easier and more sufficient to publish for several platforms and formats. For this purpose they have researched and developed several tools, and created manuals and visualisations that will make this process accessible for a larger audience.

During the test day the tools and manuals were tested by several people that each represented a certain role in this workflow: editor, designer, and developer. Thanks to Andre Castro (developer and designer), Gert-Jan van Dijk (Uitgeverij Duizend & Een) and his multimedia designer James Fitzpatrick (Machined Arts Amsterdam), Menno Grootveld (Leesmagazijn), Geert Lovink (INC), Margreet Riphagen (INC), and Caspar Treijtel (UvA, University Library) we gained insights in the parts that still need to be developed further. The results of this test day will be implemented and published on the blog as soon as possible.

The results of this test day will be implemented, and published on the blog as soon as possible!

John Haltiwanger: Free Your Objects (And Let The Subject Follow)

By Irina Enache, June 10, 2014 at 12:37 pm.

A post by Mathijs Weijers

John Haltiwanger was the third speaker of session 2, which focused on publishing workflows, tools and platforms.

His talk aimed to give the audience a better understanding of the recent work of Gilbert Simondon on cybernetics theory. Simonodon’s work shines a new perspective on Norbert Wiener’s theory of cybernetics, originally published in 1948, but it is often hard to grasp by readers. Hence, Haltiwanger wanted to offer the audience a clear analysis of the essential terms of Simondon’s vocabulary on cybernetics.

Haltiwanger warned that he is not an academic, and that he became interested in the topic when doing his master’s thesis in New Media and Digital Culture at University of Amsterdam: “I had to make a decision about the format the thesis should be published in: PDF, HTML or .doc?”. Choosing the right format seems to be very easy but actually can be problematic, as each has its own specificity. PDF might have a clean interface but it’s hard to archive and be read by machines – HTML would do that job better. Word Documents are, in his opinion, standard formats that are required in the academic environment but have little benefits and reduced usability. There is furthermore the issue of proprietary formats. While he used the open-source Libre software to write his thesis, when exporting to PDF it crashed. These inconsistencies are harmful as “knowledge is too important to be locked in proprietary tools”. Thus, the thesis topic soon revolved around the very format that academic publications can take, Haltiwanger joked. Yet, this is why he believes that understanding the vocabulary for discussing the cybernetics theory of Simondon is important, as users are forced to simplify or even weaken the content of what they are working on in order to get a desired format. Whilst there are so many format options, Haltiwanger argued, “we are constrained by liberty”.

Haltiwanger explained Simondon’s cybernetics theory by a couple of terms. The first one is medium specificity. Its official definition is: “1. the fact, condition, or quality of being specific. 2 the quality of being specific to a particular organism”. In the context of publishing, a book and a Kindle have different specificities: the Kindle is built with cheap labour and needs a charger, the book needs trees as primary material and a shelf to be placed on. Knowing this, how should an academic paper look like? PDF, HTML or Word?

The next term is metastability. To explain this definition, Haltiwanger used a picture of an iceberg. An iceberg affects its environment but the environment also shapes the iceberg – it’s a dynamic progress. This metastability is taking place in the digital age as well. There are components that influence each other, hence digital objects will be different tomorrow.

The third term is transduction, defined by Simodon as follows:

“An operation–physical, biological, mental, social–by which an activity propagates itself from one element to the next, within a given domain, and founds this propagation on a structuration of the domain that is realized from place to place: each area of the constituted structure serves as the principle and the model for the next area, as a primer for its constitution, to the extent that the modification expands progresively at the same time as the structuring operation. (Simondon 2009: 11).”

The term is hard to work with, and Haltiwanger proposes a replacement: calcification . This is easier explained as “what has come before you an what you choose to put back into it is going to define the next layer of bone that the world is growing”). In other words, e-publishing is constantly reshaped by the tools and practices we choose to employ now.

Finally, there is a matter of reciprocity: helping the computer with the right input so that it delivers the desire output. HTML is, according to Haltiwanger, the best suited format for the future of e-publishing.

Haltiwanger believes that tools in general evolve reciprocally with their use, as do the users of those tools. What we can do and what we wish we could do are enabled (or limited) not only by the tools we have access to but also by the larger socio-economic conditions that determine these tools and their modes of production and operation. Tools actively participate in shaping our identity as producers, makers, and appreciators. Through the case study of a multi-output typesetting workflow that uses only Libre software, his talk explored a vocabulary to think differently about how we work with text today, one of that focuses on qualities of re-composition and the dynamics of a different type of ownership.

The essential questions here, as Haltiwanger proposed in the end, are not only what tools and what experience to build but also what is the underlying skeleton of our endeavors.

You can find a PDF of his original presentation here: Presentation John Haltiwanger

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562329

Joost Kircz: Going Electronic

By Irina Enache, June 5, 2014 at 1:08 am.

A post by Mathijs Weijers

Joost Kircz was the first speaker of the 2-day conference “Off the Press – Electronic Publishing in the Arts”, organized by the Institute of Network Cultures. From 2006 till 2013, Kircz was a part-time lecturer on electronic publishing within the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (Hogeschool van Amsterdam), and currently he is involved with the Digital Publishing Toolkit research project. He regularly publishes his findings on his personal website, www.kra.nl.

Kircz’s presentation was about the various technical requirements and design standards that different types of electronic books need. “Electronic book publishing in the Arts is a multifarious adventure. On the one hand, electronic publishing is already an unclear notion and on the other hand the notion ‘Arts’ is something nobody agrees on anyway”, Kircz mused. He then introduced The Digital Publishing Toolkit, a project initiated by the Institute of Network Cultures in partnership with Knowledge Center Creating 010 of the Hogeschool van Rotterdam, and a number of publishers: “with this toolkit we want to be able to refrain from deep philosophical preoccupations and – as this conference will prove – are able to develop methods and techniques that help publishers, editors and authors to use electronic means to recreate old works and to create novel ones”. He argued that we must see Electronic Publishing as complimentary to print publishing and not just a change from paper-to-screen. What publishers need, and what the toolkit aims to provide, is easy to use, open source software (more about the Digital Publishing Toolkit, which is due to be release by the end of this year, can be read here).

Kircz argued that one of the most important features from the electronic medium is its active memory, “a memory that allows for endless reuse and multiple presentations on a great variety of substrates”. What he also pointed out is that content stored in an electronic memory cannot be read by humans. It is instead stored in a coded form: “(…) the most important conclusion we can draw from the fact that we use structured coded information as basis for book production, is that this demands new working methods throughout the whole process from author to reader. As soon as we take a step away from just a replication from the printed page, our design, our editorial practises, as well as our production and dissemination will change from bottom to top and back”, Kircz warned.

Different types of publishing materials might require different treatment. Kircz laid out four major toolkit scenarios:

1) Art/design catalogue;

Each kind of publication needs a different kind of approach in terms of use of metadata. What we read in a digital publication has much of this meta structure surrounding it, but we do not see it (i.e. a simple sentence like “ All you need is love” is in fact written in, for example, HTML code: <quotation> All you need is love </quotation>). This metadata can be used to specify and design almost any desired content and outcome but can also be complex to use.

What publishers need then is easy, readable software to work with. Kircz offered a short history of existing Mark-up Languages that address this need:

SGML (1982) – which he described as the mother of all other coding languages;

HTML 5 (most up-to-date ) – which is readable for humans;

Epub3 (most up-to-date) –  a competition to HTML5.

What the Digital Publishing Toolkit aims to do is add further resources, tools and software to this list and aid publishers in their e-publishing endeavours.

Kircz concluded that “(…) the central issue of our toolkit project is that we consciously try and define the creation, production, and consumption of a creative object as one single process. We try and experiment to create a production pipeline of illustrated texts or textually explicated collections of images in such a way that right from the beginning we understand, and appreciate that electronic publishing is more than reworking existing works, but a new creative branch in human expression.”

You can find a PDF of his original presentation here: Presentation Joost Kircz

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562227

Angie Keefer: The difference between the two

By Irina Enache, May 29, 2014 at 11:28 am.

Angie Keefer is a writer, artist, and co-founder of The Serving Library, along with David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey of Dexter Sinister.

The Serving Library, as described by Keefer, is a cooperatively-built archive that assembles itself by publishing means. It first releases e-publications of the artworks and texts of various artists under PDF format, for free (but only for a period of six months), after which the latter are printed and sold.

However, Keefer’s presentation specifically focused on the house font of The Serving Library – called Meta-the-Difference-Between-the-Two font, based on the typesetting language of Tex – and how its digital origins relate to design possibilities. She allowed the audience to delve into the video titled “Letter & Spirit”. The 18-minute production presents both a history and a philosophy of fonts by simultaneously playing with the animated typing it uses to convey the message.

You can find a PDF of her original presentation here: Presentation Angie Keefer.

Video: http://vimeo.com/65248695

Sebastian Luetgert – Precarious Publishing, Autonomous Archiving, Collaborative Collecting

By Jakub Dutka, May 28, 2014 at 9:18 am.

Sebastian Luetgert at the closing session of Off the Press 2014

Sebastian Luetgert, a.k.a. Robert Luxemburg, is a theorist and media artist, copyleft advocate, programmer, writer, co-moderator of nettime, member of mikro and Bootlab. His projects include rolux.org, textz.com, project Gutenberg, and Last Tuesday, where people can “exchange mp3 files, beta-test new viruses from Asia or vote for the most stupid new dot-com brand.”. He is also the author of “2 x 5 Years of German Internet” and other texts on the contradictions of the network society. He is currently working on a fictional documentary film set in Dubai.

Sebastian addressed the issues of e-book circulation, which he finds impoverished by the current mediascape. As he went on to explicate, on the internet we can observe two dominating trends: either gigantic, difficult to manage ‘dumpsters’ of files, or personal ‘libraries’ of ebooks, like Calibre. As a proposed solution to this unfavourable status quo, Sebastian introduced his project Open Media Library, which he developed together with Jan Gerber.

Sebastian Luetgert demonstrates the Open Media Library

Open Media Library is a local web application that lets you manage and sync digital media collections. This library software can be described as “something like iTunes for books, with other libraries instead of a store, running in your web browser”. What Sebastian proposes in his project is changing the mindset from peer-to-peer file sharing to archive-to-archive exchange. Open Media Library allows users to see other peers’ book collections, download them, create own read-list or wishlist, upload and explore different ways of browsing and display.

The software runs in the web browser and supports EPUBs, PDFs and any other book format for which there is javascript reader, as well as plain text. At the moment there is no stable version of the software and no standalone installer, but users willing to try out the Open Media Library can run it from Terminal(Mac) or PowerShell(Windows), following instructions on the website.

If you want to know more about the project, contact Sebastian and Jan :openmedialibrary@openmedialibrary.com

Video: http://vimeo.com/97508729

Oliver Wise – Making .epubs easy with The People’s E-book

By Jakub Dutka, May 28, 2014 at 10:22 am.

Oliver Wise presenting how to use The People’s E-book.

Oliver Wise, together with Eleanor Hanson are the co-founders of The Present Group, a creative studio creating affordable and sustainable models for funding artists. In their first three years, their subscription art project has channeled over $20,000 toward funding artist projects, stipends, and development of critical essays. In May 2010 they began a web hosting project where a portion of the fees fund prizes for contemporary artists. Hosting clients get to vote on the recipient of each grant. At Off the Press Oliver presented their latest project, in collaboration with Hol Art Books, The People’s E-book, a free online e-book creation tool. The enterprise started on Kickstarter and raised three times the pledged goal, with 920 backers.

The goal, Oliver said, was to make the People’s E-book as simple as possible to encourage and facilitate experimentation with the medium. Given the EPUB’s finicky nature, Oliver and his colleagues decided to strip it down to bare essentials: title, cover image and page(s). In order to make The People’s E-book as user-friendly as possible, instead of Markdown, it uses a WYSIWYG interface. This, however, created some problems, since WYSIWYG, being designed to work in browsers, offers a range of options which would not work on e-readers. To prevent any potential problems with display and re-flowability, the WYSIWYG had to be restricted to a certain extent.

The choice of EPUB as the format was justified by the following :

Oliver Wise demonstrates the use of The People’s E-book

it works offline, is self-contained and facilitates safe archiving of texts, as opposed to websites and links

for text, EPUB can be read on a variety of devices using free apps and brings general good reading experience

people buy it, so artists can use EPUB publications as a source of supplementary income

it’s less ephemereal, as opposed to social media, which are designed to be consumed instantly and flow through. EPUB offers a slower and more stable kind of experience.

Oliver expressed the hope that maybe one day EPUB will take on a life of its own, like the GIF format, with thousands of people around the world self-identifying themselves as GIF artists. One of the further experiments undertaken by Oliver and Eleanor with EPUB format is the Streambooks, a tool allowing to convert any Tumblr blog into an e-book.

You can find a PDF of his original presentation here: Presentation Oliver Wise

Follow Oliver on Twitter : @owise1oliver@thepresentgroup.comgithub.com/peoples-ethepresentgroup.comhttp://beta.thepeoplesebook.net/

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562327

Miriam Rasch – Hybrid Workflows for Hybrid Publishing

By Jakub Dutka, May 28, 2014 at 12:28 am.

Miriam Rasch

Miriam Rasch, a co-editor (together with René König) of INC Reader #9, Society of the Query: Reflections on Web Search, presented the workflow she and her colleagues followed while working on the Reader. The Institute of Network Cultures project group involved: Joost Kircz, Silvio Lorusso, Michael Murtaugh, and Kimmy Spreeuwenberg. Miriam described their creative process following the principles of hybrid publishing – creating one publication for several different output formats. The reasoning behind it was to move the INC publications beyond the print format and facilitate the distribution on digital devices.

Miriam went on to describe INC’s efforts to disseminate their publications. All the publications are distributed under Creative Commons license and the print copies can be ordered for free. INC uses a number of platforms (for instance ISUU) and file formats to expedite the distribution of its publications. They also introduced two innovative digital formats: iPad magazine and personal EPUB. The iPad magazine, designed to target a broader audience, features a selection of 10 articles from the Reader translated into Dutch, with added pictures and video clips. Due to its multimedia nature its only available on iPad. The personal EPUB is an interactive way of choosing articles of one’s interest (up to 10) from the INC database and compiling them into an e-book, in DIY fashion. Moreover, a variety of additional materials are available online, the most notable example being materials from a range of conferences organised by INC, like Society of the Query, Money Lab or Unlike Us. The conference materials, including pictures and video clips are available on Flickrand Vimeo. More information can be found on INC’s website.

You can find a PDF of her original presentation here: Presentation Miriam Rasch

Miriam writes books reviews and guest posts for different websites and magazines. Look up her personal blog.

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562332

Marcell Mars: Free access to resources for every member of society

By Irina Enache, May 28, 2014 at 1:16 pm.

The final session of the “Off the Press: Electronic Publishing in Arts” conference approached another side of the e-publishing field, namely what happens after the e-books are launched: where do we distribute, store and manage them?

In traditional publishing, perhaps the most iconic actor to play this role is the public library. However, as Mars pointed out in his talk, the public library itself is currently under a financial, social and political threat. Furthermore, there is still the question which actors can take up its role in the virtual world. Proprietary platforms like Google or Amazon have already stated their ambitions to become such global knowledge keepers, but this comes with the danger of intellectual copyrights and censorship. Mars, alongside with the other speakers of this session, discussed the existing alternatives: open, collaborative, non-proprietary platforms. How can they be designed to best fit the role of public libraries, and how should they adapt this role online?

Mars is a hacker, activist and researcher with a strong interest in book sharing and book hacking. He began by explaining the very narrative associated with the public library concept. The latter, he argues, embodies humanity’s dream of an epistemological heaven. The thought of being able to generate knowledge about knowledge has always been an ideal often reflected in philosophy as well (take the example of Leibniz and his proposal to have a language so formal that it would explain and recreate everything – much like humanity’s hopes with the public library). In reality, however, public libraries were built after the French revolution in the 19th century and were far from the ideal of open access to everyone, argues Mars. In this sense, public libraries have always been gripped by politics – one example is that access is conditioned to being a citizen (have a valid ID card and residence within the city/country, which excludes vulnerable groups such as refugees or immigrants). The public libraries world-wide are furthermore constrained by financial cuts and even shut-downs. They are not able to buy books and borrow them, since publishers agree only on licensing contracts – a problematic proprietary regime.

In this context, what vision of public library should we strive for in the digital world?

Mars identifies three essential pillars of the public library that also translate to the digital ones: free access, a library catalogue and the librarian.

Mars strongly advocates for free access of resources for everyone, instead of access by means of identification. The library catalogue equivalent online is the web index, argues Mars. Essentially, whoever has a more powerful and refined way of indexing all the knowledge is in fact seizing it altogether. Google is currently the most famous player when it comes to indexing, in close competition with Amazon’s index. Monopolization is dangerous, warned Mars. Instead, he supports the idea of having many more, alternative and collaborative indexes, thus decentralizing the process of knowledge sharing. In this vision, anyone can become a librarian, and “when everyone is librarian, library is everywhere”. He gave the example of Calibre – a platform where users can manage their own e-books, convert to different formats, tag, search, share, download (but also purchase from publishers), and connect with other users. The major strength of Calibre, Mars points out, is that its technical design allows sociability. With Calibre, a user can connect any PC to the Calibre built-in server and thus has access to their e-book collection, as well as to the network of Calibre librarians everywhere. The capability to use independent servers rather than via third-party providers is also desirable in order to protect these online catalogues.

Mars also mentioned a number of other online collections and platforms for e-book sharing, among which are aaaaarg.org, LibGen, UbuWeb or Monoskop. While some are just online depositories, others host entire communities of librarians, researcher and readers. In the end, the purpose is not to have just one universal (digital) public library, but rather many small ones that work in a decentralized, collaborative manner.

Marcell Mars is one of the founders of Multimedia Institute â€“ mi2 and net.culture club mama in Zagreb. He initiated Public Library, GNU GPL publishing label EGOBOO.bits, started Skill sharing in mama + Skill sharing’s satellites g33koskop, ‘Nothing will happen’ and ‘The Fair of Mean Equipment’. His full biography here.

Video: http://vimeo.com/97508731

Dušan Barok: Communing Texts

By Irina Enache, May 28, 2014 at 5:55 pm.

Monoskop (a wiki for art, culture and media technology).

The Internet is not just a medium to distribute, store and manage e-books, he continues, but is in itself a medium that dictates specific means of reading and writing. As far as reading is concerned, many e-books are downloaded and bookmarked but in the end never read. Barok identifies the cause in that “they may contain something relevant but they begin at the beginning and end at the end” – in other words, their linearity is an obstacle for readers searching only for specific information. With full text search functionality available, why bother reading everything? Instead of humans, these e-books end up being read by machines. As far as writing is concerned, plain text might now be rendered to new formats like HTML, XML, wikitext or markdown, but Barok believes that coding holds an untapped potential in linking e-books to each other, much like referencing does in traditional publishing.

Thus, one of e-publishing’s most important unrealized potential is, in Barok’s opinion, contextual reading. An e-book is rarely a closed box; rather, it links to other content and authors, something that we formally know in traditional publishing as referencing.

Referencing has always been a trademark of writing and an act of comradeship in order to guide the reader to another writer’s passage. This is a laborious work with analogue books, since readers need to get up, go to the library or bookstore and find the other referenced book. On the web, this is a click away thanks to the hyperlink. The difference though is that in analogue books, referencing is done by writers, whereas with e-books the process is completely machinist. Both have their cons. The readers of analogue books rarely check the references and instead accept the interpretation of the referencing author (“the beauty of reading across references was never fully realized”, muses Barok). Are readers of e-books then more critical? Barok suggests not, as hyperlinking takes the readers to the whole referenced paper, and not the passage it directly refers to. The abundance of hyperlinks, especially in popular news articles, make it almost impossible for readers check everything. This lack of critical effort often paves the way for journalists and writers to manipulate others’ quotes, by taking them out of the original context or only quoting half the sentence. These deceptions can only be counteracted by the very few careful readers that would bother commenting on those articles, but what if the “Comments” section is closed? What happens to vigilance in online publishing? Isn’t e-publishing supposed to put author and reader in a more direct, bi-directional relationship? Or, for that matter, to allow e-publications to further connect  to each other by means of referencing?

The major obstacle, argues Barok, is that e-publishing persists in old formats. In history, content has been written on stone, on columns, papyrus and paper. Writers have developed a framework that is here today: the use of grids, of paragraph, of punctuation, of arranging space. However, he explains, examples such as the early scriptio continua style (a text that essentially flows in one line) or Plato’s Phaedrus (originally written without any punctuation, word or paragraph separators) to illustrate how it is still possible to locate a passage regardless of how text is displayed and what tags it contains.

The essential difference between the medium of paper and that of code is that the latter has a completely different materiality. Despite this, we are still treating HTML codes to render page-like formats and follow grid rules, albeit the code itself could allow for much more exploration. The way that humans structure e-publications reflects old habits (pages need to be rectangular) or cultural habits (text letters to allow readability). What would happen if we renounced the use of grid and rather let text render itself according to the space we offer it – a good example for this is the conference’s interactive logo. Why is the technical possibility to reference-link directly to the passage rather than the entire document so little discussed?

“There is a tremendous amount of both old and recent texts online but we haven’t done much in opening them up to contextual reading”, Barok concluded. If the Internet is changing our way of reading, it is only to allow distraction from linearity, context and vigilance. To counter-act the latter, Barok suggests to authors, designers, publishers and developers to further explore ways in which referencing and content display can help readers engage with their e-books and immerse in new reading experiences. The way linking takes place on the web and the way scholars reference their works are two perspectives that could unite for a better communing of texts in e-publishing.

Video: http://vimeo.com/97508732

Alessandro Ludovico – Networks as agents in the clash between personal and industrial post-digital print

By Jakub Dutka, May 28, 2014 at 11:36 am.

Alessandro Ludovico during his talk on day 1 of Off the Press 2014

Alessandro Ludovico, the author of Post-Digital Print, The Mutation Of Publishing Since 1894, is an Italian media critic and editor in chief of Neural magazine (http://neural.it/) since 1993, for which he received an honorary mention of the Prix Ars Electronica 2004. He has published and edited several books, and has lectured worldwide. He’s one of the founders of Mag.Net(Electronic Cultural Publishers organization). He has been guest researcher at the Willem De Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and he teaches at the Academy of Art in Carrara. He is one of the authors of the Hacking Monopolism trilogy of artworks (Google WIll Eat Itself, Amazon Noir, Face to Facebook). He is currently a PhD scholar at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge (UK).

Alessandro begun his lecture by addressing the changing mediascape, shaped by two opposing forces: on one side the underground, personal agendas and, on the other side, the corporate interests of Google and the like. The post-digital print era is witnessing the booming in net-content or IT-processes based artist’s books (with a whole taxonomy of techniques and approaches), and the efforts in collective scanning of underground culture in print, shared in proper digital repositories, is revamping the production and rediscovering of critical content in a classic form. On the other side, the unveiling of Google’s major plan with the industrial scanning, the rising of the un-sustainability of newspapers’ business model, the growing role of software in literary and journalistic production, and the constant fine-tuning of commercial e-publications’ rules.

Paul Soulellis

Alessandro went on to describe the taxonomy of publications scraping the information from the internet. As a prime example, he introduced a New York-based artist and creative director, Paul Soulellis, the founder of Library of the Printed Web, a curatorial project organized around artists who use screen capture, image grab, site scrape and search query to develop printed matter from content found on the web. Soulellis has tried to define this common strategy as a sequence of “search, compile, publish.” Due to the coupling of free content available on the internet in ‘big data’ proportions with the inexpensive Print-on-Demand platforms, a new type of artists’ books has emerged – one that ‘scrapes’ or ‘harvests’ content from the Internet and re-work it into book format. Ludovico, after Soulellis, attempted to compile a draft taxonomy through three categories:

Grabbing (and scraping): artists who perform web searches query and grab (with intent) the results. They are interested in how the search engine articulates the idea. An example of that approach is 56 Broken Kindle Screens – by Silvio Lorusso and Sebastian Schmieg

Hunting: The hunter takes a highly specific screen capture that functions as evidence to support an idea. They reject almost all of what they find because they’re looking for the exception. See A Series of Unfortunate Events(2010) by Michael Wolf – a compilation of weird or bizarre situations that had been captured by Google’s Street View cameras.

Performing: Those are artists making work that involves the acting out of a procedure, in a narrative fashion, in a kind of performance between web and print. A performance with data, or how he put it: publishing performing the Internet. An example here is the American Psycho published by TRAUMAWIEN.

All the approaches presented above enable for the ‘transduction’ between the internet and the print  book, namely they take a sequential, or reductive part of the web and mould it into traditional publishing guidelines. It is often the case that this practice is undertaken to compansate for the imbalance between the colossal amount of information available instantly on the internet and the limited human capacity to process this information comprehensively.

The process of digitising everything is two-fold: it comprises of creating natively digital content and digitising analogue cultural objects through scanning. This dematerialisation, to quote Jacques Derrida, is “a very deceptive word meaning that in truth they are moving from one kind of matter toLa Carte Ou Le Territoire (‘The Map or the Territory’), which exploits Google Book searches to find identical phrases across texts, revealing the ‘plagiarised’ nature of all writing.

Google’s efforts to digitise all human knowledge through the Google Books project are widely discussed in academia and otherwise. Initially advertised as a “dream of a universal library”, Google Books has been interpreted and unveiled for its own final goal, which is creating artificial intelligence. Google and the World Brain (2013), through interviews with people directly involved, investigates the whole scope of the project.

As opposed to the monopolistic inclinations of Google, Ludovico introduced individuals and groups which strive to digitise culture in order to facilitate the spread of knowledge, free of charge. To further illustrate his point, Ludovico used three examples from Italian hacker community :

The Grafton 9 collective in Bologna which is scanning the political cyberpunk culture of

 ‘Archivio il Sessantotto’ (Archive of 1968) in Florence – a huge archive of political magazines, poster and leaflets about left activism.

 ‘Germinal’ archive in Carrara, which is also the historical archive of one of the biggest national anarchic communities, which has already started to scan their unique collection of

Drawing from Jeffrey Schnapp, Alessandro affirmed:

“the book is a construct in constant evolution: a construct that routinely and dynamically interacts with a shifting array of other media types. In other words, the book is a technology.”

The statement above is embodied by the post-digital print, which reacted to and reflected on the advent and subsequent ubiquity of digitised texts. In order to survive to the online competion even newspapers since a decade have included more ‘data’ in their own visual structure than they ever did, in the form of big figure or sophisticated infographics. Examples go further, to name only a few: books by Marshall McLuhan, Jerome Agel and Quentin Fiore. The main question, then, is whether the internet is a new medium, or just an accumulation of all the ‘old’ media? Photographs, texts, video clips, all predate the internet. If not a ‘real’ medium, is the internet an agent, inducing radical changes in other historical media, but leaving their inner core intact?

You can find a PDF of his original presentation here: Presentation Alessandro Ludovico

Video: http://vimeo.com/96574475

Pia Pol: Digitizing Context Without Walls, Creating EPubs Through the EPubster Generator

By Patricia de Vries, May 27, 2014 at 1:39 pm.

The publishing house Valiz publishes Context Without Walls (CWW), a series of book publications focused on the work of artists from all over the world. The books in this series are multilingual, rich in images and text, and the design is meticulous. From the first publication in this series, Common Skin, Valiz and their designers have attempted to create a digital version.

It goes without saying that many difficulties arise when converting a publication like Common Skin to the digital realm. How do you deal with the richness of the visual language and the textual design of the book version? What kind of format should be used? How can you make keywords link to the indexes of the book? And what to do with all the footnotes of each publication? As part of the Digital Publishing Toolkit Initiative Valiz worked on the Epubster Generator tool to tackle these questions.

With the Epubster Generator, an open source software tool for editing and designing ebooks, a publisher can create EPub3s with a wide range of extensive image and design options. But there is more, the Epubster Generator

it’s ePubs can be sold to different platforms – a common problem of digital publishing

its style sheets can be amended and reused for different styles to create series

you can add style sheets and metadata – the latter is particularly important if you want to sell the book

you can use hyperlinks in text

both markdown and rich text can be used

changes in text and image can be made directly in the program

Pol explains that their focus has been on developing a tool that is both easy to use and sustainable. However, there are some more style and design problems that they need to tackle. How to deal with the page divisions and centrefolds that are a crucial part of Common Skin? And how can we make it completely bug-free? These are questions Pia Pol and her team will be working on and seek solutions to during the last leg of the Digital Publishing Toolkit development period.

You can find a PDF of her original presentation here: Presentation Pia Pol

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562363

Off the Press – Report Day I

By Arie Altena, May 27, 2014 at 10:44 pm.

Off the Press, Electronic Publishing in the Arts is the third one in a series on the state of electronic publishing that started with the Unbound Book (http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/unboundbook/), and was more recently followed by the presentation of the research of The Publishing Toolkit at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam in november 2013.

A disclosure of my particular interest, perspective and background might be appropriate. I studied Literary Theory, and learned HTML back in 1994, and taught basic HTML in my days at Mediamatic. Though I use WordPress for my blog. I still maintain my website using hand-coded HTML (plus a few line of CSS). It does the trick – my website also displays fine on a smartphone or tablet as far as I know. I’m an editor, writer, theorist –  not a designer. In the past few months I’ve been tinkering with various editorial tools and ways of making epubs – and created two epubs for Sonic Acts. I have not been part of the Publishing Toolkit project, but up to a certain point I have traced a similar trajectory. Some of the remarks in the report will derive from that experience.

Geert Lovink introduces the conference and workshop programme stating that it is important to raise the critical issues in the world of electronic publishing. He outlines the context of contemporary publishing with bookshops (for printed books) in decline, and ebooks still on the rise (they have entered the market for educational publishing). The ambition of the Digital Publishing Toolkit programme is to make sure that we – I assume he means citizens, students, readers, artists, small publishers – are empowered by the tools we use, and are able to shape the tools and the discussion, instead of leaving it all to Google, Amazon and other large players that know how to bundle power, money and attention to shape tools, access to knowledge and culture.

Structured Data

Joost Kircz is the perfect speaker to kick off the conference, that is, if you want to emphasize the structural aspects underpinning computer publishing, and bring in knowledge acquired in more than 25 years in the business. Joost Kircz’ experience in electronic publishing and database publishing goes back to 1987. He gives a perfect summary of what happens with editing and publishing when you work electronically. He stresses the fundamental issue: electronic publishing means storing data in code which is not human readable, but can be manipulated in many ways. Markup needs to be structural, to enable output in different media. This all goes back to SGML (1982), to HTML as sloppy implementation of SGML, to XML. A good history lesson, in which he also quickly refers to Markdown as editing tool.

Structured, coded data is the basis for electronic book production. This fundamental ‘truth’ can’t be repeated often enough as it is apparently still not understood by many people who work in writing, editing and publishing. Presentation and content should be strictly separated in electronic publication. If they are strictly separate, and content is stored in a structured database, then it’s search, store and retrieve. The structured data can be used for output in a great variety of media. Books are made of documents, which are made of paragraphs (and other structured ‘bits’ of data), which are made of words, made of letters, made of ASCII, made of, in the end, bits. And then there are metadata of course. There is no going back to the old way of making books.

This is what anybody should know, I guess, but this is also where the problems begin. If you understand that it works this way, and that it has been like this ever since the 1980s, one wonders why the workflows in publishing is still not based on this model. (One exception being database publishing in the academic world). And why, given that this model is so clear and simple, is the reality of electronic publishing such a mess? (Was the mess-up created by the sloppy implementation of HMTL, has the development of visual web design been a factor, or is it because of the dominance of Word?) The other issue is that the strict division is all fine when you deal with text. But what happens with content in which it’s the visual aspect that carries the meaning? Then maintaining this division is either banal (insignificant), or impossible to maintain. I guess that in a computer and database universe the answer is that when it’s solely visual, it should be an image-file.

What an optimal editorial workflow is in an electronic world is not so difficult to imagine. But though most of us have worked electronically at least 25 years (unless you’re younger than that, and you have worked electronically pretty much all the time anyway – at least when you’re not a zine-making artist), there is no tool that really fits the job. A lot of this surely has to do with the adoption of Word (and Word-like) word processors as default writing software since the late 1980s. I could start ranting here – but won’t. Part of the research of the Digital Publishing Toolkit is to come up with an editorial tool for small publishers. In a sense it’s the Holy Grail for editors: a tool that allows you to do the whole editing process, ending with a clean source document that can be use for various media outputs. (And generates good and well-formed output…). Theoretically it should be ‘super-easy’ to create simple epubs from clean texts which are also used for the web, for print publication, for database publication, epubs which work fine on any device (and do not mess up the presentation)… – especially since epub is an open standard… Welcome to reality: there is no perfect technological fix.

Post-Digital Publishing

Alessandro Ludovico – editor of Neural (http://neural.it) and expert in post digital publishing (see http://postdigitalprint.org) – gives an overview of a specific culture of artist books, made possible by the coupling of online free digital content, print on demand, and simple scripting. This has created a new taxonomy of publications that scrape content from the internet. ‘Search, compile, publish’. It’s the idea of the ‘Library of the printed internet’. Ludovico mentions three methods that are used to produce books from existing online content: 1. grabbing and scraping, 2. hunting. 3. performance. Sometimes these experiments are exhilarating – not as books itself, but rather conceptually. TraumaWien’s massive production of books made from Youtube comments come to mind (See more below). As well as various other non-artistic misuses of the print on demand systems and Amazon to sell real books, which are books (as they are bound stacks of paper), but the content is, well, spam?

The second subject Alessandro Ludovico  puts in the mix is industrial scanning of books – as done by for instance Google Books. What he does not mention, but what I find very interesting, is that industrial scanning has made possible new ways of doing literary theory and literary history too. The ‘big data’ of Google Books and the possibilities of searching through an enormous corpus is used to gain new insights on both the history of literature, and through that also on history. I am of course referring to Franco Moretti’s books (a.o. on The Bourgeois in the 19th Century) and the Stanford Literary Lab (http://litlab.stanford.edu/). Moretti’s take on this is quite down to earth. The thousands of scanned books – which nobody will ever read – can be used to get some insight on the development of ideas, and of daily life. Human intelligence is needed to obtain these insights and critically evaluate them. (It is the same sort of ‘big data’-use that allows Thomas Piketty insight in the evolution of income and capital in his book Capital in the 21st Century). No superior machine intelligence is produced in the process, as the Ray Kurzweil’s of this world would like us to believe. (Upload all the knowledge of the world in the cloud, have various algorithms harvesting and analysing the data – and see: new insights and knowledge emerge, eventually making machines more intelligent than us humans). But let’s not get into the whole discussion on ‘big data’ and singularity. Alessandro Ludovico refers to it, but does not open up this ‘box’, instead opting to reflect on the emergence of hybrid reading ‘forms’, and the ‘Long Read’-format which now seems to have become a genre of its own. Not only are there now (more) hybrid forms of reading as before, we also now are more aware that we use, and always have used different ‘modes’ of reading, there is more than ‘close reading’ and ‘speed reading’ – there’s scanning, browsing, deep reading, distant reading (Moretti’s term), and more.

The questions after the presentation are on the current state of Google Books – as there has not been much ‘news’ on that recently. Florian Cramer mentions that, judging from the website-design Google Books might be heading more in the direction of selling (or e-books) than in pursuing the grand scheme of storing all the knowledge of the world.

Multi-faceted Practices

Michael Murtaugh introduces a series of presentations which reflect on various electronic reading and publishing practices that have emerged over time. The first one is about using Twitter and Catalan. Elizabeth Castro – computer book author –  uses Twitter to interview people about Catalunya and the Catalan language (see #CatalanTalk). She explains how she uses the Twitter-interviews in different languages (she has an online volunteer translation team) about Catalan, how she stores and archives them using Storify (https://storify.com/). The question is how to go from Storify to epub? As tweets are basically HTML, this should be straightforward enough. She explains the workflow. First export to XML. Create XSLT to filter the XML – of course there is way too much data in the source code of the tweet, she only needs the body text. Then she makes an InDesign template, imports the XML, and maps tags to styles. InDesign to epub can be a good tool – I am told also by others – if you use InDesign in a very structured way. How she designs in InDesign is strictly structural and systematic. Not all graphic designers I know work this way. They might work visually oriented, and not necessarily ‘structured’ in a technological sense. (Hence the horrible output when you ‘just’ convert some InDesign files to epub).

Elizabeth Castro, wrote about 100 pages (says Florian Cramer) about cleaning up InDesign files for epub. So Florian Cramer asks her about it. She answers that InDesign has become much better in this respect, but also states that InDesign is simply the tool she has used for a long time. If another tool fits one’s goal better: use that.

The People’s Ebook (http://hepeoplesebook.net), presented by Oliver Wise, is intended to be the tool to create ebooks in the most simple way. There are now a number of such tools. (I made the epub2-version of the Sonic Acts publication The Dark Universe with Pressbooks (http://pressbooks.com/), which I found an easy and agreeable tool which fitted that particular project. I am used to WordPress, and in Pressbooks is easy to do the footnotes by hand.) The People’s Ebook uses WYSIWYG for the People’s Ebook, not Markdown. Markdown would have been easier – they say – but as not many people use Markdown, it’s not the best choice for them. An interesting experiment they did is turning Tumblr’s into epubs at http://streambooks.thepeoplesebook.net. As a lot of webAPI’s gives data in the form of JSON – which is what their tool wants – so it’s possible to turn a Tumblr into epub automatically. In fact technologically this is not (so much?) different from the scraped-free-content artist books that Alessandro Ludovico mentions.

But why epub? That is a good question, to which Oliver Wise gives good answers: epubs are self-contained, good for archiving, they enable a good reading experience (though better than paper? better than a laptop? I wonder), they are cross-device (or they are when you know how to use Calibre for conversion). And yes, an important reason is that people buy them. He’s probably right. Epubs read on an e-reader enhance a concentrated reading experience, where being online enhances a ‘distracted’, link-following, scanning reading experience (which is not necessarily bad – it is useful in many circumstances).

HTML is king/queen?

Adam Hyde is the man of the Booksprint methodology of making books (http://www.booksprints.net/), Floss Manuals (http://booki.flossmanuals.net/), Booktype (http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/booktype/), and many more similar projects. He recently did a Booksprint on Booksprints. He gave up art after art had brought him to Antarctica. He entitled his talk ‘Books are Evil, 8 years in the wilderness’, and gives an overview of publishing projects he has been involved in over the years. His first book-making platform was based on Twiki. He learned that HMTL is ‘king/queen’ – the source files for his books are always HTML. He has also learned that doing Farsi in Regex (I did not know what Regex is) is extremely hard – touching on the language issue that tends to be forgotten in a predominantly English-focused world. Hyde finds it amazing and unbelievable that people in the knowledge industry, and publishing still reject the idea that HTML is king/queen. Not all the speakers here agree with him, others champion Markdown, or XML, or would say HTML is too sloppy. Hyde made a whole range of free softwares from Booki and Booktype to Lexicon, PubSweet, BookJS and Objavi. And learned that doing something the simple way is the best way. Import and export is all file conversion. He ends with ‘Monstruous, Belligerent, Learnings’, the central argument of which is – again – that HTML is ‘it’. He states that in our world paper books are weird, as they were digital files first. He has a great metaphor: printed books are like frozen waves. He pleads: one has to get into the digital space for real – design does not relate to a fixed thing (a frozen wave – as can be found in Antarctica), but to data which flows and can be reflowed. Anything else in this world is crazy. Books – as printed things – are evil: they brought us copyright, industrial culture, the myth of the solitary genius. The market conditions for printed books do not exist without these. He pleads: let’s forget about the book, and really go into collaborative knowledge production. He’s being provocative – but he is right as well. Why go back to the book in a networked world? Only at this point the issues begin. Is science not collaborative knowledge production? Sure this is possible in a printed book format too? In the discussion later on, he says that his is a reversed provocation, against the fiction or myth that books are authored by a single author, even those are not made by a single author, they are collaborative efforts.

Florian Cramer chimes in and warns that one should not fight windmills, not fight against a situation that does not exist anymore, or has lost power. The myth of the single author is not so strong anymore in a time of Facebook, Amazon, cloud-storage, and the Clay Shirky collective intelligence cloud-ideology, with the iPad as the most ‘evil tool’. Also Marcell Mars reacts (from the audience), making a point of the book as a cultural structure, rather than a technological one – though it is also technological. He counters Adam Hyde’s championing of HTML, mentioning that many things that are great about book technology are not solved in HTML, like pagination, citation and referencing. To which Adam Hyde replies with the example of the implementation of ‘doi’ (digital object identifier). It is interesting to see the playing-out of these differences – shall we call them ideological? – differences that to almost anyone outside electronic publishing or coding will seem pretty arcane…

These ideological differences come back in the presentation of John Haltiwanger about tools for knowledge production. He starts from the fundamental principle that knowledge production is too important to be locked in with proprietary software. His writing environment is a minimal full-text text editor. He invokes Simondon’s concept of technology and transduction and outlines how the tools we construct and use form a sort of ’skeleton’ that’s around us in four (sic) dimensions. Like Adam Hyde he uses a picture of a glacier too. I have to admit that I loose track of what he’s exactly getting at – maybe it is just how the technology that we use envelops us and our world. I am too focused now on the practical issues, it’s not a day for me to contemplate the differences between Simondon’s philosophy of technology and cybernetics. John Haltiwanger absolutely loves Markdown, I am told, and co-leads the pandoc workshop the next day.

Workflows and Toolkits and Basic Knowledge

In his introduction to the next panel Florian Cramer puts the issues ‘on the table’, technological ones and pragmatic ones, concerning online versus offline, epub versus app versus website, issues of file size, bandwidth and connectivity. He mentions that many of the apps and tools that people now use unthinkingly do not work without connectivity. We are not sure bandwidth will stay as cheap as it is now. (And then he does not even mention that connectivity means tracking use). The world of epub, he says, is like the world of web design of the middle 1990s. There is a beautiful standard (epub2 and epub3), but very bad implementation and support of it by different reading tools. (An extremely simple but crazy example is that the CSS of the Kobo Touch displays the emphasis tag as bold instead of italics). And then, Florian Cramer says, there’s the unworkable Microsoft/Adobe legacy in the workflow in the editorial and design world. This makes the question how to publish both on paper and electronic, which should be simple, quite problematic. He also says that the promise that electronic publishing is cheaper than print publication is false. (Though sometimes it is cheaper, we will hear). A slide ‘you must change your life’ states that XML is het ideal solution (as Joost Kircz outlined). Florian’s pragmatic solution is to use simple markup languages like Multimarkdown (which Adam Hyde is against).

According to Florian Multimarkdown has all the functionality that is needed for book production, and it has a straightforward and simple structure. It does body text, three hierarchies of headings, emphasis, strong, citation, footnotes, lists, and links. (HTML has already too many possibilities says Cramer). The only problem is – I think – that not many people are used to such markup languages. I have the impression (no hard data) that more people can write simple HTML than Markdown. But I might be mistaken. I’m of the generation who learned to write HTML, pre-Dreamweaver.

Then it’s over to Miriam Rasch, and the current research of the Institute of Network Cultures (INC) project group. They made two anthologies – the INC Reader #9 and #8 Unlike Us and Society of the Query. (They can be downloaded as PDF and epub at different sites). She speaks about how she changed her habits and workflow as an editor in the course of the project. (It partly mirrors my own struggles with using softwares, tools, and way of collaborations in book projects). Getting out books in various formats is a way of reaching a larger audience. The workflow starts with Word-documents of writers, these are edited by editors, go back and forth. A final document is sent by the editor to the designer who imports it into InDesign to produce a designed PDF, which can be printed, and made available digitally. It’s institutionalised DIY. (Good term). Making the epub of Unlike Us was totally separate – it was the only output format outside this workflow. (This particular epub is one of the best I ever saw – looking at how it worked on my Kobo, and inspecting the source code. Many epubs I have on my Kobo Touch have Table of Contents and footnotes that do NOT work). So how did the workflow change through producing the epub for Society of the Query? They made Markdown the central document format for keeping the definite texts and archiving. The workflow became Word —> MarkDown —> HTML —> output formats (epub, ibook, website et cetera).

They also made a personal epub-machine (coded by Michael Murtaugh) that allows you to choose from the available material – including stuff which is not in the original epub, like blogposts, photos, videos associated to the Society of the Query project, and generate a personal epub. But it can be done, and it’s fun. (Though the idea of the epub as a self-contained file loses some of its power. I think. As the power of a self-contained file, as a book with covers, also lies in the fact that there are identical copies, that others have read the same book (or epub), and can refer to it as the same book, even though the reading experience of that same book might differ quite a bit).

