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 haroldkonickx, 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 4 AC with the
th

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 haroldkonickx, 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 haroldkonickx, 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 roserowson, 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 & MULTICHANNEL
PUBLISHING
By roserowson, 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 roserowson, 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 Andre 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 Andre 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-Read

cd how-to-tutorial/developer/part2

Use pandoc to tweak a markdown

document to be combinable with
others
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

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/advanc

[^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\$20a

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

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 rea

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.m

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-Read

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.o
<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.o
<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.o
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"$if(lang)$ lang="$lang$" xml:lang=
<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$type="text/css"
endfor$
</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
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 --ta

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 haroldkonickx, 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
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 postdigital 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 kimberley, 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
ereader 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 kimberley, 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, 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, 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, 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 jakubdutka, 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 jakubdutka, 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 jakubdutka, 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, 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 19 century and were far from the ideal of open
th

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 – 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, 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 counteract 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
POSTDIGITAL PRINT
By jakubdutka, 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 PostDigital 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 postdigital 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

2012.

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 :

1. The Grafton 9 collective in Bologna which is scanning the political

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

PostDigital 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
postdigital 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/MetaFontBoo
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 Appstore 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
typesetting 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 ariealtena, 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 21 st
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 jakubdutka, 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, 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, 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 jakubdutka, 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, 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, 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, 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 jakubdutka, 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, 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 haroldkonickx, 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 haroldkonickx, 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 haroldkonickx, 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
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 workflow 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 vince, 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
postdigital print

The postdigital 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

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 postdigital 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

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
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
InstituteArTEZ (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
PostDigital?, 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 (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 (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 (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 PostDigital 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 – 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 kimberley, 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 haroldkonickx, 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 kimberley, 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 kimberley, 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 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

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

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

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 marcstumpel, 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, 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 marcstumpel, 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

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

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

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

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

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

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 marcstumpel, 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 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

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 timoklok, 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 kimberley, October 31, 2013 at 3:11 pm.

(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, 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 kimberley, 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 kunsten 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 kunsten 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 kunsten 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 kunsten
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 kunsten 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 kunsten 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 kunsten 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 kunsten 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’ kunsten 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 kunsten 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 internetvaluta 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 kunsten
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 smartphones. 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 kunsten
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:

1. the set of metadata is defined into a Dublin Core Application Profile

(DCAP);
2. the ways to insert the DCAP within a MultiMarkdown document are
discussed.

What Metadata?
1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. Metadata that deal with navigation e.g. anchors in an hypertext
environment.

Why Embedding Metadata into MMD?

Embedding Metadata directly into MMD means that:

1. 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.);
2. 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;
3. 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
eversion. 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 kimberley, 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 kimberley, 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
1
access the collection.”

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
2
information.”

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?

1. http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bookless-public-library-texas-home-bibliotech/story?
id=18213091 ↩
2. Warwick, Henry. (2013) ‘Sharing is Caring, the radical tactics of the offline’ Forthcoming
within INC’s Network Notebook series. ↩
READMILL – SOCIAL E-BOOKS
By kimberley, 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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Digitalpublishing-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

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 "aut
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 mistake

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 Expr

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 kimberley, 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 kimberley, 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 kimberley, 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 kimberley, 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 kimberley, 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:

1. Structural lay-out on basis of HTML5;

2. Hyperlinking, within the confines of the EPUB;
3. Support for MathML, a language for producing the notation of
mathematical formulas;
4. Scripting the content using JavaScript;
5. Applying a custom visual style to the publication with the use of CSS;
 6. Use of custom fonts (other than the ones present on the viewing
device);
7. Embedding audio and video;
8. 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:

 1. 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”.
2. 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”;
3. Multiple custom typefaces (test results and tables: “Fonts”);
4. Coloured text elements and blocks, text styles (“Basic Styles”);
5. 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 kimberley, 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

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
ereader 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):

1. 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.
2. 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.
 1. Select and group elements (Cmd+G);
2. While selected go to Object > Object Export Options;
3. Click on EPUB and HTML, then check Custom Rasterization;
4. Choose PNG if you want a transparent background;
5. If you want to have it as a fullpage image check Insert Page Break
and select Before and After Image;
6. 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:

1. Click on the small blue square on the top right and drag it to the
point the picture belong in the text;
2. 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:

1. Include the paragraph style that you want to use as title of the TOC
element;
2. You can add other styles to create a hierarchic TOC;
3. Save the style;
4. 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 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
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 eversion 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
1. Even though the official current version for EPUB is 3.0, the de facto
is 2.0.1 as it’s widely supported.
2. As said before (see Paragraph Really Means Paragraph) there
are two possibilities for the cover.
 3. Choose the style you created before (see Modify the General
TOC) as TOC Style.
4. You can add margins to your page even though most e-readers will
overwrite this setting.
5. Choose Same as Articles Panel as Content Order.
6. The default for footnotes is at the end of the story. If you prefer you
can add footnotes after paragraph.
7. Check Remove Forced Line Breaks to remove those breaks used for
print layout.
8. Finally you can map bullet and numbers respectively to unordered
and ordered lists.

General options in EPUB Export Options

Image Panel
 1. Check Preserve Appearance from Layout if you want to keep the
way images are cropped, etc.
2. Choose Relative to Page as Image Size if you want a value expressed
in percentage (e.g. 40% of the page width);
3. Choose Image Alignment and Spacing;
4. You can insert a page break before, after or both before and after
you images;
5. Choose JPEG as Image Conversion’s format;
6. Choose the Image Quality and the Format Method for your images;
7. If you check Ignore Object Export Settings the settings for specific
images will be overwritten.

Image options in EPUB Export Options

Advanced Panel
 1. You can choose to Include Document Metadata;
2. Also you can add the Publisher and a Unique ID that could be the
ISBN;
3. Check Include Style Definitions if you want InDesign to generate a
CSS for you;
4. You shouldn’t have any local override, so you don’t need to check
Preserve Local Overrides;
5. Include Embeddable Fonts only if you need them;
6. 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

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,
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:

1. using margin (margin-bottom: 3em;);

2. 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.idp

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:creat
<dc:creator opf:role="aut" opf:file-as="Bassett, Caroline">Caroline Bassett</dc
[]

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, dig

More info

Description
A short description of the content could be added.
<dc:description>The Unlike Us Reader offers a critical examination of social me

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
Rights of the publication could be added in the following form:
<dc:rights>This publication is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution, Non

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="navpoint2" 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<
</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 ereaders are two competing markets?Yes. The

booming market for tablet computers is starting to make the dedicated
ereader 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 ereader, then the iPad is not your best bet. April 11, 2012

How many US citizens own an ereader?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 ereader (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 kimberley, 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

kyur8

http://kyur