Context Without Walls, presented by Pia Pol is the project of Valiz publishers within the Digital Publishing Toolkit project. They created a digital version of the printed book Common Skin, looking at the visual essays, the footnotes and the extensive indexes. For the toolkit they made an epub3 generator (EPUBster). She says: ‘we as publishers do not know how to use Markdown’. The question is: could they not learn it? It does not take an intensive week workshop, you learn it in two hours. (She took part in the pandoc workshop the next day). It mystifies me that apparently people are willing and able to learn Excel and Word – which I find hard and horrible programs, with way too many and too complex functionalities – but not Markdown, or basic HTML. Or is it that people do not know how to use Word and Excel either, but just type in the open window and hit ‘save? I’m afraid not many people use Word in the right way, or take advantage of even 20% of its functionalities. (Who ever received a perfectly formatted Word document that used styles consequently and in the right way?) Editors do usually know their tools, or at least the functions they need. But there is definitely a problem – for education as well – that massive success of consumer-friendly intuitive interfaces have locked people – except ‘nerds’ – out of understanding the tools they use, and really making use of them.)

(I did not understand pandoc – the converting tool that Florian Cramer had advised me to use. I did not even understand where my Mac had saved the program when I downloaded it. Of course not: it’s a command-line tool. You need to open the terminal to use it. I’m afraid I hadn’t used the terminal in three years. But at least I knew that there is such a thing as terminal access, and that I can learn (again) to use it, and it is not extremely difficult. Though it might not be extremely attractive (visually), not intuitive.)

Two other visually oriented projects follow. First an epub3 produced for the Stedelijk Museum, which is nice enough, or very nice, yet I can’t get rid of the impression that I’m looking at something which actually is a website (which it is of course). Arjen de Jong presents the work of the BIS Publishers workgroup. Their goal was to explore the possibility of rich media with highly interactive content. He mentions that iBooks Author has a crazy user agreement, which is unworkable for a real publisher: epubs created by iBooks Author may only be sold in the Appstore, and nowhere else. And it only produces one format. So it’s unusable professionally. They focused on tablets as the platform to produce for, as that is where their market is. This choice decided the use of tools and formats. E-readers, he states, move forward really slowly, and are basically one-function tools: to read texts. (They are, and that’s their forte too). For anything else (and for reading) we have laptops and tablets. The publication they worked on – an interactive ‘book’ on sketching, where the reader or users makes sketches – would be ridiculous to produce for an e-reader. So it makes sense.

More Presentations

visualMANIAC (http://visualmaniac.com/) from Madrid create and sell image heavy (art) publications. Judging from their websites, they are much more in an ‘ipad-touch-screen-world’ than some of the earlier presenters. They have about 1200 publications in the store. They are a small fish in the pond where Amazon rules, looking for a commercial format in a world where it still is difficult to have people pay for digital content. Their solution is to work together with institutions, also offering their services and expertise. The challenge is to survive and remain independent as an online bookstore for digital content, of whatever format (HTML5, epub, apps, PDF). The question is: where do you buy your ‘books’ and ‘magazines’ for the e-reader and iPad? Is there a (market) possibility for a store? What is the function of a store for digital content? Of course a small store with a good choice of content is nicer to browse than Amazon – but wouldn’t I get the PDF or epub rather directly from the publisher or the author? It’s the old question of the middle man trying to define a niche.

My colleague at V2_ Michelle Kasprzak talks about making epubs for the Blow-up program of V2_ (http://www.v2.nl). This happens next to the printed books that V2_ is publishing. (Actually today a new book is published: Giving & Taking, edited by Joke Brouwer and Sjoerd van Tuinen). Why did she bother to make these ebooks, that delve deeper into the theme of each Blowup – events that had to be experienced there and then? The old reason: books can be distributed over space and time, and are easily archived. She dug through the archive to find archive stuff to republish (with help of me, ‘the archive guru’ at V2_), and combined and mixed it with new and commissioned content. She used the methodology of the Book Sprint – a masochistic concept, she says with a smile – to create the e-book on ‘the New Aesthetic’. She elaborates on the method of Book Sprints: getting the group together, the nudging needed from someone who oversees the process, the choice of a central topic. She calls the room where the authors who were writing the book on the New Aesthetic in 5 days humorously ‘the torture room’, and ‘the pressure cooker’.  She organized a second Book Sprint about the V2_ long term research project ‘Innovation in Extreme Scenario’s’, with the ambition to make a reader to explain the topic. The sprint morphed into writing personal essays on the topic. ‘Write often, distribute widely’ – is how she ends the presentation. To get the message out there. Focusing on the methodology of making a book, to speed up the process, is another angle at electronic book production – though it is not tied to electronic tools. Even in the 18th Century books were produced and published very, very fast to react on topical issues.

Matthew So presents the books of Badlands Unlimited (http://badlandsunlimited.com/), founded by the artist Paul Chan. They see publishing as an experiment, make books ‘in an expanded field’. In their store they have the choice between IRL (printed), Amazon, or iPad+iPhone. They are not typical. They work only on Mondays and Tuesdays, give a 50-50 royalty for authors – which is indeed unheard of. They are not coders, and rely on the knowledge that they acquired themselves – a bit of HTML for instance. They started to do e-books because it would be cheaper to do – and in their experience it worked out cheaper. The first books were by Paul Chan – just when he was becoming well-known. Their most successful book – commercially – is the Marcel Duchamp interview book. Matthew So shows a number of ebooks that make artistic use, or actually misuse of simple technologies embedded in for instance iBook Authors. There’s a lot of meta-technological fun. How to Download a Boyfriend (with Cory Arcangel, Tony Conrad and many others) is an example of that – typical of the post-digital aesthetic, (mis)using the most horrible visuals of contemporary internet culture. Another example is an iBook with only ads (it became 230 pages thick). These books typically do not work cross-platform, they are made for ipads, and are an artistic statement. Publishing these books cross-platform, he says, is not an issue, since the artistic impulse and concept comes first. If they can be cross-platform, they will be. All their ebooks are a good example of what can be done with the available tools, especially iBook Author, and care less for all of the issues that the other speakers today mentioned. Maybe you have to be American to work like this? Is it harder in the Netherlands and Europe, as a small art publisher, to simply make books that will NOT work on an e-reader, or your laptop, and only on an Apple device? And tell you customers, ‘no sorry, it does not work on your machine’? This attitude is relaxing as well. Maybe we should care less about it. Just make e-books with the best tools. And when it won’t display anymore on your new reading device in 6 years time, so what? In the discussion afterwards he admitted that they did run into quite a few rejections from the iBook store. Sometimes this concerned censure, sometimes the problem was in scripts they had used in an iBook – which Apple saw as possible malicious code. But though he is concerned, he seemed not to be terribly deterred by it.

The Serving Library is a project by Stuart Bailey, David Reinfurt and Angie Keefer (who presents it here) – they are Dexter Sinister. I have collaborated with Stuart Bailey in my Metropolis M past, and greatly admire his work. Angie Keefer gives a short introduction and then shows a long video – Letter & Spitter. It is about the 1960s breakthrough work of Donald Knuth (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/index.html), the man behind Metafont (http://www.math.zju.edu.cn/ligangliu/LaTeXForum/TeXBooks/Metafont/MetaFontBook.pdf) and TeX.  It’s going into the fundamentals of digital typesetting. Dexter Sinister made a script to make a single font that is constantly moving and changing – and this font is used in the video. It’s great, it’s crazy, it’s what is possible in a computer world, but the video is too slow for my brain, goes on too long, and I wonder if the message comes across.

All of this, as Sebastian Lütgert says from the audience at the end of the discussion of the first day, is like the web of 20 years ago. Everything that is experimented with, all the changes in workflows, all the issues, is what we have seen 20 years ago. And he asks: is the book really the paradigm that we want to look at when we are concerned with knowledge production? (He says a couple of things more that I am unable to summarise on the fly). He is right, and it is very strange to see the middle 1990s re-enacted. One could also argue that this is exactly great about epubs: all these tools are quite simple, you need just a few days to understand them and work with them – and sometimes much less than that. In fact figuring out how to upload them to the App-store can take more time to figure out. It’s fun to make epubs, but it is pretty doubtful that it’s the only future of reading and publishing.

Art Uncreative Art Spam Art

In the evening it’s time for presentation of projects that perform publishing, instead of just doing publishing, Shirin Pfisterer, from Crosslabs/Willem de Kooning Academy, is the first presenter. She made a plugin for a web browser that saves and scans your reading behaviour – or at least the bits that you highlight yourself. (Very useful I would say). Out of Print is an installation by design collective sixthirty that explores the abundance of online news that divides our attention. (That make us reading more and understanding less). As this one is actually a real type-setting machine and printing press it’s rather an art work that asks questions than a pragmatic tool (though of course it really works). What they print is headlines, looks nice, but not really connecting to the issue of the abundance of online news. Collate is a later work from them (2013) that looks at the publishing process and is an experiment in collaborative editing. They made a book using Collate – with 3 essays – printed with Blur.

TraumaWien (http://traumawien.at)– presented here by Lukas Jost Gross does ebook projects, relational publishing, and organizes events that mix literature with art and acid techno. They connect, I guess, to a real Viennese tradition. Think Der Wiener Gruppe (with Ernst Jandl, Konrad Bayer, oswald wiener etc.). They are great, so please excuse me for not being critical. They published 25 books – but they only sold about 100 in 4 years. In their crazy projects they exploit ebooks and on demand printing technology, and use spam. They’ve automatically generated epubs from Youtube-comments, and employing Kindle’s direct self-publishing service, uploaded about 2400 such books automatically to Amazon. Their ‘hack’ was running for three days, before they were found out. (They stupidly did not use TOR or another way to hide their IP-address used for uploading). Luckily it was seen before that by journalists, and so it was picked up, and the story went around the world. They show what you can do when you really want to exploit the technologies. They actually sold about 5 of those books. What he is not referring to is that this project is one of the best examples of Conceptual Poetry, and Uncreative Writing (see the book by Kenneth Goldsmith – of UBUweb –, and the anthology Against Expression by Craig Dworkin & Goldsmith), which has gained quite some attention in poetry and theory circles in the past years. (In the Netherlands composer/poet Samuel Vriezen is into this). Though TraumaWien holds probably – as befits Austrian – the most extreme position. (And yes, TraumaWien have the PDFs of these book up at their site: http://traumawien.at/stuff/texts/.) They also have a great scheme to get readers: get the torrent with all the new German epubs, contaminate all the 24.000 epubs, and re-upload. Keep on seeding, making sure people take your torrent. And all of those readers who think they’re going to read the new Daniel Kehlmann book for ‘free’, will get the TraumaWien version.

‘That’s a tough act to follow’, says Oliver Wise from the Present Group, who is now presenting with Eleanor Hanson Wise. They show The People’s Ebook, and try to answer the question why it is framed as a tool for artists. The answer is first in the social scene they are themselves part of, and secondly because getting artists involved into making epubs, is a method of pushing the technology further. Their historical example is Sonia Landy Sheridan’s residence at 3M’s Color Research lab in 1971 and 1976. Furthermore artists they know do publish, but are usually not technological savvy, and do not use epub – so having such a tool for that scene, is useful.

The last presentation I see is by Greyscales’ Manuel Schmalstieg (see http://greyscalepress.com)  – Black Holes in the Galaxy. He starts with the idea of the flip-flop: going from digital to analog and back. He made a couple of printed editions, sometimes pirated – for instance Neal Stephenson’s essay from Wired on the undersea cable, with new illustrations. He aggregated a novel from texts written by various ghost writers. He made the edition ‘In Conversation with Julian Assange.’ Some of these book remained undercover, as they were pirate editions, and rights were not acquired. His most successful publication is a book with transcriptions of talks by Jacob Appelbaum, – a book which can be added to every time a new talk is transcribed. He ends with on overview of spam publishing – which very nicely complements the presentation by TraumaWien.

Off the Press – Report Day II

By Arie Altena, May 27, 2014 at 9:28 pm.

Tools and Workshops

The second day of Off the Press starts with workshops. I decide to go to the workshop about pandoc first, as it promises to be about a way of working with text that I am not used to, but have started to like. When I started to use computers, in 1991 there was already Word and that is what I used for writing. At the same time I still sometimes had to use command line tools and learned about 20 Unix-commands. Through the years I’ve met people who championed the use of emacs, LaTEX, Multimarkdown or pandoc. But I have never really figured out how to work in that ‘paradigm’. First thing to understand is that pandoc is basically a very powerful converting tool. Pandoc is not an environment, but a step in a chain, a step in the workflow. It just converts. And it won’t solve the problems of converting visual design to a digital format. It is based on using Markdown, a simple markup language that uses asterisks, square brackets, underscores. I have always found it easier to write HTML markup, than this type of markup, but it is even simpler than writing HMTL-tags. The idea is that the plain text file shows the structure in a human readable format but is ready for computer consumption at the same time. What you see is what you get – but in a different way. An interesting remark is made – I forget who made it: ‘Word and InDesign are not basic tools of the trade – though most people now have grown up thinking they are. They are very specific tools.’ And it’s true that especially editors can take advantage of the knowledge of markup languages to create better, cleaner source texts… There’s some panic and chaos in the workshop, as the difference in competence is really big. Some participants use the terminal mode all the time, others have never seen a command line interface before, let alone worked with it. There is also a bit of a clash between those who think that people should be empowered to use tools themselves and acquire what they think is necessary basic knowledge, versus people who do not have such ‘basic knowledge’, consider such knowledge to be ‘technical’, and who, let’s face it, will probably never use these tools themselves anyway. In the middle is a majority who at least would like to get a taste of the ‘basic knowledge’.

After the lunch break I have a look at  the other two workshops. Two groups of each 20 participants (the maximum) are working concentrated. In the SuperGlue workshop (http://superglue.it/) all have just installed, or tried to install, the SuperGlue package, thus creating a local network of mini servers. (The SuperGlue website states: ‘SuperGlue’s mini-server provides full control of your personal data by enabling you to run and maintain your server at home. This means you can better protect and share important information, directly with those whom you want to share it with. So your privacy is in your hands.’) Danja Vasiliev, one of the workshop tutors and creators of SuperGlue asks: ‘who has got it working?’ About everybody has it working. When I check my Airport it sees six SuperGlue networks. Again, I realise I should finally learn how to set up my own server, that I should learn this little bit of command line tweaking, so I can run WordPress on my own machine, and have all the other useful tools at my fingertips. It really is basic knowledge. A lot of it is hardly ‘technical’ – but it’s in a different computer paradigm, that feels very far removed from the shiny ‘intuitive’ interfaces.

Megan Hoogenboom leads the workshop in which the participants try to make an epub form a work of visual poetry. About everyone is playing around with what I call good old-fashioned HTML: writing tags. It looks like they are having good fun with HTML and CSS.

Both the SuperGlue workshop and the visual poetry workshop show that it’s fun to work with tools that empower you as user, that give you the feeling of being in control and creating something – instead of consuming nice interfaces that mostly control you. (I would say that working, well playing, with an iPad mostly give the user the feeling of being controlled by the interface, not of being in control. Using an iPad certainly does not enhance the feeling that one can make something oneself, apart from using services that offer heavily pre-formatted ways of creation. Sure, the touch screen can be great to control sound output, and it can be nice for gaming, but that is another thing). It’s an old point, but it stays relevant.

Back in the days – roughly 1997 to 2000 – I taught basic HTML (and writing to the web and so forth) at Mediamatic. At the time it was still considered ‘handy’ for editors and designers – who actually already were working in Dreamweaver and were doing Flash – to know some HTML. (Of course the question was always raised: why should we know these tags, when you can do the same visually in a WISYWIG editor?) Who, apart from the ‘nerds’, maintained their websites doing HTML in the 21st century? Maybe some artists who liked the simplicity of HTML. Some academics. The great thing is that a website made with simple HTML in 1995 still displays fine in any browser. I think there is a basic, simple fun in creating something with one’s own hands. Maybe the result doesn’t look as slick as other websites, but it will work fine, and you have control over almost every step.

Also in the visual poetry workshop I mostly see smiling faces. They generate an epub in the end – using a command line tool. And that’s great. There is fun in making epubs. (Michael Murtaugh told me that the pandoc workshop, which started quite chaotic, also ended with a great feeling of relief from the side of the participants, when they create an epub-output with pandoc with a simple command.)

Libraries

‘Mp3 was not made big by the music industry, it was made big by file sharing, started by hackers. Netflix makes it decisions about programming by analysing Pirate Bay downloads. Maybe,’ Florian Cramer says, because he’s doing the introduction again, ‘we should have started the conference with this last panel on underground publishing.’ The underground file sharing of books is, at least in Europe, much larger than the retail market of e-books. Artists have been very active in this scene from the beginning according to Florian Cramer. It also exists much longer than the retail market. Some of it is illegal ‘sharing’ of books, but not all of it. Here at the conference Bibliothecha is running on a little local file server. It appears as an open wireless device on one’s computer and allows you to download books that people have put there. There’s also a website and a public repository – at http://bibliotecha.info.

Sebastian Lütgert, the next speaker, ran a repository of philosophical and activist and underground texts ‘back in the days’. (I still should have a lot of those files somewhere on a harddisk, the start of my digital library together with downloads from Project Gutenberg). His talk is about ‘what do you do with your books’. What do you do with the gigantic amounts of unsorted PDFs and epubs that you have on your hard disk, often not properly named. He assumes we all have such collections – do we? He does not like Calibre as a management tool and reader. Calibre (http://calibre-ebook.com/) – in the first place a converter for epubs and comparable formats – seems to be the tool of choice of many. Though I wonder how many users in the iPad/iPhone/Adobe universe know of it. Sebastian Lütgert main question is: how should library-software function, what is a good ebook-management tool? With support from Constant vzw (http://www.constantvzw.org/site/) in Brussels such software is developed: openmedialibrary (http://openmedialibrary.com/#about). He shows how it works in a web browser. It allows browsing the library of peers, and transferring books from there to one’s own computer.

We’re in ‘the underground’ here so we’re assuming that we’re dealing with free content and books that people have bought and like to share with friends… But the topic now is not how the digital is or should be changing society, culture and the economy. We’re looking at how the tools work in practice. Tools like this one are important, they are an activist ‘cog’ in the ‘machinery’. They change the function of the public library too – and public libraries, at least in Europe, are thinking about these transformations. Here we get into an endless and endlessly interesting discussion, which is a topic for another conference. It is self-evident that this is about sharing knowledge, which is a basis of our civilization. If I sound a bit ironic, this is unintentional. I agree with the philosophy to build these tools – it is an active and activist impetus to change society.

Calibre by the way also has a function to set up a content server, and can connect to other users. I think Calibre is a decent viewer, it’s great for conversion (Mobi to epub…), and can be used to produce ebooks. The main downside to Calibre, for me, – except for the fact that it adds its own code to your converted epubs – is that its interface is not attractive at all.

After Sebastian Lütgert it’s over to the Marcell Mars – hacker, activist, researcher. He is expert in book sharing and book hacking, and is, or was, actively involved in creating code for Calibre. (Actually he has just been banned from the developer forum). He wrote a sharing tool for Calibre: memoryoftheworld.org/public-library). He says: aesthetics and usability are less important than social interaction. Calibre might be ugly – he says it’s ugly – and not the easiest tool, but it has thousands of users. He wants to make Calibre a political project. He mentions the property regime and intellectual property are a huge problem. They sure are. He also rants against the technological problems – the asymmetry in the network, laptops that send requests for data, but never send data, though they could. He is so right in that. The internet we have created is a far cry to what it could have been in the dreams of 30, 20 or even 10 years ago. But most importantly Mars wants to connect again to the idea of the public library. The public library as the democratic dream of access to knowledge. He’s from Croatia where in 1991 books were burned because they were in Cyrillic, in Serbian, and/or communist. And the book scanning project at MAMA in Zagreb was a way of resurrecting that burned library. He’s passionate about the idea of the public library, and a passionate speaker with his Karl Marx-beard, using the word struggle quite a bit. I think he is very right in his passionate plea for the public library, and his plea against the development of electronic reading as ‘streaming’, licensing temporary access to a file, where the whole reading behaviour is controlled. In between he advises us to read Paper Machines, Markus Krajewski’s book on the card catalogue. The issue he raises is that of having power in the control over access to knowledge, control over the index to knowledge. He pleads to not let Google take over a total control over this index, that we need to retain the index of the public library. He also pleas for retaining the function of a librarian – as a person, a human being – and not hand over the control over the index to computer engineers and algorithms. There are many points in his presentation that deserve a detailed think-through and discussion.

Dusan Barok of monoskop (http://monoskop.org) is the last speaker. He delves into the history of reading and publishing, going back to manuscripts and scrolls. While he talks an image of one of the earliest Greek manuscripts of Plato’s Phaedrus is shown, with the title ‘Communing Texts’. Referencing is his main topic. How to refer to passages in an ebook? Pagination – a historical, ‘technological’ invention that came about through the development of the codex – is hardly ever mentioned in the discussion of ebooks. Dusan compares two traditions of referencing: the academic one (pointing to a specific passage in a text) and hyperlinking between sections of a website (through using anchors). He would like to see the possibility to digitally augment references in scanned printed books, as well as the possibility to link to any passage in a digital text – regardless of whether there is an anchor in the HTML. He says that this means looking at digital text as a continuous line of data (which is the materiality of digital text anyway). Enabling referencing between texts is important, as in such a way a community of texts can arise.

During the discussion Joost Kircz repeats that we indeed need referencing inside texts – and that this still does not exist. Interestingly Sebastian Lütgert says that it is probably easy to make such references inside electronic publications – and sketches the concept how it could work. Sounds simple. Joost Kircz says: well let’s make it, because this does not exist, and we have been wanting it for over 30 years now.  (I think: doesn’t this go back to Ted Nelson’s ideas on transclusion – and that was very problematic?) Marcel Mars thinks that any computer student could solve it. But it’s another question if such a standard would be used. (And making sure it becomes a standard is difficult).

Marcell Mars ends one of his answers with that he hates the idea of the underground in the American and UK sense – ‘I’m not underground, fuck you’. He is very right – when you would consider all our book sharing (which in the current technical implementation means downloading) as being the new implementation of the public library. (And not as building a private library).

Toolkit

So, is there a toolkit? There is no finished toolkit yet. There is the repository with tools http://networkcultures.org/digitalpublishing/github/. There is also by now a good insight in the various workflows used by small publishers, artists, writers, self-publishers and organizations. There is an overview of the pro’s and con’s of different tools. There is an overview of how all of this relates to the larger context of publishing, and to reading and sharing behaviours in online and offline culture. There is probably no perfect toolkit that fits every need. What I personally learned, is that pretty much everybody has been trying out different ways of making epubs that are good enough to bring into the world, and that there’s almost always something that has to be done ‘by hand’ as well, some tweaking and correction. Every method has advantages and disadvantages, and what fits a certain project depends on a variety of factors: the source text, the editorial process, the goal of the publication, the envisioned market or reading group, the available time… I think a progression has been made thanks to this project and the three conferences. There is also progression in knowing that a lot concerns really very basic stuff – very basic stuff.

The attraction of epubs for me lies in the fun of making something which is simple, which you can do yourself (just as well as any large institution). It’s in the joy of making – and also there is a parallel with web design of the middle 1990s. In that respect I have gone from amazement over the fact that such a fuss was being made of ‘e-books’, to a joy of making epubs.

(For pictures see: https://www.flickr.com/photos/networkcultures/)

Michelle Kasprzak – The eBook as a Vehicle for Re-dissemination and Creation

By Jakub Dutka, May 27, 2014 at 6:48 pm.

Michelle Kasprzak

Michelle Kasprzak, curator at V2_, Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, introduced participants of Off the Press to the creation of an e-book series aimed to complement the events run by V2_. Michelle begun by briefly outlining the history and activities of the institute.

Vughterstraat 234 (short: V2_) in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the first abode.

The Institute for the Unstable Media started in 1981 as an artist collective in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. The theoretical principles of V2_ were laid down in 1987 with the “Manifesto for Unstable Media”, which grew out of dissatisfaction with the status quo in the visual arts at the time. In 1994, V2_ moved to its current location in the city centre of Rotterdam.

The idea behind the e-book series was to create ‘legacy objects’ for those who could not attend the actual events run by the institute. The events in question include DEAF – Dutch Electronic Art Festival, Test_Lab series, Blowup_series, as well as others. Regarding the institute’s style, Michelle stated that their two main approaches – mixing old and new content, and reframing – allows V2_ to remain agile and be flexible to adjust to the hot topic of the time.

Book Sprints – time-limited (5 days) collaborative book writing. Michelle is responsible for curating participating groups and choosing participants from different backgrounds to come together as an efficient writing group. Michelle remarked that Book Sprints are like weddings : they bring best and worst in people.

dhr. M.J. Dieter during Book Sprint

Contact Michelle Kasprzak :

You can find a PDF of her original presentation here: Presentation Michelle Kasprzak

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562225

Matthew So: Badlands Unlimited: We Make Books in an Expanded Field

By Patricia de Vries, May 27, 2014 at 1:54 pm.

Matthew So handles sales, distribution and inventory operations at Badlands Unlimited. Founded in 2010 Badlands Unlimited publishes e-books, paper books, prints and artist works in digital and print forms, and even one book in stone, on a range of topics that do not cover specific genres. Their publications, So explained, render the dissolving distinction between books, files and artworks. They have no plan to start producing Moocs anytime soon, as “Ebooks are cheap and easy to make.” The basic aesthetic of their press is “whatever we can do on our own” as there are no developers or programmers working for Badlands.

Badlands Unlimited is run by the founder and artist Paul Chan and three staff member amongst which So himself. Chan had the ambition to start a press of his own, but was at loss as to what kind of books to publish apart from his own. He decided to publish the work of the artists he admired, starting with the poetry of Yvonne Rainer, that turned out to be one of their first publications.

The catalogue of Badlands Unlimited’s publication is small and remarkable and has included a .gif-filled e-book as an art-advertising White Pages, titled AD BOOK. AD BOOK consist entirely of ads for magazines made by various artists and art institutions. “That book paid for itself before it was on sale.” It is in part a response to the New York art scene “which seems to be concerned only with networking, marketing and money.”

Hell Tree by digital media artist Petra Cortright is another example of their extraordinary books. Hell Tree is made up of writings by Cortright and screenshots of Cortright’s desktop. Countless open widows with texts and images are juxtaposed; the desktop of a life saturated by media and media images. Hell Tree displays Cortright’s thoughts during the course of her workdays; to-do lists interlace with poems, texts and images pile and are superimposed.

Book trailer Hell Tree

On Democracy by Saddam Hussein is an English translation of three  essays on the purpose of democracy written by the late Iraqi dictator in his student days. Chan was gifted the essays and later obtained the rights for the Ebook. On Democracy shows the interest of Badlands Unlimited to press books that are unusual to say the least.

Other publications of Badlands Unlimited include:

The Afternoon Interviews – a series of formerly unpublished interviews with audio fragments of Marcel Duchamp by The New Yorker’s art critic Calvin Tomkins.

Think Like Clouds – a coffee table book composed of an accumulation of drawings, notes  and scribbles by the art curator and art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist.

How to Download a Boyfriend – a group art show turned into an interactive Ebook.

Book trailer How to Download a Boyfriend

Discussions on the book publishing, So argues, should not be about what the book is as an object or what it is not. “Books always evolve and change due to changes in it production and distribution methods and technology.” Badlands, So explained, embraces the fact that the book form has entered a digital life and advised bookmakers to explore and seek out what the new purposes of a book can be. The possibilities seem to be Unlimited indeed.

You can find a PDF of his original presentation here (unfortunately without the GIF’s): Presentation Matthew So

Badlands Unlimited website

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562223

Loes Sikkes: Highlights – EPub Personalizer

By Patricia de Vries, May 27, 2014 at 1:43 pm.

The Rotterdam-based graphic designer Loes Sikkes of Medamo, consortium partner of the Digital Publishing Toolkit, presents the Highlights research project on which she worked together with nai010 Publishers and PUNTPIXEL.

Sikkes observed that digital versions of hard copy publications are often not more than that: a digital, oftentimes a PDF format, of the analogue publication. That is, the advantages and possibilities a digital environment has to offer are left unused. How can you avoid resorting to a 1 on 1 translation of an analogue to a digital environment?

The starting point of this research project were the Highlights and Reflections publications of the nai010 publishing house. Highlights is composed of images of the highlights of the collection of Amsterdam’s modern art museum, the Stedelijk Museum, and Reflections is an addition to this photo catalogue and consists of a series of essays on the art pieces. The question was: how could they make use of the advantages e-publishing has to offer, tackle the difficulties, and make it work for the average visitor of the Stedelijk Museum.

The majority of the visitors of the Stedelijk Museum are 50 years and older tourists with smartphones. This is the visitor and the device they had in mind when developing the Highlights Personalizer Application.

The application is optimized for iPhone and iPad and can be used to prepare for a visit to the museum or as a personal reference, a personalized catalogue of your visit to the Museum. Personalizing and filtering are the key aspects of the application. Using the Highlights Personalizer the user can make a selection of his or her personal favorites of the museum’s Highlights. With the Highlights Personalizer the user composes the content, it can decide what kind and how much information is stored. Based on a large amount of content provided by the Stedelijk Museum, the user can make a compilation by means of several selection and filtering criteria and download his personal Highlights with additional information on the artwork or the artist.

The structure of this open source application is usable for all kinds of topics. Data collections containing multiple levels of information can be used. However, there are still some difficulties they need to solve, for example:

What should be arranged to keep the content up to date and how will it be managed?

How to deal with the copyrights issues on the used images and information?

Over the next coming months they hope to solve these issues.

You can find a PDF of her original presentation here: Presentation Loes Sikkes

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562365

Joaquín González – Setting up an art digital book store, or ‘Working out how to do something is better than waiting for a magic formula’

By Jakub Dutka, May 27, 2014 at 9:18 pm.

Joaquín González

Joaquín González is the executive director of visualMANIAC,a Madrid-based, independent distributor of digital books and magazines. visualMANIAC specialises in publications from the domain of art, design, photography and architecture. Their books are accessible on iPads, Androids and computers.

As Joaquín remarked at the very beginning of the session, when he bought an iPad back in 2011, he was fascinated by it, yet the market of digital publications he could access left a lot to be desired. While some magazines had already begun experimenting with apps, in the field of visual culture and arts there was nothing. The founders of Visual Maniac decided to fill in the niche and explore the possibilities that the digital publishing offered.

Having received positive feedback on their plans from many separate publishers, Joaquín and his friends decided to put their plans into practice. The first obstacle they encountered, however, was the choice of format for their publications. Out of all the formats available, they chose PDF for its well-rounded features and the preservation of the visual layout (as opposed to the austerity and re-flowability of EPUB). Preserving the unique nature of each publication, as well as the high quality of pictures, was of essence. While PDF clearly has its limitations, mainly its ‘flatness’, team at Visual Maniac worked to modify it to allow for ‘enhanced’ content like video and sound links, yet this extended form is not yet embraced by publishers.

Joaquín González explaining the tough choices Visual Maniac had to make

visualMANIAC clients can add their purchases to their accounts and access them from any device. On top of that, users can take advantage of online reader and tablet apps, however the content is not available on e-readers and phones.Visual Maniac collaborates with over 100 publishers and offers over 12000 publications in their catalogue.

Another obstacle Joaquín and friends encountered in their work is that publishers are constantly overworked and lack the time to involve in innovative attempts. Subsequently, the ownership of copyrights is stopping some publishers from moving to digital formats. Furthermore, publishers desire a perfect product, one that would be cheap (or, ideally, free) to produce and easy to use on a variety of devices. The situation on the market is not easy either, because, as Joaquín explained, it is challenging to attract potential readers and it’s even harder to make them buy. As a solution to the harsh market situation, Visual Maniac started offering its services to institutions.

visualMANIAC wants to become an international ‘go-to’ publisher for everyone who is interested in digital publications in the field of arts. Their plans include incorporating new formats, like apps and HTML. Joaquín’s final remark addressed the specificity of current mediascape, which is highly heterogenous and, as a result, any successful enterprise must provide content in diverse formats so users can enjoy it on a variety of devices.

You can find a PDF of his original presentation here: Presentation Jouquin Gonzales

Check out visualMANIAC’s blog : http://visualmaniac.com/visualmag

Contact Teresa and Joaquín :joaquin@visualmaniac.comteresa@visualmaniac.com

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562226

Florian Cramer: Electronic publishing in the arts – what works and what doesn’t

By Irina Enache, May 27, 2014 at 10:30 am.

Florian Cramer announced the soon-to-be-released Digital Publishing Toolkit – the results of a two year project with publishers and designers that taps into their practical experiences and difficulties in developing a number of pilot e-book projects. It furthermore addresses ways in which publishers can change their internal ways of working so that releasing one publication simultaneously for print, web, epub and other formats becomes less painful and more efficient.

According to Cramer, digital publishing promised writers, designers and publishers exceptional visuals and interactivity combined with easy distribution and low costs. Examples such as Art Circle – an impressive application that brings entire art collections to readers via beautiful visuals, sound and interactivity – support this ideal.

photo credits: Martin Risseeuw

So what isn’t currently working in e-publishing? Reality is, argues Cramer, that most arts and design publishers are small, have low budgets and can not maintain electronic publications that will continuous technical updates. Developing interactive applications would require those publishers to effectively become indie game designers – which is not workable in a world where books appear in editions between 500 and 1500. To complicate things, digital publishing is still a market in development. Print book publishing is in a deep crisis (for example, Rotterdam’s biggest – and only remaining general – bookstore recently went into bankruptcy) while there is no real mass market for e-books yet in continental Europe and the Netherlands. What publishers need is sustainable forms of electronic publishing. What is first needed, he says, is identification of exact needs. During the Digital Publishing Toolkit project, Cramer identified the following needs are: platform independence (the possibility to easily publish content everywhere – phone, tablet, PC, e-readers), stable formats, and optimized workflows that simplify the production process.

There are some important choices to be made in e-publishing, Cramer argued. One example are publishers who want to publish work as e-books that should better be on the web – but their only reason for choosing the e-book format is that they haven’t figured out how to monetize web content. In such cases, e-books and the ePub format are pseudo-solutions to problems that really lie elsewhere. In other cases, one should not underestimate the importance of offline reading. You can’t even read an online electronic publication in the high speed train from Amsterdam to Rotterdam with its many tunnels and connectivity disruptions.

Some practical issues were brought forth as well. One is the support of the epub standard on e-readers and e-reading software. It is currently as bad and as inconsistent as the support of web standards in the web browsers of the 1990s. Another issue is that software workflows in the editorial process need rethinking. (Cramer mentioned the Microsoft/Adobe legacy as unworkable). The technically ideal solution is the document format XML as a basis from which documents can be automatically translated into desktop publishing files, web pages and e-books, but in most cases, XML is too complex and technically demanded for non-IT companies. A pragmatic solution is to use simplified document markup languages like MultiMarkdown, which are easy to write and read, and a good basis for automatic file format conversions, too. Unlike HTML, which could also be used for this purpose, MultiMarkdown has an unambiguous syntax that can’t easily lead to incompatibilities when several people have worked on the same file.

Cramer further discussed costs, a rather sensitive aspect: “the promise that the electronic publishing is cheaper is a false promise”, he argues. That is why it becomes important to optimize workflows in the production process.

Ending his talk, Cramer has an important question for the audience: why do publishers tend to stick to the traditional formats of publishing even when they move to e-publishing? He gave the example of poetry books. Traditionally, poetry is published as poetry volumes because it is the only economical way of printing, distributing and selling it. With e-publishing however, it is possible to sell single poems. The same is true for exhibition catalogues. He gave the recent example of Stedelijk Museum, the Dutch contemporary art museum. It would have made no sense to publish its 200-page collection highlights catalogue as one e-book. But e-publishing makes it possible to turn each monographic chapter on an individual artwork into a mini-epub of its own, and to allow readers to choose what they want to explore and read.

The same essential questioning of formats concerns anthologies and periodicals. Cramer gave the example of the Dutch contemporary art and theory magazine Open which successfully transformed from a print periodical into a web platform. The overall point here is that traditional publishing formats often don’t follow some necessity dictated by their content, but rather the technical necessities of print production, distribution and retail. Since e-publishing obsoletes many of these necessities, it urges publishers to rethink those basic formats – rather than simply making books with multimedia additions.

You can find a PDF of his original presentation here: Presentation Florian Cramer

Florian Cramer is a reader for new media in art and design at Hogeschool Rotterdam, and director of the Creating 010 centre for practice-oriented research in support of creative professions. He also is dean of the Parallel University of WORM, the Rotterdam-based Institute of Avantgardistic Recreation. Last publication: Anti-Media, NAi Publishers, 2013; What Is Post-Digital?, A Peer-Review Journal About, 2014.

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562331

Elizabeth Castro: CatalanTalk – Publishing multilingual interviews, from Twitter to ebooks to paper

By Irina Enache, May 27, 2014 at 10:20 am.

Elizabeth Castro kicked off the second session of the conference by introducing herself as a computer book writer. She is the author of several guides on how to create webpages and epubs by working with tools like HTML, XML, InDesign and CSS.

In this talk, however, Castro showed how she applies this know-how to a topic close to her heart: the independence of Catalonia. She is an active contributor to Catalan online news portal VilaWeb and has recently moved to Barcelona. When she first started the collaboration there, she noticed how hard it was to spread the word about Catalonia’s struggles internationally. The reason was the use of one language (Catalan) and only posting news on the website. That is when she decided to carry interviews with Catalan activists, researchers, politicians, writers and artists on Twitter, in multiple languages, using the social network as a live chat. After this, she came up with the idea of publishing the interviews as electronic collections.

The interviews take place in real time, Castro explained, and people can follow and comment on them, therefore creating a new space for discussions. Each interview has the hashtag #CatalanTalk and another one for the local language (for example, #CatalanTalkEn). Each interview is translated in multiple languages by a team of volunteers. The interviews are further embedded on the Twitter stream on VilaWeb’s website.

There are challenges to this method, Castro also pointed out. First, she needs to decide the exact time to have the interview each week, so that followers know when it takes place. This is particularly burdened by the different times zones of interviewees. Another challenge is that both her and the interviewee need to type extremely fast – the interviews last maximum one hour, because that is how long they expect followers to tap in.

The main benefit of this method is the global reach of her interviews, facilitated by the use of hash tags, comments, re-tweets and translations.

There are also limitations to Twitter interviews, she warned. For example, interviewees need to have an account and to be familiar with Twitter in the first place. Furthermore, they might often get very heated on the topic, which makes the interview hard to moderate. Finally, not everyone can follow the interviews on Twitter (either because they do not have an account or simply because they read on other formats). While Castro regularly publishes the interviews on VilaWeb, she recently decided to turn them into e-publications too.

How does she do that? The flow of publishing starts with archiving all the tweets via Storify. Then, Castro explained, she exports them from Storify to XML. At this point, there might be a lot of irrelevant tweets in the data. In order to extract the clean interview, she uses XSLT to filter the XML file by giving it certain commands (such as to delete all re-tweets or comments and keep only the original interview). After clearing it up, she imports the XML file in InDesign, where the text loses all the unnecessary metadata and becomes readable text. Finally, she proof reads and copy-edits the text, as typos and grammar mistakes are common when writing so fast. She also sometimes edits abbreviations and typos (these are inevitably used on Twitter, given the 140 characters limit) but restrains from changing her interviewees’ writing styles or tone of voice. After all these steps, she exports the file to EPub, which can also be printed and distributed.

Reflecting on the idea of having liveTwitter interviews and then transforming them into e-publications, Castro believes one can truly take advantage of the ephemeral, but highly interactive and engaging nature of Twitter conversations and transform them into concrete literature by means of e-publishing.

You can find a PDF of her original presentation here: Presentation Elizabeth Castro

Photo credits: Martin Risseeuw

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562278

Arjen de Jong: Sketching skills

By Irina Enache, May 27, 2014 at 3:31 pm.

De Jong is a visual designer for design agency Essense and a member of BIS Publishers, both located in Amsterdam. He attended the conference “Off the Press: Electronic Publishing in the Arts” as a representative of the latter and shared the production process of two of their recent e-publications.

The first case study he presented was the translation of the best seller book titled “Sketching: The basics” by Roselien Steur an Koos Eissen into an e-publication (app) that design students and creative professionals would find easier to learn from. The desired output was for the e-publication to be highly interactive and visual while allowing the readers to choose between different narratives (linear reading versus fragmented, personalized reading). The idea was to focus on the book’s purpose – to teach “the basics” of sketching. With the app (soon to be launched), design students can choose if they want a step-by-step teaching process or dive directly into specific skills. They can also choose to read on theory or practice bits, or jump to industry experts’ highlights.

This is how the demo of the app looks like:

Arjen de Jong demo

The other case study was translating the book “Think like a lawyer, don’t act like one” by Aernoud Bourdrez into an electronic publication (EPUB3). In this case, they opted for a neat, flat design in order to stay as close as possible to the printed version. In either cases, BIS Publishers followed the same workflow, which De Jong shared with the audience.

He first stressed out that one of the most important steps in the workflow is knowing what you’re looking for in the upcoming product. This means researching your target audience: who are they? What devices do they use? How do they engage with reading and exploring? What is the best format for them? Are they permanently online? etc. These insights further dictate what type of content is more suitable (flat text or rich media? Linear or fragmented narratives?).

Then, the authors, designers and publishers (more often than not, one can play all three roles) choose the design and publishing tools to work with. They can opt for either open tools (a wide range of developer tools, Baker Framework, Sourcefabric) or proprietary tools (InDesign, iBooks Author, LayerGloss, PressMatrix).

Second, a decision on format is required: would ePub, iBook, Mobipocket or a stand-alone app better suit the purpose? De Jong argues in favor of open, flexible and sustainable formats; in his experience CSS, EPUB, Hybrid and the likes work best.

The third step is picking a distributor: iTunes, App Store, Newsstand, Google Play, Amazon App Market or indirect distribution. When choosing a distributor, De Jong warns about the terms and conditions that apply with proprietary distributors like Google, Amazon or iTunes, as they often require the right to exclusive distribution. Once the distributor(s) is chosen, publishers opt for the platform, such as IOS, Android or Kindle.

Finally, the product is made available on a device: iPad, Android Tablet or Kindle.

At BIS Publishers, De Jong works mostly with rich content (interactive, audio, video, fragmented narratives) and thus prefers tablets and apps. His checklist contains full color screen, high resolution, sound, and internet connection. There are further technical aspects to be considered on the long run, like the fact that updating an app is easier and cheaper than buying a new e-reader. Different desired outcomes dictate the use of different tools and platforms.

You can find a PDF of his original presentation here: Presentation Arjen de Jong

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562364

André Castro – “Bibliotecha”

By Jakub Dutka, May 27, 2014 at 9:59 pm.

Bibliotecha

The last session of Off the Press was opened by André Castro, who introduced participants to the Bibliotecha project. André is a sound artist from Lisbon, currently living in Rotterdam. He completed the Master’s program of Media Design and Communication at the Piet Zwart Institute in 2013, and graduated in 2007 from the Sonic Arts BA program at Middlesex University. He developed Bibliotecha in collaboration with : Yoana Buzova ,Lasse van den Bosch Christensen, Max Dovey,Michaela Lakova and Roel Roscam Abbing.

Andre Castro explaining the specificities of Bibliotecha

André explained the motivation behind creating Bibliotecha as frustration with sharing knowledge. As he explained, due to legal regulations, lecturers at universities couldn’t upload texts online and students wanted to be able to share study materials outside the university regulations. Paradoxically, EPUBs are less shareable than print books, because there are no indexed databases where one could find extensive range of publications on particular topic (as opposed to highly organised library collections). As a result, a Hackaton dedicated to finding solution for sharing ePubs resulted in the prototype of Bibliotehca. The idea was initiated by Marcel Mars and Femke Snelting at Impact Festival Utrecht.

Andre Castro and Florian Cramer

In technical terms, Bibliotecha is a framework to facilitate the local distribution of digital publications within a small community. It relies on a microcomputer running open-source software to serve books over a local wifi hotspot. Using the browser to connect to the library one can retrieve or donate texts. Bibliotecha proposes an alternative model of distribution of digital texts that allows specific communities to form and share their own collections.The Bibliotecha grows organically with each member adds EPubs and thus the community grows. They work with Raspberry Pie software and Calibre.

Find out more at : www.bibliotecha.info

Contact André : andre[AT]andrecastro.info

Video: http://vimeo.com/97508728

Adam Hyde: Books Are Evil, or: Towards a collaborative production model of books using free software

By Patricia de Vries, May 27, 2014 at 1:29 pm.

“Books are Evil” is the provocative title of Adam Hyde’s talk in the session on Workflows, Tools and Platforms. For many years Hyde worked as a digital media artist, however, after coming back from an art residency in Antarctica he decided to quit the art world and focus his career on the design and development of online knowledge production platforms. He has done so diligently; Hyde has become a well-known figure in the E-pub field as the founder and director of Book Sprints, and previously as the designer of various platforms such as Booki, BookJS, Booktype, Objavi, Lexicon and the more recent PubSweet.

Hyde outspokenly refuses to use propriety tools and has developed a range of free manuals about open source software tools and methodologies for the collaborative production of books. He strongly advocates using only free software, not only because it is free but also because open source tools enable you to constantly innovate and ameliorate the system.

Working and designing collaborative book production models using free software, Hyde has a few lessons to share with the audience. First of all he highly recommends HTML, unlike Regex or Farsi, it is very efficient, he claims. “It is the Royal King, the best thing out there.” That people try to get out of this system seems “crazy” to him. Secondly, “always choose the simplest route to getting to the end result you want.”

Provokingly addressing the title of his talk, Hyde exclaims that books are evil because they gave birth to

copyright,

industrialized culture,

and to the construct of the solitary genius-author.

The current book market conditions for books, Hyde argues, is interwoven with the above and could not exists without each of the above.

According to Hyde, “we need to move away from books towards a collaborative production model of books using free software”. What’s important for Hyde is to show that the notion of the genius, single author of a book and the supposedly linear and solitary process of book production is “absurd and ahistorical as it obscures not only all the people that are working on a book, it also obscures a long history of collaborative book production.” With his provocative stance  – books are evil – Hyde wants to point attention to the many problems of traditional book production that are not talked or even thought about. One of these problems is the idea of the single author, which is not only interrelated with rules and regulations around licensing and book business models, but also heavily touches on cultural traditions and emotional attachments.

Hyde predicts, “issues of voice, of knowledge production, of collective ownership and participatory workflows and concepts will come up in future discussions.”

“A book”, lest we forget “is a proprietary depository.” What’s the point of E-publishing? – Hyde asks the audience rhetorically. E-pubs are a distribution tool; the purpose is distributing – that comes with selling – books, Hyde contends. Moreover, for Hyde it is also a mechanism that helps us to rethink, rework and imagine “new and truly collaborative ways of writing and knowledge production.”

Video: http://vimeo.com/96562328

Thomas van Aalten: ‘Het evangelie van de nulletjes en eentjes is niet zaligmakend’

By Harold Konickx, May 21, 2014 at 12:45 pm.

Thomas van Aalten is a critically acclaimed Dutch writer and teacher at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. In this interview he answers questions on digitalization. He thoughtfully formulates his views on topics like reading culture, sales of e-books and a so called ‘Spotify for books’. Van Aalten believes that literature and the printed book are not by definition the same thing and he certainly sees a future for e-books or new ways of storytelling. At the same he proves to be a critic of flashy revenue models. The interview is in dutch.

Video: http://vimeo.com/95953457

Thomas van Aalten: ‘Het evangelie van de nulletjes en eentjes is niet zaligmakend’ from network cultures on Vimeo.

Importing HTML into InDesign (via XML)

By Silvio Lorusso, May 15, 2014 at 3:35 pm.

As part of the INC subgroup research, we are looking into hybrid workflows that employ Markdown/HTML. While Markdown remains the source, it is also used to generate HTML files that form the EPUB files.

Generally, the source files for InDesign are Word files. In the new workflow Word files are not central anymore, instead they are only used at the beginning of the process out of necessity.

In order to allow the designer to use InDesign, it is necessary to find a way to import the HTML files into the project. This can be achieved by using the Import XML function.

In this post I’ll go through the procedure employed to import HTML into InDesign.

1. Change the Extension of Your HTML file to .xml

2. Keep Only the Body

In order to be able to import the file into InDesign, it is necessary to delete the headers (eg. <!DOCTYPE html>) and the head tag. Also the upper html tag should be deleted. Finally you will have only body of your document, like in the following image.

3. Remove Redundant Line Breaks

Unlike the way browsers render HTML, InDesign will preserve every line break that is in the document. Only the ones after headers or paragraphs are needed, so the other ones need to be substituted with a space.

With python it is possible to do as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# usage: clean.py myfile.xml

import re, sys

source = str(sys.argv[1])

f = open(source, 'r+')
doc = f.read()

cleandoc = re.sub('(?<!>)n',' ', doc)
print(cleandoc)

The script will look for line breaks that are not preceded by a >, and will substitute them with a white space.

4. Import XML into InDesign

You can now import the clean file into InDesign from File > Import XML.

By checking the Create Link box you will be able to modify the content of the xml file and it will be automatically updated into InDesign.

A window with the structure of your document will appear on the left. By drag-and-dropping the body tag into the pages, the content will appear.

5. Create Paragraph and Character Styles

It make sense to keep the name of the style consistent with the relative HTML tag (eg. p to be used with ** tag).

6. Map Tags to Styles

The final step is to connect the HTML tags to the relative paragraph and character styles. To do so click on Map Tags to Styles.

By clicking on Map by Name tags and styles will be automatically associated.

Notes

This procedure lacks support for images and footnotes.

(thanks to Roberto Arista for the hints.)

Miriam Rasch: ‘E-books kunnen de leeservaring naar een ander niveau tillen’

By Harold Konickx, May 14, 2014 at 1:28 pm.

Miriam Rasch is one of the speakers at the Off the Press conference. She works at the Institute of Networkcultures and teaches at the school for media and communation (MIC) of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Furthermore she is a passionate reader and literary critic. Starting off with Barbara Hui’s online mapping of W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn she gives us her ideas on the future of digital publishing. The interview is in Dutch.

Video: http://vimeo.com/95271818

Miriam Rasch: ‘E-books kunnen de leeservaring naar een ander niveau tillen’ from network cultures on Vimeo.

Vasilis van Gemert: ‘Over 100 jaar kunnen we nog HTML lezen’

By Harold Konickx, May 7, 2014 at 10:42 am.

Developer and Designer of the Amsterdam Design School for Multimedia (CMD) makes a passionate plea for publishing on the web (in Dutch).

Video: http://vimeo.com/94333279

‘Over honderd jaar kunnen we nog HTML lezen'; Vasilis van Gemert over digitaal publiceren from network cultures on Vimeo.

Mark me up, Mark me down!

By Michael Murtaugh, April 30, 2014 at 12:50 am.

During the recent Digitial Publishing Toolkit hackathon, the proposal, made in the context of the INC project, for a using a browser-based editing workflow centered on HTML as the core “document” format was challenged in a discussion initiated by Florian Cramer who proposed focusing instead on the Markdown format. The resulting spirited discussion began focussed on questions of ease of use and features of the respective approaches and ended up touching on fundamental principles of document markup in relation to (digital) publishing.

Can editing HTML ever be something possible for “non-experts”? Or, better said, for those whose skills do not include some working knowledge of HTML. While web programmers, technical editors, and designers often come to understand HTML’s particularities through their work, publishers and copy editors tend not to. Florian argued for the clarity of Markdown’s cleaner “structured text” format over the idiosyncrasies of HTML. The particular needs of the INC, whose reader publications are primarily collections of academic essays with elements such as footnotes and references, figures and captions, was a key issue. HTML (in its latest incarnation HTML5) lacks a firm standard for marking up footnotes (though current standards documents do suggest some best practices using HTML’s existing “link” or anchor element). In contrast, markdown offers an explicit and convenient syntax for specifying footnotes (also through a kind of “best practices” extension to the original syntax by the “multimarkdown” project which has now been widely embraced by many other markdown tools such as pandoc). Beyond just the important details related to footnotes, the ongoing discussion revealed a number of more fundamental questions and principles related to markup languages.

Markup

The concept of markup exists for decades now, coming primarily from the intersection of engineering and publishing interests to make generalized methods for indicating structure and editorial intentions (through “tags”) in text documents for the purposes of producing technical documentation in a “multi-path” way. In other words, a flexible system where the same input text files can be used to produce documentation in a variety of languages and/or for a variety of output forms and methods of printing. The SGML standard (Standard Generalized Markup Language, 1986) formed the basis on which Tim Berners-Lee’s HTML (Hypertext Markup Language, 1989), design would form, and led to the parallel development of XML (Extensible Markup Language, 1996) to include applications beyond web publishing.

Markdown

A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters — including Setext, atx, Textile, reStructuredText, Grutatext, and EtText — the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email. from the Markdown “Philosophy”

Markdown was born from the online writing practices around blogger John Gruber (2004). In its very naming, Markdown thumbs it’s nose at the generality and extensibility promised by HTML’s markup preferring instead to focus on human read- and write-ability. With Markdown, writers use indentation, blank lines, and bracket text with typewriter symbols like asterisks, brackets and parentheses according to a set of predefined rules to indicate structural elements in a text: paragraphs, headers, and block quotations, as well to give emphasis to text, make links, and place images. Where Markdown lacks a feature, either custom extensions are added (such as the notation for a footnote) or else HTML markup can be included and which then simply “passes through” the Markdown conversion. The Markdown system is published under a free software license so others are free to contribute and re-implement it’s functionality in their own software, which has led to the format being included in a large number of tools and platforms.

Markdown’s less-is-more approach privileges readability over the extensible functionality of markup, and as a result favors writing in a “clean” and inherently “rawer” stage of development. Ideally this allows text writing to be focussed and maximally editable while leaving open a range of possible options in terms of how the text can then be further manipulated (laid out, combined, reformatted) or used by other people with other tools. Despite its initial design for publishing HTML, it’s minimalist approach produces text sources that are inherently “open to interpretation” and thus suitable to a variety of uses. In a sense, where markup provides its flexibility through an explicit layering of tags, markdown “leaves space” for other uses by omission.

Performing the text

During the discussion, we arrived at the useful metaphor of comparing sheet music to a recording of its musical performance. While technically possible to use audio analysis to convert an audio recording into sheet music, the process is inherently prone to error. Any musical performance in fact includes many more nuances (slight rhythmic variations, differences of interpretation, the expressiveness of each performer not to mention the details of the audio registration itself).

In this metaphor, the audio recording is like an HTML document, and could equally be the WYSIWYG output of a word processor like Word, or a PDF document. While technically possible to convert any of these formats into markdown, the process is inherently likely to produce errors. Like the recorded performance, a published representation is rich, loaded with extra information particular to its context (page layout, interactivity, the subtleties of typography and spacing). These documents lack the simpler structure of a markdown source of the same text (where such subtleties simply cannot be expressed). Like the sheet music, the markdown requires the additional skills of the performer to “bring it to life” in an actual performance. The skills of the designer or web programmer are thus engaged to make form-specific adaptations or interpretations of the “source” text to make a particular rendering.

The limits of markdown & the needs for flexible notation

For all the benefits of markdown, there are some important factors to consider as limitations. By enforcing a kind of “content vs presentation” separation Markdown privileges traditional/academic textual writing where the assumption is that visual presentation flows unproblematically and deterministically from the text. Following the metaphor of musical notation, many kinds of music, from improvisational to serial music, would be ill-served when primarily written and expressed in traditional musical staff notation. Particular modes of expression demand particular forms of notation. One can imagine a multitude of “domain specific” structured text or other forms of writing to complement markdown in a publishing workflow.

The use of Markdown can also reinforce traditional professional separations and hierarchies where writers write, then hand off to a designer who “designs” the eventual presentation. The workflow is unidirectional and sequential as editorial & design work can’t be done in parallel or give feedback to the initiating writing process. It remains an urgent and exciting area of work to consider workflows and tools that allow for parallel and cyclic workflows where the textual and the visual can fully interoperate without a return to the problematics of “WYSIWYG”. A strict separation, while beneficial in other ways, also potentially ignores emerging online practices of writing where the loop of writing, designing, and publishing drives new forms of writing, design, and publication.

The importance of standards

Finally, it remains urgent to enforce/encourage the translation of best practices into open standards through engagement with standards bodies like the W3C. The addition, for example, of the audio and video tags to HTML5 has helped stimulate an explosion of tools and applications for publishing audio and video online. The addition of firmer standards for marking up academic references & footnotes would provide a target for which various structured text and other formatting tools could then aim and facilitate the kinds of interoperability of tools that markup standards have long promised.

DPT Hackathon Results

By Michael Murtaugh, April 30, 2014 at 12:49 am.

Thursday and Friday April 24 & 25 a hackathon took place at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. Over the course of 2 days, some of the developers of the Digital Publishing Toolkit initiative gathered to work on their projects and to share experiences, code and tools and discuss the (devil-is-in-the) details of developing for digital publications.

present (left to right in photo): Michael Murtaugh, Marc de Bruijn, Sauli Warmenhoven, Florian Cramer, Andre Castro, Kimmy Spreeuwenberg (facilitating and taking the photo ;), , and Miriam Rasch dropped by for a bit.

An overview of the projects

Marc de Bruijn / Valiz

Marc is working on an ePub generator for the Valiz publication ”Context without Walls”. This web-based generator allows the publisher to generate (and edit) epubs based on text structured with Markdown. The EPUBs may be styled by selecting from a list of available styles packages. These style packages are basically a zipped collection of CSS and other resources like font files. Over the last couple of weeks they have been adding functions, and a more user friendly interface. The project can be found on the DPT github page.

Another (future) part of the generator will be the possiblity to generate a cover based on the CSS of the ePub.

The current worflow of the generator is as follows:

Create a new edition by filling in the mandatory form field;

Add the necessary sections which will form the structure of the edition. Sections have a title and a body of text structured with Markdown. The order of the sections can be changed after creating them;

A cover can be added and a style package may be chosen;

After all these steps have been completed an EPUB can be generated or previewed within the application

The generator already includes:

The possibility to use custom fonts

It makes sure the epub includes all the necessary metadata

Chapters can be ordered, each chapter is a separate HTML file

It is possible to view the epub in the application itself

They’ve added an interface to add covers to the publication

Possibility to choose between different CSS via an upload function to add custom styles is planned

Software used:

CakePHP – http://cakephp.org/

epub.js – http://fchasen.github.io/epub.js/ epub reader in browser for preview functionality

PHPePub https://github.com/Grandt/PHPePub

http://validator.idpf.org Validator/ & EPUB-Checker (standalone of the website)

Problems/Issues to look into

At the moment the main problem is that the generator doesn’t produce valid EPUBs. The files can be viewed in an EPUB reader, but do not validate against the EPUB 3 standard

The usage of endnotes causes validation problems, a fix is forthcoming

The EPUBs should play nicel with major epub readers, as of yet the generated EPUBs do not display their cover in Apple’s iBooks, for example.

The generator might include functions to generate a cover based on the chosen style package, this ties into the requirements for the Stedelijk Museum project, where the resulting EPUB should have a composited cover containing artworks chosen by the user.

Results/Conclusions

Some progress made resolving the many validation errors, most of them stemming from duplicate footnote IDs. The code responsible for parsing the footnotes should be changed, this will eliminate most, if not all, validation errors.

A first attempt at a generated EPUB cover has been made, but the difficulties of automatically generating any sort of simple design involving text were encountered. Text positioning and wrapping is hard, especially in a barebones library like GD2 (ImageMagick supposedly offers more advanced functions in this regard). Sauli proposed a different approach using an image export of the HTML5 canvas element, which is worth looking into as well (as javascript libraries like paper.js or processing.js could be employed).

Michael Murtaugh / Institute of Network Cultures (INC)

Michael as been researching the different tools/platforms that can play a role in the Institute of Network Cultures projects workflow for hybrid publishing, which at the same time allows to create personalized epubs. It tries to find a balance between complex HTML based editors, and the actual knowledge/skills publishers have to work with these tools. The focus is on a modular approach in which different choices for tools or programs can be made. Working the classic way from Word, and converting this to HTML with pandoc, or starting from a (multi)markdown structured document. Rather than aiming for creating (yet another) ideal platforms, the intent is to develop flexible workflows that allow mixed-toolsets: editors, version control and repositories, (commandline) document converters, epub reader software. The Society of the Query Reader, just released in print form by the INC, is being used as in an-process test case.

Michael showed a working sketch interface for a personalized epub generator for the Society of the Query online reader. The idea is that the results from a search engine query can be compiled and downloaded to custom epub. The essays of the reader are indexed, using the Python search engine Whoosh. In addition, a separate scraper script (taken from the earlier Hackathon in Utrecht) downloads images from the SotQ2 event Flickr stream along with their captions and adds these to the search index. The plan is to use Calibre’s ebook-converter then to convert the search results and linked content into a downloadable epub.

Current Workflow

The documents of this publication have been developed in a classic workflow – starting from Word files collected from authors. The following steps have already been taking to get from this stage to the eventual digital publication: * Conversion doc to docx by LibreOffice (manually done) * docx converted to HTML by Calibre’s ebook-convert script (batch) * Python scripts to clean up (strip "invisible" markup like non-breaking spaces), validating and sensibly indenting the resulting XHTML (using html5lib & ElementTree). These scripts can be found in the SotQ2 repo.

HTML editor?

We began with a hypothetical workflow for editing the HTML directly in the browser using the browser’s own integrated inspection tools (Firefox’s DOM inspector and style editor) & HTML5’s contenteditable attribute and javascript in combination with a simple local python webserver to save the live documents content back to the local filesystem as an HTML file. Marc suggested we also look into using javascript extensions such as the medium editor (free software recode of the popular proprietary platform’s interface) as an example of the "state of the art" of non-intrusive in-browser editing widgets.

In general, "live" editing of the HTML in the browser offers the directness of "WYSIWYG" and taps into the many free software efforts to make editing in the browser better. We discussed other possibilities like integration with git, and some kind of simple means of applying the various cleanup scripts (typically performed on the commandline) via buttons in the browser interface.

This approach turned out to be contentious (Will publishers actually work with this? It is easier to do corrections, but the structure in html can be overwhelming. With this model you still need specialist to help with certain problems. ) and led to a fruitful discussion with Florian Cramer for why a Markdown approach might be better suited.

Problems/Issues to look into

For the SotQ front end interface, one issue is how to adjust the search result algorithm to include images related to articles that match the search (but are possibly not directly linked). In other words, when searching for the term "keyword", the search results include the article Is Small Really Beautiful? Big Search and Its Alternatives by Astrid Mager, and then the results include images with Astrid Mager included in their caption. The code for the proof of concept is included in the SotQ2 repository (though not yet in a form viewable online).

Andre Castro / INC Notebooks

Many of the INC project issues and questions overlap with Andre Castro’s work developing epubs for the INC netbooks series from word documents.

Problems/Questions he came accross so far: * Calibre converter: how to make clear and structured conversions from docx to html? Calibre creates a series of artifacts in the conversion process: * empty tags (again) * Losing table of contents hierarchy

In this workflow that starts with docx there is the necessity to enforce a style guide / protocol for the docx e.g.: Asign a style (like h6) to blockquotes, sections tiltes as heading, so these can be seamingless converted. And if they are not well converted one can go back to .docx document and search for the particular style, quickly finding the content contained under that style. Yet, this remains difficult.

(Libre) Open Office >>> why is the html export so bad?

Results/Conclusions

My initial idea was to work on the preparation of the master HTML file that will give birth to the epub.

I aimed to developed scripts to : * clean html artifacts from calibre conversion * create an indented strucutred TOC – based on the document headings the work-flow what was I aiming for:

docx –(calibre)–> epub(html) –(clean scripts)–> clean html

From the discussion with Florian it was clear that there was a necessity to have as the master/source file of the book, very lean and robust, with only the essential structure and clear to read. Markdown was an answer, since it has a very strict syntax, readable, and when converting a messy html into markdown it cleans it out of the calibre artifacts.

The ”’drawback”’ is that footnotes are going to be broken. They have to be ”prepared” before hand (using a script).

To create a structured TOC I used: using calibre conversion tool:

ebook-convert IN_FILE.docx OUT_FILE.epub –dont-split-on-page-breaks –pretty-print –toc-title "Table of Contents" –level1-toc="//[name()=’h1′]" –level2-toc="//[name()=’h2′]" –level3-toc="//*[name()=’h3′]" –epub-inline-toc

The important bit is: –level1-toc="//[name()=’h1′]" –level2-toc="//[name()=’h2′]" –level3-toc="//*[name()=’h3′]" which translates to: all the level 1 of toc = to the name of the all the headings 1, and so forth for the other levels.

Sauli Warmenhoven / BIS publishers

Sauli is working on a digital version of Sketching, a tutorial publication for designers in which they learn to draw design objects. It is divided between different exercises that refer to different skills. Starting point of the project was to explore the possibilities of designing a highly interactive publication using open standards like HTML5 rather than rely on the proprietary nature of the iBooks format. As such they decided to develop a standalone web application, and developed, in a sense their own custom reader experience using html5 and javascript. The exercises and skills are two separate tracks of chapters, that are interlinked. Building their own reading application allows us to create a custom built reader for this specific publication.

Tools used

jQuery for javascript development, with the touch events from jQuery Mobile which normalizes browser implementations of javascript and touch events and provides a consistent way of writing code. Once everything is working, we will then package the webapplication in a platform-specific shell using phonegap a mobile development framework. Phonegap allows us to tap into device specific features, such as locking the screen orientation.

Problem/Question to look into

HTML5 gives new possibilities for digital publishing, also compared to iBook/epub, but there isn’t really a clear overview of these possiblities and issues. A blogpost what they. html5 vs API compare what the possibilities or problems are? for instance Orientation: Javascript/CSS knows about it (but not consistent), but need API to lock it

Could we make a table of functionalities that are HTML5 vs API only to illustrate how this project is really pushing the boundaries of HTML5 + Javascript to build highly customized apps

Florian Cramer

Footnote renumbering tool (linebased, doesn’t renumber it if they are on the same line) : this has been solved by using pandoc to convert from and to markdown;

Markdown pretty printer / tidy markdown see above; pandoc can also be used for this purpose

The three Toolkit sections introducing Markdown and explaining its relative advantages and disadvantages (relative to XML, for visual and interactive publishing, for multi-channel publishing, extensibility vs. human readability and ease-of-use), have been written and submitted to the GitHub repository: docs/markdown-advantages.md docs/markdown-tips.md docs/markdown-vs-xml.md

Results/Conclusions * footnote fixer also works as a numbered list fixer. * Markdown introductions for Toolkit reflect our discussion on Markdown this morning * will still write a tool to track orphaned footnotes

See also the Markup vs. Markdown Discussion.

Program booklet

By Vicentiu Dinga, April 14, 2014 at 11:30 am.

You can find the program booklet below. Check out the conference program, sessions descriptions and workshops. Then, be sure to book your ticket for the conference here. 

Conference Content

Thursday 22 May @Museum Boijmans van Beuningen

Thursday 22 May @WORM

Friday 23 May @WORM

Bibliotecha @ Off the Press

An instance of Bibliotecha will be present at each venue from Off the Press. The initial titles present at Bibliotecha@Off the Press result from a contribution of digital publications relevant to the event, donated by its organization and participants. The Bibliotecha librarians encourage anyone in the vicinity to contribute or gain from the present collection, by logging into the Bibliotecha wifi network and donate or lend e-books.

This project is initiated by: Lasse van den Bosch Christensen (DK), Michaela Lakova (BG) http://mlakova.org, Max Dovey (GB) www.maxdovey.com, Roelof Roscam Abbing (NL) www.roelroscamabbing.nl, Yoana Buzova (BG) http://oyoana.com/, and André Castro (PT) www.andrecastro.info

Thursday 22 May @Museum Boijmans van Beuningen

09:30 – 10:00  doors open, coffee and tea

10:00 – 11.00  session 1: Today’s Book Publishing

In this opening session of the event we focus on the role of images and artistic inventions in the publishing domain. Publishing in the arts is not just about catalogues or art history monographs. How do artists respond to the growing diversity in platforms and to cross-overs between paper and digital? What is the status of the image in an increasingly multimedia world? What artistic strategies can be identified in today’s networked age, when image and text are starting to have a new relationship to each other?

Moderator: Geert Lovink

Speakers

Joost Kircz (NL)

The Fashionable Fever of Going Electronic

Art and design books are joining the fashionable fever of ‘going electronic’. Here, in contrast to novels, images are more important than text. In the arts the text explicates the image, whilst in many other genres the image illustrates the text. This fundamental difference makes an electronic arts book a much more demanding, challenging and problematic project. Firstly, we encounter the same issues as with purely textual works; secondly, we have also to address the issues of image quality, colour control, the spatial relationship between text and image – and even more than with text – the relationship between ‘items’ (parts of text, images of cutouts) and large repositories, such as those of museums. Lastly, art printing can choose between many different qualities and types of paper to print on, but the screen is a glowing, often flickering substrate; so it must also be decided which substrate works best for which reader or consumer.

Alessandro Ludovico (IT)

Networks as agents in the clash between personal and industrial

post-digital print

The post-digital print era has definitely begun. On one hand, the boom in net content or IT process-based artists’ books (with a whole taxonomy of techniques and approaches), and the collective effort to scan underground print culture and share it in digital repositories, is revamping the production and rediscovery of critical content in a classic form. On the other hand, the unveiling of Google’s huge industrial scanning plans, the growing unsustainability of newspapers’ business models, the growing role of software in literary and journalistic production, and the constant fine-tuning of commercial e-publications’ rules are slowly changing the industrial printed mediascape. The resulting scenario helps to shed new light onto the role of networks in these processes, and the possibility of considering them as agents rather than as media per se.

11:00 – 13.00  Session 2: One Thousand and One Publishing

Workflows, Tools, and Platforms

   … Shahrazad awoke and signalled to her sister Dunyazad who sat up

and said, “Allah upon thee, O my sister, recite to us some new story, delightsome and delectable, wherewith to while away the waking hours of our latter night.” … and thus, on the first night of the Thousand Nights and a Night, she began…

This panel explores the diversity of tools and processes for publishing online from highly designed and specialised platforms and content management systems to more DIY heterogeneous and dynamic toolchains. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches. A group of practitioners representing a range of disciplines and approaches share their experiences.

Moderator: Michael Murtaugh (USA)

Speakers

Elizabeth Castro (USA)

Adam Hyde (NZ)

Adam will talk about his experiences over the last eight years with different free software tools and methodologies for creating digital books. Tools include Booktype, Lexicon, PubSweet, Objavi, BookJS, Booki and others. Methodologies include Book Sprints, Collaborative Knowledge Production, and others.

John Haltiwanger (USA/NL)

Title: Free Your Objects (And Let the Subject Follow)

Subtitle: Textuality and Reciprocity in the Metastability

Tools evolve reciprocally with their use, as do the users of those tools. What we can do and what we wish we could do are enabled and limited not only by the tools we have access to but also by the larger socio-economic conditions that determine these tools and their modes of production and operation. Tools actively participate in shaping our identity as producers, makers, and appreciators. Through the the case study of a multi-output typesetting workflow that uses only libre software, the talk will explore  a vocabulary to think differently about how we work with text today, one that focuses on qualities of re-composition and the dynamics of a different type of ownership.

Oliver Wise – The People’s E-Book (USA)

Making .epubs easy with The People’s E-book

Oliver Wise from The People’s E-book will walk the audience step by step through the creation of an .epub using The People’s E-book. He will explain the advantages of creating something that limits your options and explain the founding principle of keeping things as simple as possible. He will also showcase the open source nodejs module ‘pe-epub’ that was developed for The People’s E-book, and expand on the possibilities for its use in a wide variety of settings.

13:00 – 14:00  lunch break

14:00 – 15:00  Session 3: Introducing the Digital Publishing

Toolkit

The Digital Publishing Toolkit initiative, a network of two applied universities and art school research departments, four Dutch art and design publishers and several graphic and media design bureaus, is working on an accessible  “how-to” guide for electronic publishing in the arts along with a collection of open source software tools for editing and designing electronic books. This session will give an overview of the Digital Publishing Toolkit initiative research results and their most interesting findings in the field of electronic publishing.

Moderator: Margreet Riphagen

Speakers

Florian Cramer (DE/NL)

Electronic publishing in the arts – what does work and what

doesn’t

The computer industry promises for electronic publishing – better audiovisuality, more interactivity, easier distribution, lower costs, easier do-it-yourself publishing – often don’t quite match the reality of what is possible with electronic books and magazines, especially for small and low budget publishers. On the other hand, there new yet not-so-obvious opportunities and possibilities for publishers that go digital. This presentation will summarize some of the general experience designers and publishers gathered in one year of conducting the Digital Publishing Toolkit project.

Miriam Rasch (NL)

Hybrid Workflows for Hybrid Publishing

Any publishing workflow that takes into account not only print but also digital publications – be it a website, an online PDF, ePub or other form – has to be flexible. In order to be open to different outputs, the workflow should comprise different strategies and tools – while at the same time being clear and transferable between authors, editors, and designers, just as the content is clear and transferable between output formats and platforms. The INC subgroup tries to establish precisely that, balancing between technological constraints and possibilities, between high qualitative standards and a flexible and creative handling of materials. We hope to present an outcome that illustrates precisely this: your own personal ePub, collected for you on your own terms from a range of articles, blogs, photos, or videos. Want to know about social media without mentioning Facebook? Curious to see a collection of videos and essays on web search, with a focus on algorithms? What new forms of personalized publication become possible when editing, compilation, and design processes themselves become partially algorithmic?

Pia Pol (NL)

Context Without Walls, Creating ePub3s through the Epubster

Generator

Valiz and the art publicist Daphne Pappers are currently developing a new series of publications named Context Without Walls. The publications in this series are focused on artists from all over the world. The books are multilingual and contain essays as well as images. The paper versions of Context Without Walls are being designed by Meeus Ontwerpt. Valiz, the designers of Meeus Ontwerpt and the developers of PUNTPIXEL have together attempted to create a digital version of Common Skin, the first publication in the Context Without Walls series. Taking into account the technical possibilities and questions of design, they have sought a solution for the issues that arise when turning a paper book into an e-book: the Epubster. The Epubster is generator which enables a publisher to create ePub3s with extensive designs as well as images in the format of a series.

Loes Sikkes (NL)

Highlights – ePub personalizer

Arjen de Jong (NL)

Sketching Skills

The BIS-publisher workgroup set out to research the following issue: how can we make highly interactive rich media publications, accessible on multiple devices, at a reasonable cost? They show the problems and solutions encountered in their case study Sketching Skills, an App version of Sketching, the bestselling book that teaches sketching to industrial designers, by Koos Eissen and Roselien Steur.

15:00 – 15:30  tea break

15:30 – 17:00  Session 4: Showcases

As the field of electronic publishing continues to expand, it is giving rise to new possibilities in design, distribution and modes of publishing. A wide range of designers, artists, or (designer/artists as) publishers will elaborate on their practices, present new approaches to book design, and give insights into how they are tackling the challenges of electronic publishing.

Moderator: Kimmy Spreeuwenberg

Speakers

Joaquín González – visualMANIAC (SP)

Setting up an art digital book store, or ‘Working out how to do

something is better than waiting for a magic formula’

visualMANIAC was born with the intention to preserve the role of the specialist publisher and bookseller in the digital world.

Michelle Kasprzak – _V2 (NL/CA)

The eBook as a Vehicle for Re-dissemination and Creation

In this talk, Michelle Kasprzak, Curator at V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, will discuss the creation of an eBook series as a complement to public events at V2_. The strategies behind its series of Blowup Readers – including using the series as a vehicle to mix old and new content, experiment with different forms of collaborative writing, re-purpose archived material, disseminate artistic research, and reach new audiences – will be analyzed and discussed.

Matthew So (US)

: Badlands Unlimited: We Make Books in an Expanded Field

Badlands Unlimited publishes books on a varied range of topics that do not cover specific genres, but which have included a .gif-filled eBook as an art-advertising White Pages, entitled AD BOOK; an English translation of three essays by Saddam Hussein on the purposes of democracy, entitled On Democracy; a series of formerly unpublished interviews of Marcel Duchamp by the New Yorker art critic Calvin Tomkins, entitled Marcel Duchamp: The Afternoon Interviews; and most recently, a book of drawings by the art curator and critic Hans Ulrich Obrist, entitled Think Like Clouds.

Matthew So, an associate of Badlands, will speak about the more important and recent of these titles. A few book trailers will be shown. Matthew handles sales, distribution and inventory operations at Badlands. Questions in relation to these functions will be answered, and unrelated questions will make for interesting conversation.

Angie Keefer

Meta The Difference Between The Two

20:00 – 22:00  Digital Arts & Crafts in the Field of Publishing

@Worm

“We pursued distractions and called them enhancements.” This is how e-book designer Peter Mayers drily summarized the recent history of experimental digital publishing in the New York Times.

It is time to look closely at the plethora of available functionalities and the value they have beyond the rhetoric of innovation. If not in the baroqueness of rich media, slick interfaces and smooth gestures, where does the core of digital publishing lie? What happens when, instead of asking what e-books can technically do (especially in comparison to print), we ask how can they be produced, altered, stored and distributed?

During the session, artists and designers will present their own practices and approaches to digital publishing that both take advantage of and question the current modes of content production and dissemination. The presented cases will open the debate on possible strategies to build sustainable, networked or hybrid publishing models.

Curator: Silvio Lorusso

Artists

James Cuddy, Danilo Di Cuia, Roma Levin – Six:Thirty (UK)

Experiments in Collaborative Publishing

For the Off The Press conference, Six:Thirty explore the significance of online networks to the role of the designer. During an experiment at the V&A museum entitled Collate, the studio set out to co-create a publication with visitors, using images automatically downloaded from a creative commons resource. The installation and resulting book represent a new collaborative approach to publishing, where designers define a process and users determine the result.

Six:Thirty create new experiences with design and technology. As designers and technologists they use a broad range of experience to deliver projects for brands and cultural institutions. Six:Thirty’s work is realised in branding, creative direction, and user experience design.

Delphine Bedel, researcher (NL)

The Networked Book – Publishing as Artistic Practice

Artists’ books seem not to have yet taken the digital publication as a means of production and creation of its own, and seem to keep ‘paper books’ as their model. Facing the complexity of understanding the challenges of the current revolution in publishing, Bedel’s PhD research aims to address the transition in the publishing industry and digitalization of content, from the perspective of the book as a privilege medium for artists. Shifting from print to software culture, how are we to frame and create the relevant and urgent critical tools (theory, softwares), and challenges to be investigated by artists/publishers? New modes of production, appropriation, distribution and collaborative practices, as well as extended forms of ‘books’ will be presented.

Lukas Jost Gross – TRAUMAWIEN (AT)

Ghostwriters and Literary Trojan Horses

TRAUMAWIEN will present the 2012 work GHOSTWRITERS: bots that compiled and uploaded hundreds of e-books on Amazon.com with text stolen from YouTube video comments. And the 2013-ongoing work HIJACKED EBOOK BESTSELLERS AS LITERARY TROJAN HORSES, which uses piracy distribution mechanisms to massively publish altered/contaminated book contents exploiting what will be known as ‘native advertising’ in digital journalism and digital book publishing.

TRAUMAWIEN

TRAUMAWIEN.AT (Vienna, Austria and St. Gallen, Switzerland) published conceptual digital literature from 2010 to 2013: these included continuous algorithmic works as well as asynchronous ‘Artclub’ Events merging theatre, digital literature, acid techno and art exhibitions. Since 2014 it has focused on a definition of ‘relational publishing’ as a practice.

Eleanor Hanson, Oliver Wise – The People’s E-Book (USA)

Publishing Constitutes a Public

Oliver Wise and Eleanor Hanson Wise of The Present Group and The People’s E-book will present an overview of their current and past projects in order to showcase the different community-based funding models they use to support their practice. They will present an artistic production and publishing practice rooted in both the physical and digital worlds, and how their experiences shaped the building of The People’s E-book.

The People’s E-Book is a free e-book creation platform for artists, authors, and alternative presses who want to experiment, publish new types of books, and push into new territory. After raising almost three times its Kickstarter goal in 2013, The People’s E-book is now in beta and its community is outputting reflowable .ePubs for free everyday.

Manuel Schmalstieg – Greyscale Press (CH)

Black holes in the Gutenberg Galaxy: Non-books, anti-books,

maybe-books, and everything in between

This talk will review the latest productions of Greyscale Press, and expose the promiscuous workflows and methodologies it puts in place to fit its needs, urges and dreams.

The electronic publishing disruption has induced a range of uncanny side-effects: print-on-demand spam is lurking on library bookshelves, publisher-entrepreneurs are buying into the infinite monkey theorem, and a whole generation of writers is turning SEO-aware. The Gutenberg Galaxy is full of black holes.

Embracing these phenomena, Greyscale Press deliberately runs against the tide of analogue-to-digital conversion, turning born-digital materials into physical forkbombs.

Greyscale Press, a post-digital publishing house, is crafting book-like artifacts and merging the tool sets inherited from 20th-century modernist avant-gardes, post-structuralism, the free software and copyleft movement, and the latest strains of crypto and cypherpunk activism. Recent publications include L’Eve future, a crowdsourced collection of typographic specimens for over 200 libre and open-source fonts; netfahcsnegiE enhO nnaM reD, a mirrorview edition of Robert Musil’s A Man Without Qualities; and the freshly-launched #freespeech collection, a series of readers on privacy and data politics.

Willem de Kooning Academy students (NL)

With the Digital Publishing Toolkit project and its ensuing Off The Press conference event as a catalyst, second-year students at the Graphic Design Department of the Willem de Kooning Academy were asked to research the theme of digital publishing. What are its consequences, its opportunities, its effects on reading, production, distribution, and so on? What role can they, as the upcoming generation of graphic designers, play in the process of ideation and design? How relevant do they feel that it is?

The first part of the assignment consisted of extensively testing and reviewing various tools and platforms related to the digital publishing field. For the second part (still in progress) the students were asked to apply their findings, not only from the testing of tools, but also from their design research, to the transformation of a non-digital text into a digital text. They worked with texts originating from Octavo Publishers’ publication Een ruimte om in te bewegen by Serge Daney. They translated these texts into a digital publication for computer, tablet, e-reader or smartphone – with design approaches ranging from the experimental, critical and provocative to the functional, practical and all-embracing.

Friday 23 May @ WORM

09:30 – 10:00  doors open, coffee and tea

10:00 – 14:30  Workshops

(Please note that there is a limit of 30 participants per workshop, and it is necessary to buy a separate ticket to participate (http://networkcultures.org/digitalpublishing/ticket). No prior knowledge or skills necessary. Bring your own laptop.)

Megan Hoogenboom (NL) & Harold Konickx

Paper to Code: Transforming the Future of Reading

What happens when a visual poem is translated to .ePub 3? Which elements are lost and which elements have to be added? In this workshop .ePub 3 will be explored on the basis of a transformation of a visual poem. We will go from paper to code, from page to HTML, from analogue to digital.

Hogeschool van Amsterdam instructor Harold Konickx will select two poems to work with. During the transformation some elements will have to be deleted (the page, for example), while others can be added to enrich the poem (such as hyperlinks and audio files). By working with part or all of a visual poem the shortcomings and opportunities of the .ePub are quickly discovered. Every person reads or interprets a poem in their own way, which results in a different transformation. The different outcomes also influence the way one reads the original poem. This workshop provides a creative introduction to .ePub 3: a crash course in .ePub 3 and in making a personal translation of a poem.

John Haltiwanger (USA/NL) & OSP

Electronic Publishing Workflows: (Multi)Markdown & Pandoc

Pandoc is a minimalist open source program that converts documents between different formats – including HTML, epub, PDF. In conjunction with Markdown, a way of marking up plain text files with easily readable formatting signs popular for E-Mail and blogging, it can be used as a powerful system for publishing in different document formats and media (web, print, e-book…) from one single source document file.

This workshop will teach participants the practical use of Pandoc and Markdown, departing from their own particular backgrounds, needs and expectations. We will take individually selected online texts and convert them to Markdown. From there we will craft Pandoc translation templates for HTML/CSS and PDF (using the open source typesetting framework Context). These templates may be context-specific (only fitting one particular type of publication) or generic (suitable for a broad range of publications) as we design them. But they will nevertheless be universally applicable to any Markdown source document. Participants will leave with a small arsenal of Open Source, cross-media typesetting and document generation tools, and their own design templates for these tools.

Danja Vasiliev, Michael Zeder & Joscha Jäger

Superglue: Reshaping the web?

Web 2.0 promised that everyone could become a free and creative media publisher, but had exactly the opposite result. Today, most people’s web content is locked into the proprietary services of only a handful of Internet social media giants. Individual freedom of expression fits perfectly in a consumerist environment of templates and themes. Privacy is not an issue because “we have nothing to hide”. And cloud computing refers to everything except the clouds of CO2 that are being emitted by data centres all over the world. Superglue is the successor to Hotglue (http://hotglue.me), a tool to intuitively create your own website that is being used by thousands of users. Superglue not only allows Internet users to simply and cheaply design websites, but also run a energy saving micro-webserver and bring personal data back to your home and thus truly own it again.

In this workshop you will join the Superglue development team for a four-hour exploration and alpha testing. Evaluate Superglue and provide your feedback on its design and functionality. Learn how to build Superglue websites and find out how to get involved in the project.

Participants will receive a Superglue router and the download links to the Superglue plugin that enables you to edit your webpage directly in the browser, and the firmware that turns your Superglue router into a personal web server. Superglue is ‘hosted’ by WORM (http://worm.org) together with the Libre Graphics Research Unit (http://lgru.net) and supported by Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie (http://www.stimuleringsfonds.nl/) and the European Union (http://europa.eu/).

14:30 – 15:00  tea break

15:00 – 16:30  Session 5: Underground e-Publishing

Just like mp3 in music, electronic publishing began as a non- or even anti-commercial subculture: with literary classics freely published by Project Gutenberg, with underground books and pamphlets such as the “Principia Discordia” and Abbie Hoffman’s “Steal this Book” circulating on electronic bulletin boards, computer hackers swapping “disk mags”. Long before the Amazon Kindle, ASCII e-books and e-zines were popular underground media, with their own minimalist aesthetics and radical politics. Since the 1990s, artists and media activists have entered this field as well, building up pirate libraries with electronic versions of classical art and critical theory books, and extending the concept of free software and peer-to-peer file sharing to publishing. What has been achieved in this culture, what is its status quo, and what can mainstream publishing learn from it?

Moderator: Florian Cramer

Speakers:

Sebastian Luetgert (DE)

Precarious Publishing, Autonomous Archiving, Collaborative

Collecting

As every Western visitor to South and South-East Asia has to learn, no such thing as an ‘underground scene’ can be found there, as the required historical and material preconditions do not exist. What exists, other than a breathtaking abundance of unattainable material wealth, is precarity of every hue. And it is precisely precarity, a pragmatism of leakage and residue rather than a politics of ‘underground’, that independent publishing initiatives in these regions usually stem from. As we shift from sharing files to sharing libraries, from a peer-to-peer to an archive-to-archive mindset, and from building download ratio to building institutions, the task is to not just acknowledge, but to actively exploit the practical contradictions faced by publishing projects outside the Western world.

Marcell Mars (HR)

Free access to resources for every member of society

Public library embodies dreams and fantasies from the past about the future where it is possible to produce knowledge about knowledge and where every member of society have free access to these resources. It is not a surprise that librarians who were dreaming about these epistemological heavens imagined the world without borders where people live in piece and prosperity. In only 100 years after Melvil Dewey, Paul Otlet, Henry La Fontain, Karl Wilhelm Bührer, Adolf Saagert, and many others were establishing Repertoire Bibliographique Universel, Mundaneum, Die Brücke – Internationales Institut zur Organisierung der geistigen Arbeit, League of Nations, International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation or just helping public libraries all around the world give access to knowledge to every member of society, only 100 years after, all of these dreams will die with the last of public library being shut down because of commercial interests of publishers and austerity measures.

Dusan Barok (SK)

Digital Imprint: the Motion of Publishing

It has become an established fact that virtually all utterances in digital networks are being recorded. Vast archives spanning the globe – run not just by information agencies, but by the whole industry in the widest sense – are storing a treasure trove of mostly raw, unedited material they do not intend to publish. Regardless of what preventive measures are taken, the reality of their existence persistently surfaces through ‘editorial intervention’ (typically in the form of leaks), today a genre in its own right. Framing this phenomenon as symptomatic of the presence of digital networks in the very fabric of cultural expression invites us to rethink the roles we play online. As the subjects of tracking and surveillance, we tend to view this role as one of passive acceptance, defense, or an eventual exit. But viewed in light of these ambiguities, what would it take to reclaim the emancipatory potential of networking formerly articulated in the positive ‘netizen’ notion of the user by reframing it to those of the author and editor?

16:30 – 17:30 Bazaar and Drinks @WORM

A number of artists, publishers and related practitioners of electronic publishing will be present during this Bazaar to showcase their projects in an informal way, looking forward to meeting visitors for acquaintance, discussion, and exchange of ideas.

Biographies

Dušan Barok (SK)

Dušan Barok is an artist, writer and cultural activist involved in critical practice in the fields of software, art, and theory. He is founding editor of Monoskop (a wiki for art, culture and media technology), a graduate of the Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, and a member of the collective La Société Anonyme.

Delphine Bedel (NL)

Delphine Bedel works as a photographer, publisher and curator, based in Amsterdam. She is a PhD researcher at Leiden University/PhDArts and a founder of Monospace Press. Her awarded editorial work with artists and designers includes over 60 books. She regularly contributes to books and magazines and is a frequent speaker at international conferences. She is also the author of All that is Solid Melts into Air – Notes on Tourism.

Her current curatorial practice focuses on publishing as artistic practice, and this is also the topic of her PhD research. Bedel has curated over 40 exhibitions, screenings and lectures series. She has taught at the Geneva University of Art and Design / MFA (2009-2012), the Dutch Art Institute/ArTEZ (2009-2011), on the Studium Generale of the Rietveld Academy, and at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam. Her work is shown internationally.

Elizabeth Castro (US)

Florian Cramer (DE/NL)

Florian Cramer is a reader for new media in art and design at Hogeschool Rotterdam, and director of the Creating 010 centre for practice-oriented research in support of creative professions. He also is dean of the Parallel University of WORM, the Rotterdam-based Institute of Avantgardistic Recreation. Previously, he has been a university lecturer in Comparative Literature and course director of the Media Design & Communication Masters programme at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam. Last publication: Anti-Media, NAi Publishers, 2013; What Is Post-Digital?, A Peer-Review Journal About, 2014.

James Cuddy (UK)

James studied at Design at Goldsmiths College. Prior to co-founding Six:Thirty, James worked with a range of design and branding agencies in London and Barcelona including 4Creative and Base Design.

Danilo Di Cuia (IT)

Danilo is an interactive developer with a background in graphic design and a focus in human-computer interaction. With six years of experience in the development field, he has worked in the US and in the UK for clients such as ITV, BBC, BHF and many others.

Adam Hyde (NZ)

Adam Hyde has been on the pioneering edge of publishing since he returned from an artist’s residency in Antarctica in 2006 and gave up art to start FLOSS Manuals. Since then Adam has founded many projects including the first browser-based, end-to-end book production platform (Booktype) and the Book Sprint methodology. Adam now consults on projects ranging from the collaborative production of multilingual lexicons to collaborative academic and scientific research production. Twitter: @booksprint

Eleanor Hanson (US)

Eleanor Hanson and Oliver Wise are the co-founders of The Present Group, a creative studio working at the intersection of art and technology. They focus on devising and building systems that support creators. Projects of The Present Group include an art subscription service, a web hosting service that funds an intermittent arts prize, Art Micro Patronage (an experimental exhibition platform showcasing and funding artwork online), The People’s E-book (a free online tool for building e-books), and Compensation Foundation (an online database for gathering and displaying information on how cultural producers are compensated).

Arjen de Jong (NL)

Arjen de Jong is senior designer at Essense, an Amsterdam based service design agency. He was a founding member of Buro Duplex, a collective of freelance programmers and designers. He also initiated the Stereo Publication project, a cross-media publishing project avant la lettre.

Angie Keefer

Geert Lovink (NL)

Geert Lovink is a media theorist, internet critic, and the author of Zero Comments (2007) and Networks Without a Cause (2012). Since 2004 he has been a researcher in the School for Communication and Media Design at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA) where he is the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures. From 2004–2013 he also taught in the New Media Master’s programme at Media Studies, the University of Amsterdam. Since 2009 he has been a media theory professor at the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee) and in 2011 he became an associate member of the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University (Lueneburg/D).

Alessandro Ludovico (IT)

Alessandro Ludovico is an artist, media critic, and has been editor-in-chief of Neural magazine since 1993. He has published and edited several books, and has lectured worldwide. He is one of the founders ofhttp://mag.net (Electronic Cultural Publishers organization). He has also served as an advisor to the Documenta 12’s Magazine Project. He is Adjunct Professor at OCAD University in Toronto, and teaches at the Academy of Art in Carrara and NABA in Milan. He is one of the authors of the Hacking Monopolism trilogy of artworks (Google Will Eat Itself, Amazon Noir, Face to Facebook). He is currently a PhD scholar at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge (UK).http://neural.it

Joaquín González (SP)

visualMANIAC is an independent book store specializing in art, architecture, design, photography, film, fashion and visual culture. Its aim is to offer the best selection of e-books and digital magazines and to provide art publishers with an uncomplicated way to be present in the digital environment. For them, editorial goods are more than bundled paper and beautiful objects to decorate bookshelves. Publishers put a lot of effort into producing amazing content that ultimately becomes books and magazines, and we intend to give those products a longer, richer life. We have managed to build a catalogue containing over 1000 digital titles published by more than 100 international publishers and art centers. Our books and magazines can be read on computers, iPads and Android tablets.

Lukas Jost Gross (AT)

Studied Digital Arts with Peter Weibel, University of Applied Arts, Vienna. Working and living in Vienna.

John Haltiwanger (US)

Since arriving in Amsterdam to do a Master’s degree in New Media at the University of Amsterdam in 2009, John first taught at universities around the city while participating in the caravan of design, philosophy, and joy that is Open Source Publishing where he and the other members worked with artists, collectives, initiatives and public institutions – but most of all with ideas – until eventually arriving at a full-time position as a programmer. At night he can be found tinkering with sounds, amongst other things.

Eleanor Hanson (US)

Eleanor Hanson and Oliver Wise are the co-founders of The Present Group, a creative studio working at the intersection of art and technology. They focus on devising and building systems that support creators. Projects of The Present Group include an art subscription service, a web hosting service that funds an intermittent arts prize, Art Micro Patronage (an experimental exhibition platform showcasing and funding artwork online), The People’s E-book (a free online tool for building e-books), and Compensation Foundation (an online database for gathering and displaying information on how cultural producers are compensated).

Megan Hoogenboom (NL)

Megan Hoogenboom finished her Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design at the Willem de Kooning Academy with two projects. The first was a fictional new identity for Holland Festival; the second was a book on two districts in Rotterdam. Both projects were created following a system and design strategy of her own invention. Working with systems and a fascination for the transformation from the analogue to the digital world played a big role in her projects during her Master’s study at the Piet Zwart Institute. These and other projects can be viewed on her websitewww.meganhoogenboom.nl. Another project is the transformation of the poem Boem Paukeslag by Paul van Ostaijen to .ePub format. In this project all elements of the e-Book reader were explored by translating the fonts and the design to .ePub format. Megan is currently working as a independent designer with a focus on .ePub design. Her latest .ePub can be downloaded at http://creating010.com/ebook.

Joscha Jaeger (GE)

Joscha Jaeger is a freelance interface designer at filmicweb – Hypervideo Interface Design and a research assistant at Merz Akademie Stuttgart. His work covers web-based hypervideo technology, search interfaces, web applications for educational settings, and collaborative editing systems.

http://filmicweb.org/

Michelle Kasprzak (CA/NL)

Michelle Kasprzak is a curator and writer based in Amsterdam. She is currently Curator at V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media in Rotterdam, the Netherlands; co-curator of the Dutch Electronic Art Festival 2014; and a member of IKT (the International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art). Michelle has exhibited and lectured across North America and Europe. In 2006 she was awarded a curatorial research residency at the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art in Helsinki, Finland; in 2010 she attended the Summer Seminars for Art Curators in Yerevan, Armenia; and in 2011 she was a guest of the BAM International Visitor’s Programme in Flanders. She has written critical essays for C Magazine, Volume, Spacing, CV Photo, Public, Mute, and several online journals on a wide range of subjects in the realm of contemporary culture. Her writing has appeared in anthologies and exhibition catalogues in both Canada and Europe. In 2006 Michelle founded a leading blog on the subject of curating contemporary art, Curating.info. She is also an active weightlifter with current personal records of 80kg squat, 52.5kg bench press, and 90kg deadlift.

Joost Kircz (NL)

After science studies at the universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht, Joost joined Elsevier as an international science publisher. Here he started his research on electronic publishing with a first paper on database publishing, way back in 1987. In 1998 he started KRA Publishing Research (www.kra.nl). In 2006 he joined the HvA as a part-time lector on electronic publishing, and as of 2010 he has coordinated its electronic publishing programme. He chaired two conferences,the Unbound Book andBoek uit de Band. The proceedings of the first conference were recently published by Amsterdam University Press. All his publications are available on theKRA website.

Roma Levin (RU)

Roma is a Russian born art director with a background in design and advertising. Before co-founding Six:Thirty, Roma worked in Moscow and London for a variety of clients ranging from Tate to Sir Bryan Ferry.

Silvio Lorusso (IT)

Silvio Lorusso is an Italian artist and designer. His ongoing PhD research in Design Sciences at IUAV University of Venice is focused on the intersections between publishing and digital technology from the perspective of art and design. He regularly collaborates with the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. After he received his MA in Visual and Multimedia Communications in 2011, he spent a period of study at the Networked Media course of the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. He took part in exhibitions, festival and events such as Transmediale (Germany), Unlike Us (Netherlands), and Fahrenheit39 (Italy). He has written for blogs and magazines such as Progetto Grafico and Doppiozero. He launched the Post-Digital Publishing Archive (p-dpa.net) in 2013.

Sebastian Luetgert (DE)

Sebastian Lütgert, a.k.a. Robert Luxemburg, is an artist, programmer and writer. He is a co-founder of Bootlab and Pirate Cinema Berlin, software developer in residency at CAMP in Bombay, and the initiator of several online media archives, most notablytextz.com,0xDB.org,Pad.ma andIndiancine.ma. His artistic work has been exhibited internationally since the late 1990s, and his writing has been published in FAZ, Süddeutsche Zeitung, taz, Jungle World and e-flux Magazine, among others. He is currently working on a fictional documentary film set in Dubai.

Marcell Mars (HR)

Marcell Mars is one of the founders of Multimedia Institute â€“ mi2 and net.culture club mama in Zagreb. He initiated Public Library, GNU GPL publishing label EGOBOO.bits, started Skill sharing in mama + Skill sharing’s satellites g33koskop, ‘Nothing will happen’ and ‘The Fair of Mean Equipment’.

Marcell participated in curating/producing mi2 yearly exhibitions: I’m still alive (2001), re:Con and Freedom to creativity! (2005., 2006. 2007.) and in conceptual exhibition System.hack() (2006).

When in Zagreb Marcell hangs out in Hacklab in mama, in Belgrade runs Wonder of technology, Hackers lenses and Programming for non-programmers at Faculty of Media and Communication. Through 2011-2012 did a research Ruling Class Studies at Jan Van Eyck in Maastricht. In 2013. he was fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart.

Michael Murtaugh (US)

Michael Murtaugh (automatist.org) designs and researches community databases, interactive documentaries, and tools for new forms of reading and writing online. He teaches in the Master’s Degree programme in Media Design and Communication at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, and is a member of Constant in Brussels.

Miriam Rasch (NL)

Miriam Rasch started working as a publication manager at the Institute of Network Cultures in June 2012. She holds Master’s degrees in Literary Studies (2002) and Philosophy (2005). Since graduating she worked as a (web) editor and from 2008 on as a programmer for the Studium Generale public lectures department at Utrecht University, organizing events and taking care of digital broadcasts and online representation. She also worked as a lecturer for Liberal Arts and Sciences, and is teaching philosophy and media theory in the Media, Information and Communication department. She writes book reviews and guest posts for different websites and magazines; her personal blog can be found on miriamrasch.nl.

Margreet Riphagen (NL)

Margreet Riphagen started working at the Institute of Network Cultures (INC) in March 2008 and is involved in various research projects. She holds a Master’s degree in Information Science (Human Centered Multimedia), a post-Bachelor’s degree in Business Science, and a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Management. Besides working at the INC at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences’ Knowledge Centre, CREATE-IT, Margreet also works for the MediaLAB Amsterdam, part of the knowledge centre. Before this Margreet worked at Waag Society and Media Guild for over five years.

Pia Pol (NL)

Pia Pol (Amsterdam, 1985) is Deputy Publisher at Valiz book and cultural projects in Amsterdam with whom she has worked since 2008. She received a BA in English Language & Culture and and an MA in American Studies from the University of Amsterdam. She has been working in the (art) book trade for over ten years, principally in book stores, international distribution, and publishing. At Valiz she focuses on production and digital development.

pia@valiz.nl,http://valiz.nl

Manuel Schmalstieg (CH)

Manuel Schmalstieg (1976) is an artist, designer and educator, operating in the murky area between media art and hacker communities. A graduate of HEAD Geneva and ASP Kraków, he founded multiple collaborative entities, including N3krozoft Ltd (in 2001) and Aether9 (in 2007). Since 2008 he has run Greyscale Press, a postdigital publishing house. As a web designer and free software enthusiast, he is a contributor to the WordPress platform, and has kickstarted a lively local community in Geneva. He is currently guest editor of Libre Graphics Magazine, for an issue dedicated to the Libre Type Design movement.

Loes Sikkes (NL)

Loes Sikkes graduated cum laude in Globalization and National Identities. Since 2004 she has worked as a graphic designer, setting up multiple design studios, such as Medamo (a young Rotterdam-based design bureau founded in collaboration with Barbara Lateur) in 2012. Signifying Medamo’s approach is the drive with which they translate new insights, approaches and social involvement into a clear design. Conceptual and strategic design solutions evolve through thorough analysis and research. They cross the traditional borders of the profession and feel most at home where graphic design, new media and typography meet. In addition, she has been working at the Willem de Kooning Academy as department coordinator of the visual communications programme, and giving lessons on publication to the illustration department.

Kimberley Spreeuwenberg (NL)

Kimberley Spreeuwenberg is a new media researcher and graphic designer with a special interest in the areas where these two disciplines intersect. She is currently project coordinator of the Digital Publishing Toolkit research project initiated by the Institute of Network Cultures, with whom she collaborates regularly, and teaches at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

Matthew So (US) – Badlands Unlimited

Badlands Unlimited is a New York-based American publisher of e-books and paperback books with an emphasis on contemporary art, culture and politics.

The company was established in 2010 by Paul Chan, a New York-based artist, as a platform to publish the writings and works of emerging and established artists whom Chan respects and champions. Since 2010 Badlands has also published obscure and controversial historical works and one romance novel.

Chan considers Badlands as not only a press but also a publishing experiment. He has written:

‘Historical distinctions between books, files, and artworks are dissolving rapidly. We publish and produce new works by artists and writers that embody the spirit of this emerging dissolution. We make books in an expanded field.’

Danja Vasiliev (RU)

Danja Vasiliev has been involved in computer technology events, media art exhibitions and seminars around the world since 1999. He has received several awards and mentions at Ars Electronica, Japan Media Art Festival, and Transmediale, and is one of the creators of Hotglue.

http://k0a1a.net

Patricia de Vries (NL)

Patricia de Vries is a project coordinator at the Institute of Network Cultures and is responsible for coordinating MoneyLab: Coining Alternatives. She has an academic background in Media Studies (BA), Cultural Analysis (MA) and Liberal Studies (MA). She has previously worked as a film programmer, researcher, and art magazine editor. From 2010 until 2012 she was based in New York where she worked as a research associate at the World Policy Institute think tank and as a teaching assistant of Professor James Miller at The New School for Social Research.

Oliver Wise (USA)

Oliver Wise and Eleanor Hanson are the co-founders of The Present Group, a creative studio working at the intersection of art and technology. They focus on devising and building systems that support creators. Projects of The Present Group include an art subscription service, a web hosting service that funds an intermittent arts prize, Art Micro Patronage (an experimental exhibition platform showcasing and funding artwork online), The People’s E-book (a free online tool for building e-books), and Compensation Foundation (an online database for gathering and displaying how cultural producers are compensated).

Michael Zeder (DE)

Michael Zeder is engaged with research into and the development of tools for an information society. He works currently on systems of knowledge distribution and learning environments. For Superglue, Michael designed the client-side software architecture and an interactive development system.

http://michaelzeder.de/

Alle relevante data over e-books in Nederland

By Miriam Rasch, April 4, 2014 at 12:17 pm.

Hoe groot is het aanbod van e-books in Nederland? Hoe veel worden er verkocht? Hoeveel e-readers een tablets zijn er in Nederland?

Het Centraal Boekhuis zet alle relevante gegevens over e-books in Nederland in een infographic, ook te downloaden als pdf via hun website.

Converting a Docx directly to EPUB using Calibre

By Silvio Lorusso, March 28, 2014 at 4:53 pm.

Recently the software Calibre added Docx to its converter as a possible input format. Thus it’s allowed to convert directly from Docx to Epub. The procedure is quite simple. We’ll use thetest Docx document provided by the Calibre team.

Add the docx file by drag-and-dropping it into calibre. In this way it’ll be added to your library.

Click on Convert Books in the top bar.

Select “DOCX” as input format and “EPUB” as output, add metadata and click OK.

You should now be able to see EPUB on the right. Click on it to open the epub with the Calibre viewer, right click on it to see the option to save the file to your disk.

Now let’s have a look to the output Epub.

Calibre added a default cover (with generated author and title) because we didn’t specified any.

Besides some minor glitches, all the features of the Docx document are preserved.

Let’s have a look now into the Epub. To do so we need to unzip it. We can either change the extension to “.zip” or use theEpub UnZip tool.

The nice thing is that the conversion keeps (or create) a table of contents, splitting the document in several HTML files. From the document itself:

There are two approaches that calibre takes when generating a Table of Contents. The first is if the Word document has a Table of Contents itself. Provided that the Table of Contents uses hyperlinks, calibre will automatically use it […] If no Table of Contents is found in the document, then a table of contents is automatically generated from the headings in the document. A heading is identified as something that has the Heading 1 or Heading 2, etc. style applied to it. These headings are turned into a Table of Contents with Heading 1 being the topmost level, Heading 2 the second level and so on.

This means that by merging several Docx in a single one, it is possible to obtain an Epub containing multiple chapters, therefore an entire book.

The Epub obtained passes validation and it wouldn’t be too intensive to clean its code, especially if not many styles are expressed.

Metadata should be added or modified in the content.opf file.

Why E-book Distribution Is Completely and Utterly Broken (and How to Fix It)

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, March 4, 2014 at 10:50 am.

Already written in November 2012, but still very relevant: A post by MICHAEL CLARKE on the politics involved with e-book distribution. Read the full article here

A recent incident involving Amazon and a Norwegian reader has highlighted the sad state of e-book distribution on many levels. For those new to the story, which was broken on Martin Bekkelund’s blog late last month, a Norwegian woman named Linn (described as a friend of Bekkelund’s) reportedly found her Amazon account closed and all the e-books she had purchased via Amazon wiped from her Kindle with no explanation.

Megan Hoogenboom: You and the Book

By Harold Konickx, February 25, 2014 at 4:54 pm.

Megan Hoogenboom (Rotterdam) is a graphic designer who explores the possibilities of digital reading, using the ePub format. In this interview Megan gives us her view on the challenges and possibilities of ePub. Megan wil be one of the guests of our upcoming conference.

Video: http://vimeo.com/87566827

You and the book; some thoughts on the practice and future of ePub from network cultures on Vimeo.

Out now: The Unbound Book by Adriaan van der Weel & Joost Kircz

By Miriam Rasch, January 24, 2014 at 9:48 am.

The Unbound Book

Published by Amsterdam University Press. Order a copy at your local bookshop or online.

Post-Digital Publishing Archive by Silvio Lorusso

By Margreet Riphagen, January 21, 2014 at 9:28 am.

Recently Silvio Lorusso launched the Post-Digital Publishing Archive (P-DPA). The aim of P-DPA is to systematically collect, organize and keep trace of experiences in the fields of art and design that explore the relationships between publishing and digital technology. The archive acts as a space in which the collected projects are confronted and juxtaposed in order to highlight relevant paths, mutual themes, common perspectives, interrelations, but also oppositions and idiosyncrasies. P—DPA is maintained by Silvio Lorusso.

How to distribute your ebooks?

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, January 16, 2014 at 12:59 pm.

Say "The netflix of Books" one more time

source: http://memegenerator.net/instance/44918325

Hacking the Academy: New Approaches to Scholarship and Teaching from Digital Humanities

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, January 14, 2014 at 9:52 am.

About the Book

Can an algorithm edit a journal? Can a library exist without books? Can students build and manage their own learning management platforms? Can a conference be held without a program? Can Twitter replace a scholarly society?

As recently as the mid-2000s, questions like these would have been unthinkable. But today serious scholars are asking whether the institutions of the academy as they have existed for decades, even centuries, aren’t becoming obsolete. Every aspect of scholarly infrastructure is being questioned, and even more importantly, being hacked. Sympathetic scholars of traditionally disparate disciplines are canceling their association memberships and building their own networks on Facebook and Twitter. Journals are being compiled automatically from self-published blog posts. Newly minted Ph.D.s are forgoing the tenure track for alternative academic careers that blur the lines between research, teaching, and service. Graduate students are looking beyond the categories of the traditional CV and building expansive professional identities and popular followings through social media. Educational technologists are “punking” established technology vendors by rolling out their own open source infrastructure.

Hacking the Academy will both explore and contribute to ongoing efforts to rebuild scholarly infrastructure for a new millennium.

About the Editors

Dan Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Art History and the Director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University.

More information

nai010 uitgevers – Highlights en Reflections

By Katía Truijen, December 3, 2013 at 10:25 am.

Het team van nai010 Publishers, Medamo en PUNTPIXEL ontwikkelt een digitale versie van de Stedelijk Museum Highlights en Reflections catalogi. In plaats van het creëren van een één op één e-book kopie, ontwikkelen ze een digitaal distributieplatform via een (mobiele) web-applicatie. Deze geeft de gebruikers de mogelijkheid om hun persoonlijke hoogtepunten uit de Stedelijk collectie te vinden, filteren, zoeken, bekijken en verzamelen. Deze serie hoogtepunten wordt vervolgens samengevoegd tot een persoonlijke EPUB catalogus die als pdf ook offline kan worden geraadpleegd.

Barbera van Kooij, Photo: Martin Risseeuw Barbera van Kooij, Photo: Martin Risseeuw

Barbera van Kooij van nai101 publishers legt uit dat het een nieuwe en aanvullende rol van de uitgever is om nieuwe platforms en distriebutiemogelijkheden te verkennen. Volgens haar is het interessant om te onderzoeken hoe we op nieuwe manieren digitaal kunnen publiceren. De gangbare EPUB versies van bestaande boeken hebben volgens van Kooij vaak geen toegevoegde waarde ten opzichte van een boek of pdf. De vraag is hoe je een visuele uitgave als de catalogi van het Stedelijk vertaald naar een digitale uitgave die meerwaarde heeft.

Daarvoor transformeerde het team het statische afgesloten product naar een catalogus volgens het ‘mp3 model’. In plaats van de gehele catalogus aan te schaffen kan de gebruiker straks invloed uitoefenen op de inhoud van de gepersonaliseerde catalogus.

De grootste doelgroep van het Stedelijk is een buitenlands 50+ publiek mét smartphone. Deze doelgroep wil zich graag vóór de reis verdiepen in de collectie van het museum. Voor hen wordt een serviceomgeving ontwikkeld; webpagina’s die zijn geoptimaliseerd voor smartphone gebruik. Via een aantal keuzecriteria kan de gebruiker een selectie maken met wat hem aanspreekt en informatie over deze verzameling verkrijgen.

Daarnaast kan extra informatie worden aangeboden, zoals verdiepende essays uit Reflections, audiofragmenten of zaalteksten bij de afbeeldingen. Deze extra informatie kan al dan niet tegen betaling worden toegevoegd aan de persoonlijke catalogus.

Momenteel wordt er gewerkt aan de gebruiksvriendelijkheid van de applicatie en worden de criteria voor het selecteren van content vastgesteld.

Barbera van Kooij, Photo: Martin Risseeuw Barbera van Kooij, Photo: Martin Risseeuw

Vragen waar het team mee wordt geconfronteerd wordt zijn bijvoorbeeld voor welke informatie de bezoeker zou willen betalen. En hoeveel zou hij of zij hiervoor precies willen betalen? Om dit goed uit te zoeken wordt er nu aan een pilot gewerkt. Verder moet er heel strikt worden gekeken naar welke informatie precies tegen betaling wordt aangeboden. Content die al op de website van het museum te vinden is, of informatie die maar tijdelijk geldig is valt meteen af.

De rol van de uitgever is om de inhoud van de catalogus te structureren en selecteren en om na te denken over het verdienmodel. Zo moet er een constructie worden bedacht waarbij rekening wordt gehouden met rechthebbenden van tekst en afbeeldingen en het uitkeren van vergoedingen.

Uiteindelijk moet het project resulteren in een basis applicatie die zich leent voor het ontwikkelen van allerlei nieuwe publicaties. Andere musea en uitgevers moeten hier ook gebruik van kunnen maken.

nai010 kijkt op dit moment naar welke publicaties geschikt zouden zijn om op deze manier uit te geven en aan te bieden. Volgens Barbera van Kooij wordt de applicatie een bijzonder inspirerend instrument om informatie op een andere manier beschikbaar te maken.

Het originele presentatie document (PDF) kan hier gevonden worden.Bekijk de volledige presentatie hieronder

Video: http://vimeo.com/80985297

Showcase nai010 uitgevers – Verzamelen Highlights from network cultures on Vimeo.

Valiz – Context Without Walls

By Katía Truijen, November 28, 2013 at 1:59 pm.

Valiz, Meeus Ontwerpt en PUNTPIXEL richten zich op het creëren van een digitale versie van twee edities van de nieuwe serie van Valiz Context Without Walls. De serie bestaat uit acht meertalige boeken over hedendaagse internationaal opererende kunstenaars. Elk boek is een drieluik: een inzichtelijk essay, een case study en een beeldessay.

De printversies van Context Without Walls zijn gemaakt door Meeus Ontwerpt en bevatten veel design- en conversie uitdagingen. Moeilijkheden zijn onder andere het werken met visuele essays, referenties in de marges van de pagina en (voet)noten. Deze uitdagingen hebben geleid tot het maken van zowel een eenvoudige als een meer ingewikkelde digitale versie van het e-book. Op deze manier wordt aan de wensen van de uitgever voldaan en wordt het originele grafische ontwerp van de serie behouden.

Pia Pol, Photo: Martin Risseeuw Pia Pol, Photo: Martin Risseeuw

Daarnaast wordt er door het team een template ontwikkeld voor het uitbreiden van de digitale serie. Hierbij wordt geëxperimenteerd met hyperlinks die verwijzen naar alinea’s binnen het boek én een overkoepelend verwijssysteem, dat wellicht naar fragmenten uit alle acht boeken uit de serie kan verwijzen. Voor de meer ingewikkelde versie wordt uitgezocht of de tekst kan worden uitgebreid met extra beeld, geluid en videomateriaal. Beide versies zullen worden uitgegeven in verschillende talen om een zo groot mogelijk publiek aan te kunnen spreken.

Pia Pol, Photo: Martin Risseeuw Pia Pol, Photo: Martin Risseeuw

Er zal dus eerst een versie worden uitgebracht die tegemoet komt aan een deel van de wensen, zodat er daarna kan worden geëxperimenteerd met een droom versie van de serie. Voor de eerste versie is gekozen voor het Epub3 formaat, omdat het compatibel is met meerdere platforms en veel vrijheid biedt voor het ontwerp.

Valiz is er nooit van uit gegaan dat de serie één op één vertaald zou worden van analoog naar digitaal, maar het oorspronkelijke ontwerp wilden ze wel in ere houden. Sommige dingen moesten worden aangepast om het als e-book goed te laten werken. Zo werden de letters van de inhoudsopgave groter zodat deze goed aan te raken zijn.

PUNTPIXEL werkte ondertussen aan een Epub generator, de ‘Epubster’. Dit is software met een webapplicatie waarmee Valiz straks zelf aan de slag kan met de webpublicaties. De software is speciaal ontwikkeld voor mensen zonder technische kennis. Op deze manier kan Valiz zelf alle edities binnen de serie opmaken. De Epub wordt gegenereerd op basis van vooraf bepaalde stijlregels (CSS) die aansluiten op de werkwijze van de uitgever (docx/RTF doc workflow). Tekst en beeld kunnen online worden ingevoegd in het opmaakproces (Markdown). Door de live preview mogelijkheid kan Valiz steeds terugkoppelen hoe het uiteindelijke ontwerp eruit zal zien. Wanneer er bij nieuwe versies tóch wordt gekozen voor veranderingen in het ontwerp, dan kan dit in het content management systeem worden aangepast.

The original presentation file (PDF) can be found here

Video: http://vimeo.com/80883774

Showcase Valiz – Context Without Walls – genereren van een serie ontworpen ePubs from network cultures on Vimeo.

Joost Kircz: Het ongebonden boek aan de ketting

By Marc Stumpel, November 28, 2013 at 2:06 pm.

“Er is iets aan de hand in de boekenbranche. Eeuwen lang hadden we stevige boeken in alle formaten die goed in de hand lagen en als vrienden ons leven verrijkten. Nu gaat het boek de wijde wereld in. Schud het papier af als een streng Calvinistische opvoeding en ben vrij. Maar welke vrijheid heeft dit ongebonden boek eigenlijk? Hierover hebben wij op de Hogeschool van Amsterdam en met het Instituut voor Netwerkcultuur al jaren ouderlijke zorgen. Wij organiseerden twee congressen. Een in het Engels: “The Unbound Book”, waarvan de verhandelingen binnenkort bij AUP uitkomen, ach ach… op papier, maar ook als saaie elektronische versie van dat papier. Een tweede conferentie had de vrolijke titel “Boek uit de band”. En een project heet “Out of Ink”, nu heeft de ongebonden adolescent zelfs de inktpot het raam uit gegooid. Maar de vrije wereld van los fladderende zinnen, plaatjes, films en liedjes wordt een ondoordringbaar woud, waar iedereen elkaar roept , maar niemand elkaar meer kan verstaan. Dit project probeert na te gaan welke soort talige-, beeldende- of audiocommunicatie tools nodig zijn om zich vrij te bewegen tussen papier en scherm. In dit project zoeken we uit wat we hebben, wat we willen overdragen en welke regels en gereedschap daar voor nodig zijn.”

Joost Kircz, Photo: Martin Risseeuw Joost Kircz, Photo: Martin Risseeuw

Joost Kircz, Emeritus Lector aan de Hogeschool van Amsterdam, wijdde zijn introductie voor de bijeenkomst over digitaal publiceren aan de huidige status en ontwikkelingen van de gereedschappen voor digitaal publiceren. Het online zetten van foto’s, eenvoudige PDF’s en dergelijke valt volgens hem niet onder digitaal publiceren. De opslag en de transport hiervan veranderen is mooi en belangrijk voor het verdienmodel, maar er is geen sprake van een inhoudelijke ‘revolutie’. Er is namelijk geen wezenlijke verandering in de informatieoverdracht.

Tegenwoordig kunnen we tekst manipuleren. Het aantal regels per pagina ligt niet meer vast, terugbladeren gebeurt amper, aantekeningen blijven beperkt en er is steeds meer mogelijk met afbeeldingen en geluid. De vogelgids is een mooi voorbeeld van een publicatie die audiovisuele elementen goed kan gebruiken, maar de werkelijke uitdaging zit hem volgens Kircz in het vernieuwen van publicatievormen van wetenschappelijke teksten en kunstboeken. Hierbij is het namelijk essentieel om heen en weer te kunnen bladeren, zodat onderstrepingen en aantekeningen makkelijk terug te vinden zijn.

Kircz dringt aan om verder te kijken dan de vertaalslag van papieren naar digitale boeken. Hoe zit het bijvoorbeeld met boeken die digitaal worden ‘geboren’? Hoewel er zijn talloze technische snufjes op de markt die de innovatie van digitale publicaties kan dienen, is het nog steeds lastig om te zeggen wat wij hier precies mee aanmoeten. Om dit te onderzoeken houdt de INC subgroep, waaronder Kircz, zich momenteel bezig met het aanleggen van een database, waarin alle elementen die men kan herbruiken uit papieren publicaties eenduidig worden benoemd en beschreven. Hoewel deze stapelbare eenheden zijn, vliegen zij kris kras door elkaar, als duiven in een duiventil. Maar hoe kunnen wij al die ‘vrije vliegende objecten’ identificeren en hun relaties te benoemen? Welke mogelijkheden bieden presentaties in andere vorm? Deze vragen staan centraal bij het Digital Publishing Toolkit onderzoeksproject, waarbij er aandacht wordt besteed aan zowel de werkprocessen als nieuwe standaarden zoals Epub3.

Bovendien is er nog altijd veel te doen over metadata, oftewel, gegevens over gegevens. De uitgeefdata, zoals publicatie, auteursrecht, stijlen, technische metadata vormen een klasse apart. Maar wat is hiervoor de standaard? Welke structuurelementen worden er toegepast? ‘Er is een keiharde splitsing tussen het metadata en het object’, aldus Kircz. Niet elk scherm is hetzelfde en er zijn verschillende klassen. Emotionele en educatieve data zijn bijvoorbeeld niet hetzelfde, maar wel beide afhankelijk van het presentatiemedium. Om de inhoud op de juiste manier te presenteren aan een specifiek publiek zijn in toenemende mate de stijlontwikkelingen van belang.

Voor het onderzoeksproject Digital Publishing Toolkit is het primaire doel om te begrijpen wat wij willen laten overvloeien van papieren naar digitale publicaties. Door het in kaart brengen van werkprocessen, standaarden en trucs daarbinnen, komen er innovaties tot stand. Maar welke obstakels komt men hierbij tegen? Welke gebondenheid kent het ongebonden boek?

Bekijk de volledige presentatie hieronder

Video: http://vimeo.com/80800588

Joost Kircz – Het ongebonden boek aan de ketting, met introductie van Geert Lovink from network cultures on Vimeo.

Oorspronkelijke introductie tekst van Joost Kircz:Hoe vrij kan het boek zich bewegen tussen papier en scherm.

Geachte aanwezigen,

Vandaag hebben we het over de stap naar lezen en schrijven in een digitale wereld. De technologische innovaties duikelen over ons heen en de claims zijn nog hoger dan de wolken (z.g. clouds), waar al deze digitale informatie vrij en onbevangen zou zijn opgeslagen. Ieder feestje heeft ongeschreven regels waardoor het een succes wordt, en zo ook het digitale uitgeven. In de afgelopen jaren hebben we op de HvA en met het INC aan verschillende projecten gewerkt zoals het Amsterdam E-boekenstadproject met de twee grote conferenties: The Unbound Book, waarvan het conferentieverslag ongeveer nu zou moeten uitkomen bij Amsterdam University Press en het congres Boek uit de band, daarnaast het project Out of Ink en nu het project Gereedschap voor Digitaal uitgeven, waar we ons vandaag mee bezig houden.

Zoals we weten is steeksleutel 13 geschikt voor je fiets, voor digitaal uitgeven gaan we sleutels nog maken. Er is nog een standaard set aanwezig. We moeten daarom een paar zaken goed in de gaten houden. Wat verstaan we eigenlijk onder digitaal publiceren. Laat ik het even nalopen en wel van makkelijk naar moeilijk. Voor alles wil ik zeggen dat foto’s, eenvoudige PDF’s e.d. door mij niet tot echt digitaal uitgeven worden gerekend. In dit soort gevallen veranderen we het substraat papier door iets anders. Alleen de opslag en het transport veranderen, mooi maar nog geen inhoudelijke revolutie in het schrijven, lezen en uitgeven. Wel staat dit toe dat veel meer mensen heel makkelijk een exemplaar van ene tekst of boek kunnen verkrijgen. Of ze dit ook echt lezen is een andere vraag.

De makkelijkste invulling van digitaal uitgeven is om platte tekst van papier naar een ander medium over te brengen. Platte tekst is plat, dat betekent dat we weinig variatie hebben. Het font, het corps, de interlinie, de regellengte en het aantal regels per pagina. Omdat lezen een fysieke activiteit is, is traditioneel -door de eeuwen heen- het boekformaat dusdanig dat het boek “lekker” in de hand ligt. We kunnen platte tekst makkelijk omzetten naar een presentatie op een scherm waarbij het scherm weer “prettig in de hand ligt”. Maar nu kunnen we de tekst wel manipuleren. Afhankelijk van de bijziendheid van de lezer kan een groter corps worden ingesteld. Terzijde: ere wie ere toekomt, Microsofts Clear Type is in deze context geweldig. De regellengte en het aantal regels per pagina liggen niet meer vast. Dat is mooi en we zien dan ook dat de e-lezer met haar prachtig stilstaand beeld heel populair wordt voor roman lezers. De tekst is en blijft primair en de lezer kan die naar behoefte instellen. De auteur neemt de lezer bij de hand. Terug bladeren gebeurt amper en aantekeningen zijn beperkt.

Veel moeilijker wordt het als we plaatjes, film of geluid mee willen nemen in een uitgave. Een vogelgids is hier een mooi voorbeeld. De traditionele vogelgids is onmiddellijk begrijpbaar in een digitale versie, waarbij wij zowel de beelden, zoals de precieuze vorm van de kop, de structuur en de kleuren van de veren, de vlucht en ook de zang bij de hand kunnen hebben. Dit voorbeeld is eenvoudig omdat er een hechte en onmiddellijke band is tussen de elementen tekst, beeld, film en geluid. Een dergelijke stramien zou ook goed bruikbaar kunnen zijn voor een bijen en wespen gids. Veel moeilijker wordt het al als we educatieve of wetenschappelijke tekst hebben en in het verlengde daarvan kunstboeken. Daar waar er een redenatie wordt opgebouwd en waarbij op verschillende plekken in de tekst verwezen wordt naar andere mediale objecten, is terug bladeren en heen-en-weer verwijzen essentieel. Ook annotaties en onderstrepingen van de lezer gaan een rol spelen. Onmiddellijk worden we hier geconfronteerd met het feit dat deze vaak niet puur tekstuele elementen vaak meervoudig gebruikt worden in verschillende publicaties. Zoals bijvoorbeeld een populaire cartoon, een schilderij, of een technische of geneeskundige tekening.

U was er al bang voor en inderdaad het hoge woord moet eruit. Als wij mediale elementen, van welk soort dan ook, willen hergebruiken en meervoudig gebruiken dan moeten wij ze eenduidig benoemen, ze een eenduidige beschrijving geven en in een gestandaardiseerde vorm gieten. En dan heet zo’n verzameling stapelbare eenheden een Databank of in het jargon een Database. Over de inrichting van zo’n databank hoeven we het hier niet te hebben, die kan lokaal zijn, in de wolken, of op de NSA servers in Washington D.C. De enige eisen zijn: een welgedefinieerd object, een eenduidige beschrijving EN de haakjes en oogjes om het vast te pakken en op de juiste plaats tussen de andere objecten te zetten. Dat heet dus koppeling of hyperlinking. Hergebruik en meervoudig gebruik zijn de kenmerken van de volgende stap in digitaal uitgeven. Uiteraard is dit geen klein bier. Want willen we wel precies gelijke eenheden hergebruiken of willen we er zelf iets aan toevoegen of veranderen, al is het maar een pijl op een beeld om de aandacht van een detail te benadrukken.

We hebben, beste aanwezigen, het nog steeds over het transponeren van een papieren boek naar een elektronische vorm. Maar is dit de toekomst? Nee toch, we willen het ook hebben over echt nieuwe elektronische boeken. Boeken dus die digitaal geboren worden en waarvan alleen delen aan het traditionele papier toevertrouwd kunnen worden. Nu wordt het pas echt spannend, want we mogen ons niet blind staren op wat de techniek NU wel of niet kan en bedenken wat zou kunnen met enkel de aanwezige hulpmiddelen. We moeten als auteurs en redacteuren denken wat we zouden willen uitdrukken en daar software middelen bij (laten) ontwerpen. Daarom is de discussie over gereedschap dat we vandaag voeren ook zo belangrijk. Alle elementen die samen een coherente digitale uitgave zullen gaan vormen zweven als intellectuelen vrij rond, maar meer nog dan pen en papier vereist een digitaal platvorm dat we ten eerste -zoals boven al genoemd- goed weten wat die elementen precies zijn en hoe ze aan elkaar te rijgen zijn binnen verschillende schermomgevingen. In een verdere toekomst kunnen we dan gaan bedenken hoe we elementen tijdens het hergebruik kunnen gaan veranderen in aangepaste vormen, die op hun beurt weer door anderen kunnen worden hergebruikt.

Maar vandaag staan we met de voeten op de natte Nederlandse bodem. We bespreken de mogelijkheden en processen om de overstap naar een andere presentatie van dezelfde boodschap in andere vorm aan te vatten. Daarom gaat het ook over werkprocessen en min-of-meer stabiele standaards zoals Epub3. Maar weest gewaarschuwd!: alle standaarden met een nummer hebben de neiging door te nummeren. Vooralsnog is de droom van vrij zwevende informatie- en kennisobjecten die wij naar bevind van omstandigheid, humeur, publiek of mode kunnen samenvoegen tot een fluïde stroom een droom.

Het is makkelijk te begrijpen. Neem een groot duiventil, liefst zo’n oude duiventoren die bij kloosters gebruikt werd als voorloper van de intensieve veeteelt, de duiven zitten daar netjes op hun nest en zijn individueel herkenbaar, stapelbare en aftelbare eenheden. De digitale knal heeft ze opgeschrikt en ze vliegen nu kris kras door elkaar in de open ruimte. Onze eerste taak is om al de vrij vliegende objecten eenduidig te identificeren, hun vluchtpatronen in kaart te brengen en hun relaties te benoemen. Uiteindelijk willen we leren in formaties te vliegen. Je zou bijna de oude VVD verkiezingsleus van de plank halen: “Vrijheid in Gebondenheid”. Voor digitale objecten is deze leus in ieder geval zeer van toepassing. Verder is voor mij de rol van de VVD voor elektronisch uitgeven niet zo groot, al zouden ze natuurlijk het lage BTW tarief voor e-boeken moeten bepleiten.

Waar komen we dus in onze werkervaringsstages op uit? Allereerst de notie van metadata, gegevens over gegevens. Metadata zijn er in soorten en maten. Als domeinafhankelijke trefwoorden-essentieel voor zoekopdrachten. Deze kunnen alleen door de auteur of een redacteur worden toegevoegd. Dan de administratieve metadata, die weer uiteenvallen in auteursnamen, -adressen,- kenmerken, enz. Deze eisen een standaardisatie die boven een vakdomein uitstijgt. Maar ook de uitgeefdata zoals publicatiedatum, versie, type auteursrecht, e.d. zijn overkoepelende metatdata. Denk maar eens aan de chaos door de verschillende stijlen om bibliografische referenties aan te geven. Ook de technische metadata vormen een klasse. Welk alfabet, welke codering (ASCII, uni code), welke standaard, welke structuur elementen en ga zo maar door. Van het grootste belang is dat er een keiharde splitsing is tussen het mediaal object en de beschrijving van haar presentatie. Op papier staat een uitroep tussen aanhalingstekens, op een scherm kan dit rood zijn en flikkeren; maar niet elk scherm is hetzelfde. Derhalve zijn de metadata die de opmaak en de presentatie beschrijven een eigen klasse geworden. De auteur, redacteur of uitgever kan eenzelfde publicatie afhankelijk van het presentatiemedium een geheel eigen smoel geven. Dat betekent dat ook de emotionele of de educatieve ervaring bij de lezer anders en afhankelijk kan zijn van het soort presentatiemedium. De extra culturele waarde hiervan kunnen we nog niet overzien.

Voor een blik in de toekomst is de spelontwikkeling van belang. Het in elkaar overlaten lopen van beelden, zoals bij morphing, en het werken met hetzelfde materiaal op verschillende niveaus kan een enorm potentieel vormen voor de vormgeving van een educatief of zelfs een literair vertoog. Maar ook hier geldt weer dat we primair moeten begrijpen wat we willen laten overvloeien en waarom. Helaas bestaat de rijstebrijberg die ons scheidt van het digitale Nirvana uit taaie kost van werkprocessen, informatiebenoemingen en -registratie, standaards en trucs. Maar daarbinnen kunnen we zeker nu al tot frivole nieuwe dingen komen. Wel moeten we bij iedere stap heel duidelijk onder ogen zien, wat deze stap mogelijk maakt en welke mogelijkheden ze uitsluiten. Het gaat dus heel erg, net als in de politiek om “welke gebondenheid” we kiezen. Geautomatiseerde systemen zijn gevaarlijk dat weet u. Onder de leuze “wat kan dat gebeurt”, zien we hoe de vrijheid van expressie onder digitale surveillance staat, zoals dat eufemistisch heet. We moeten zorgen dat ons gereedschap het pad van een arabesk Nirvana hakt en dat we niet eindigen in een Germaans Walhalla. Ook hier is het medium niet alleen de boodschap, maar ook de wegbereider. We gaan vandaag bespreken waar we nu mee bezig zijn en hoe we zoekend verder komen.

Ik wens u een heel inspirerende dag toe.

Institute of Network Cultures – One thousand and One workflows

By Marc Stumpel, November 28, 2013 at 4:30 pm.

The final presentation of the Digital Publishing Toolkit meeting, the ABC of digital publishing, was held by Miriam Rasch, publication manager at the Institute of Network Cultures. In her talk, she addressed workflows, format conversion, finding the ideal format, metadata and how to put these all together. According to Rasch, the great diversity of input and output formats that are available today, calls for digital publishers to have a flexible workflow, instead of a single defined path to follow.

Miriam Rasch, Photo: Martin Risseeuw Miriam Rasch, Photo: Martin Risseeuw

Taking the Silvio Lorusso’s idea of the ‘Book as a Directory‘ as starting point, the main goal of the INC subgroup (consisting of Michael Murtaugh, Joost Kircz, Silvio Lorusso, Miriam Rasch and Kimmy Spreeuwenberg) is to define the workflow for INC publications. In doing so, the aim is to make it easier for everyone involved (editors, designer and INC staff) to ‘natively’ output digital publications, as well as to provide insights about digital publication workflows, which can be useful for publishing houses.

Considering the fact that Adobe InDesign is still central to the workflow of many publishers, INC’s experiments with new publication forms started with by applying an Indesign-Centric Workflow to the development of the Epub version of the Unlike Us Reader print publication. (Read elaborate notes on the conversion here). This process actually turned out to be quite sloppy with a lot of manual labour, e.g. adding hyperlinks. Consequentially, INC realized that it would be much more effective to have a modified HTML centric workflow, with structured content in each phase and a file format that is maintained throughout the entire process.

Html Centric Workflow, INC Subgroup Html Centric Workflow, INC Subgroup

This file format should then easily serve as the basis for a printed publication as well as an epub. But, how is this possible with many authors submitting their work in a Word file?

One solution, albeit not the holy grail, is to use MarkDown, a rather simple markup language, comparable to HTML. According to Rasch MarkDown is perfect for text -based editors, like herself, and at the same time very suitable for making digital products. It has a great level of readability, while maintaining a strict content structure. Then again, most authors will keep working with Word instead of Markdown editors like Mou. Therefore Rasch stressed the need for ways to convert Word documents to the Markdown format. INC´s research into file formats and conversions is documented on the Digtial Publishing Toolkit blog.

The INC subgroup has also started to develop a specific INC set of metadata, which can be useful to manage contents and output custom versions of the publications. They started by referring to a broad Document Type Definition (DTD), similar to that of Elsevier, but eventually derived the metadata directly from all the available content. Compiling a condensed list of about 10-20 metadata that specifically refer to INC readers, was helpful in understanding the essential and wanted metadata for INC´s digital publications, and to figure out what´s ´special´ about the list of INC publications (for example, the various inputs, like video, blogs, interviews, texts etc). The set of metadata is applicable to other publications, but could also prove useful for publishers in general.

INC, condensed metadata set INC, condensed metadata set

In addition to this list, INC has considered the idea of embedding metadata directly into MarkDown documents. In this line of thought, Michael and Silvio created a mockup of a customized Markdown editor. But should filing and tagging articles accordingly with the metadata be ´the end´? Are there other unexplored possibilities?

Rasch explained how the subgroup´s research is shifting away from the middle of the workflow to it´s very beginning. It´s the collaborative, back and forth process, between author, editor, designer and proof reader, that marks the publishing workflow. Word could be considered as ´the battlefield´, where many revisions leads to more comments, annotations and corrections. To map the complexities in the workflows, INC has started to take more role-oriented perspective, leading to new questions, such as: how to handle editing in Markdown? Should everyone involved in the workflow start using Markdown editors? These are the kinds of questions the subgroup will increasingly focus on.

Some team members recently participated in the Free Libraries For Every Soul hackathon at IMPAKT where some ideas were developed around epub and the creating new kinds of publications. One outcome was an epub generated out of INC´s Flickr feed. In the future this kind of event-related content could be merged into customized versions of publications, such as an author page, where one could find all of the available related material (biography, writings for the reader, presentation video´s from Vimeo, Flickr Photo´s, related blogposts).

Another concept -at the end of the workflow- was to take the idea the epub format as input to an extreme, and apply it to relatively new genre, the ´book trailer´. This resulted in the creation of the epub Book Trailer Generator, which manipulates a publication´s metadata with scripts, to generate a ´subliminal´ book GIF trailer.

Unlike Us Reader Epub Trailer Unlike Us Reader Epub Trailer

Do you have feedback, comments or questions regarding the Digital Publishing Toolkit research project? Let us know!*

The original presentation file (PDF) can be found hereWatch the full presentation below

Video: http://vimeo.com/80884524

Showcase Institute of Network Cultures – One thousand and One workflows from network cultures on Vimeo.

Florian Cramer – De uitdagingen van e-publishing voor kunst- en designuitgevers

By Katía Truijen, November 28, 2013 at 8:04 pm.

Wie naar binnen kijkt in de kunstboekhandel van nu ziet het volgende: een lege ruimte met enkele boeken die niet langer in kasten zijn geschoven maar als kunstobjecten zijn uitgestald. Volgens Florian Cramer betreden we hier een gevaarlijk kerkhof die de dood van het papieren boek als gebruiksobject inluidt.

De ontwikkeling richting e-publishing is niet iets van de toekomst, maar is al in volle gang en alomtegenwoordig. Een goed voorbeeld is het E-flux journal, een gratis elektronisch kunsttijdschrift dat een belangrijke rol speelt in het internationale debat over hedendaagse kunst. Of Speculations, dat vanaf het begin al veel aandacht kreeg, juist omdat het elektronisch wordt verspreid. Nu al wordt er volgens Cramer meer elektronisch dan van papier gelezen. Tijdschriften bestaan vooral nog als advertentiemogelijkheid voor galeries. Een ander voorbeeld is de populaire Aaaaarg.org bibliotheek waar studenten theorieboeken gratis downloaden. Florian Cramer: “Elektronisch uitgeven is een hype. Het probleem is dat er vaak naar de verkeerde kant van het fenomeen wordt gekeken. De lezers zijn er wel, de makers nog niet.”

Florian Cramer, Photo: Martin Risseeuw Florian Cramer, Photo: Martin Risseeuw

Problemen die men bij het maken van e-books vaak tegenkomt zijn de technische beperkingen van platforms en de duurzaamheid van een bepaald bestandsformaat. Moet je een e-book offline of online aanbieden? Je hebt immers niet altijd en overal internetverbinding. In het ideale geval is een formaat geschikt voor elk medium, maar zeker als je interactieve elementen wil toevoegen ben je al gauw gebonden aan een bepaald platform.

Hoe interactiever een e-book wordt, hoe hoger ook de designkosten worden. Dit is lastig wanneer een publicatie slechts in een kleine oplage door een specifieke doelgroep wordt gelezen. Voor veel uitgevers in de culturele sector is dit behoorlijk problematisch.

Om te voorkomen dat een e-book steeds moet worden aangepast naar een nieuwe versie, is het belangrijk om toe te werken naar een duurzaam e-publishing model. Het is niet slim om voor bestandsformaten te kiezen die maar korte tijd worden gebruikt. Het web is bijvoorbeeld een prima platform voor de korte termijn, maar het is niet duurzaam. Websites die vijf of tien jaar geleden zijn gepubliceerd zijn vaak niet meer beschikaar. Eigenlijk zou je toe willen werken naar een product dat tussen het web en het klassieke boek in staat: bestanden die lezers kunnen bewaren en op lange termijn steeds weer kunnen raadplegen.

Florian Cramer, Photo: Martin Risseeuw Florian Cramer, Photo: Martin Risseeuw

Daarvoor zijn goed gestructureerde formaten nodig. Het wordt ook voor kleine uitgevers interessant wanneer er één werkwijze voor e-publicaties komt en één bestandsformaat dat gemakkelijk te vertalen is naar zowel papieren als elektronische versies. Op deze manier kan een ontwerper snel aan de slag.

Om dit te kunenn bereiken moeten uitgevers volgens Cramer de gehele workflow veranderen. DPT, Word en InDesign staan dan niet meer centraal. Het metaformaat XML is geschikt om verschillende bestandsformaten mee te creëren, maar is complex om mee te werken, zelfs voor informatici. Een pragmatische oplossing is MultiMarkDown, een vereenvoudigd alternatief waarmee platte tekst op een simpele manier kan worden opgemaakt.

Een belangrijke misvatting is dat elektronisch publiceren per definitie goedkoper is dan een analoge uitgave. Volgens Cramer kunnen betere workflows het proces wel economisch voordeliger maken. Het vinden van goede verdienmodellen is nog steeds een probleem en moet verder worden onderzocht.

Volgens Cramer moet interactiviteit alleen worden toegevoegd als het werkelijk meerwaarde oplevert; “Interactivity is no magic bullet.” Het feit dat een publicatie niets oplevert als het op het web wordt gepubliceerd mag geen argument zijn om er een (betaald) e-book van te maken.

Verder wordt er nog altijd in oude publicatieformaten gedacht. De dichtbundel ontstond omdat het te duur was om één gedicht te distribueren. Dit is nu geen issue meer. Door de opkomst van mp3 kopen mensen niet langer full-lenght albums, maar losse nummers. Dit model is ook van toepassing op zoiets als een artikel, essay of gedicht. Waarom zou je nog één catalogus van een expositie maken als de gebruiker zijn eigen catalogus kan samenstellen? En waarom zou je één tijdschrift maken als je de lezer ook kunt laten kiezen welke artikelen hij of zij interessant vindt?

De economie van het drukwerk bestaat niet meer. Waarin nu werkelijk de waarde van een tijdschrift ligt, is iets waar we nu veel scherper over na moeten denken dan in het verleden.

Florian Cramer werkt met nai010 Publishers, Medamo en PUNTPIXEL aan een digitale versie van de Stedelijk Museum Highlights Catalogus. In plaats van het creëren van een 1:1 e-book kopie van de catalogus, ontwikkelen ze een digitaal distributieplatform via een (mobiele) web-applicatie. Daarnaast wordt de software Open Source en komt er een stap-voor-stap introductie e-publishing voor ‘dummies’.

The original presentation file (PDF) can be found here Watch the full presentation below (in Dutch)

Video: http://vimeo.com/80873921

Florian Cramer – E-publishing voor kunst en design (uitdagingen 2013) from network cultures on Vimeo.

BISPublishers: Over lettertype gebruik, spread layout, beeldgebruik en interactie

By Marc Stumpel, November 28, 2013 at 4:29 pm.

De uitgeverij BIS vormt samen met het webdesignbureau Restruct, service designbureau Essense en webdeveloper Mr Sauli de project subgroep BISpublishers.

Uitgeverij BIS is typisch een visuele uitgever, met een specialisatie in het uitgeven van vakboeken voor creatieve professionals, academische boeken, business boeken en boeken voor het algemeen publiek ( zoals ‘gift’ boeken). Engelstalige boeken in Amerika is voor hen de grootste markt. Uitgeverij BIS is de E-book markt aan het verkennen, die zich razendsnel ontwikkelt.

BISpublishers subgroup, Photo: Martin Risseeuw BISpublishers subgroup, Photo: Martin Risseeuw

BISPublishers is begonnen met een kort onderzoek naar de wereld van ‘digital publishing’. Uit dit onderzoek zijn inzichten gewonnen die de basis vormden voor de ideale formaat keuze, platform en device(s) met betrekking tot twee digitale publicaties, waar zij momenteel aan werken. De belangrijkste vragen ten grondslag van dit onderzoek: Hoe kunnen we de e-reading experience verbeteren? Hoe we kunnen we ‘rich media’ content het beste verwerken? Hoe kunnen we interactieve publicaties beschikbaar maken op verschillende devices tegen redelijke kosten? Welke ontwerp tools gaan wij hiervoor inzetten? Welke devices willen wij ons op richten?

De subgroep het heeft het digitale traject van auteur/publisher tot de uiteindelijke lezer gevisualiseerd. Dit verloop is complex gebleken, aangezien er veel trajecten mogelijk zijn en er constant nieuwe bij komen. Door het in kaart brengen van verschillende eindgebruikers en segmenten kwamen zij bij specifieke formaten terecht, zoals Epub en standalone apps.

BISPublishers, Digital Landscap Journey BISPublishers, Digital Landscap Journey

De eerste case study, de publicatie -Think Like a Lawyer, Don’t Act Like One- zit tussen een ‘business’ en een’ gift’ boek in en behandelt 75 onderhandelingskwesties. Bij het digitaal publiceren van dit boek was het uitgangspunt om een vormgevingsgetrouwe e-book conversie te realiseren, waarbij het lettertype gebruik, de spread-layout en het beeldgebruik zoveel zou worden behouden. Developer Sauli Warmerhoven (Mr. Sauli) bouwde een EPUB3 generator om de pagina opmaak voor dit boek te automatiseren.

Bij -Think Like a Lawyer, Don’t Act Like One- heeft de projectgroep gekozen voor een eenduidige structuur, waardoor het een template-matig boekje werd. Het kleine formaat (b5) was uitermate geschikt voor conversie. Daarom is er gekozen voor het Epub formaat. Hoewel de Epub generator nog verder kan worden ontwikkeld (met de broncode beschikbaar op Github) en de resultaten work-in-progress zijn, heeft de projectgroep aan de hand van deze case al wel conclusies getrokken:

1. Als je een Epub ontwikkelt moet je onthouden dat hij zal worden bekeken op e-readers. Je zal daarom rekening moeten houden met de navigatie. Voor de ontwerper/publisher is het verstandig om de aanwezige navigatie functionaliteit te gebruiken, in plaats van nieuwe navigatiefuncties toe te voegen die mogelijk kan conflicteren met de aanwezig functionaliteit.

2. Epub3 en standaard formaten maken het mogelijk om meer controle uit te oefenen op het ontwerp, maar het is niet geschikt voor grotere boeken.

3. De huidige Epub reader applicaties ondersteunen momenteel geen interactieve elementen die zouden kunnen worden toegevoegd aan pagina’s (zoals video’s of afbeeldingen-carrousels).

De tweede publicatie -Sketching- is een tekenleerboek voor (industrieel) ontwerpers, van de auteurs Koos Eissen and Roselien Steur (TU Delft). Het boek, waarmee (industrieel) ontwerpen kunnen leren schetsen, is in geprinte vorm 100.000 keer verkocht en in 7 talen vertaald. Dit boek heeft BISpublishers omgezet naar interactieve ervaring. Hierbij was de opdracht om een zeer visueel e-learning boek te ontwikkelen waarbij verschillende tekentechnieken in beeld worden gebracht. Daarnaast werden onder andere de interactie mogelijkheden onderzocht zoals een sociale elementen, layered pagina opmaak, navigatie en video.

Het doel was om deze productie non-lineair aan te pakken met een focus op tablets en navigatie. Het boek werd opgedeeld in schets ‘exercises’ en ‘skills’. Door deze zijn verwerkt in het interactieontwerp kan je als lezer verschillende stappen nemen, zoals makkelijk terugnavigeren naar bepaalde oefeningen, of inspringen op basis van je eigen skills(et). Het idee is dan ook om rekening te houden met verschillende typen lezers en ontwerpers met verschillende of specifieke skills.

BISpublishers heeft voor deze publicatie in applicatie vorm niet gekozen voor het Epub formaat, maar voor een gratis open source web framework: Phonegap. Hiermee konden zij het boek in website vorm omzetten, ofwel verpakken, in applicatie formaat. Dit werd mede mogelijk gemaakt door Adobe PhoneGapp Build.

De resultaten van de eerste experimenten met Phonegap voor Sketching zijn veelbelovend. Er kwam een goedwerkende applicatie uitgerold, die op diverse manieren te presenteren is, in verschillende segmenten. De app werd daarnaast automatisch gekoppeld aan de iOS store. BISPublisher liep bij het testen nog wel tegen wat ‘performance issues’ aan, zoals de reactietijd van de app bij ingewikkelde interacties, maar bij de Sketching publicatie zijn zij nog niet tegen limieten van PhoneGap aangelopen. Zij hoefden relatief weinig aan te passen, om een native app te ontwikkelen voor meerdere platformen. Hoewel je als uitgever zodanig bent aangewezen op Adobe, is het een voordeel met HTML en CSS heel veel kan doen. Dit zijn bekende programmeertalen, dus ontwikkelaars kunnen daar snel mee aan de haal. Native code schrijven zou veel meer tijd in beslag nemen. Bovendien kan je als uitgever op deze wijze makkelijk en met minder kosten een boek distribueren, mocht dit wenselijk zijn. Naast HTML en CSS blijft de koppeling met andere formaten (zoals XML of MultiMarkDown) heel goed mogelijk.

BISPublishers is van plan om PhoneGap verder testen en uit te zoeken of zij -Sketching- volledig met PhoneGap gaan publiceren. Deze aanpak zorgt er in ieder geval voor dat zij zich iets minder hoeven te focussen op de technische ontwikkeling en de conversie tussen verschillende formaten, waardoor er meer tijd en aandacht kan worden besteed aan de content.

The original presentation file (PDF) can be found hereWatch the full presentation below

Video: http://vimeo.com/80883773

Showcase BISPublishers – Over lettertype gebruik, spread layout, beeldgebruik en interactie from network cultures on Vimeo.

First results and thoughts on using PhoneGap for e-publications

By Timo Klok, November 15, 2013 at 5:52 pm.

For the SketchingBook project, we (Restruct, Mr.Sauli, Arjen De Jong) decided to explore the possibilities of producing a publication in app form through PhoneGap. These are the first results:

Why & What PhoneGap

” PhoneGap is a mobile development framework that enables software programmers to build applications for mobile devices using JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS3, instead of device-specific languages such as Objective-C or Java. The resulting applications are hybrid, meaning that they are neither truly native (because all layout rendering is done via web views instead of the platform’s native UI framework) nor purely web-based (because they are not just web apps, but are packaged as apps for distribution and have access to native device APIs). “

(wikipedia)

Why did we decide on PhoneGap:

This decision was made based on requirements for the publication:

Offering a richer environment than the existing paper book: embedded video, smooth (swipe) interaction

We wanted to explore the possibilities of a modular purchase model, allowing for individual chapters to be bought (or added to the publication later on).

Some ‘smart’ components, for instance having the publication store which chapters have been read by the viewer.

Allow for a non-linear navigation, that would also store the path the viewer has taken through the chapters, so they could take a side-step into a different chapter but always be able to return to their starting point.

The publication relies heavily on full color image media, and less on text, there’s no need for reflowable pages. Tablets – rather the e-readers – are the obvious end-device for reading this publication.

In the scope of digital publication options, ranging from simple pdf’s to full native apps, producing through PhoneGap seems a viable option for this publication since:

It, in principle, allows the interaction listed in the requirements.

Is written in HTML/JS/CSS, so (within our team there’s) no need to learn new languages. The code is easy to share and adapt.

There’s no need for heavy interaction with hardware components such as camera, sensors etc (for which native code would be more suitable)

Producing a native app would probably be more expensive, less durable, with fewer reusable components.

It is (ideally) easy to produce a publication for different platforms.

For future publications, it seems easier to link such a HTML project to a database from which other publication forms are created (pdf’s, ePub, sites) then with a native app.

However, PhoneGap is also known to render slower in comparison to native apps (because of the web view rendering), so test are needed to see how far we can push the interaction.

First results -> PhoneGap Build

After Adobe purchased PhoneGap, they have released the online PhoneGap Build system. This allows user to upload a zip file containing the HTML/JS/CSS files, and produces an app for iOS and Android. This service for free for every user that only maintains a single project, afterwards a subscription is required (but free for unlimited open source projects).

To produce an iOS app (which is our first focus for this project), an Apple developer account is always required (costing around 90e year).

The first results with this service were promising: after enabling hardware acceleration for elements that move via CSS, and making sure video files were correctly encoded, sliding to the next page appeared reasonably smooth (through buttons as well as swipe gestures). Those different ‘pages’ are actually elements on a single HTML document. Storing user data via localstorage also worked as expected.

In anticipation of the final design & content, next step was to test the possibilities of in app purchases for the different chapters:

Progressing & moving to Xcode

At this moment, the PhoneGap Build service doesn’t provide the plugins needed to connect to the iOS store for in app purchases. Those plugins do exists, but it means the ‘compiling’ of the app must be done locally, using Apple development environment XCode, allowing the use of custom plugins.

Switching from PhoneGap Build to Xcode was a painstaking experience, since developing for the latest iOS version (7), requires besides all the iOS SDK en PhoneGap libraries the latest Xcode version, which in turn only runs on OSX Mavericks, so a complete system update was needed before we could reach the same results as with PhoneGap Build.

After adding a dummy purchase option to the app (registering this on the Apple Dev. centre) it was fairly simple to complete a purchase by using this Javascript sample. This however was only possible after providing Apple with all our bank and tax details, even for test purposes. Since the purchase consists only of a payment and callback through the Apple store, the action following the purchase is completely customisable. In our case, we succeeded downloading a new file into the app from our server. Because of Apple’s policy of checking all apps before releasing them to the Apple store, such an action would probably mean this app would be rejected. Alternatives are to have Apple host the downloadable content for you, or packaging the complete content within the initial app, and unlocking that content partly when purchased.

The latter option is the most simple, because there’s no need to download a new series of files into the app and correctly linking them to the existing content. Downside would be that all the content has to be ready on the first launch of the app, and the total filesize would increase dramatically. On the other hand, users would never have to download new (large) packages (for instance if they are on a 3G network). Also, we estimate a total size under 500MB for all content which is not that large in comparison to other rich media publications/apps.

More results will follow as soon as further decisions have been made concerning content and design!

Epub Trailer Generator – “Free Library for Every Soul” Hackaton – First Report

By Silvio Lorusso, November 11, 2013 at 1:02 pm.

Unlike Us Reader Epub Trailer

On the 2nd and 3rd of November, the INC subgroup (Silvio Lorusso, Michael Murtaugh, Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, Margreet Riphagen) attended the hackathon Free Libraries for Every Soul, in Utrecht, which was part of the Impakt festival. Here’s the description of the project proposed by us:

Situated in the “Digital Publishing Toolkit” project the subgroup ‘Book as Directory’ concerns itself with workflows for digital publications that move beyond putting a print PDF online. We want to explore the creative tension between the strict constraints and particularities of epub as an output format and the diversity of possible tools and practices that can be employed to produce them. Starting from specific materials from the Institute of Network Cultures (INC) including publications (in both word processor and page layout formats), web blogs, and video event recordings, we will be using the diversity of the participants knowledge and work practices to produce as many different workflows (and their resulting outcomes) as possible. In doing so, we will make use of a diverse toolbox of free software tools taken from different practices (graphic design, informatics, linguistics, text editing, blogging, library sciences, statistics, reverse engineering). The final outcome will be compiled into an epub cookbook demonstrating a tasty palette of possible digital publishing workflows.

Starting from the main goal of diversifying the array of digital publishing workflows for epub, we worked on several concepts that explored both the production of a publication in a digital format and the management and manipulation of ready made e-books.

This post represents the first report on the concept developed during the hackathon. More will follow!

(For a comprehensive overview on each project developed during the hackaton, check André Castro’s report.)

Epub Trailer Generator

During the hackaton we discussed the possible outputs that could derive from well-structured content. Thinking beforehand of those outputs would influence the structuring of the content.

In our discussion we didn’t limit the outputs and the sources to what is generally considered a publication: we considered as well Flickr streams, contact spreadsheets, etc.

We also realize that open format like Epub could be easily accessed and harvested for content, in other ways than the mere linear reading. So we started to think of ePub as an input/source that could be manipulated by scripts.

In order to take the idea of Epub as input to the extreme, we needed a very different output from an e-book. Therefore we chose the “book trailer” relatively new genre, different from a theory publication both as format and as attitude.

We developed a small python script that: 1. unzips the epub; 2. searches the metadata for informations such as: title, authors, publisher, publication date; 3. gathers all the pictures in the book; 4. get a font if it’s embedded in the ePub; 5. creates an animated gif out of those contents.

The scripts employs the PIL library to handle the images (resizing, creating text, etc.) and images2gif to convert all the images to an animated gif.

Usage

python epubtrailer.py file-name.epub

Here’s a couple of examples.

“A Neoist Research Project ” Epub Trailer

“To Save Everything, Click Here” Epub Trailer

Book review. The end of ebooks. 20 visionaries on the future of digital reading.

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, October 31, 2013 at 3:11 pm.

Het einde van ebooks (This book is published by publisher Eburon in Dutch. Original Title: ‘Het einde van ebooks. 20 visionairs over de toekomst van digitaal lezen)

The title indicates the intention of the book. To make a prediction of the development of ebooks by looking at what comes beyond. It’s an interesting play of thought, but unfortunately the idea doesn’t always come to it’s full potential as the articles circle around similar predictions that have been around for a while. They focus mainly on the technical potential of ebooks and the changing position of the author, reader and publisher that follow. Some of the authors also critically address the (technical) limitations that detain these visions of the future to become true, but a perspective on what we want this future to look like seems to be missing.

Predictions

Many of the authors describe the Ebooks of the future as explosions of video and sound, where people interact with the book, each-other, and the author, allowing ‘social reading’ and personal publications. Ebooks will thus become multimedia publications that should not be seen as book, website, game, video or any other kind of document, but as a hybrid in which interactivity is key. Readers can not only change the size of the text, or add comments and highlights, but also exchange reading habits and experiences with their fellow readers. This social reading can already be seen in services like Readmill, Goodreads and Bookshout!.

As Bob van Duuren describes in his article “Uitdaging voor de boekenvakker: innoveren en afscheid nemen” this Social Reading process can also give the authors the opportunity to include user feedback into their writing process. (Making you wonder to what extend authors should start writing for the sake of their readers). But the position of the author will not only change in this respect. As Erwin Blom points out in “Boekenwereld, geef de koper wat hij wil, anders gaat hij het halen” new platforms like iBooks from Apple make it easy for ‘everyone’ to create their own ebook and distribute it to their readers directly. This ease of publishing is emphasized by the absence of printing costs, and other free platforms like Abulafia that allow you to create an ePub and distribute it with ease. As a result everyone can publish ebooks endlessly resulting in an overload of publications instead of scarcity that is characteristic of printed books.

Publishers, who normally gate keep what is being published and how it is being published, don’t have a defined role in this user driven publishing network anymore as Dr. Willem de Laat describes in his article “Memo 3: Het einde van het ebook?”. Moreover, big players, like Apple, Amazon and Google seem to push publishers even further from their position as they develop their own formats, readers and apps to connect as many readers to their platforms, which results in private ecosystems. This is also the case for smaller initiatives or services like Readmill. To make use of the social layer of the book, you are bound to their platform.

The shift in the position of the publishers also leeds to questions about business models. How can you ensure any income from your publications when everyone can publish, when authors can skip the step of the publisher and distribute the books themselves, when readers can download the book you so carefully produced on any of the torrent sites and copy them endlessly? More than ones the connection to the music industry and the iTunes and Spotify business model are made. From this perspective people no longer pay for the ebooks themselves, but for the service and ease of use. From this perspective it becomes more important to create a user-friendly platform with a complete collection for a reasonable price. But these new business models are not without problems as Willem Mastenbroek Jr. in “De toekomst van het ebook Nieuwe hoop of totale ondergang?” describes. The consumption of ebooks is not comparable to the consumption of single mp3 files – how many pages can you read during one song? – leading to the question when such a service will be profitable.

Move beyond predictions?

Overall most of the articles stay rather close to these predictions and hesitations. It is as if we are still blinded by the seemingly endless possibilities of the ebook that we are unable to look beyond them or take a clear stance on where this development should lead. It confirms the goal of the digital publishing toolkit project. To look really closely at the development of ebooks from a designers perspective, and see the practicalities of the technical potential, and use these to reflect on a possible future for ebooks.

From this perspective it becomes even more clear how critical we should be of the position of platforms like Amazon, Google, and Apple within the publishing world. It is not only that they are overthrowing the strong position of publishers within the publishing chain, they also enforce certain formats that limit, or at least direct the possibilities of design. In the case of Apple this is even more pressing as you can only sell your ‘beautifully designed’ iBooks within Apples stores. Gonny der Zwaag makes a similar assumption: “It creates tremendous need for simple tools to make magazines and books yourself. Who offers the best tools and becomes market leader, can earn a lot by taking a percentage of the sales.” Unfortunately she doesn’t address the problems that come with having a market leader without having any real alternatives.

Peter de Ruiter in his article “Binnenkort op uw tablet: de killer foto-app” addresses these problems and he wonders to what extend we should conform to Apple’s ecosystem and give the company 30 percent of our revenue. He looks at the development of ebooks from a photographers perspective and notices that the tools to develop beautiful photography books, outside of the Apple ecosystem, are missing. He describes the technical limitations of creating a simple product as a photo ebook – not a photo app, which is very expensive to develop. In this way he makes clear that even though ebooks can be explosions of multimedia, on a practical level this doesn’t always add up. He makes a clear plead for developers to create an easy to use tool for this, thus being fully aware of the problematic position the iBooks format has.

Conclusions

Essentially the book thus gives a clear overview of all the different perspectives, arguments, pro’s and con’s of digital publishing. But is it enough to simply predict these changes by looking at what is happening right now, and not envision what you would like this future to look like? Will we allow platforms like Apple, Amazon and Google to define the field of digital publishing, and possibly overthrowing the role of publishers, or do we create parallel platforms that allow for experiments in content, revenue models, and most importantly in the case of the digital publishing toolkit project: design?

On the publication of Think Like a Lawyer, Don’t Act Like One

By Sauli Warmenhoven, October 16, 2013 at 11:19 am.

Our subgroup, consisting of BIS publishers, Essense, and Sauli Warmenhoven set out to create a ePub version of the BIS publication of Think Like a Lawyer, Don’t Act Like One. This publication has a relatively straightforward layout, with its 75 lessons generally being displayed in similar fashion, namely the text of a lesson on one page, and on the facing page a full-bleed image.

We felt that this publication was an excellent opportunity to try our hand at a fixed layout epub. Though fixed layout support is in its infancy, as there is no common support for it, fixed layouts are possible on modern tablets, such as the iPad and recent kindles, we thought it would be worthwile to be ambitious in this regard. In the end the choice was made to create a second version with a simpler layout, to facilitate the reading of the publication on older devices.

In order to generate the 160 or so pages of the publication, we developed a simple tool that acted as a CMS of sorts. The tool allows for the creation of page spreads, and the entering of associated texts and background-images. When all content is entered, an epub is generated on the basis of predetermined templates. This generated file then has to be checked for errors, and was in this case disassembled so that the page spreads that do not follow standard layout could be done by hand. All in all even with the use of the tool it still turned out to be a significant workload, that could, in the future, only in part be lightened by a more efficient workflow.

link to the code on github

The revolution of digital publishing is taking place right now

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, October 15, 2013 at 1:44 pm.

An interview with Geert Lovink by Jorinde Seijdel (in Dutch)

The revolution of digital publishing is taking place right now (PDF) About the current practice and the future of digital publishing for the arts and cultural sector. What are the possibilities and challenges and what are the pitfalls?

Inleiding Bij de ingrijpende bezuinigingsmaatregelen voor kunst en cultuur in Nederland, die in 2013 in werking zijn gesteld, werd onder meer bepaald dat aan kunst- en cultuurtijdschriften geen subsidie meer kan worden verleend. Dit soort publicaties, met haar vermeende dure productiemodellen en elitair kritische houding, moet net als andere cultuuruitingen gestuurd gaan worden door de markt, aldus het neoliberale adagium van de dominante Nederlandse politiek. Als reactie hierop werden prompt conferenties en debatten georganiseerd over het in zijn bestaan bedreigde kunsttijdschrift en de vraag hoe verder. Het zal niet verbazen dat alles er daarbij op wees dat de toekomst van het publiceren over kunst en cultuur online en digitaal is. Dit stelde de meeste ‘old-school’ kunstredacties, auteurs, uitgevers en lezers echter nauwelijks gerust, gezien de nieuwe inhoudelijke, organisatorische en financiële vragen die erdoor worden opgeroepen.

Echter, de ‘crisis‘ van het kunst- en cultuurtijdschrift wordt natuurlijk niet alleen veroorzaakt door het wegvallen van subsidies en maatschappelijke support, maar vooral door de immer toenemende druk van de geglobaliseerde digitale cultuur. De bezuinigingen leiden er in Nederland vooral toe dat de digitalisering van het publiceren en uitgeven van kunst en cultuur niet langer meer uit de weg kan worden gegaan. Dit interview met Geert Lovink, mediatheoreticus en ‘founding director’ van het Instituut voor Netwerkcultuur (INC) in Amsterdam (Een onderzoekscentrum en lectoraat van de Hogeschool van Amsterdam (HVA) en de Universiteit van Amsterdam (UVA) Zie: networkcultures.org), gaat over de huidige praktijk en de toekomst van publiceren en uitgeven over kunst en cultuur. Wat zijn de uitdagingen en mogelijkheden en wat de valkuilen? Vanuit een beschouwing van ontwikkelingen in de mediacultuur en digitaal publiceren in het algemeen wordt vervolgens ingezoomd op de kunst- en cultuurpublicatie.

Jorinde Seijdel (JS) Het INC onderzoekt met langlopende projecten als Out of Ink en Digital Publishing Toolkit de gevolgen van de digitalisering voor het publiceren en uitgeven, met speciale aandacht voor de kunst- en cultuursector. Waarom staat dit onderwerp zo hoog op jullie agenda?

Geert Lovink (GL) Het INC onderzoekt digitaal publiceren door het zelf in de praktijk te brengen. Onze publicaties zijn te lezen op het web, als EPUB te downloaden op je telefoon en te bestellen als boek via Print on Demand. Zeker de helft drukken we zelf en geven we gratis weg. Zo kunnen we diverse nieuwe platforms en publicatiemodellen uitproberen en de juridische, technische en sociale standaarden bevragen die momenteel onderdeel zijn van issues als intellectueel eigendom, wetenschappelijke en artistieke communicatie of noties van auteurschap. En zo kunnen we kennis delen en anderen ten voorbeeld zijn. Het veld van digitaal uitgeven en publiceren is juist nu enorm aan het groeien. De revolutie van digitaal uitgeven vindt nu plaats! Wij vinden het dus belangrijk dat wij ons hierin mengen als schrijvers, kunstenaars en ontwerpers en ons niet als consumenten en hekkensluiters opstellen. Computers worden steeds kleiner en handzamer en internetverbindingen sneller. We zijn op een punt in de geschiedenis beland waarop het heel makkelijk is om grote bestanden te downloaden en uit te wisselen als het gaat om tekst, beelden, boeken en tijdschriften. Het gangbaar worden van het vrije en open e-boekformaat EPUB speelt hierin ook een rol. Door EPUB kunnen mensen nu ook teksten lezen op hun telefoon (EPUB is ontworpen voor ‘reflowable’ content. Bij ‘reflowable’ content kan de tekst van de boeken voor elke e-reader geoptimaliseerd worden. Zie ook: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats).

JS Wat vind je in dit kader van het Google Books project, waarin Google ernaar streeft om alle boeken en alle kennis van de wereld te scannen, digitaliseren en doorzoekbaar te maken (zie: books.google.com)

GL Het Google Books project is een soort kristallisatiepunt van alle mogelijkheden en problemen die er bij dergelijke ondernemingen komen kijken. En het is een echte hoofdbreker gebleken voor de bazen van Google. Er is een mooie BBC-documentaire gemaakt over de geschiedenis ervan, ‘Google and the World Brain’, die heel goed laat zien waar het in de volgende fase over gaat en hoe zulke projecten kunnen vastlopen (Ben Lewis, ‘Google and the World Brain’, 2010. Zie ook: www.worldbrainthefilm.com). Niet alleen door de copyrightproblemen, maar ook door de gigantische en encyclopedische opgave om alle kennis van de wereld te willen digitaliseren om er vervolgens zelf rijk van te worden. We worden allemaal uitgedaagd om deel te nemen aan dergelijke mammoetprojecten. Mensen kunnen nu op hun telefoon of laptop enorme bibliotheken bij zich dragen, dus deze ontwikkeling zal alleen maar verder toenemen. De kernvraag is hoe je het beste in deze bestanden kunt zoeken. Dat moet onderwezen worden op scholen en daar moet zo snel mogelijk mee worden begonnen. Het kunnen formuleren van een goeie vraag, dat is de kwestie. Technologie leert je dat niet, dat kan alleen goed onderwijs doen. Daarom wordt er relatief ook niet zoveel bezuinigd op onderwijs en onderzoek. Kennis mag dan wel gedemocratiseerd zijn, maar wat kun je ermee? Als je de goede vraag hebt, en weet wat je moet bestuderen, pas dan kan je al die online bibliotheken en archieven waar je de toegang toe hebt op een productieve manier gebruiken.

JS In die documentaire kwamen ook een aantal pregnante voorbeelden in beeld van boeken die helemaal verkreukeld of onleesbaar gescand en gedigitaliseerd werden. Iets wat natuurlijk de woede opwekt van de schrijvers ervan, die dit ervaren als beschadiging van hun intellectueel eigendom. En het ging ook over het feit dat Google zou kunnen controleren wat je leest, waar je leest, wanneer en hoe lang je leest. Wat betekent iets als Google Books voor onze notie van privacy?

GL Deze eigendoms- en privacykwesties zijn cruciaal en komen tegenwoordig in elke context voor, ook in onderwijs, gezondheidszorg, werk, noem maar op. Het gaat om de fundamentele en lastige vraag: in hoeverre ben ik de eigenaar van wat ik doe en produceer in de digitale sfeer? Het gaat echt om meer dan alleen copyright. Als je kijkt naar hoe er geld wordt verdiend met sociale media, dan snap je wel dat het ook bij het digitale lezen gaat om het uitmelken van de aanbevelingseconomie. ‘Ik lees Orwell dus ben ik ook geïnteresseerd in Huxley, en zou ik zijn boeken misschien ook wel moeten kopen.’ Ook krijgen aantekeningen maken in een digitaal boek en commentaar leveren met elkaar straks een andere status.

JS Wat verstaan jullie eigenlijk precies onder digitaal publiceren? Hebben we het dan zowel over e-boeken, iPads, digitale webmagzines als Print on Demand, of is een digitale publicatie in jullie visie specifieker?

GL Het gaat ons niet zozeer om de verschillende platforms en technologieën zoals de Kindle van Amazon of iBooks van Apple, maar om het onderzoeken en hoog houden van standaards die in de boekcultuur door de eeuwen heen zijn ontwikkeld. Het gaat over wat een goed geredigeerde tekst is, wat leesbare, gebruiksvriendelijke typografie is. Het gaat ook om de aandacht die we kunnen geven aan een tekst. Hoe lezen we, hoe positioneren we beeld en woord? We weten al heel lang dat het boek multimediaal gaat worden, maar hoe gaat dat precies? Wat is het belang van de illustratie en de plaats van voetnoten in een tijd dat je alles kunt illustreren met video en ieder woord kan worden uitgelegd via een link naar Wikipedia? De kennis die hierover al is opgedaan, wordt op dit moment omgezet naar digitale omgevingen, maar wat vinden wij daarvan? Welke nieuwe elementen kunnen we eraan toevoegen zonder de gehele schriftcultuur overboord te zetten? Welke nieuwe mogelijkheden zijn er om verwijzingen te maken? Wanneer is een verwijzing productief, wanneer niet? Een voorbeeld: er wordt nu vaak gedacht dat we bij digitaal lezen voortdurend worden afgeleid en dat het alleen maar gaat om ‘distributed attention’. Maar vroeger bestond de vraag hoe mensen hun aandacht bij het boek of de tekst kunnen houden ook al. De Duitse mediawetenschapster Petra Loeffler heeft hier interessant onderzoek naar gedaan (Zie voor informatie over haar onderzoek: www.uni-weimar.de/cms/?id=22734). Vandaag de dag is het door de ons omringende communicatieprogramma’s echter wel moeilijker om die concentratie op te brengen. Dus de technieken die ons moeten helpen om ons te concentreren moeten verfijnder worden. Op veel e-readers kun je instellen of je afgeleid wilt worden door sociale media of niet. Er wordt dus heel veel teruggeworpen naar de individuele gebruiker: jij moet het zelf aangeven. Wil je toegang tot Facebook, meer of minder licht, een andere letter? Het gaat om digitale geletterdheid, iets wat we allemaal individueel moeten uitvinden en leren (en wat in Nederland ongelukkigerwijs ‘mediawijsheid’ is genoemd). Wat wij in ons onderzoek kunnen doen is deze dingen systematisch uitzoeken: hoe zit het nu met dit platform? En waar loop je als vormgever nou tegenaan bij dit of dat format?

JS Kunstpublicaties zijn relatief marginaal en kwetsbaar in de boekenmarkt. Beschouw je het kunst- en cultuurtijdschrift als een aparte categorie, met eigen organisatorische, financiële en inhoudelijke vragen ten aanzien van digitaal publiceren?

GL Op dit moment nog niet per se. Ik denk wel dat er vanuit de kunsten veel behoefte is om het gesproken woord en het bewegende beeld dichter bij elkaar te brengen. Op dat gebied zal er nog heel wat gaan worden geëxperimenteerd. Misschien zal zich een nieuw genre kunstpublicatie ontvouwen, als een opvolging van het foto-essay of de essayachtige documentaire. Denk aan de korte YouTube- en Wikipedia-filmpjes, die in een paar seconden of in een paar minuten een complex probleem, een begrip, een geschiedenis uitleggen. Op dit gebied staat ons nog heel wat te wachten. En het is onze taak om al die experimenten, expertises en technologieën op een heel poëtische en verleidelijke, maar toch dwingende manier samen te brengen. Kunstpublicaties zouden meer vrijheid moeten claimen en zich moeten mengen in het experimenteerveld. Waarom zijn veel kunstenaars zo conservatief, stellen ze geen vragen en houden zich afzijdig als het gaat om de media-architectuur van de toekomst? Kunsttijdschriften moeten net als in het interbellum weer een avant-garde positie innemen. Toen ging het om typografie, nu gaat het om technische formats.

JS In Nederland lijkt er momenteel sprake van een crisis van het gedrukte kunst- en cultuurtijdschrift. Dit komt deels doordat de subsidies acuut zijn weggevallen. Maar is het sowieso nog van deze tijd om op de traditionele wijze, zowel in technische als in inhoudelijke zin, over kunst en cultuur te publiceren? Is ook niet aan de orde dat een gedrukt kunsttijdschrift een ouderwetse expertcultuur reflecteert en een omgang met beeld en tekst die onder druk staan van de op participatie en interactie gerichte digitale cultuur? Zijn kunsttijdschriften hierdoor niet gedwongen om hun werkwijze en positie te herzien?

GL Ja zeker. In de kunst- en cultuurwereld gaat het inderdaad nog erg om een gesloten expertcultuur. Het is niet gewenst dat anderen zich daarin mengen, want het gaat er uiteindelijk om wat beleidsmakers en verzamelaars vinden. Men is behoorlijk elitair en bang voor de mening van buiten. Ik denk zelf dat het creëren van urgentie één van de grootste uitdagingen voor een hedendaagse redactie en zeker ook voor een kunstredactie is. Die urgentie kan niet meer voortkomen uit het geven van informatie, want informatie kunnen we inmiddels overal vinden, en informatievoorziening doen andere, snellere (sociale) media veel beter. Dan kom je toch uit bij het publiceren van achtergrondverhalen en debat. Dus de tijdschriften zouden zich meer moeten richten op de context. Voor mij is een voorbeeld op het gebied van cultuur, dat onder de nieuwe voorwaarden van publiceren tot stand komt, de online Los Angeles Review of Books (lareviewofbooks.org). Ook kan je denken aan een kunst- en theorievariant van Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com/news). E-Flux Journal is dat nu een beetje maar hun aanpak is erg gedateerd, aangezien zij geen discussie- en aanbevelingscomponent hebben (www.e-flux.com/journals/).

JS In de digitale cultuur kan inderdaad iedereen consument én producent zijn en zijn/haar zegje doen. Iedereen kan beelden en teksten publiceren, al is het maar in de vorm van Tweets. Is dat de affirmatieve digitale cultuur van ‘liken’ en ‘trashen’? Hoe moeten publicatieplatforms over kunst en de ‘serieuze’ kunst- en cultuurkritiek zich hiertoe verhouden?

GL Ik zie juist het belang van interactief en online discussiëren en daar kunnen dergelijke applicaties iets aan bijdragen. Ik denk dat er nog veel te winnen valt door het verder ontwikkelen, niet alleen van een soort ‘netiquette’, maar van een geavanceerde en kritische experimenteercultuur. De angst voor populaire cultuur is onterecht en al decennia geleden bekritiseerd. Door eraan vast te houden ontwijk je je verantwoordelijkheid. Hoe kunnen we met elkaar van mening verschillen en discussiëren? Het gaat niet alleen om ‘trash-cultuur’. Op populistische websites als geenstijl.nl is het degraderen van elkaar echt uit de hand gelopen en daar valt een hoop van te leren. Het gaat ook om het ontwikkelen van nieuwe technische en redactionele vaardigheden. Bijvoorbeeld om goed te kunnen omgaan met filters en om vaardigheden te kunnen toepassen waarmee je op een snellere manier inhoud kunt samenvatten en op een snellere manier kunt overzien en bevatten wat je voor je hebt. Vroeger waren we veel meer afhankelijk van de vaardigheden van professionele critici, schrijvers, journalisten, van ‘gatekeepers’, om zicht te krijgen op de algemene sfeer in de maatschappij. Nu wordt dat steeds meer aan onszelf overgelaten. Ik zie dit als uitdaging en niet alleen als vervlakking.

JS Wordt er op kunstacademies en hun ontwerpafdelingen wel genoeg aandacht besteed aan nieuwe vormen van ontwerpen en publiceren in een culturele context?

GL Niet genoeg. De ontwerpafdelingen op kunstacademies houden zich bezig met websites vormgeven, maar nog zelden met e-boeken en e-publiceren. De trend blijft het maken van leuke boekjes van papier. Door de aarzeling aan de kant van kunstenaars en ontwerpers mist de digitale boekenbranche nog een artistieke en experimentele component. Het is ofwel vrij commercieel, of vrij technisch. Juist de kunstzinnige kant ervan blijft nog onderbelicht. Maar er zijn ook andere oorzaken: Je zou kunnen denken dat er veel werk aan de winkel is voor een nieuwe generatie ontwerpers, maar dit is op dit moment niet het geval omdat overal gebruikgemaakt wordt van standaard templates. Zolang mensen blijven geloven in gecentraliseerde platforms (veelal in Amerikaanse handen) zal er weinig gebeuren.

JS Bij de debatten rond de toekomst van het kunst- en cultuurtijdschrift is een steeds terugkerende vraag: “Wat is dan het verdienmodel als we online gaan of een e-boek worden?”

GL We zien in de boeken- en uitgeefbranche het verval van het traditionele verdien- en productiemodel, waarin een uitgever een materieel object, een boek of tijdschrift, fabriceert, distribueert en verkoopt op vaste fysieke plekken en volgens vaste afspraken, terwijl de online verdienmogelijkheden zich nog niet volledig hebben bewezen. In de nieuwe situatie wordt de gebruiker/consument veel bepalender bij wat hij wanneer en waar wil kopen en voor welke prijs. Vandaag was wel het goede nieuws op de radio dat dankzij streaming-diensten als Spotify de muziekindustrie voor het eerst in tien jaar weer winst maakt – al maakt Spotify dan zelf nog geen winst. Dit zou de boekenmarkt ook kunnen overkomen, dat het oude en nieuwe elkaar gaan versterken. We kunnen er ook van uitgaan dat er het een en ander gaat gebeuren zodra er een werkende inter-netvaluta is (zoals Bitcoin (nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin) ) en betalingen van kleine bedragen automatisch verlopen. Crowdfunding kan ook een rol gaan spelen bij het schrijven van boeken die dan vervolgens, zodra ze af zijn, gratis kunnen worden verspreid.

JS Het Spotify-model bestaat eigenlijk uit tijdelijk weggeven van inhoud om dan vervolgens voor het gebruik te laten betalen. Zie jij iets dergelijks ook voor je in het geval van kunstpublicaties? Deze sector is doorgaans niet gewend in termen van winst te denken, omdat er altijd relatief veel gesubsidieerd werd – de publicatie en/of de auteur. Nu dat wegvalt moet men wel over alternatieven nadenken …

GL Absoluut. Er zijn nog economische beperkingen en daarom ook veel teleurstellingen. Men heeft niet goed opgelet en niet op tijd maatregelen genomen om op doordachte wijze te kunnen aansluiten bij het digitale domein. Er is in principe genoeg ruimte voor nieuwe verdienmodellen. Om ze te ontdekken en te kunnen gebruiken, zullen makers echter wel op een andere manier moeten gaan werken. En er zal bijvoorbeeld een veel duidelijkere politieke lobby op gang moeten komen om kunstenaars en vormgevers een vaste plaats te geven binnen bedrijven en instellingen. Het idee van de autonome kunstenaar die het liefst alleen gelaten wil worden om zijn/haar ding te doen, maar daar wel voor betaald wil worden door de gemeenschap, moet worden losgelaten. Het blijft nog zoeken en experimenteren, vooral binnen de meer kritische en onafhankelijke cultuur. Bij ons instituut zijn we nu een project begonnen, Moneylab, dat zich met alternatieve verdienmodellen bezighoudt: mobiele betalingen, crowdfunding, Bitcoin en andere internetvaluta zullen hierin centraal staan. Het gaat ook over hoe nieuwe ‘peer-to-peer’ mobiele betalingssystemen de positie van bestaande banken en het geldmonopolie van de staat ondergraven.

JS Het afgelopen decennium was er op internet ook een bepaalde cultuur waarin werd gepropageerd dat alle online content, beelden, muziek, films, software, gratis te downloaden zou moeten zijn. Ik las een uitspraak van jou waarin je stelt dat deze ‘ideology of the free’ funest is voor professionele makers. Je zegt: “What we instead need is an alternative economy, one in which artists and creative producers are financially rewarded directly, without ‘middle men’, for instance through micro-payments (blog.p2pfoundation.net/geert-lovink-on-free-culture-and-artists-revenues/2010/06/07).”

GL Inderdaad. En het online ‘peer-to-peer’ betalen van kleine bedragen wordt ook steeds makkelijker. Ik denk dat we ons over een tijdje ook helemaal niet meer kunnen voorstellen dat eens alles gratis was, of dat men vond dat het dat zou moeten zijn. Die gratiscultuur lijkt heel aantrekkelijk, maar is juist heel destructief. ‘Free culture’ is ook iets heel anders dan ‘open source’. Het laatste betekent vrije toegang tot de broncodes, en dat is van groot belang om kennis met elkaar te kunnen delen en dingen te kunnen ontwikkelen, te kunnen maken. Met elkaar informatie kunnen delen is een recht.

JS Kun je iets vertellen over de Digital Publishing Toolkit, waaraan jullie nu werken? Op de website staat dat veel uitgevers in de kunst- en cultuursector onbekend zijn met de nieuwste ontwikkelingen op het gebied van digitaal publiceren en uitgeven: “They do not have the knowledge, resources and capacities to develop new methods of digital publishing and participate in the digital market. Moreover, the art and culture books have an extra challenge, because form and content are deeply intertwined (networkcultures.org/digitalpublishing/aboutus).”

GL De Digital Publishing Toolkit is toegepast onderzoek dat wij hier op de Hogeschool van Amsterdam doen. We werken er nu hard aan en willen het pakket volgend jaar beschikbaar stellen. De onderzoeksvraag is op de site als volgt geformuleerd: “In what way can a platform be created with new tools for open source-publishing, by which publishers in the art- and cultural sector can produce interactive e-publications by themselves?” We proberen ervaring met alle mogelijke platforms bij elkaar te brengen, zodat uitgevers en ontwerpers die graag willen beginnen met digitaal publiceren daarvan kunnen leren. PDF, EPUB, web apps, e-readers en tablets, smartphones, enz. Windows komt met nieuwe standaarden en er is ook een nieuwe open source standaard van Ubuntu. Het gebied dijt steeds verder uit. Potentiële makers zien door al die verschillende platformen en technologieën door de bomen het bos niet meer. De toolkit is dus bedoeld om ontwikkelaars, ontwerpers, kunstenaars en uitgevers die zelf digitaal willen gaan publiceren te helpen de juiste keuzes te maken. Uiteindelijk zal iedereen de gereedschappen kunnen kopiëren, aanpassen en distribueren. BIS Publishers, Valiz, nai010 Uitgevers doen mee aan de kant van de Nederlandse kunstuitgevers. De participanten werken in vijf deelgroepen aan elektronische publicaties die als voorbeeldprojecten dienen. We zullen eind 2014 een handleiding presenteren voor hoe je als uitgever/producent met de veelheid aan platformen en mogelijkheden om kunt gaan.

JS De toolkit is dus zowel bedoeld voor professionele kunstuitgeverijen als voor onafhankelijke ‘self publishing’ door schrijvers, vormgevers of kunstenaars?

GL Ja, de professionele uitgeverijen hebben wat dit betreft geen voorsprong op een kunstenaar of schrijver bijvoorbeeld, die onafhankelijk zelf een publicatie produceert. Ze kunnen over dezelfde technologie en programmatuur beschikken. Bij de Digital Publishing Toolkit gaat het echter vooral om de samenwerking tussen uitgevers en ontwerpers. Sommigen denken dat alles in het productieproces van digitaal publiceren al is geautomatiseerd, maar op dit moment is het handmatige aanpassen, het exporteren, coderen en controleren nog heel erg belangrijk. En de juiste keuzes maken dus, aangaande platform, format, opmaaktaal en software. Als je nu bijvoorbeeld het formaat EPUB niet serieus neemt, dan vergeet je wel dat het momenteel dé standaard is op alle smart-phones. En er wordt meer en meer gelezen via de smartphone. Dus als je EPUB aan je voorbij laat gaan dan sluit je al die smartphone-gebruikers uit.

JS Beschouw je de Digital Publishing Toolkit als een neutrale set gereedschappen of moet er ook een democratiserende werking van uitgaan? Er zijn in de uitgeef- en boekenwereld en in de e-culture business immers dwingende monopolies en machtsverhoudingen. Heb jij als mediatheoreticus met een activistische achtergrond ook een kritische inzet?

GL Wij zijn ons heel erg bewust van de grote, maatschappelijke en commerciële belangen die werkzaam zijn en dat die uiteindelijk zullen bepalen welke standaard algemeen gebruikt gaat worden. Met de Digital Publishing Toolkit willen we de kunstuitgeverijen en makers vooral helpen om mee te blijven spelen, en uiteindelijk: om te overleven. Ik vind dat ontwerpers aan de bak moeten en dat zij bovenop de technologische ontwikkelingen moeten zitten. De vormgeving, de esthetiek en de esthetische ervaring van het boek is heel belangrijk. Als de artistieke makers afhaken dan leidt dat de facto tot verarming, die nog veel verder zal rijken dan alleen de visuele, sensuele ervaring van het boek. Vormgevers moeten actief betrokken zijn en zichzelf zien als drivers van deze ontwikkelingen en niet als slachtoffer.

JS Dit is toch een heel geëngageerde inzet, een oproep tot participatie?

GL Ja, maar het gaat niet per se om een bevrijdende ervaring van de maker of de lezer. Want ik denk dat we daar al heel ver in zijn. Het is nu juist het gevaar dat we eindigen met een heel beperkte hoeveelheid van dominante standaarden, die leidt tot een verarming van het kunst- en cultuurboek, van haar diversiteit, en uiteindelijk van de kritische leescultuur. Dat is wat wij moeten zien te voorkomen. Denk aan bijvoorbeeld de invloed die een firma als Adobe op dit moment heeft op de vormgeving. Daar kun je vraagtekens bij zetten. JS Bestaat er voor jou iets als de ‘politiek van het uitgeven’?

GL Uitgeven heeft altijd te maken met keuzes maken, met welke technologie of welk platform je ook werkt. En er moet tijd en geld worden geïnvesteerd in processen als het redigeren, het opmaken en het verzorgen van het boek of de publicatie. Als er dus zoiets is als de ‘politiek van het uitgeven’ dan gaat die over de allocatie van schaarse, financiële middelen ten bate van een diversiteit. En om ervoor te zorgen dat er een bepaalde complexiteit bereikt kan worden in het vertoog, en dat die in de maatschappij en in het onderwijs kan worden gereproduceerd en gedistribueerd. Het uitgeven speelt een verantwoordelijke rol in de kennis en de verfijnde taal die het mogelijk maakt om onze gevoelens, meningen en reflecties adequaat uit te drukken. En dat is een heel politieke rol.

JS In Nederland is gezegd: “Kunsttijdschriften krijgen geen subsidies meer”. En er is dus die angst dat het verliezen van subsidies wellicht een deprofessionalisering en een vervlakking in de hand zou werken. Omdat er minder geld is, moet je goedkoper materiaal gaan gebruiken, of oud materiaal hergebruiken, of kun je auteurs bijna niets meer betalen, of je moet met partijen samenwerken die andere belangen hebben, enz. Zijn wij wel voldoende in staat om onze oude denk- en werkwijzen los te laten en tot nieuwe oplossingen te komen?

GL Een publicatie moet toch een bepaalde kritische massa bereiken, want dan is er ook de mogelijkheid om tot een bepaalde complexiteit komen en die te handhaven. Dus één van de dingen die zou moeten gebeuren is dat redacties, uitgevers en schrijvers zich beter gaan organiseren, om zo met elkaar die kritische massa in bepaalde gebieden te bereiken. Dan treedt die verschraling waar jij het over hebt minder op. Als je graag wilt dat kunst en cultuur een meer kritisch, complex en rijk vertoog vertegenwoordigen, dan zul je mensen bij elkaar moeten brengen in een soort dwingende verbanden waarin zowel duidelijk wordt wat het gemeenschappelijke is als wat de verschillen zijn. JS Het Nederlandse cultuurbeleid is op dit moment zeer vaag. Denk je dat de bevindingen die jullie doen op het gebied van digitaal publiceren verdisconteerd zouden moeten worden in een nieuw cultuurbeleid? Zouden het Mondriaanfonds en de andere fondsen actiever kunnen meewerken aan een omslag of aan het tot stand brengen van die dwingende verbanden?

GL Een van de grote problemen binnen het huidige cultuurbeleid is dat beeldende kunst en design tegen elkaar worden uitgespeeld. En dit breekt alles af wat we in de afgelopen decennia in Nederland hebben opgebouwd. Design zonder beeldende kunst bestaat helemaal niet en beeldende kunst heeft altijd een toegepast element.

JS Bedoel je dat deze gebieden op dit moment op niet-productieve wijze tegen elkaar worden uit gespeeld ten bate van het denken in termen van de markt en de zogenaamde creatieve industrie? En dat hierdoor nieuwe ontwikkelingen en mogelijkheden in het digitaal publiceren en uitgeven niet in al hun dimensies kunnen worden uitgewerkt?

GL Ja. De vragen die op tafel liggen zijn groot en die kunnen we alleen maar gezamenlijk oplossen, en niet door deze twee domeinen tegen elkaar op te zetten. Het is volstrekt kunstmatig om ze los van elkaar te zien. De discussie gaat niet over die goede, autonome beeldende kunst die zo zielig is en niet op eigen benen kan staan, en ook niet over de boosaardige, creatieve industrie. Het gaat over het feit dat ze niet in relatie tot elkaar gezien worden. Eigenlijk gaat het om een boze droom. Laten we deze desastreuze fase zo snel mogelijk afsluiten!

Jorinde Seijdel is auteur, redacteur, spreker, adviseur en kunsttheoreticus. Ze is hoofdredacteur van Open! Platform voor Kunst, Cultuur & het Publieke Domein. Momenteel is ze docent bij de Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam en theoriementor bij het Dutch Art Institute (MFA ArtEZ) in Arnhem. Seijdel is ook adviseur bij de Adviescommissie Beeldende Kunst en Vormgeving van de gemeente Utrecht.

Geert Lovink is mediatheoreticus en internetcriticus. Sinds 2004 is hij lector aan de Hogeschool van Amsterdam. Zijn lectoraat is het Instituut voor Netwerkcultuur (www.networkcultures.org) waar onderzoek wordt gedaan naar online video, sociale media, Wikipedia, zoekmachines, verdienmodellen, publieke schermen en de creatieve industrie. Lovink is ook professor Mediatheorie aan de European Graduate School in Saas-Fee (Zwitserland) en is verbonden aan het Centre for Digital Culture van de Leuphana Universität in Lüneburg (Duitsland). Zijn recente boeken zijn ‘Zero Comments’ uit 2007 en ‘Networks Without a Cause’ uit 2012, beide verschenen in het Engels, Duits en Italiaans.

Embedding a Custom Set of Metadata Based on Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Into a MultiMarkdown Document

By Silvio Lorusso, October 9, 2013 at 3:57 pm.

(updated on the 21st of October)

— INC subgroup

In this post I’ll treat the issues that emerge from the proposal of embedding a custom set of metadata, based on the Dublin Core standard, within a MultiMarkdown document.

The metadata set here employed is an extremely simplified version of what it is needed in our research project, but it gives anyway several insights that are useful in the definition of a more complex set.

The work is divided in 2 phases:

the set of metadata is defined into a Dublin Core Application Profile (DCAP);

the ways to insert the DCAP within a MultiMarkdown document are discussed.

What Metadata?

Metadata tied to workflow and production. Those allow to structure a text in such a way that, with the help of a style sheet, different kinds of output technologies (and formats) can be used.

Metadata as the translation table between the tags under 1. and the output appearance. E.g. This is a Title has a related list in which it is stipulated that on paper words in the field title are printed Bold face in Green. In the same list it is stipulated that on a B&W e-reader it is only Bold.

Metadata for keywords and classifications. Here a word or small noun-phrase is tagged with a tag that is coupled to a glossary orontology in which the meaning of the term is given. E.g. <glossA23>Spinach</glossA23> means the word spinach according to glossary A (vegetables) is defined in field 23.

Metadata that deal with navigation e.g. anchors in an hypertext environment.

Why Embedding Metadata into MMD?

Embedding Metadata directly into MMD means that:

the context of a document is bound to its content, so even if the document is considered in itself it still tells its context (author, date, etc.);

the one who inserts the metadata only needs to know the MMD syntax so that she can use her preferred software to compile a document;

the one who inserts the metadata could use –but is not bound to– any interface with custom forms.

An index of all the documents is then created according to a “media player” model (already used for e-books like in tools like Calibre). The metadata of each document are directly extracted and updated each time a document is modified.

A Simplified Version of the Metadata Set Mapped to Dublin Core

Following the Dublin Core’s MyBookCase example we define a simplified version of our metadata set by creating a Dublin Core Application Profile (DCAP).

Functional Requirements

First we list the functional requirements for our DCAP:

Retrieve articles through a title or an author search;

Sort retrieved items by publication date;

Sort retrieved items by editing date;

Provide the author’s name and affiliation for contact purposes.

Sort different typologies of articles, such as blogposts or essays;

Arrange the articles according to the project they belong to;

Retrieve a certain part of an article, such as the abstract;

Retrieve specific information within the text, such as names of people or organizations that are mentioned into it.

Domain Model

Then we develop a domain model:

The domain model for IncPubBeta has 3 things: Projects, Articles and Persons (the authors of the articles). The domain model therefore consists of:

An Article that belongs to a Project and is authored by a Person.

Domain Model

Now we select or define metadata:

An Article:

may have a Title;

may have a Publication Date;

may have an Edited Date;

may have a Type (blogpost or essay);

may have an Abstract;

may have one or more Agents mentioned (such as people or organizations);

may have a Parent project;

may have one or more Authors.

A Parent is a Project that has:

a Title;

An Author is a Person that has:

a Name;

an Affiliation.

Metadata Evaluation

At this stage we evaluate the possibilty to use terms from existing vocabularies in our DCPA:

Article

For the Title we can use dcterms:title, simply defined as “A name given to the resource”. It takes a free text as value.

Publication Date is mapped to dcterms:date, formatted according to the W3C Date and Time Formats Specification.

Edited Date is mapped to dcterms:modified, formatted according to the W3C Date and Time Formats Specification.

Type is mapped to dcterms:type, defined as “the nature or genre of the resource”. It uses a domain specific vocabulary limited in our case to the following values:

Essay;

Blogpost.

Abstract is mapped to dcterms:abstract and it is defined as ”a summary of the resource”.

Agent is mapped to foaf:agent and it is defined as ”an agent (eg. person, group, software or physical artifact)”.

Parent is mapped to dcterms:isPartOf, defined as “a related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included”. It is used with a non-literal value in order to be described with multiple components.

Author is mapped to [dcterms:creators][dcdatesub], defined as “an entity primarily responsible for making the resource“. It is used with a non-literal value in order to be described with multiple components.

Parent as Project

Title is mapped to dcterms:title and it takes a free text as value.

Author as Person:

Name is mapped to foaf:name (part of the FOAF vocabulary), defined as “a name for some thing”.

Affiliation is mapped to foaf:workplaceHomepage(part of the FOAF vocabulary), defined as “a workplace homepage of some person; the homepage of an organization they work for”. It takes the URL of the workplace as value.

Summary

Two vocabularies are used in our DCAP:

DCMI Metadata Terms;

FOAF Vocabulary.

Description Set Profile

We design our Metadata Record, called IncPubBeta, with a Description Set Profile (DSP) which is technology-agnostic.

DescriptionSet: IncPubBeta
    Description template: Article
    minimum = 1; maximum = unlimited
        Statement template: title
        minimum = 1; maximum = 1
            Property: http://purl.org/dc/terms/title
            Type of Value = "literal"
        Statement template: dateCreated
        minimum = 1; maximum = 1
            Property: http://purl.org/dc/terms/created
            Type of Value = "literal"
            Syntax Encoding Scheme URI = http://purl.org/dc/terms/W3CDTF
        Statement template: dateModified
        minimum = 1; maximum = 1
            Property: http://purl.org/dc/terms/modified
            Type of Value = "literal"
            Syntax Encoding Scheme URI = http://purl.org/dc/terms/W3CDTF
        Statement template: type
        minimum = 1; maximum = 1
            Property: http://purl.org/dc/terms/type
            Type of Value = "literal"
            takes list = yes
        Statement template: abstract
        minimum = 1; maximum = 1
            Property: http://purl.org/dc/terms/abstract
            Type of Value = "literal"
        Statement template: agent
        minimum = 0; maximum = unlimited
            Property: http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/agent
            Type of Value = "literal"
        Statement template: parent
        minimum = 0; maximum = unlimited
            Property: http://purl.org/dc/terms/isPartOf
            Type of Value = "non-literal"
            defined as = project
        Statement template: author
        minimum = 0; maximum = unlimited
            Property: http://purl.org/dc/terms/creator
            Type of Value = "non-literal"
            defined as = person

    Description template: Project id=project
    minimum = 1; maximum = unlimited
        Statement template: title
        minimum = 1; maximum = 1
            Property: http://purl.org/dc/terms/title
            Type of Value = "literal"

    Description template: Person id=person
    minimum = 1; maximum = unlimited
        Statement template: name
            Property: http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name
            minimum = 1; maximum = 1
            Type of Value = "literal"
        Statement template: affiliation
            Property: http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/name
            minimum = 1; maximum = 1
            Type of Value = “non-literal"
            value URI = mandatory

Support for Metadata in MultiMarkdown

MultiMarkdown features the possibility to insert metadata at the beginning of the document in the following way:

Title: This is the title
Author: John Doe
Affiliation: MIT

Comparison Between our DCAP and MultiMarkdown Default Metadata

In the comparison between our DCAP and MultiMarkdown default metadata set we will particularly consider two aspects:

legibility, which is a key issue in Markdown language;

adherence to a shared standard for defining metadata.

Article’s Title

Title could be seamlessly mapped to Title metadata, present in MultiMarkdown and defined as follows.

Used to provide the official title of a document. This is set as the string within the <head> section of an HTML document, and is also used by other export formats.

Title: This is my title

Publication Date

Publication Date could be seamlessly mapped to Date metadata, present in MultiMarkdown and defined as follows.

Provide a date for the document.

Even though MMD doesn’t provide any particular way to fomat dates, it is preferable to adhere to W3C Dates and Times Formats.

Date: 2012-10-08

Edited Date

There is no metadata similar to Edited Date in MMD. So I propose Modified metadata to stick with the DC syntax.

Modified: 2013-10-08

Type

There is no metadata similar to Type in MMD. So we propose Type metadata to stick with the DC syntax. It allows for a custom vocabulary.

Type: Blogpost

Parent Project’s Title

There is no metadata similar to Parent in MMD. So I propose Project to give an immediate idea of what this metadata is about.

Project: My project’s Title

Author’s Name

The Name of an Author could be seamlessly mapped to Author metadata, present in MultiMarkdown and defined as follows.

Self-explanatory. I strip this out to provide an author string to LaTeX documents. Also used as the sender for letterhead and envelope templates.

Author: John Doe

Author’s Affiliation

The Affiliation of an Author could be seamlessly mapped to Affiliation metadata, present in MultiMarkdown and defined as follows.

Use this to include an organization that the author is affiliated with, e.g. a university, company, or organization.

In our case we will limit the values to URLs.

Affiliation: http://www.international.hva.nl/

This is off course problematic in case the workplace homepage moves to another address.

The Affiliation is dependent to a specific Author, so ways to express this dependency are needed., specifically in case of multiple authors.

Affiliation Consequent to Name

A possibility could be to insert Affiliation consequently to Author, like in the following example.

Author: John Doe
Affiliation: http://www.international.hva.nl/
Author: Mario Rossi
Affiliation: http://www.unimi.it/

Abstract

In order to identify the Abstract within a MMD document, it is necessary to implement some extra syntax. Following there are some references and possibilities listed.

LaTEX

In LaTEX an Abstract is identified in the following way.

begin{abstract}
Your abstract goes here

end{abstract}

This could be simplified for MMD in the following way.

abstract
Your abstract goes here

In this case a blank line would represent the end of the abstract. The advantage of this solution would be that the abstract is not written more than once. The solution is not MMD compatible.

Pandoc’s Markdown

The software Pandoc has an extended Markdown syntax that includes the possibility to insert an abstract within a YAML object in the following way:

---
abstract: |
  This is the abstract.

  It consists of two paragraphs.

---

#{abstract}

The syntax is conflicting with MMD because --- is used to draw an horizontal line.

HTML5

Another possibility could be to insert the abstract within a section tag.

     This is the abstract.

     It consists of two paragraphs.

The solution doesn’t conflict with MMD and allows to write the abstract only once. The main drawback is on the readability of the text.

Agent

As for the abstract, a way to tag Agents (such as people, organizations, institutions) within the document is desirable. Following there are some references and possibilities listed.

LaTEX

LaTEX uses the following way to define nouns.

noun{Jack} and noun{Joe Bloggs} went up the hill.

A simple way to do this in MMD could be the following.

[Jack]{agent} and [Joe Bloggs]{agent} went up the hill.

And in the case of having a link to tag as agent, one could do like this:

[Jack](http://jack.com){agent} went up the hill.

The solution, similar to Markdown Extra’s Special Attributes, is only a proposal and it doesn’t work in MMD.

Semantic MediaWiki

In Semantic MediaWiki, an extension to MediaWiki, it is possible to tag links and normal text in the following ways.

This article has the following agent: [[Agent::John Doe]].

This article has the following agent: [[Has Agent::John Doe]].

A possible solution in MMD would be to keep the syntax as is, even though the result is less legible.

HTML5

Another possibility could be to insert the agent within a span tag.

This is an agent: Bruno Latour.

The solution doesn’t conflict with MMD. The main drawback is again the readability of the text.

Example of the Whole Set within MMD

Here’s an example of the whole set of metadata as proposed above. In the case of Abstract and Agent, the HTML5 solutions are employed.

Title: This is my title
Date: 2012-10-08
Modified: 2013-10-08
Type: Blogpost
Project: My project’s Title
Author: John Doe
Affiliation: http://www.international.hva.nl/
Author: Mario Rossi
Affiliation: http://www.unimi.it/

    This is the abstract.

    It consists of two paragraphs.

# “This is my title”
## Part of *My project’s Title*

This is an agent: Bruno Latour.

Conclusions

Even though the proposed scenario that employs HTML5 is fully functional within MMD, some issue regarding the legibility of code (main concern while using MMD) do arise. In order to extract the metadata correctly, a preprocessor is anyway needed. A possibility not treated in the post is to include DC metadata directly as HTML header. This solution was consciously avoided because it totally breaks the legibility.

Resources

Guidelines for Dublin Core Application Profiles;

Dublin Core User Guide;

MultiMarkdown Syntax Guide;

Sematic Tagging in Markdown;

Additional Markdown We Need in Scholarly Texts by Martin Fenner;

Fountain, a plain text markup language for screenwriting based on Markdown;

Introduction to Semantic MediaWiki.

Translating a paper book design to a simple e-pub design

By Miriam Rasch, October 8, 2013 at 2:15 pm.

A contribution by Meeusontwerpt

The subgroup of Valiz, Meeus Ontwerpt and Puntpixel has set out to create a digital version of two editions in a new series by Valiz called Context Without Walls. The paper versions of Context Without Walls – books containing essays about and works by a contemporary artist – are being designed by Meeus Ontwerpt and are full of design and conversion challenges. Some of these include working with image-filled essays, references in the margins and notes. As starting point we have decided to try and make a simple e-pub that works even on the most primitive devices (like e-readers). This means we cannot do too many crazy things (regarding interactivity, but also with respect to the lay-out). Therefore the result of this simple version will be quite dry. However, by thinking well about details we want to make sure a certain quality and a connection with the original book design are maintained.

What did we do design wise, in order to achieve this? (For images, scroll down)

Convert the print colors to matching RGB colors (of course you cannot see the colors on every device, but we didn’t want to skip the colors completely).

Adjust the cover design to a one-language book (the original book is bilingual).

Start from a single-page design instead of a design in spreads.

Choose open source typefaces (through Google font) that come close to the original typefaces and that work well for the screen (Libre Baskerville instead of Plantin en Cabin instead of Akzidenz Grotesk).

Define styles for the text, titles, subtitles, notes, and keywords that work well for the screen (for instance the use of whitespace and notes, which are not shown in superscript, but in between brackets and in a color).

Set a standard rule for the use of images in between the text: there always must be three small images that form one image together. In this way the images still resemble the small images in the margin of the paper book.

Translate the visual essay in the heart of the paper book into an e-version. For example, in the paper book we use black as a background color, but in the e-pub that could turn out ugly since extra white margins might appear around the screen, that’s why we choose a white background here.

Add a content page in big letters, so it is easily clickable (this content page can exist next to the automatically generated content page of the device).

Add extra features that make the e-pub similar to the paper book, like endpapers.

What is the next step?

Puntpixel is making a generator that creates an e-pub, based on the input of text in mark-up language. The design of the books will be translated into the right CSS styles to use in this generator, so the final e-pub is going to look like the original paper design.

Then we will have a simple e-pub that can be tested on different devices. And the good thing is we also have a system to convert a whole book to an e-pub (since we are working with a series that comes in very handy). The important thing we have to sort out is how to easily make a mark-up document from for instance a Word document.

The next step is to create a more complicated e-pub (e-pub 3), with more possibilities concerning interactivity and layout. Unfortunately such a version won’t be able to work on all the readers / devices. What we would like from such an elaborate e-pub we don’t know yet, that’s something we still have to decide together.

HTML5 and “Digital First” Content Development

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, October 7, 2013 at 10:29 am.

Anyone who truly wants to engage with the challenge posed by [the popularization of tablets] and be a part of evolving the medium of the “book” needs to take seriously the notion of digital-first content development. Being digital first means refusing to make the ebook version of your content an afterthought. The digital format of the book should not be merely a postproduction conversion of print-bound manuscript files; nor should it be an ex post facto “enhanced” version of content that has already been completed— for example, adding in a few video clips at the end of an otherwise static text. From conception to publication, true digital-first content is designed to take full advantage of the capabilities offered by dedicated ereaders, tablets, and smartphones to create something that is native to the platform.

There is no other source content format better suited to the task of developing digital-first content for the diverse ecosystem of ereading devices than HTML5, because you can develop directly for the browser (ereader software engines are effectively specialized Web browsers). As I argue in “The Case for Authoring and Producing Books in (X)HTML5,” authoring in HTML5 makes it “trivial to integrate…digital-first elements directly into the manuscript”

Source: HTML5 is the Future of Book Authorship, The key advantages of the HTML5 platform for authors and publishers by Sanders Kleinfeld, September 19, 2013

“Just say no to ebook CSS and JS” by Baldur Bjarnason

By Silvio Lorusso, October 4, 2013 at 7:49 pm.

An ebook that doesn’t have structure is broken and unacceptable. […] The more I discover about existing publisher ebook production processes, the more I talk to people ‘on the inside’, the clearer it becomes that a substantial portion of existing ebook inventory is quite simply rubbish. No structure. Crap stylesheet. Broken markup. So I propose that ereader vendors simply turn all publisher styles off and never even consider enabling javascript. […] In exchange, what we need you to do is to improve your built-in stylesheets. We need you to support common markup practices like figures and captions, headings and subheadings, horizontal rules that don’t look like a 90s flashback and so on. Best if you support them both in markup patterns and as class-based microformats.

“Just say no to ebook CSS and JS”, Baldur Bjarnason, 2 October 2013

BiblioTech – a modern library

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, October 4, 2013 at 2:21 pm.

The rise of e-books not only poses problems for publishers, it also asks to rethink the position or function of the library. Bexar County’s (Texas) Judge Nelson Wolff envisioned BiblioTech, the first public digital library. A modern library that will ‘store’ just e-books, not physical books.

“Through BiblioTech, residents of Bexar County will be able to access approximately 10,000 current titles through e-readers that they can check out to take home or read on the premises.  Residents will also be able to use their own e-readers or tablets to access the collection.”1

Conceptual renderings of Bexar County's digital-only BilblioTech library Bexar County Commissioners Court.<br /> Conceptual renderings of Bexar County’s digital-only BilblioTech library Bexar County Commissioners Court

If we have to believe the image above, this modern library will look a lot like Apple stores. It will be filled with aisles of computers and gadgets instead of physical books. It is great that BiblioTech tries to bring these services to people who do not necessarily have access to technologies to read e-books. However, when a library is not limited by the amount of books it can physically store, or exchange between several nearby libraries, then why is there still a limit of 10.000 current titles? How modern is this concept of a library?

When moving from physical books to e-books there is no real limitation to the amount of books you can offer to the public. Current costumer hard drives of one terabyte allow you to store 500,000,000 pages of reading. More than you can read in a lifetime. And for instance P2P systems like Kazaa or Limewire allow you to access and share these files through the Internet. Moreover, e-books can be copied endlessly. You don’t need to return your copy to the library so someone else can borrow it as well. You can keep your ‘personal’ copy and even add notes and annotations, and in this manner create your personal library.

The limitation of 10.000 books thus seems to be build around proprietary regimes and copyright laws that limit the exchange of knowledge instead of allowing the free flow of easily copied, shared and stored e-books. From this perspective the library is seen as a warehouse that stocks information and ideas, managing the rights to lent these books to you. Essentially it limits the amount of information you can access instead of opening it up. Instead of rethinking the possibilities of a digital library, BiblioTech copies the tactics of the libraries we already know – it seems you even have to return the e-books you ‘lent’.

However, a more intriguing concept that helps to rethink the function of the library, and look beyond these principles of copyright, is the ‘personal portable library’ conceptualized by Henry Warwick. He will publish the essay ‘Sharing is Caring’ within the network notebooks series of the Institute of Network Cultures about this topic shortly.

His concept builds on the fact that it is now more easy than ever to copy and share e-books, or more specifically to share complete libraries stored on one single hard drive neatly managed and preferable with a directory to help retrieve the books. He builds on older notions of the library and moves away from the idea of the library as warehouse. As he explains the older libraries were copy-making centers, copying every clay tablet or papyrus roll they could gather. This changed when the printing press mechanized the process of copying books.

“With this mechanisation came several changes to the purpose and meaning of the library. As a printing press was an expensive piece of gear, there was a high investment cost in printing books. The result was the development of copyright laws to protect the interests of capital and its investment in production. Libraries ceased to be centres of copying and became warehouses of information.”2

Creating a digital library as yet another place to gate keep our access to copyrighted material is in a sense very modern, but e-books allow us to exploit the original role of libraries as copy-centres as explained by Warnick. Instead of copying one book per month we can copy whole libraries in an hour or less. So why go to an all digital library if you can only read 10.000 books?

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bookless-public-library-texas-home-bibliotech/story?id=18213091back

Warwick, Henry. (2013) ‘Sharing is Caring, the radical tactics of the offline’ Forthcoming within INC’s Network Notebook series.back

Readmill – Social E-Books

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, September 3, 2013 at 2:46 pm.

Michael Grothaus, a technology journalist, talked to Henrik Beggren, CEO of a small but growing app Readmill. In his article E-Books Could Be The Future Of Social Media he describes how Readmill approaches e-books as “its own self-contained social network”, and how this can change book publishing on different levels.

“Talking with him, I discovered that compared to what Readmill is planning, today’s e-books might as well be dusty scrolls of parchment. In the future, e-books are going to explode beyond just containing stories, becoming niche social networks where we discuss our favorite passages with other readers and even authors and publishers buy our data to make more informed decisions. So hold on tight, book lovers. Reading as we know it will soon change, forever.” Source: E-Books Could Be The Future Of Social Media, Michael Grothaus, August 30 2013

Print+Ebook Bundling

By Silvio Lorusso, September 2, 2013 at 3:59 pm.

There are many arguments in favor of including an ebook download with the physical book: it adds value to the physical book, it enables booksellers to sell digital books alongside print (and customers to buy ebooks in shops, where they discover them) and most importantly, it’s just downright convenient. Much like the music industry’s pairing of vinyl records with MP3 downloads, by bundling print and digital, publishers can meet readers’ demand to consume media in both digital and analog forms.

Source: (Ghost in the Machine: Does Print+Ebook Bundling Have a Future?)[http://publishingperspectives.com/2013/08/ghost-in-the-machine-does-printebook-bundling-have-a-future/], Joy Hawley, August 26, 2013.

.Docx to MarkDown using Calibre and Pandoc

By Silvio Lorusso, August 30, 2013 at 2:30 pm.

This post documents the outcomes of a new feature of Calibre available in version 1.0: docx conversion. The docx file is firstly converted to HTMLZ in order to be converted again to MarkDown through Pandoc. An automated version of the process (bash script) is available at the bottom.

We are going to use a test document provided by Calibre team, downloadable here. The document has the following features:

Test Document in .docx, shown in LibreOffice

Inline formatting

Fonts

Paragraph level formatting

Tables

Footnotes & Endnotes

Dropcaps

Links

Table of Contents

Images

Lists

First, we convert the .docx to HTMLZ using Calibre. To do so add the test document to Calibre and right-click to convert it individually.

Choose HTMLZ as output format click OK. You will then find your .htmlz in the containing folder of your document (right-click on the element > Open containing folder).

The HTMLZ is a zip file containing an HTML file along with images, style, etc. Therefore in order to access those files simply change the extensions from .htmlz to .zip and uncompress.

The result of the conversion is pretty decent: except for “Paragraph level formatting”, everything else is preserved, especially footnotes (that were the most labour intensive issue in the previous processes and still not solved).

The HTML document

Let’s now use Pandoc to convert the .html to MarkDown.

pandoc -f html -t markdown -o output.html your_forlder/index.html

Here you can download the output MarkDown file.

The MarkDown output as shown in Mou

Let’s now go through the features.

Inline formatting

Bold and italic are preserved, even though there are problems when they are one next to each other;

Underlined, struck out, superscript, subscript, colors, highlight are not preserved.

Fonts

Paragraph level formatting

Tables

Footnotes & Endnotes

Dropcaps

Links

Table of Contents

Images

Lists

Automated version of the process (bash script)

In order to use the automated version you need:

Calibre’s Command Line Interface activated: On OS X you have to go to Preferences->Advanced->Miscellaneous and click install command line tools to make the command line tools available. On other platforms, just start a terminal and type the command.

An unzip tool: on OS X I use “unzip”.

#!/bin/bash
mkdir temp
cp $1 temp
cd temp
ebook-convert $1 output.htmlz
unzip output.htmlz
cd ..
pandoc -f html -t markdown -o output.md temp/index.html
rm -R temp

Landscape Digital Publishing research PDF

By Arjen de Jong, July 30, 2013 at 3:06 pm.

In cooperation with BIS publishers, Essense kicked off their work with a research PDF that explores the digital publishing landscape.

As we started working on this project we realized that the parties that participate in the ‘consortium’ have different levels of understanding of publishing in the digital realm. Also the field is overflowing with formats, standards and businessmodels. We therefore created a research PDF that firstly introduces the landscape of digital publishing, and secondly looks at research & design issues that are relevant to the publisher (BIS) we are currently working with.

The Landscape PDF can be downloaded here.

Digital-publishing-Journey

A Digital Publication Journey by Essense showing the route from maker(s) to reader, a vizualisation that also indicates players, platforms and Formats.

Our collegues of PuntPixel also created a comprehensive post about Jargon, Platforms & Publication Formats.

Notes on Converting a .doc to MultiMarkdown

By Silvio Lorusso, July 23, 2013 at 6:34 pm.

As stated in a previous post, there is no direct and straightforward tool to convert a .doc to Markdown. Of course the same goes for MultiMarkdown (MMD). In this post I’ll document the process adopted to convert the file, which is partly automated, partly manual. As a test document I use an article that has the following features:

Mou for Mac as editor because it’s a freeware. Metadata I start adding the standard metadata as suggested in the MMD’s guide.

Title:             This is the Title of the Article
Author:            Author Name
Affiliation:       https://twitter.com/AuthorName
Date:              2013
Base Header Level: 1
Copyright:         All Rights Reserved
 In addition to the standard metadata (that are not mandatory), it is possible to add any custom metadata that is needed. Considering that the aim of this would be to have source files to publish articles to different formats such as ePub and PDF, some metadata and attributes can be borrowed from the

specifications of IPDF for ePUB. An example could be the attribute “file as” used to normalise names.

Title:             This is the Title of the Article
Author:            John Doe
Author File As:    Doe, John
Affiliation:       https://twitter.com/AuthorName
Date:              2013
Base Header Level: 1
Copyright:         All Rights Reserved
Subject:           Internet
Description:       This is a long description of the article
                   on more than one line
Publisher:         Institute of Network Cultures
Type:              Article
Language:          English
 The fact that attributes are linked to the main metadata (as "file-as" to "author") adds a level of complexity to the organization of the document and the possible validation of it. The set of "linked" metadata should be of course put one next to another and this can't be shown through a blank line that would signify the end of the metadata part.

Content I get the content, with a basic formatting, using Pandoc in conjunction with textutil (Mac only) as described more in detail here:

Headlines I can now paste the content of “file.md” into the file in which I set the metadata. In the case of this test document, the headlines were simply set in bold; so I needed to correct that. From:

**Title**
**Subtitle**
 To:

#Title
##Subtitle

Footnotes Converting footnotes is pretty annoying because they’re all at the end of the documents but the relative numbers, both in the actual text and outside, are stripped. So I need to find each footnote in the .doc and recreate it in the .md:

Here is some text containing a footnote.[^somesamplefootnote]

[^somesamplefootnote]: Here is the text of the footnote itself.
 Due to the fact that this is done by hand, it is likely that there are mistakes. Generally when this happens the amount of footnotes does not correspond.

Hyperlinks Hyperlinks are easy to add if they are provided with the “http:” or “www” part. In this case a simple regular expression allows to add them:

<&> That makes this:

http://exampleurl.com to this:

&#60;http://exampleurl.com/&#62; Unfortunately Mou doesn't support Regular Expression so I did this with

Coda. The regular expression was tested in real time on RegExr. (Here’s a good starter to Regular Expressions) Blockquotes Blockquotes aren’t indicated in any way in the converted document, so it’s necessary to find them in the original .doc and adding a “>” symbol at the beginning.

Images Images are stripped in the converted document; they are added manually in the following way.

![This is the figure caption][fig_id]

[fig_id]: mmd.png "This is where the title goes" height=45px width=120px

References MultiMarkdown provides support for basic citations but, considering that INC publications have references that are not directly “linked” within the text (because there are footnotes for that), an unordered list is probably the easiest solution. Still declaring that the list is the set of reference would be useful for data retrieval. An easy way to do so would be adding an HTML comment.

&#60!--references--&#62
* Young, Tim. ‘My Book’, 2011.
* Doe, John. ‘Book’, 2010.

Conclusions The resulting MMD document can be downloaded

here, while the output in HTML can be downloaded here. The process to convert a .doc to MultiMarkdown is not straightforward and has some levels of complexities due to the fact there is no single tool able to do the conversion in a satisfying way. Several passages between different softwares are needed and some prior knowledge is required. Furthermore the conversion requires a good amount of hand labour, in particular regarding the formatting of the footnotes.

Converting a .doc to Markdown

By Silvio Lorusso, July 20, 2013 at 4:55 pm.

This posts gathers the preliminary reflections on including Markdown into the publishing workflow of INC. INC often receives papers and articles in .doc format. That’s why it is necessary to test the possibilities for automated conversion from .doc to Markdown.

.doc as rendered by LibreOffice

The test document chosen is in .doc format and it contains:

Basic formatting (e.g. bold and italic);

Footnotes;

References;

Blockquotes;

Hyperlinks;

Images.

First Method: Textutil (Mac only) + Pandoc

The first method employs the command line tool textutil (only available on Mac), to convert the document to HTML, and the command line tool Pandoc.

The advantage of this method is the fact that it only requires a one-liner:textutil -convert html file.doc -stdout | pandoc -f html -t markdown -o file.md

Outcomes

Resulting Markdown as rendered by Mou

Pros

Basic formatting is preserved;

Cons

Images are missing;

Line breaks are converted into backslashes;

Footnotes are put at the end of the document without keeping the link within the text;

No formatting for blockquotes;

There is formatting for hyperlinks, but is not compatible with Markdown.

Second Method: LibreOffice (4.0.4.2) + Pandoc

The second methods consists in exporting the .doc to XHTML via LibreOffice and then…

Outcomes

The test document converted to HTML via LibreOffice

The HTML code outputted by LibreOffice has a CSS style applied in a paragraph-specific way, this makes it pretty unreadable.

The HTML is then converted to Markdown via Pandoc:pandoc file.html -f html -t markdown -o file.md

Pros

Hyperlinks are preserved;

Cons

Basic formatting is not preserved;

Images are included in the markdown but formatted as text, making the file impossible to open;

There is formatting for footnotes, but is not compatible with Markdown.

No formatting for blockquotes;

There is formatting for hyperlinks, but is not compatible with Markdown.

Conclusions

The first method, Textutil (Mac only) + Pandoc, seems to be more convenient time-wise. However it is still necessary to add images, blockquotes, footnotes by hand. Furthermore hyperlinks need to be reformatted and slashes needs to be deleted.

Py-clave and Books as API

By Silvio Lorusso, July 19, 2013 at 12:59 pm.

Gabriele Alese recently initiated the project py-clave, «a prototype implementation of a set of public RESTful APIs meant to enable clients to retrieve metadata and contents from a bunch of digital publications in EPUB2 format».

A presentation on the usefulness of APIs for books by Hugh McGuire, founder of PressBooks.

We all (want to) must go digital

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, July 15, 2013 at 11:42 am.

The lessons publishers can learn from the music, 

Thesis by Tamara Wouda, graduated April 2013, Hogeschool van Amsterdam. 

Resume:“What are profitable business models, currently used in the music, film and game industry, which could be useful for Meulenhoff Boekerij with selling e-books in the fiction genre?” By conducting both desk research and field research Meulenhoff Boekerij can be advised about this complex situation.

The desk research consists of a search to various business models in the music, film and game industry. To the basis of examples we decided if the business models are suitable for selling e-books in the fiction genre. It looks like the retail model, the subscription model, the free-model and the advertisers model are suitable. Afterwards, we looked at examples from abroad. The hopes were high Dutch publishers could learn from the developments in the English speaking parts of the world, but we got disappointed. Most of their innovative publishing ideas were more suitable for the non-fiction genre or would not work in the Netherlands due to this complex distribution system. Dutch publishers are in a difficult situation, which cannot be compared to the American circumstances.

The field research started with ten unstructured in-depth interviews. The respondents were five experts from the book industry and five experts from the music, film and game industry. Their advice to Meulenhoff Boekerij is to offer, together with other Dutch publishing houses, convenience for a fair price.

Afterwards we conducted a focus group with four authors. They see e-books as an add-on product and they are convinced of the fact the paper book will subsist. The authors affiliate with the experts when it comes to the sales channel: this has to be a collaborating online platform which offers all the e-books published by Dutch publishing houses.

To draw the final conclusion: not Meulenhoff Boekerij should use the business models to sell e-books in the fiction genre, but there has to be a collaboration online platform with all the e-books from the Dutch publishing houses. These would all be divided in different genres and every genre would have its own ambassador. The ambassadors help consumers to pick the right e-book. E-books can be paid apiece, but consumers can also take a subscription. Other business models that can be used are the advertisers model and the free-model.

Download the full thesis (in Dutch) Digitaal moeten we allemaal

Unlike Us Reader in ePub format

By Silvio Lorusso, July 15, 2013 at 5:18 pm.

uu-epub

The ePub version of the Unlike Us Reader, published by INC, is available. It can be downloaded here.

This e-book represents the first experimental attempt to provide more digital versions of INC Readers.

It was developed using InDesign CS6. The adopted procedure is documented here.

Inpiration for using gestures in digital publication

By Arjen de Jong, July 10, 2013 at 11:42 am.

Inspirational video for creating educational content using clever gestures.

Ted talk by Mike Matas: A next-generation digital book.

http://www.ted.com/talks/mike_matas.html

Book: How the Page Matters by Bonnie Mak

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, July 2, 2013 at 12:01 pm.

Mak’s book, “How the Page Matters,” historicizes recent debates about eBooks and similar technologies by casting the page as an interface that has been under development since the scrolls of Antiquity. “How the Page Matters” tracks the page through the manuscripts of the Middle Ages, the printed books of the early modern period, and onto digital displays. By locating the page in a broader tradition of writing technologies, the book re-examines the print and digital ‘revolutions’ and shows that the questions raised by digital theorists about the visualization of information are not new, but are instead the persistent issues in a long history of graphic reproduction. “How the Page Matters” contends that the material of the page is constitutive of knowledge; the quality of the paper, the shape of letter-forms, and the layout of text and image are all part of the conversation between designer and reader.

Source: Library and Information Science Illinois, How the Page Matters

Digital Publishing Toolkit

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, June 27, 2013 at 4:19 pm.

A preliminary proposal for the Digital Publishing Toolkitby Florian Cramer

The Toolkit should contain two basic elements. On the one hand a “Howto Document” as a sort of manual, and on the other a “Software Toolkit” should be compiled off both existing and self-written utilities.

PART 1 – A “HOWTO DOCUMENT”

CONTENTThe “Howto Document” should not presuppose any technical knowledge, but become an “e-publishing DIY for dummies”. It should become an empowerment document in an accessible language providing cultural sector publishers the know-how to produce e-publications. For this reason the manual should be released both as an analog and a digital publication. The target group of this project are mostly still in the analog world and this publication should help them to make the step to the digital world. The readers of the document will be: book publishers, magazine publishers, writers, editors, artists, graphic/media designers.

SCENARIOS: Several scenarios should give insight in the different possibilities of e-publishing in relation to different circumstances and contexts. A proposed set of these scenario’s: visual publications, research publications, periodicals, new types of publications.

TECHNOLOGY: Departing from this introduction a technological overview of pros and cons of – websites, PDF, mobile apps, EPUB2/mobi, EPUB3/html5/iBook/KF8 – is needed. But also an overview of the strengths and limitations and the differences between reader software, reader hardware and different file formats. This document will be out of date in a few years, but it is still necessary to create such an overview.

WORKFLOWS: The problem that likely needs to be communicated the most is the change in workflows. As a publisher you cannot work the old way – using InDesign or other print oriented documents as the departure point for you e-publication. This shift should be explained per scenario with an emphasis on practical solutions.

DISTRIBUTION PLATFORMS: The Pros and Cons of distribution platforms, like e-bookstores (Amazon, Apple, Google, Kobo, Sony),  online reading (Scribd , Issuu…), print-on-demand, pirate platforms (AAAAARG, Monoskop, PirateBay), artist- / designer-run projects (Badlands, KYUR8, artistsebooks) also need to be discussed.

GUIDE: DESIGN  YOUR  OWN  E – PUBLICATION: Eventually a guide will be developed that addresses per scenario the change in workflow and indicate ‘for which part you need what’. Presumably it should focus on EPUB2/3, with an emphasis on EPUB3. It needs to provide a step – by – step guide clarifying that publishers need to work from well-structured sources (not from PDF, InDesign or Word documents, but ideally XML-based documents or more pragmatically, documents in a lightweight semantic markup language like MultiMarkdown) to a final publication. It should focus on new, relevant insights: Everything that is covered elsewhere needs to be left out and addressed by a short summary. For instance Elizabeth Castro’s book “EPUB straight to the point” on transforming Word and InDesign documents to EPUB already addresses the pitfalls of working from InDesign, and this should not be explained in great depth in this manual. Also the results that are too case-specific should be left out. Cases where you really need an external professional should be clearly indicated as such, and skipped as well.

FLOWCHARTS: Each workflow should also be visualized in easy-to-follow flowcharts for each scenario.

SUMMARY: The summary should sum up common pitfalls, technological shortcomings and new opportunities.

FUTUROLOGY: Finally a vision for the future will try to answer ‘Where will we be in 2020..?’ What will the reading technology, the reading culture, the publishing culture look like, what do we expect the industry and the market to look like.

APPENDIX: This should contain a glossary of technical terms, key word index, bibliography, and a link list.

FORM OF THE DOCUMENT (We will eat our own dog food!)The developed workflows will determine how this publication will be approached: The source format will be MultiMarkdown and the publishing formats will be: Website / HTML, EPUB, HTML5 app (?), PDF, print book. Thus developing a publication for each format based on a well-structured source format.

PART 2 – SOFTWARE TOOLKIT 

CONTENT: As explained, the software toolkit will exist both of existing software and self-written software. The existing utilities should be mainly based on open source tools, but essentially there should be a detailed overview of tools that are vital and necessary for e-publishing. This could also include restricted freeware and/or proprietary tools as long as they have something unique to offer and are worth the financial investment. With regards to the self-written software, the emphasis should be on simple, reusable code, small tools that fix common problems. These should all be in the public domain or released under an open source license.

FORM: The existing software should be referenced within the workflows, but also separately in the manual with URLs. A list of links to all these tools should be compiled as a website repository and should be regularly maintained (for example, twice a year through a student assistant). The self-written software should be part of this website repository and the source codes should be included in the published manual where possible.

DISTRIBUTION: The distribution of this “Digital Publishing Toolkit” should address all possible platforms:  All book stores, all online reading platforms, all pirate sites, all artist-run sites, our own website, etc.

MONETIZATION: There should be an overview of the most relevant platforms and systems for payment/compensation. This will not be an overview of business models, but simply technical information on the payment systems that are available.

Original presentation file (PDF) here.

BiNu’s Worldreader – a reading app for emerging markets

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, June 24, 2013 at 11:13 am.

The future, as every marketer knows, is in content. But that doesn’t just mean video, audio and all the impressive high tech stuff. It also means basic amenities like books. In many regions around the world there simply isn’t access to reading material. And at the most basic level, the abundance of mobile technology facilitates literacy, and improves people’s economic potential. “Our colleagues in a rich city like Sydney might find it strange,” says Lentell, “but in many countries [mobile] is the only way many people would be able to read a book.”

Lentell wanted to make it easy for people to access books and so developers of biNu built a reading app and populated it with books from Project Gutenberg. “When this received a good response we came across Worldreader, a not-for-profit based in Barcelona and San Francisco, which enables literacy through digital books. Its first focus had been getting the Kindle into schools into Africa. However, once they were on the ground they realised just how many people had phones and how many people would  like to read via this method. We gave them our application and now half a million people are reading books on the Worldreader app on BiNu. That was a very satisfying outcome. But it is just the beginning.”

This March biNu signed a deal with Harlequin Publishers, to make over 8700 books, most notably Mills & Boon romance novels, available for purchase. “They came to us,” Lentell tells me. This seems an incredibly smart move as Mills & Boon has massive appeal in markets like India. Now the only thing left is to join the dots. If consumers in emerging markets could pay for stuff using this sophisticated retail network of mobile pre-payment hawkers perhaps you could make everyone happy?

“If all you have is the mobile phone and even if it is a small screen you’re as interested as being entertained as anyone else on the planet,” Lentell concludes, “this is just the beginning for these markets and the desire to consume is as strong as anything we might feel. And in a sense it presents an even more interesting market because the pent up demand is huge. The challenge is how to deliver content, education, knowledge through that one small screen.”

Source: Underground iTunes: Australian Start-Up Drives Apps Potential to Emerging Markets by Kathryn Cave, June 20th 2013

Digital publications in practice

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, June 23, 2013 at 2:08 pm.

Jargon, Platforms & Publication Formats

By Marc de Bruijn and Jorrit Sybesma (PUNTPIXEL)

First of all this document exists to assist the different parties directly involved in the RAAK-MKB project “Digital Publishing Toolkit”. The platforms for which publications may be developed will be introduced and contextualised in brief, and a preliminary advice for choosing publication formats is issued.

Jargon

Using a fixed set of terms is important in this phase of the project. Terms like platform, framework, etc.

Platform: The device on which the digital publication are viewed, read, and used. This includes eReaders, tablets, smartphones and personal computers. See: Platforms

Documentation: Within the context of the RAAK-MKB project “Digital Publishing Toolkit” documentation of the development of the digital publication is an essential factor besides building a framework; together these two form the proposed toolkit.

Toolkit: According to us, the proposed toolkit within the project “Digital publishing Toolkit” consists of two components: documentation and a framework. Both elements will be publicly accessible and available to third parties.

Platforms

One of the biggest challenges is the amount of extant platforms, each with their own limitations. The platforms discussed below are in order of openness, starting with the ones allowing most freedom, descending to the more closed options.

Personal Computer (PC)

The PC (desktop as well as notebooks) allows for the most freedom. One has access to a web browser and the possibility to install a great range of applications. For viewing EPUB (.epub) document formats there are various, mostly free applications. For Macintosh users there is for example Calibre (open source, accessible for several operating systems), Adobe Digital Editions (Macintosh and Windows) Kitabu (free), BookReader (paid) and Nook (free). All these applications are able to open EPUBs, some of them support multiple document formats and DRM. Adobe Digital Editions for instance supports interactive PDFs besides EPUB. Calibre has an impressive list of supported document formats ((According to the documentation: CBZ, CBR, CBC, CHM, DJVU, EPUB, FB2, HTML, HTMLZ, LIT, LRF, MOBI, ODT, PDF, PRC, PDB, PML, RB, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ)) and can also convert documents into a limited set ((AZW3, EPUB, FB2, OEB, LIT, LRF, MOBI, HTMLZ, PDB, PML, RB, PDF, RTF, SNB, TCR, TXT, TXTZ)) of digital publication formats.

There are also browser extensions for Mozilla Firefox (for example EPUBReader) and Google Chrome (for example MagicScroll, Readium) to view EPUBs.

Another possibility is to leave the separate applications and browser extensions for what they are and choose a web based EPUB viewer. The advantage of this kind of web platform is that the material can be accessed by every (modern) web browser. Examples of these kinds of platforms are MagicScroll ((MagicScroll offers a browser extension and a web platform.)), Aldiko and Booki.sh ((Booki.sh uses Monocle, an open-source EPUB viewer developed in Ruby on Rails)). A disadvantage of these web platforms is that they can terminate their services at any given moment, examples of this are bookworm of O’Reilly Media and Ibis Reader (bought by Safari Books Online).

Tablet

The tablet-market is dominated by a few big players. As is the case with the telephone market, there are roughly two main players with their matching operating systems: Apple with iOS and Samsung with Android. The Android-segment consists of many manufacturers offering similar hardware with a variant of Android as its operating system. However, Samsung has the biggest market-share. There exist smaller variants of tablets by manufacturers like Amazon (Kindle Fire HD) and Barnes & Noble (Nook HD+), these are discussed under the header "eReaders"].

For tablets the situation is comparable to that of the PC, with the exception of browser extensions.

The web-based EPUB viewers are also available for use with the internet browser of the tablet. Most browsers use WebKit (open source) as rendering engine; this means that WebKit is responsible for generating the visual and functional parts of a page on the web. Both the tablet and the PC versions of Apple Safari and Google Chrome use WebKit and Opera will also implement WebKit in favour of their own rendering engine in the near future. The only other relevant player regarding browsers is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. However, Microsoft doesn’t (yet) play an important role on the tablet-market (in spite of the introduction of Microsoft Surface) and is mostly dominant within the Windows PC-segment. Internet Explorer uses the closed-sourced Trident rendering engine

There are also applications available which can interpret EPUB. For iOS there are among others iBooks ((The only application that can read the closed iBooks document format.)) , Kindle ((Amazon uses the same name for both it’s hardware (the Kindle eReaders) and software in  relation to digital publications)), Sony Reader, Kobo and NOOK. There are also a few applications which are not directly linked to a publisher (for instance Readmill, Bluefire Reader). Android also has a Kindle application and NOOK, Sony Reader and Kobo are present. Just like on iOS there are also applications of smaller players, like Aldiko, Moon+ Reader, FBReader and Cool Reader.

Smartphones

The situation of smartphones is largely identical to that of tablets. However, the market is focussed (heavily) on Android (( www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130214005415/en/Android-iOS-Combinid )), a trend that is expected within the tablet realm as well. As of 2013, both Android and iOS hold the largest market share ((http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS24002213#.UUxKAL8WH8t)).

Most of the applications for tablets are available for smartphones. The interface is scaled to the smaller size of the telephone – the same is true for the web-based platforms.

eReaders

eReaders became widely known by the introduction of Amazon Kindle in 2007. eReaders differ from tablets in the way that they are only suitable for reading books, are relatively cheap and have monochrome displays. An important characteristic of the eReader is the use of “electronic paper” (e-paper), a so-called electrophoretic screen. “Electronic paper” is designed to mimic the characteristics of paper as close as possible and is relatively low on energy consumption.

Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble also offer more expensive models, Kindle Fire (en Kindle Fire HD) and NOOK Tablet (and NOOK HD+) respectively. These models are not really eReaders anymore, but fully-fledged, small sized tablets. These models do not use “e-paper”, but colour LED screens with backlight – a standard component of tablets like iPad or Galaxy Tab. Mostly these tablets use a version of the Android operating system as its core, in contrast to the classic monochromatic eReaders using their own operating system built on a version of Linux. The Samsung Galaxy Note and Apple iPad mini can be seen as an answer to these smaller sized tablets.

Thus, one cannot speak of a dated generation regarding the black and white eReaders. The current definition of eReader is a device on which digital books can be read, and presented on monochromatic “electronic paper”. The transition to a kind of “e-paper” also capable of rendering colour has not yet started and it remains questionable if this will happen soon. At the moment, a very limited set of devices is available that render colour, like the JetBook Color ($ 500,-) ((www.ectaco.com/jetBook_Color/ )) and the Hanvon  WISEreader C920 (± $ 530,-) ((www.engadget.com/2011/01/09/hanvon-brings-e920-worlds-first-color-e-ink-reader-to-ces-we/ )). Both models make use of the TritonImaging Film of the company E ink, a technology also present in the monochromatic models of the Kindle, for example. The reason why big players like Amazon and Barnes & Noble choose to make LED-backlit screen tablets in favour of “electronic paper” for their colour versions, is probably due to the high production costs. Currently there are “conventional” tablets on the market with more options (apart from reading eBooks), for the same price as a colour eReader.

Formats

A wide range of document formats to distribute digital publications exists. Though the question is if these formats are suitable in relation to the requirements of the publishers involved in the “Digital Publishing Toolkit” project. For instance, iBooks from Apple, a closed-source end-format that can be created by using iBooks Author, is comparable to EPUB to a certain extend. However, iBooks contains undocumented technical extensions that can only be interpreted by the iBooks application for iOS.

Interactive PDF is another end-format that offers interesting possibilities at first sight. It is possible to implement video and audio in the PDFs, as well as more common features like annotations and hyperlinks of pages within a publication. It is also possible to use JavaScript in PDFs, and this offers – in theory – interesting possibilities for using for example animations or requesting information from external sources. The aforementioned possibilities, with exception of annotations and hyperlinking, only work consistently within Adobe Reader and only in a limited way, or not at all, in alternatives like Foxit Readeror Preview for Mac.

It’s best to analyse in further detail the publication formats that are suitable. Below we discuss two document formats that most likely offer the best solutions.

EPUB

The EPUB standard was introduced in 2007 and is now at version 3.0. The latest update to the standard was in 2011. EPUB itself is based on the Open eBook Publication Structure (OEBPS) dating from 1999. Management of the standard is in the hands of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF). EPUB is nothing more than a compressed package (ZIP) of documents (text, audio, video, fonts, scripts, etc.) that can be read on an eReader.

The EPUB 3 standard offers the following, main possibilities:

Structural lay-out on basis of HTML5;

Hyperlinking, within the confines of the EPUB;

Support for MathML, a language for producing the notation of mathematical formulas;

Scripting the content using JavaScript;

Applying a custom visual style to the publication with the use of CSS;

Use of custom fonts (other than the ones present on the viewing device);

Embedding audio and video;

Support of SVG, the possibility to apply scalable vector graphics in a digital publication;

To a certain extent, producing an EPUB is comparable to developing a website, the most important difference is that an EPUB is restricted set of possibilities. Some of those restrictions are imposed by the standard itself but many of the limitations stem from the lack of support by various EPUB readers.

Advantages

Wide support of the document format;

Document format is based on a standard with a long lifespan;

Thorough technical documentation.

Disadvantages

Limited support of the standard by many eReaders, either on the basis of technical limitations (monochromatic screen, safety considerations), or because another document format is preferred (iBooks in the case of Apple);

Due to the previously mentioned disadvantage there is limited freedom in relation to experimenting with technique and design. A magazine-like publication with lots of photographic material in EPUB-format seems highly unlikely or at least very difficult to produce, at the moment.

HPub

HPub is not a standard with a central controlling authority, as is the case with IDPF and EPUB. An HPub is, just like EPUB, a compressed ZIP-package that contains documents (texts, audio, video, fonts, scripts, etc.). HPub originates from the open source Baker Framework for iOS and the derivative Friar Framework for Android.

The difference between EPUB and HPub lies not in the document format, but in the viewer interprets the package and displays the content to the user. The Baker and Friar Framework offer the code for a basic application that can be adjusted according to ones own design, and eventually distributed in the App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android. The application offers support for downloading multiple editions in a series and purchasing separate editions through the payment systems of Apple and Google. The viewer for HPub uses WebKit to present its content.

Why would one choose HPub? The format offers complete freedom in defining the structure of your publication, because you are not limited by an official standard. HPub could be a possible file format when publishing a magazine (see Aside, which uses its own framework for the lay-out structure) or a strongly visually oriented publication.

Advantages

Complete freedom in defining the publication structure;

All technical possibilities of the web are available;

Familiar development environment for web developers, as it’s in essence a small website compiled into a ZIP-package.

Publication is also accessible by web browser.

Disadvantages

Not an official standard;

Maintenance and costs of the viewer application;

Little documentation;

Only available for two platforms;

No support by eReaders.

MOBI/AZW/AZW3 (KF8)

AZW, a third, closed format is more like a collection of formats, distributed by Amazon for its Kindle eReaders. Initially digital publications based on Mobipocket/Mobi were offered. This standard is derived from the Open eBook format, just like EPUB, and has been on the market from 2000 and onwards. The company responsible for the format (the French Mobipocket SA) was bought by Amazon in 2005, which subsequently introduced the Mobi-format with certain adjustments and limitations (AZW ((http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/AZW )) ) for the first generation Kindle. Amazon introduced yet another standard for its eReaders with the introduction of Kindle Fire in 2011. This model KF8, or AZW3 ((http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/KF8)), has EPUB 3.0 as its basis, still uses the document extension .azw and also incorporates HTML5 and CSS3, both important parts of EPUB3.0. It is still possible to read the older documents with the Mobi-structure with Kindle Fire.

To use EPUBs on a Kindle device they should be converted by the program KindleGen (for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows), produced by Amazon. What is left of the specific technical qualities of the EPUB after conversion to AZW/AZW3 is difficult to assess.

What format?

The most important question right now is which publication format fits the wishes of the publisher best. Together with publisher Valiz we’ve decided to produce a dummy publication of about ten pages in which the different technical possibilities of the different formats are presented.

Initially our intention is to develop this dummy publication according to the guidelines of EPUB 3.0, using the full potential of the standard, disregarding the (technical) limitations of the applications on different platforms. However, the third format AZW should be taken into account, considering the (growing) market share of Amazon. Is it for instance possible to convert EPUB to KF8 in a reliable way, and is Mobipocket still a relevant format?

The EPUB dummy is intended to be the starting point for further development or a turning point where we might need to consider alternative formats like HPub.

Crash Test Dummy

By Marc de Bruijn, June 20, 2013 at 11:18 am.

In order to test the capabilities of the various EPUB readers we created a dummy EPUB containing a couple of features often requested by designers and publishers. While EPUB 3 is a modern standard with a lot of possibilities, the utilisation of a relatively simple design and the inclusion of rich media is seriously hampered by the limitations of the EPUB readers. Most readers place restrictions on style and content, often showing a mangled version of the original or something wholly different. As such there is no uniform way in which EPUB is interpreted by readers and the situation is more or less comparable to developing websites a few years ago, and having to support older iterations of Internet Explorer (notably version 6) by resorting to ugly hacks (the lack alpha transparency in PNG images ((http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294714, more wonderful quirks here: http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html)) comes to mind, for example) or opting out of certain technical innovations. The situation regarding EPUB interpretation is more or less the same – viz. faulty support of the standard by major EPUB readers. ((See: http://www.bisg.org/docs/BISG_EPUB3PlatformGrid.xls for a detailed comparison.)) The landscape is even more fragmented, however, there are a great many EPUB readers for various platforms out there compared to the relatively small amount of browsers (courtesy of three major players ((Internet Explorer (Microsoft), Firefox (Mozilla) and Safari (Apple).))) a developer had to support.

About the Dummy EPUB

We started out rather traditionally by creating an initial design in Adobe Illustrator, containing various ideas partly based on the wishlist of one of the publishers we work for (Valiz).

The ideas consist of the following:

The content is divided into two sections, a normal text section and a black one containing related content (images, notes, other media, etc.) The user may slide the black section into view by tapping/clicking on an image or footnote. From a technical standpoint this requires some JavaScript animation and CSS styling. For convenience sake this point will be referred to in our test results and tables simply as “JavaScript”.

The text section has a left margin containing notes, images and quotes from related publications. For this to work a reader has to support more complex CSS styles, as opposed to styling or colouring text – appears in test results and tables as “Complex Styles”;

Multiple custom typefaces (test results and tables: “Fonts”);

Coloured text elements and blocks, text styles (“Basic Styles”);

The inclusion of video and audio;

The top section of the original, static design in Adobe Illustrator.

The static Illustrator design was then converted into an HTML page adhering to the EPUB 3 standard. After some initial tests in various EPUB readers and finding that support for JavaScript isn’t widespread for example, we decided to simplify the design by eliminating the two section layout – we aim to implement a variation of this concept at a later date, however. The JavaScript in the dummy EPUB consists of two simple scripts, one animating images and another toggling the stack order of an element.

Some additional images of the design can be found here.

The EPUB we prepared contains custom fonts, Neuton and Lato, both released under the SIL Open Font License (OFL), offering multiple weights and styles and suitable for use with the CSS3 @font-face rule. Also contained within the EPUB are sound and video samples MP3/OGG and MP4/WebM ((Consistent video playback might be helped by including the OGG/Vorbis video format.)) format respectively. CSS styling is applied to the whole document, ranging from simple styling (headers, coloured blocks, bolds and italics, etc.) to more complex positioning of images and notes in the margin.

The HTML portion of the EPUB as rendered by Google Chrome.

Lastly, the document contains endnotes as per the IDPF accessibility guidelines regarding notes. Footnotes are also mentioned in these guidelines, but as most EPUB readers forgo with displaying the traditional page structure the inclusion of footnotes might not be a very viable strategy. Unfortunately endnotes do not seem to work correctly in the EPUB we prepared, we’re not certain if this is due to a syntactical error on our part or lack of support by EPUB readers – this is something we intend to investigate further in the future.

We tested our dummy EPUB on several platforms (desktop, tablet and smartphone), making sure to include the major EPUB readers of the respective platforms. A complete collection of application screenshots can be found on Google+.

The EPUB itself is hosted here. Below is a screenshot of Google Chrome showing what the first part of the EPUB should look like.

On the desktop (Mac)

The desktop/notebook is probably not the most popular platform to peruse ebooks, as it doesn’t have the portability of a tablet or smartphone. There exist some applications for this platform, notably Kindle. iBooks is also being ported to the bigger screen.

Kindle

Developer: AmazonVersion: 1.10.3Website: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000464931

Kindle for Mac

Kindle of course doesn’t support EPUB, so the document has to be converted to an AZW3 file – this process is rather trivial and can be done by Calibre. ((Calibre seems to strip audio and video, for some reason. So another method of conversion (with KindleGen, for example) might be worth investigating.)) Support for anything more than images is seriously lacking. No styling (CSS is simply not parsed), video and audio do not work and fonts are overridden. This all wouldn’t be a problem if Kindle wasn’t one of the biggest ebook platforms in the world.

Calibre

Developer: Kovid GoyalVersion: 0.9.35Website: http://calibre-ebook.com

Calibre

The cross platform solution for Linux, Mac and Windows. Due to its open source nature it characteristically supports an impressive range of features and functionality – managing an ebook library and exporting to different ebook formats is also possible with Calibre. The EPUB viewer is rather slow, it takes several seconds to load an EPUB, and has CSS isn’t fully supported it seems, bolder or lighter variations of the font are not displayed, for example.

Adobe Digital Editions

Developer: AdobeVersion: 2.0.6Website: http://www.adobe.com/products/digital-editions.html

Adobe Digital Editions

Adobe Digital Editions is comparable with Kindle regarding the lack support for various EPUB features. The application accepts EPUB, but strips it of anything except images.

Kitabu

Developer: Sixty FourVersion: 1.0.7Website: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kitabu/242717922467492

Kitabu

A very simple, free EPUB reader. Fonts and most styling are overridden and the application insists on dividing the content into columns. This may be disabled by the user, though the application still retains the concept of pagination at all times, this differs from other readers like Ehon or Kindle.

Ehon

Developer: Pierre OleoVersion: 1.0.1Website: http://ehonapp.com

Ehon

This application is relatively unknown and isn’t actively developed, it seems. Probably some version of WebKit is used for rendering the ePub, hence the full support for all the features of the publication.

Azardi

Developer: Infogrid PacificVersion: 20.0Website: http://azardi.infogridpacific.com

Azardi

Despite the very awkward interface, Azardi renders the EPUB reasonably well. No support for custom fonts and the structure is slightly mangled due to the application’s insistence on displaying facing pages. JavaScript support is present and audio and video work.

On tablets and smartphones

Most of the applications mentioned below are available for both tablets and smartphones. The differences between EPUB display on tablets and smartphones are rather trivial. Of course the screen sizes of smartphones are significantly smaller, but in terms of technical possibilities (or lack thereof) both platforms are the same.

iBooks

Developer: AppleVersion: 3.1Website: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id364709193Environment: iOS

iBooks

The EPUB support of iBooks is a pleasant surprise. Custom fonts work as does the CSS styling and JavaScript. Unfortunately everything in the application is wrapped in the skeuomorphic GUI which clashes rather violently on a visual level. The amount of space devoted to the actual content is relatively small as the book margins are defined by the application, not the EPUB.

Kindle

Developer: AMZN MobileVersion: 3.8Website: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000301301Environment: iOS, Android

Kindle on iOS

The experience is roughly comparable to the desktop version of the application. Content is divided into two columns here, no styling or custom fonts. Audio and video were stripped during the conversion by Calibre.

Bluefire Reader

Developer: Bluefire ProductionsVersion: 1.9.7Website: http://www.bluefirereader.comEnvironment: iOS

Bluefire Reader

Bluefire renders the EPUB as expected from most tablet readers, no styling or media.

Readmill

Developer: Readmill NetworkVersion: 3.2Website: https://readmill.comEnvironment: iOS

Readmill

This application doesn’t allow to load EPUB files directly and instead requires the user to upload files (PDF or EPUB) to their personal library which can then be synced across other devices. Readmill’s website proudly touts a focus on design and typography, which in practice means that any CSS styling in an EPUB is ignored and the Readmill ebook styles are applied to the entirety of the document.

Kobo Books

Developer: KoboVersion: 5.12Website: http://www.kobo.com/appsEnvironment: iOS, Android

Kobo Books

It’s telling that Kobo Books is a pleasant surprise, although it mangles several aspects of the design and doesn’t display the custom typography, it’s because the other readers are just really bad at interpreting anything more than simple text and displaying imagery.

Lektz

Developer: AEL Data ServicesVersion: 3.1Website: http://lektz.comEnvironment: iOS, Android

Lektz

This reader is one of the applications to (at least partly) implement the Readium SDK. Readium is a non profit organisations backed by the IDPF and several partners aiming to develop a cross-platform SDK for developers. In practice this means Readium provides the interpreter for EPUBs on various platforms, including the web. Partners include Sony, Kobo and three large French publishing houses (Gallimard, La Martinière and Flammarion). Support of large commercial parties is vital for the emergence of Readium as a standard SDK for EPUB readers, so the initial roster of backers is a good start. Lektz supports all features of the dummy EPUB, except for audio and video.

Aldiko Book Reader

Developer: AldikoVersion: 2.2.3Website: http://www.aldiko.comEnvironment: Android

Barebones presentation of text and images. No video, audio or any styling.

ePub Reader

Developer: Graphilos StudioVersion: 1.5.3Website: http://www.graphilos.comEnvironment: Android

The “best” of the Android applications in terms of CSS styling. However, all the pages seem to exceed the available screen size.

Mantano Reader Lite

Developer: Mantano SASVersion: 1.2.9Website: http://www.mantano.comEnvironment: Android

Presentation quite similar to Aldiko: just text and images, no video, audio or styling (except font sizes).

Moon+ Reader

Developer: Moon+Version: 1.9.7.0Website: http://www.moondownload.comEnvironment: Android

Moon+ applies its own styling to the background of the publication and ignores any CSS styling (except for texts that are defined as bold or italic). No support for video or audio.

Universal Book Reader

Developer: Mobile SystemsVersion: 2.1.260Website: http://www.ubreader.comEnvironment: Android

No CSS styling (font sizes excepted) or custom fonts. No support for video or audio.

Summary

The lack of support for the more advanced features of EPUB 3 on tablets and smartphones is worrying, in our opinion. The lack of any real support hampers the production of media rich publications and any efforts regarding (visual) design. At the moment, any innovations, technical or otherwise, will only be usable or visible in a very small subset of applications which aren’t widely used nor connected to viable commercial outlets (Amazon Bookstore, Apple App Store, etc.)

So… What now?

After surveying the field of current EPUB readers we may conclude that the impossibilities surpass the possibilities when it comes to the EPUB 3 standard at the moment. The efforts of the Readium foundation are a good sign for the future, especially because the foundation is backed by commercial vendors and publishers. Apple’s iBooks might even become a rather good EPUB reader, but only if the GUI is significantly less in the way of the content in coming iterations of the application – hopefully the release iOS 7 will introduce those changes. Amazon’s Kindle is a bigger problem, as they insist on using their own file format (KF8/AZW) and the lack of support in our tests on both iPad and desktop. The AZW format merits further investigation though, as KF8/AZW is commonly referred to as a wrapper format of EPUB 3, so some of the features (fonts, basic styles, video, audio, etc.) should be supported. We intend to prepare some further tests regarding the conversion of EPUB 3 to KF8/AZW and interpretation of the resulting files in various versions of Kindle.

In relation to the Digital Publishing Toolkit project we’ve decided, together with Valiz Publishers, to produce two EPUBs based on a printed entry from Valiz’ “Context Without Walls” series.

The first version is a “conventional” EPUB, utilising only the features supported by the broadest range of readers. This version will be distributed through the common commercial channels (Amazon Bookstore, App Store Books, etc.)

The second version is the “EPUB of the future”, which can only be perused in conjunction with readers that fully implement the EPUB 3 standard. As such readers are scarce and relatively unpopular compared to the applications provided by larger commercial parties (Apple, Amazon, Sony, etc.), we also aim to use one of the libraries offered by Readium – probably Readium.js – to present the EPUB to a larger audience.

E-Reader According to the Oxford English Dictionary

By Silvio Lorusso, June 13, 2013 at 2:48 pm.

The Oxford English Dictionary recently included the word e-reader with the following meanings:

It can denote a person who reads electronic texts (this sense dates from 1995) or a hand-held electronic device used for reading e-books or other text in digital form (1999).

Source: http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2013/06/oed-june-2013-update/

EPUB3: One File, Many Ebooks

By Silvio Lorusso, June 3, 2013 at 5:42 pm.

A single EPUB3 file can be used to create an ebook for all e-readers, explained Liz Castro, tech expert and author, at the IDPF conference in New York. […] Hachette’s practice of delivering the same EPUB3 file to all its e-tailers, including Amazon, sets a precedent for the industry, said Castro. If more publishers developed a single viable ebook file, would e-reader systems converge upon a single standard for rendering that file? And in turn, make ebooks a more intelligible medium for the reader?

Source: “EPUB3: One File, Many Ebooks” by Deanna Utroske.

Buy on Amazon, Read on Kobo and Viceversa

By Silvio Lorusso, June 3, 2013 at 5:52 pm.

A problem that finally seems to be taken seriously, now Neelie Kroes expressed she supports a study of the EIBF (European and International Booksellers Federation), which states that there are too many different devices and file formats in Europe (but just as good elsewhere), which gets in the way of the development of e-book sales, and recognizes that this diversity of systems makes e-books non-interchangeable. Consumers who have purchased e-books from Amazon, cannot transfer them to their Kobo reader (for instance when they have decided to continue their digital future with them), and vice versa. Or consumers who have purchased e-books from the iBookstore, cannot transfer them to their Sony Reader (although the reverse is possible in The Netherlands). The study states that every consumer should always be able to transfer its collection of digital books to another retailer. In other words: you should be able to export and import your e-book collection. For now, this is not in the interest of the large gardens with high walls (the ecosystems that listen to names as Amazon, Apple, Kobo and Nook), but in those of the consumer. But I dare to say it should be in interest of the retailers as well, which at this moment try their best to keep the customer within their walls. Because if e-books do become interchangeable, more people would start to read digitally than currently is the case.

Source: From format war to sustainability fight by Timo Boezeman, May 30th 2013.

Project Descriptions: Hands-on research into the preconditions of digital publishing.

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, May 30, 2013 at 1:28 pm.

Each subgroup, consisting of a publisher, designer and developer has formulated their own research project within the bigger framework of the Digital Publishing Toolkit research program, and will be based on one or more publications of the publisher. The overall focus is on pragmatic solutions for digital publishers within the art and culture sector. The experiences of these hands-on projects will eventually be collected in a ‘Digital Publishing Toolkit’, giving insight into the preconditions of digital publishing, providing open-source tools where possible, and allowing publishers of the arts and culture sector to navigate this diverse and complex landscape of digital publishing in a more grounded way.

**** ****

The subgroup Valiz is working on the publication Context Without Walls. This new series is a collaboration between Daphne Pappers and Valiz. Within this series intercontinental contemporary art will be discussed in relation to philosophical, anthropological, political and art historical notions. The series will exist of eight separate parts, and is created initially for printed publication. However, for this project Valiz, Puntpixel and Meeus Ontwerpt will digitize the series.

The goal of this project is to publish the first two parts of the series as an e-book, and to develop a digitization manual for the series overall. The digital publication must go beyond the PDF versions of the print documents. The publisher and designers want to add elements that complement the current content. For instance hyperlinks (between books of the series and within the books themselves), searchable corpora, complementary content through for example images, sound and/or video material. From a designer perspective it is important that the analog design, created by Meeus Ontwerpt, will get a digital equivalent. Central to this is translating the relation between the text and the image section of the analog publication to a digital version in such a way that the design is still recognizable, but also relates to the new medium.

The subgroup BIS publishers is working on two publications. Think like a Lawyer, Don’t Act Like One is a popular printed publication in America. The e-book version will focus on keeping absolute control over the design, with a fixed format, own font and the left and right pages relation fixed. Especially this last part is tricky in relation to the diversity of aspect ratios of the different devices you have to deal with in relation to digital publishing. Therefore the publication will be limited to an ePub/Kindle format. Research into the different formats and devices you have to take into account when designing and/or developing for digital publishing was part of this publication trajectory.

More complex publications to digitize are the two product design books, Sketching, and Sketching The Basics, written by Koos Eissen and Roselien Steur, both connected to TU Delft Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering and the Hogeschool of Amsterdam, product design. The books have a large international reach and are used in design courses all over the world. The goal of this project is to translate the books into an interactive and media rich educational publication that is accessible on multiple devices. Moreover, the team wants to get insight into what interactive elements give added value to a digital educational book. For instance, an in-app sketchbook, social elements, video, layered images etc, and how this relates to the wishes and experiences of the user.

Through these two cases hands-on insight into the problematics of digital publishing will be given – this is not only complex because of the limited availability of technique (formats like ePub, Html 5, etc.), but also because of the different ecosystems that surround these publishing formats.

**** ****

The subgroup of nai010 Publishers is also working on two publications. On the one hand a digital publication for the Stedelijk Museum of Amsterdam that is based on the printed publication Highlights, a collection of high-end artworks, will be developed. The starting point for this digital publication is the idea that visits to the Stedelijk, through the use of a digital publication, can be prepared, deepened and afterwards ‘taken along’. The research will focus on the idea of ‘highlights’ as a collection of ‘high-end artworks with commentary’ – which can be deconstructed in an iTunes-like structure of mini-publications on one high-end artwork – which can be combined into sets of mini-publications: personal favorites, ‘curated’ collections etc. From a developers point of view, the user-scenarios are an important part of the research.

The other digital publication will be developed for the Glasmuseum in Leerdam – an exhibition about E.H. Haeckel. His work is based on systematically cataloging and classifying subterranean living species, in beautiful drawings or glass sculptures. Therefore this project allows to approach digital publishing from a database-like perspective: On the one hand it looks into the opportunities digital publishing can give for adding navigation layers and how this can correlate with different reader groups, also design wise. And on the other hand how, from a developer’s perspective, the digital material can be reused within the same publication, limiting file-size.

****The INC subgroup will look into the concept of ‘The Book as Directory’. Here the book is no longer distributed in one format, but is presented in all its possible formats – from which the user can choose the format wanted and/or the format that is suitable for the device used. Central to this research is to get a better insight into the workflow of developing digital publications that move beyond putting the print PDF online, and how INC should change their print-oriented workflow to be able to create digital publications for themselves. It will examine digital publication formats and their implications in the workflow and production process, and the changing ways in which The Book as Directory will serve the interests of publisher, author, distributor and reader. The Unlike Us Reader will be used as a test-case. This research will be complemented with a research into the systematic use of metadata and document management, and the role it plays within digital publishing workflows.

The Book as Directory

By Silvio Lorusso, May 29, 2013 at 10:39 am.

[Originally posted on Doppiozero with the title “Quando il lettore diventa utente”]

The Inside of a Kindle 3. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Inside_the_Kindle_3.jpg

The debate around the *future* of publishing never lost momentum. For decades writers, publishers, programmers and designers have been discussing the revolutionary possibilities of the electronic book in terms of rich media, non-linearity and augmentation. The iPad just gave a new boost to the topic. In the meantime, the dream of an immersive reading experience in a digital environment came true thanks to the Kindle and e-readers in general. While much of the attention is directed toward those content-oriented opportunities concerning modes of fruition and media enrichment, the context of digital publishing is going under profound modifications that affect the very definition of reading and the way the reader relates tothe book as both cultural object and commodity.

In the context of digital publishing the *future* is here today (a good reason to stop talking about *future*), but it’s not evident. It doesn’t blatantly resemble science fiction. On the contrary, it manifests itself through slight shifts in habit and perception of things rather than in sensational technologic disruptions. Those shifts easily become invisible as part of the daily routine. Jaron Lanier would say they become lock-in. That’s why it’s a good idea to focus more on the context than the content before some of those concepts become ineradicable part of our common perspective on books.

E-books are “real” not only from the technical point of view: In 2012 Amazon declared thatitcurrently sells more ebooks than hardbacks and paperbacks combined. However the phenomenon shouldn’t be read only as a technological achievement that made its way to the market. E-books and e-readers are only the tip of the iceberg: they are accompanied and supported by a new overall arrangement of the publishing model and infrastructure.

In fact every big player (Amazon, Google, Apple) on the market is promoting its own publishing ecosystem. In doing so distributing platforms are gaining power, overcoming both the publishing houses and the authors. When the book becomes a service, the influence of the ecosystem doesn’t stop after the purchase, but propagate to the act of reading through the reading device. Books also become computers: machines that are not simply able to render ebook files but actual mobile technologies, constantly connected to the cloud. While using the Kindle, all the highlights (along with all complete list of reading activities) are remotely stored trough a *silent* process called Whispersync. Of course the absence of any evidence of those processes is meant not to break the immersion into the reading activity. But when an huge amount of data is collected ceaselessly, reading can no longer be considered a private and autonomous act. Therefore it seems appropriate to speak of user rather than reader, as the person who uses an e-reader interacts with a complex system and performs, consciously or not, a complex and networked series of operations.

The contextual changes in publishing also determine the meaning of ownership regarding books: if you think of the book as a service it makes sense to buy it twice when you want both the digital and the physical version. A Kindle user can’t read the books he purchased on other e-readers (as Cory Doctorow puts it, it’s like buying a lightbulb from Walmart and be required to use it on a Walmart lamp). Those books are encrypted: they are bound to a personal profile and they can’t be duplicated. Ultimately Amazon has the power to remotely delete a book from the device.

Big distributors are influencing the reader’s behavior and mindset: as an example, the Kindle app for desktop computers doesn’t allow copy-paste. The lack of this feature, clearly against the intrinsic tendency of the medium, is supposedly a market-driven choice: the e-books that sell the most are fiction, and it is generally thought that readers don’t need to copy-paste much from a fiction book. In return they’re allowed to share passages on Facebook and Twitter. The service offered by the big players, inevitably conditioned by a commercial logic, not only determines a purchase process, but a usage pattern. And the application of a usage pattern to the book corresponds to the instillation of a cultural model.

Currently the ones that are taking the biggest advantage of new technologies are neither the readers nor the authors, but the distributors. So, what can the books’ producers do in order to oppose to the

As Project Gutenberg taught us, providing the reader with a set of different tools for different uses of the same content is already a revolutionary act. Different tools means different formats and of course the main one would be ePub: an open, easy-to-tweak format, the contents of which are not crystallized into a fixed layout for a particular device. Either from ePub itself or from the various development phases, it is possible to obtain a number of different formats meant for different aims: plain text for general use, HTML for online reading and, of course, PDF for print.

Rather than the book as a service, I like to think to the book as directory: simply a .zip file containing all these different formats, possibly provided by the publishing houses or the authors themselves through their own websites. The book, not bound anymore to a software, a device, a platform or a company, will then be easily read, annotated, copy-pasted, shared and reworked. The book will return to be a user-oriented technology.

– Silvio Lorusso ([@silvi0l0russo](https://twitter.com/silvi0L0russo))

Notes on EPUB Development in Adobe inDesign CS6

By Silvio Lorusso, May 21, 2013 at 9:16 am.

Version: 0.1 – May 11th, 2013

Abstract

These notes focus on the ways an InDesign CS6 file should be arranged in order to be appropriately exported as ePub. Further insights are provided in order to improve quality of the exported ePub in terms of file size, metadata, layout.

Required Knowledge

Adobe InDesign CS6

Basic HTML and CSS

Premises

Legend

Software Command

Shortcut

Code Snippet

Wait, weren’t we supposed to use open source tools?

We all love opes source, but in some cases a pragmatic approach it’s needed: a perspective that takes into account the actual workflow without denying it beforehand. Not every designer would be happy to give up the softwares used for the last five years for the sake of open source.

Developing an EPUB through InDesign could be considered a transitional process, in doing so the designer will anyway acquire a know-how that could be invested in open source tools and procedures.

So you’re saying that obtaining EPUB from Indesign is not necessarily the best practice…

Exactly, it really depends on the context. This procedure could be useful whether:

you, or your collaborators, don’t have any HTML or CSS knowledge (but in this case you won’t be able to go through the whole tutorial and this will heavily impact the quality of your final ePub);

you have an articulated publication already set as an InDesign file;

you want to convert your backlist to ePub and the books are archived as InDesign packages.

Is Indesign enough to develop a high quality ePub?

No, it’s not enough. There are strong limitations for ePub development within InDesign, this is because its primary function is to set files for print.

Therefore if you want a high quality ePub you need to tweak the code produced by the software, in order to do so you will need HTML and CSS skills.

May I use the same structure of the InDesign file for both print and ePub?

Rarely the InDesign file ready for print will work fine to be exported “as is” to ePub. But in case you want to produce an ePub version of the printed ducument, setting the file as follows will save you a lot of work. In this sense this tutorial proposes an ePub-first approach.

Resources

“InDesign CS6 to EPUB, Kindle, and iPad” course by Anne-Marie Concepcion on Lynda.com;

La pratica dell’ePub (The ePub Practice) by Ivan Rachieli, 2011;

Open Packaging Format (OPF) 2.0.1 v1.0.1 Recommended Specification.

Softwares

Adobe InDesign CS6

EpubCheck

EPUB zip/unzip apps

Calibre

Adobe Digital Editions

Attachments

InDesign package with example content

CSS file to be included when exporting the ePub via InDesign

ePub example

General

No Local Overrides!

This simply means that you should set everything in your document either as a Paragraph Style or a Charachter Style. When you have set one of those and change a setting locally a plus sign (+) appears next to the name of the syle. You should avoid this because it would heavily affect the cleanness of the ePub code.

More info

The Paragraph Styles panel

Use Master Pages

Keep all the repeating elements such as title, page number, article title in Master pages. In this way they won’t be rendered in the ePub.

More info

Example of master page

Paragraph Means Paragraph

Don’t use paragraph breaks to space elements, use instead the bounding box itself.

Wrong use of paragraphs

Correct use of paragraphs

Paragraph Really Means Paragraph

Use the Space After feature in the Paragraph Style instead of a double paragraph break, except in the case of colophon and exceptional layouts.

Paragraphs spaced via Space After

Paragraph = Paragraph

Use soft returns (Shift+Return) instead of paragraph breaks (Return) when you work on the visual appearance of text. A paragraph break could cause problems in a reflowable context, while the soft returns could be automatically stripped out when exporting.

More info

Soft returns used to break the title for visual purposes.

ALL CAPS hide Actual Caps

Even if you have an ALL CAPS setting remember to use Capitals when you write the text: it may happen that in the ePub version the setting is ignored, the result would be for instance a lowercase title.

Letters Aren’t Meant to be Stretched

Do not use Vertical Scale to adjust the paragraphs (for instance when you have a single word going to the next line), use instead the Justification settings in the Paragraph Style.

Vertical Scale setting

Justification settings in the Paragraph Style

Fonts

Embed a font only if you consider it necessary. On some devices only the headings’ fonts will be preserved. Also, only the fonts licensed for “e-use will” be actually embedded by InDesign, therefore if you want to embed a font make sure you own the license. An OpenType font is preferrable.

In order to embed fonts just check Include Embeddable Fonts from the EPUB Export Options (Cmd+E).

Include Embeddable Fonts checked in the EPUB Export Options

Export Early, Export Often

You can find the export option from File > Export (or Cmd+E). Of course you need to choose EPUB as the resulting format. A detail explanation of all the options available can be found at Export Options.

How do I open an EPUB file?

There are several softwares and online applications available. Among the most used there are Calibre and Adobe Digital Editions.

Cover and Images

Formats and Resolution

As we will see afterwards (see Image Panel ), from InDesign is it possible to export images in 3 formats:

JPEG

GIF

PNG

JPEG could be used in any case, except for images with transparent background (such as logos). In this case PNG is preferable.

150ppi is generally considered to be a good compromise in terms of resolution and file size. File size is important cause it directly affects loading time on limited computing capacity such as mobiles and e-readers.

Colour Over Greyscale

Consider that your book could be seen on a E Ink device as well as on a tablet, therefore it makes sense to include your images in colours. On an e-reader they will automatically set as greyscale.

Two Covers?

In InDesign there are 2 choices for including the cover in the EPUB Export Options(Cmd+E):

Include the cover of your book in the InDesign file as the first page. Consider that in this way, it will be exported as both as cover and first page of the book.

Choose an image from your computer.

Cover settings in the EPUB Export Options

Optimal Cover Size

There is no clear answer, but it is suggested to keep the size less than 1000px in width and height.

More info

Groups for Complex Layout

Group elements and rasterize if you want to preserve complex text layouts. Consider that this will be rendered as image, so it’s better to have a text version of the same content as well.

Select and group elements (Cmd+G);

While selected go to Object > Object Export Options;

Click on EPUB and HTML, then check Custom Rasterization;

Choose PNG if you want a transparent background;

If you want to have it as a fullpage image check Insert Page Break and select Before and After Image;

Add a description of the picture as an Alt Text, in this way if the image is not shown people will still be able to know what it is about.

Group for complex text layout

Group for images that are connected

Object Export Options, , Custom Rasterization checked

Images as Part of the Text

Images need to be inserted in the flow of text in order to be shown at the right place. Otherwise they will be shown after the whole text. There are 2 ways to insert the images:

Click on the small blue square on the top right and drag it to the point the picture belong in the text;

Cut the image and paste it while you’re inside the textbox, do the same with the caption.

With the first method there are some known problems: both the picture and the caption will be included in a bounding box (). In order to fix this you will need to work on the HTML and CSS.

First method: image linked to the text

Manage the Layout of the Image

Go to Object > Object Export Options to manage the layout of the image.

More info

Alt Text for Every Picture

As said in Images as Part of the Text, it’s important to have an Alt Text for every image included in the document.

Alt Text box in Object Export Options.

Organizing the File for ePub Export

The Articles Panel

Use the Articles Panel (Window > Articles) to manage the contents and the order of your publication. Add content to your articles by drag and drop content into it. When export to ePub (Cmd+E) set Content Order as Same as Articles Panel to make your changes effective.

When you add a text box to an article, the whole text will be rendered in the ePub even if it’s oversetting in the InDesign document.

More info

Window > Articles.

The Articles Panel.

Same as Articles Panel as Content Order in the EPUB Export Options.

No Tags, Text Repetitions, Etc.

Don’t include in neither in the Articles panel nor in the flow of text unnecessary elements such as tags or repeated text.

A list of tags, not to be included in the articles.

Split the Document

Splitting the document (in different XHTML files) is important because having a too big document would mean a quite big load for a device in order to quickly navigate it, for instance when one wants to check a footnote and then go back to the text.

In order to split the document, check the Split Document option in the Export Tagging options for each paragraph style you want to break the document, such as the title of the TOC (Table of Contents), or the titles of articles.

Then you will need to select Split Document based on Based on Paragraph Style Export Tags from the Export(Cmd+E) panel.

Split Document checked in the Paragraph Style Options

Split Document based on Based on Paragraph Style Export Tags from the Export(Cmd+E) panel.

General TOC and Inner TOC

The General TOC

Any ePub document has a general TOC (Table of Contents) that isn’t included in the actual pages of the document. Even if you don’t do anything, it will be automatically created and it will include a single voice which is the whole document.

Modify the General TOC

In order to create a general TOC for the ePub go to Layout > Table of Content:

Include the paragraph style that you want to use as title of the TOC element;

You can add other styles to create a hierarchic TOC;

Save the style;

When you export the ePub choose the style you created as TOC Style.

More Info

TOC based on article-title as Paragraph Style.

TOC Style selection in the EPUB Export Options.

The Inner TOC

Even if it’s not mandatory, it could be useful for readers to have an inner TOC, it could be different from the general one: other contents could be added and in a more articulate way.

If there is already one, the TOC prepared for the printed version can be preserved. In this case it’s needed to add an internal hyperlink for each voice (see Internal Hyperlinks).

No Page Numbers!

Remember not to include any reference to page numbers in the Inner TOC. You could for instance not include them in the Articles panel (check The Articles Panel).

Lists and Tables

Lists

For each list create a paragraph style from Window > Styles > Paragraph Styles. The options specifically referred to lists are the one under Bullets and Numberings.

More info

Bullets and Numberings panel in the Paragraph Style Options

Tables

For each table create a table style from Window > Styles > Table Styles. If you have a table with a complex layout is better to rasterize it (see Images as Part of the Text).

More info

External and Internal Hyperlinks

External Hyperlinks

Add external hyperlinks via Windows > Interactive > Hyperlinks. You can search them looking for “www”, “http”, etc. You can also attribute a specific Character Style to links.

The task can be done automatically using the option Convert URLs to Hyperlinks findable clicking on the right top triangle. Usually this method doesn’t work perfectly because the ”http://” is not automatically added.

Hyperlinks panel

Internal Hyperlinks

Add internal hyperlinks to the inner TOC and to the whole document via Windows > Interactive > Hyperlinks. In oder to do so you need to select the text you want your link to go to and select New Hyperlink Destination. Give it a name and save it.

After that you need to go to the text that links to the previous text and to Create a New Hyperlink. It should link to Text Anchor, in particular the one you just created.

Adding a New Hyperlink Destination

Linking to Text Anchor

Cleaning the file and Adding Main Metadata

No Unused Styles

Delete all the unused styles. You can look for them via Edit > Find/Change. There you need to look for a specific style from Find Format.

More info

Find/Change panel

No Local Overrides

As said before (see How do I open an EPUB file?) it’s preferable not to have local overrides, in order to keep the ePub clean. Find and remove any local overrides, indicated by the plus sign(+) next to the style. You can use the Show Text Overrides plugin to highlight them.

No Spaces in Filenames

Make sure that all linked files (and the InDesign file itself) don’t have spaces nor special characters in their names.

No Useless nor Print-oriented Characters

Make sure there are no double spaces and all the typical formatting errors. Check misspells and useless characters (this should be already done for the printed version).

No References to the Printed Edition

Make sure there are no references to the printed edition such as “printed in…”, etc. Also make sure there are no references to inner pages (such as “p. 23”), in notes as well. Lastly, make sure that there are no repetitions of the the title in pages such as frontispiece, etc.

Add links and e-version specific elements to colophon.

You’ll probably mention the publishing house, so add a link to its website. Remember to use an ISBN specific for the ePub. Remember also to add the rights for your publication.

Creative Commons as the rights in the text of the publication

InDesign Errors and Layout Problems

InDesign automatically detect errors in the document (such as missing fonts). You can find the alert on the bottom left of the software’s window. Make sure there are no problems with pictures and with the layout in general (missing fonts, broken paragraphs, etc).

More info

The Preflight panel showing there are no errors

Check Both Internal and External Hyperlinks

As above. Make sure that internal links are bidirectional. If you added them automatically, consider that you’ll probably get external links where you don’t want them.

Assign HTML Tags

By default InDesign will export each paragraph style as a  (paragraph in HTML) and characters as . HTML allows to tag elements in a more specific way, hierarchically defining headlines for instance (<h1>, <h2>, etc.).

You can set what tag you want to use and what class from the Export Tagging panel from Paragraph Style Options. It is also useful to merge style that are similar under a single class.

Remember to do so for bold (), italic () and superscript ().

Export Tagging options in Paragraph Style Options

Metadata

Add the basic metadata (data about other data) from File > File Info, other ones will be implemented directly in the ePub code (see Metadata).

Title;

Author(s);

Description;

Keywords;

Rights.

File Info options.

Export

Export Options

You can export from File > Export (Cmd+E).

More info

General Panel

Even though the official current version for EPUB is 3.0, the de facto is 2.0.1 as it’s widely supported.

As said before (see Paragraph Really Means Paragraph) there are two possibilities for the cover.

Choose the style you created before (see Modify the General TOC) as TOC Style.

You can add margins to your page even though most e-readers will overwrite this setting.

Choose Same as Articles Panel as Content Order.

The default for footnotes is at the end of the story. If you prefer you can add footnotes after paragraph.

Check Remove Forced Line Breaks to remove those breaks used for print layout.

Finally you can map bullet and numbers respectively to unordered and ordered lists.

General options in EPUB Export Options

Image Panel

Check Preserve Appearance from Layout if you want to keep the way images are cropped, etc.

Choose Relative to Page as Image Size if you want a value expressed in percentage (e.g. 40% of the page width);

Choose Image Alignment and Spacing;

You can insert a page break before, after or both before and after you images;

Choose JPEG as Image Conversion’s format;

Choose the Image Quality and the Format Method for your images;

If you check Ignore Object Export Settings the settings for specific images will be overwritten.

Image options in EPUB Export Options

Advanced Panel

You can choose to Include Document Metadata;

Also you can add the Publisher and a Unique ID that could be the ISBN;

Check Include Style Definitions if you want InDesign to generate a CSS for you;

You shouldn’t have any local override, so you don’t need to check Preserve Local Overrides;

Include Embeddable Fonts only if you need them;

You can add Additional CSS, such as the one attached to this tutorial, this could be useful if you have a whole series with the same style.

Advanced options in EPUB Export Options

Validate your EPUB

In order to validate you EPUB you need EpubCheck. You can use either the online validator or the desktop app. Correct the errors if there are.

Fix HTML and CSS

An ePub file is basically a ZIP file containing, beside other structure files, all the contents in XHTML documents and the style in one or more CSS files. You can make changes to those files using any Text Editor. Of course you can use editors with syntax highlight such as gedit or Coda.

Access the ePub

In order to access the inner files of your ePub you need to unzip it. To do so you can use this ePub unzip app. From the same link you can download the ePub zip app that you will need to compact your ePub again after you made your changes.

Cover

Keith Falgren suggests the following solution as the best practice for the cover. The following code should be included in a specific XHTML file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
    <title>Cover</title>
    <style type="text/css">
      body, div, dl, dt, dd, ul, ol, li, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, pre, code, blockquote {
      margin: 0;
      padding: 0;
      border-width: 0;
      }
      p#cover {
      margin: 0;
      padding: 0;
      text-align: center;
      }
      img#cover-image {
      height: 100%;
      max-width: 100%;
      }
    </style>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p id="cover">
      <img id="cover-image" src="image/cover.jpg" alt="Unlike Us Reader"  />
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

CSS and XHTML

Padding or Margin?

There are two possibilities to space elements vertically:

using margin (margin-bottom: 3em;);

using padding (padding-bottom: 3em;);

Apparently they act the same, but actually padding is suggested because it works better when near to the bottom of the page.

Delete Defaults

InDesign will automatically add CSS settings that are not rendered because they are defaults. Examples are:

margin: 0;

padding: 0;

font-style: normal;

Delete Font Colour if not necessary

InDesign will automatically add a colour for the text in the CSS. In several cases this attribute is useless therefore it can be deleted.

Delete Redundant Classes

Such tags as superscripts or italics (<sup>, <em>) automatically get a class from InDesign:

<sup class="superscript">

<em class="italic">

The class can be deleted as long it’s not there to differentiate tags.

Use Page Breaks

Page breaks are useful to break a page before or after a certain element. It’s also possible to avoid that automatic page breaks happen within some elements bound together. The CSS attributes are:

page-break-before: always;

page-break-after: before;

page-break-inside: avoid;

More info

Images with Captions

It’s useful to bind together images with their captions. In order to do so set the images as follows in the XHTML files.

<div class="img">
  <img src="image/Lonneke_image1_fmt.jpeg" alt="Description" />
  <p class="caption">Caption</p>
</div>

No “char-style-override” class

Often InDesign adds a char-style-override class to certain tags. Make sure the class doesn’t add anything and delete it both from the XHTML than CSS files.

The OPF file

The OPF file is basically divided in 4 parts:

metadata;

manifest;

spine;

guide.

More info

Metadata

Metadata are data about other data. They are used to provide information about the publication as a whole.

Metadata

Namespaces

InDesign will automatically set the XML namespace to the following:

<metadata xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">

Add the following to have the possibility to add futher info in the metadata:

<metadata xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf">

Title

The title should be already included in the following form:

<dc:title>Unlike Us Reader</dc:title>

More info

Authors and Roles

Author set in InDesign should be already there. More than one authors could be added and through the opf:role attribute their role could be specified.

<dc:creator opf:role="edt" opf:file-as="Lovink, Geert">Geert Lovink</dc:creator>
<dc:creator opf:role="edt" opf:file-as="Rasch, Miriam">Miriam Rasch</dc:creator>
<dc:creator opf:role="aut" opf:file-as="Barocas, Solon">Solon Barocas</dc:creator>
<dc:creator opf:role="aut" opf:file-as="Bassett, Caroline">Caroline Bassett</dc:creator>
[]

More info

Publisher

The publisher should be already included in the following form:

<dc:publisher>Institute of Network Cultures</dc:publisher>

More info

Subjects

Subjects can be added in form of keywords.

<dc:subject>social, media, monopolies, alternatives, internet, web, online, digital, Facebook, twitter, Mark Zuckerberg, unlike us, critique, theory, art, practice, economy, political, philosophy, social sciences, essays, network, privacy, database, web 2.0, individuation, collective, Lorea, Foursquare, design, program, code, graph, business, intervention, resistance, occupy, protest, Diaspora, hackers, hacking, federation, Distribution, centralization, decentralization, architecture</dc:subject>

More info

Description

A short description of the content could be added.

<dc:description>The Unlike Us Reader offers a critical examination of social media, bringing together theoretical essays, personal discussions, and artistic manifestos. How can we understand the social media we use everyday, or consciously choose not to use? We know very well that monopolies control social media, but what are the alternatives? While Facebook continues to increase its user population and combines loose privacy restrictions with control over data, many researchers, programmers, and activists turn towards designing a decentralized future. Through understanding the big networks from within, be it by philosophy or art, new perspectives emerge.</dc:description>

More info

Date

A date relative to the publication could be added in the following form; month and day are not mandatory.

<dc:date opf:event="publication">2013-02</dc:date>

More info

Language

The language of the publication could be added in the following form:

<dc:language>en-GB</dc:language>

Rights

Rights of the publication could be added in the following form:

<dc:rights>This publication is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, NonCommercial, ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0).</dc:rights>

Identifier

At least one unique identifier must be included. This could be the ISBN number.

<dc:identifier opf:scheme="ISBN">978-90-818575-5-0</dc:identifier>

More info

Other Metadata

It is possible to add other metadata.

More info

Spine

The spine defines the linear order of the publication. The linear attribute is useful for items that are part of the publication but are not actual content (such as cover, colophon, etc.)

<spine toc="ncx">
<itemref idref="cover" linear="no" />
<itemref idref="unlike-us-reader" />
<itemref idref="unlike-us-reader-1" />
[]
</spine>

More info

Guide (optional)

The guide element identifies fundamental structural components of the publication such as cover, list of illustrations, etc.

More info

the NCX file

The NCX file structures the TOC that will be automatically displayed by the reading software. InDesign doesn’t allow complex structures, therefore if you need a nested TOC you’ll need to organize it in the following way.

<navPoint id="navpoint-2" playOrder="2">
  <navLabel>
    <text>Theory of Social Media</text>
  </navLabel>
  <content src="unlike-us-reader-3.xhtml#toc_marker-2" />
  <navPoint id="navpoint2" playOrder="2">
    <navLabel>
      <text>The Most Precious Good in the Era of Social Technologies</text>
    </navLabel>
    <content src="unlike-us-reader-3.xhtml#toc_marker-2" />
  </navPoint>
</navPoint>

ID’s should not be repeated more than once and the playOrder attribute should be consistent with the actual order of the XHTML files.

A Layered Book

By Silvio Lorusso, May 20, 2013 at 6:28 pm.

I am not advocating the sheer accumulation of data, or arguing for links to databanks—so-called hyperlinks. These can amount to little more than an elaborate form of footnoting. Instead of bloating the electronic book, I think it possible to structure it in layers arranged like a pyramid. The top layer could be a concise account of the subject, available perhaps in paperback. The next layer could contain expanded versions of different aspects of the argument, not arranged sequentially as in a narrative, but rather as self-contained units that feed into the topmost story. The third layer could be composed of documentation, possibly of different kinds, each set off by interpretative essays. A fourth layer might be theoretical or historiographical, with selections from previous scholarship and discussions of them. A fifth layer could be pedagogic, consisting of suggestions for classroom discussion and a model syllabus. And a sixth layer could contain readers’ reports, exchanges between the author and the editor, and letters from readers, who could provide a growing corpus of commentary as the book made its way through different groups of readers.

A new book of this kind would elicit a new kind of reading. Some readers might be satisfied with a study of the upper narrative. Others might also want to read vertically, pursuing certain themes deeper and deeper into the supporting essays and documentation. Still others might navigate in unanticipated directions, seeking connections that suit their own interests or reworking the material into constructions of their own. In each case, the appropriate texts could be printed and bound according to the specifications of the reader. The computer screen would be used for sampling and searching, whereas concentrated, long-term reading would take place by means of the conventional printed book or downloaded text.

Robert Darnton, “The New Age of the Book” in The New York Review of Books, 18 March 1999.

Testing the Unlike Us Reader ePub Version on Kobo Mini, Sony Reader PRS-T2, Cresta CEB665

By Silvio Lorusso, May 17, 2013 at 1:46 pm.

Preview of the Unlike Us Reader, mobi version

By Silvio Lorusso, May 13, 2013 at 8:04 am.

Available digital versions of Cory Doctorow’s “With a Little Help”

By Silvio Lorusso, April 28, 2013 at 5:09 pm.

As a strategy for dissemination, the novel “With a Little Help” by Cory Doctorow is provided in 5 different official formats. Some fan-converted versions are available as well.

http://craphound.com/walh/e-book/browse-all-versions

“EBooks violate the fundamental promise of the Internet”

By Silvio Lorusso, April 25, 2013 at 3:25 pm.

EBooks violate the fundamental promise of the Internet. Anyone can publish a website. Anyone can offer content for free or sell whatever they want from a website. Small commissions to payment processors and web hosting costs notwithstanding, the Internet empowers a seller to engage directly with a buyer. Ebooks break this promise; the writer should be able to engage directly with the reader. The writer should be able to sell directly to the reader. Imagine if you had to pay your web hosting company 30% of your gross every time you sold an item on your website—that’s exactly what eBookstores do. […] The fact that paper books have traditionally been sold in bookstores does not mean that an “online bookstore” is the only legitimate place to sell eBooks. In fact, an online bookstore is no different than any other e-commerce company that displays and sells the products in its database. Downloading and installing book software should be no different than downloading and installing any other software. To be accurate, publishers can produce and distribute their own ePub eBook files but these still rely on dedicated eReader software or hardware. But you’re reading this article in a web browser. Why should reading a book require a special device, application, or intermediary service?

Dave Bricker, Why Ebooks Belong in the Web Browser, April 21 2013

Ebooks and Ownership

By Silvio Lorusso, April 15, 2013 at 7:41 am.

In current research for Microsoft, Sellen has learned that many people do not feel much ownership of e-books because of their impermanence and intangibility: “They think of using an e-book, not owning an e-book,” she says.

Ferris Jabr, The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens, Scientific American

Publishing Companies Are Technology Companies

By Silvio Lorusso, April 13, 2013 at 11:56 am.

It’s true that success for any individual experiment is far from guaranteed, and the form and marketplace are still evolving. But there are rewards for early investments in a nascent medium: ownership of repeatable workflows, an understanding of how authors can bridge the creative divide, creation of reusable technology, and most importantly pioneering the development of a new audience, community, and marketplace.

Eli Horowitz and Russell Quinn, Publishing Companies Are Technology Companies. Now It’s Time For Them To Act Like It, Huffington

Paper + Digital Access

By Silvio Lorusso, April 6, 2013 at 8:04 am.

It makes sense to have a third tier of book: paper + digital access. I am more than willing to pay a little extra for a book if it means that I have a copy for my library shelves and I can read it on a tablet on the subway. Amazon in particular is well positioned to implement this pricing structure. Better yet, why not a subscription service? $20/mo for all the books I can read? Unfortunately, as of now, the only options for paper book fans that want to use ebooks for convenience are to pay twice, or maintain two disjoint book libraries. Like its content, ebook pricing models cling to the past.

Kane Hsieh, Why Do We Keep Making Ebooks Like Paper Books? April 5, 2013

Opinions and Stats About Digital Publishing as Q&A

By Silvio Lorusso, April 5, 2013 at 2:49 pm.

Are tablets and e-readers are two competing markets?Yes. The booming market for tablet computers is starting to make the dedicated e-reader obsolete. February 28, 2013

How many ebooks does Amazon sell in comparison to printed ones?Amazon now sells more ebooks than hardbacks and paperbacks combined, the company has said. August 6, 2012

What are the most popular ereaders on the US market?Amazon’s Kindle is by far the most popular device, owned by 62% of e-book readers; Barnes and Noble’s Nook has 22% of the market. June 4, 2012

Do ebooks substitute printed ones?Not at all. Ebook readers are still voracious consumers of print books too. June 4, 2012

Does the iPad’s retina display measure up to e-ink?No. If you love reading and are looking to invest a chunk of money into a device as a dedicated e-reader, then the iPad is not your best bet. April 11, 2012

How many US citizens own an e-reader?29% of Americans age 18 and older own at least one specialized device for e-book reading – either a tablet or an e-book reader. April 4, 2012

How many American adults have read ebooks? A fifth of American adults have read an e-book in the past year. April 4, 2012

From the perspective of the book’s typology, did the market of ebooks used to follow the same pattern of physical books in 2011?No. While the majority of physical book sales are in adult non-fiction, the majority of ebook sales are in adult fiction. 2011

What were the most common ways to read an ebook in 2010?Laptops only slightly trump the Kindle, 35 percent to 32 percent. Coming in third was the iPhone, with 15 percent, followed by a Sony e-reader (12 percent), netbooks (10 percent) and the Barnes & Noble Nook (9 percent). Also at 9 percent was the iPad. August 10, 2010

Resources: Social Reading, Design Experiments, Blogs on Publishing

By Silvio Lorusso, March 29, 2013 at 10:13 am.

Design & Art:

- http://volumique.com/v2/

- http://www.elektrobiblioteka.net/ more here: https://vimeo.com/47656204

- http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1371597318/the-peoples-e-book

Platforms for social reading:

- http://www.goodreads.com/

- http://www.openbookmarks.org/

- http://www.shelfari.com/

- http://www.librarything.com/

Blogs:

- http://www.idealog.com/

- http://publishingperspectives.com/

- http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/

- http://readingforms.com/

- http://blogs.lgru.net/ft/

- http://hybridpublishing.org/

First Look: “Unlike Us Reader” Default Export from InDesign to EPUB 2.0.1

By Silvio Lorusso, March 29, 2013 at 3:55 pm.

“Unlike Us Reader” Default Export from InDesign CS6 to EPUB 2.0.1 format, then viewed in Calibre. File size: 3.1mb.here.

Cover missing

TOC missing

Problems with headlines in TOC

Inner TOC not working (no links)

Footnotes work, even though problem with lineheight

Books header rendered as well in the EPUB

Title and author detached from subtitle

Visual problems in rendering the subtitle

Block quotes work

No separation between end of the article (references) and footnotes

Images distributed after the article

TOC missing

Images distributed after the article

Bold missing in inner titles

Title and author detached from subtitle

Invisible voices in the inner TOC

Title alignment inherited by the visual layout

Kick-off Digital Publishing Toolkit

By Kimmy Spreeuwenberg, March 24, 2013 at 7:59 am.

Report: Kick-off Toolkit Digital Publishing 7th of March 2013

The kick-off meeting on the 7th of March was the official start of the “Toolkit Digital Publishing” research project. Margreet Riphagen, projectmanager of the Institute of Network Cultures, gave a short introduction of the research project and introduced the partners of the consortium that are involved in the research project. Geert Lovink (lector Instituut voor Netwerkcultuur) and Florian Cramer (lector creating010, lectoraat of the Willem de Kooning Academy) introduced several topics that are important to keep in mind in relation to digital publishing, and the partners gave short presentations about their know how and expectations of digital publishing. At the end of the morning we formed subgroups. Each subgroup, consisting of a publisher, designer and developer will each formulate their own research projects within the bigger framework of the Toolkit Digital Publishing research program and will be based on one or more publications of the publisher.

As Margreet explained the research project is funded by RAAK-MKB (Regionale Actie en Aandacht voor Kennisinnovatie), which is managed by

SIA (Stichting Innovatie Alliantie). Raak–MKB aims to improve knowledge exchange to strengthen the innovative ability of MKB’s and Universities of Applied sciences.

The overall goal of the project is: “To realise a platform with tools and methods that are based on open source- standards and tools, with which publishers in art- and the cultural sector can publish e-publications that are suitable for several (mobile) devices”

A consortium of partners will collaborate to reach this goal. It consists of a group of publishers – BISPublishers, nai010 publishers, FrameWeb, Institute of Network Cultures, and Valiz – a group of developers and programmers – Arjen de Jong (Essence), Medamo, Brinka, PUNTPIXEL, Restruct Web, and Silvio Lorusso – an expertise group that consists of Museum of the Image, and Constant – Open Source Publishers, and other partners involved are: Creating010 and Kircz Research Amsterdam.

Geert Lovink: about the proliferation and standards in the field of e-publishing

Geert emphasized that the project will be focused on experimenting, and exploring what the possibilities are for design and the distributing platforms. This particular research project thus doesn’t look into business models of these digital modes of publishing. As he explains there are other lectoraten that research this particular question. The Institute of Network Cultures also looked into these kind of questions in other projects such as: The New Media of Exchange: Dialogues on Internet, Monetization and Finance.

He elaborates on the experience INC had with publishing their own publications on digital platforms such as

Issuu and Scribd, which are free web readers, and LuLu, a paid Print on Demand service. As becomes clear these are just a small portion off the platforms for publishing online. Geert also refers to the ePub platform and the necessity to make all the INC publications available for this platform. Another important development will be the availability of Amazon.nl in the Netherlands, that will be probably launched around the summer of 2013. Geert emphasizes that this development will be a ‘game changer’ for publishing in the Netherlands if we look at experiences in other countries. Another platform he refers to is the open source/ free software platform Ubuntu which is an important international player. The platform is developed for both Smartphones and Tablets. Another platform that we should keep an eye out for is the collaboration between Nokia and Windows. It is still unclear what will happen here, but this will probably become more clear at the end of the year.

Florian Cramer: about design and typography in the field of e-publishing

Florian starts his introduction with ‘expectation management’. He explains that the field of design and typography with regards to digital publishing is like the Internet was in the 1990s. The possibilities seem endless, but once confronted with the limitations of the platform(s) you end up with a very poor design. There are several aspects a designer should keep in mind when designing for e-publishing. For instance the multitude of devices that each have their own settings and requirements. In this sense you can see it as the revival of the browser wars of the 90s, where each browser needed its own design. A result of this splintering of devices is the necessity of reflowable content. The content needs to be readable on all the different devices, and thus has to change according to the proportions of the screen. The design is adjusted dynamically. As Florian explains the paradigm of the page is disappearing. Another aspect that makes it difficult for designers is that the reader software itself isn’t fully developed. Most of them for instance do not support non-European alphabets. Especially for the art- design publications this will lead to even more limitations.

Florian also discussed several examples of platforms for e-publishing that are already developed: The people’s E-book – a webapplication for designers and artists to experiment with creating their own publications. Kyur8 – this platform is developed by graphic designers in New York and it allows people to create their own photobooks on the basis off several templates. It is based on HTML5. You can see this as a platform for Zines.

According to Florian it is important to collect these best practices and see what is already done in the field of e-publishing and look for solutions for the problems we encounter. It is about empowering the publishers, designers and developers to ensure that they can find their way in the field of e-publishing on their own.

**** ****

Expectations and inventory of existing knowledge and best practices off the partners

The presentations off the publishers illustrated that there are a lot of ideas about e-publishing, but not enough know-how and as a result the steps, or successes, that are made in this direction are very small. As Rudolf explained “veel vallen en weinig opstaan”. There is a lot of uncertainty about how to approach e-publishing, and knowledge about the possibilities that are already out there is missing, especially in relation to distribution.

From the perspective of the developers and designers the remarks made by Florian are confirmed. Annemieke from Restruct Web explains how their first experience with e-publishing was very challenging as they had relatively high expectations of the possibilities. They developed an App for Cross-lab at the WdKA Rotterdam. They encountered problems with integrating video into the app. Since it had to be readable without an internet connection the video needed to be integrated in the file itself, and eventually they ended up with a large application file that only works on a Apple tablet version. As she emphasized with regard to e-publishing it is important to develop something that is sustainable: It needs to work on several platforms and endure the test of time and platform updates.

The designers also addressed the social and interactive possibilities of e-publishing – how is it possible to share reading experiences, notes etc. And to what extend is it possible to integrate video, images or even Google maps into the e-publication? These questions relate to what Florian called ‘the Expanded Book”. But, as Florian emphasizes it is more important to approach e-publshing as a whole new medium. We should not just try to think about how to translate a book to a digital medium, but think about the possibilities of publishing beyond adding video and other interactivity. What new modes of publishing does it ask for?

In response to the question, if it is possible to export e-Pub from inDesign, Florian refers to the Guru of e-Pub design, Elizabeth Castro, who wrote the book

e-Pub straight to the point. It explains how you can export a document from InDesign to e-Pub. However, she emphasizes that this process is not without difficulties and is not the best way to approach designing for e-Pub. **** ****

Subgroups

After discussing the experiences and expectation with regards to e-publishing different subgroups were formed. They each discussed their first ideas, possibilities and expectations for experimenting with e-publishing and their specific research project. An important starting point is to decide on what publication to work with and what platform(s) to use.

The groups formed are:

Group nai010 uitgevers – nai01 uitgevers, medamo, Restruct web and PUNTPIXEL.

Group Valiz – Valiz and PUNTPIXEL

Group BISPublishers & Frame – Essense and Saulie Warmenhoven

Group Institute of Networkculture – Institute of Network Cultures, Brinka and a developer still to be confirmed.

  In a following meeting the subgroups will finalize their research plans and will start experimenting with digital publishing. The eventual goal of these separate research projects is off course to gather the experiences and “To realise a platform with tools and methods that are based on open source- standards and tools, with which publishers in art- and the cultural sector can publish e-publications that are suitable for several (mobile) devices”

Publishing platforms

By Arjen de Jong, March 19, 2013 at 2:04 pm.

Issuuwww.issuu.com

lulu.comwww.lulu.com

kyur8http://kyur8.tumblr.com/

On the business of literature

By Sauli Warmenhoven, March 19, 2013 at 3:27 pm.

http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2013/spring/nash-business-literature/

 “Abundance breaks more things than scarcity.”

ePub tools

By Sauli Warmenhoven, March 19, 2013 at 2:05 pm.

IBooks Author (aka IBA)

Apple iBooks Author & FAQ. van Apple over iBooks

publiceert naar een proprietary format van apple, lees ook dit artikel

Sigil

Sigil

Open source epub authoring software – geen support voor epub3

Calibre

Calibre

multi-platform epub authoring software – geen support voor epub3(?)

the peoples ebook

the peoples ebook

the peoples ebook op kickstarter

Kickstarter project met vergelijkbare outline als Toolkit Online Publiceren

baker framework

http://bakerframework.com

Opensource toolkit voor html5 ebook creation, mac only, publiceert naar iOS, als standalone app

mag+

Plugin voor Indesign om interactieve magazine layouts te maken, betaald. Exports naar Android, IOs en Kindle Fire platforms

epubcheck

java programma om epubs te controleren op fouten

Bedrijven & digitale publicaties

By Arjen de Jong, March 19, 2013 at 3:32 pm.

Tabula Nova

Arco van den Berg, tablet publisher, spreker op http://ereadingevent.nl/seminar/#seminar77, Apps en ePub

http://www.tabulanova.com/

Yudu

Engels bedrijf, Multi platform publishing, wel vnl met ‘Gesloten systemen'(o.a. mbv Adobe AIR, Apple’s IBA).

http://www.yudu.com/

Pressmatrix

www.pressmatrix.de

Berlin based: “Met onze software bieden we de mogelijkheid tijdschriften en andere publicaties op mobiele apparaten te publiceren en daarbij ook interactief te verrijken (o.a. met video, slideshow, textreader en 360°imaging)”

About ePub

By Sauli Warmenhoven, March 19, 2013 at 12:10 pm.

EPUB3 standaard – de technische standaarddocumenten voor de nieuwste versie van epub van het International digital publishing forum

wikipedia over EPUB

wikipedia over iBooks

overzicht van penguin over ebooks en fileformats / DRM

IBM developerworks artikel over EPUB 3

Bloggers Biographies

Arie Altena

Arie Altena is a Dutch is literary scholar, writer and lecturer. He writes about art, culture, the Internet, and literature for various magazines and publications including Metropolis M. He also works as an editor / researcher for V2, Institute for the Unstable Media, and he is part of the team that organizes the Sonic Acts Festival.

Marc de Bruijn

Web developer and graphic designer with a strong focus on the structural side of the design, as well as the technology behind it. We, being PUNTPIXEL, like to build systems, not decorative templates on top of them. This means we're often - if not always - responsible for the whole design process - including the conceptual phase, visual design and actual technical implementation of the design.

Becky Cachia

Blogger during the conference Off the Press, 22 & 23 May, 2014

André Castro

André Castro is a media artist, with a background in sound art and experimental music. His recent practice explores stragies for digital and hybrid publication and offline digital libraries (bibliotecha.info). Recenly he began teaching in the Master’s programme of Media Design and Communication at the Piet Zwart Institute, and in Willem de Kooning Academy's Publication Station, both in Rotterdam. pinknoi.so

Vicentiu Dinga

Blogger during the conference Off the Press, 22 & 23 May, 2014

Jakub Dutka

Blogger for the conference Off the Press, 22 & 23 May, 2014.

Irina Enache

Blogger for the conference Off the Press, 22 & 23 May, 2014.

Arjen de Jong

Arjen de Jong is senior designer at Essense, an Amsterdam based service design agency. He was a founding member of Buro Duplex, a collective of freelance programmers and designers. He also ini- tiated the Stereo Publication project, a cross-media publishing project avant la lettre.

Timo Klok

Media-allrounder, problem solver and frontend developer at VPRO.

Harold Konickx

Harold Konickx is a teacher of media history, coach and researcher at CMD Amsterdam. In his work he focuses on storytelling, reading culture and empathy. Apart from being a teacher he is a singer/songwriter and he recently published his third album, ‘Heppeneert’.

Silvio Lorusso

Silvio Lorusso is an Italian artist and designer. His ongoing PhD research in Design Sciences at IUAV University of Venice is focused on the intersections between publishing and digital technology from the perspective of art and design. He regularly collaborates with the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. After he received his MA in Visual and Multimedia Communications in 2011, he spent a period of study at the Networked Media course of the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam. He took part in exhibitions, festival and events such as Transmediale (Germany), Unlike Us (Netherlands), and Fahrenheit39 (Italy). He has written for blogs and magazines such as Progetto Grafico and Doppiozero. He launched the Post-Digital Publishing Archive (p-dpa.net) in 2013.

Michael Murtaugh

Michael Murtaugh (automatist.org) designs and researches community databases, interactive documentaries, and tools for new forms of reading and writing online. He teaches in the Master’s Degree programme in Media Design and Communication at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, and is a member of Constant in Brussels.

Miriam Rasch

Miriam Rasch started working as a publication manager at the Institute of Network Cultures in June 2012. She holds Master’s degrees in Literary Studies (2002) and Philosophy (2005). Since graduating she worked as a (web) editor and from 2008 on as a programmer for the Studium Generale public lectures department at Utrecht University, organizing events and taking care of digital broadcasts and online representation. She also worked as a lecturer for Liberal Arts and Sciences, and is teaching philosophy and media theory in the Media, Information and Communica- tion department. She writes book reviews and guest posts for different websites and magazines; her personal blog can be found on miriamrasch.nl.

Margreet Riphagen

Margreet Riphagen started working at the Institute of Network Cultures (INC) in March 2008 and is involved in various research projects. She holds a Master’s degree in Information Science (Human Centered Multimedia), a post-Bachelor’s degree in Business Science, and a Bachelor’s degree in Communication Management. Margreet is the Project Leader of the Digital Publishing Toolkit. Currently Margreet is the coordinator of the PublishingLab, which focuses at the intersection of publishing en digital technologies, both print and digital (hybrid publishing).

Rose Rowson

Blogger for the conference Off the Press, 22 & 23 May, 2014.

Kimmy Spreeuwenberg

Kimmy Spreeuwenberg is a new media researcher and graphic designer with a special interest in the areas where these two disciplines intersect. She is currently project coordinator of the Digital Publishing Toolkit research project initiated by the Institute of Network Cultures, with whom she collaborates regularly, and teaches at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam.

Marc Stumpel

Blogger for the conference Valt Er Nog Iets Te Ontwerpen, 28 November, 2013.

Katía Truijen

Blogger for the conference Valt Er Nog Iets Te Ontwerpen, 28 November, 2013.

Patricia de Vries

Blogger for the conference Off the Press, 22 & 23 May, 2014.

Sauli Warmenhoven

Sauli Warmenhoven graduated from the Willem de Kooning academy with a degree in Interactive Multimedia in 2005, and he continued his studies and graduated from the Piet Zwart Institute with a masters degree in Media Design. Since then he has been working on a variety of projects, but nowadays he specialises in building a variety of websites, web-apps, and electronic publications for a many a client. The intricacies of HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP hold no secrets for him, and he uses his extensive knowledge to build smooth-as-butter user experiences and stunning designs.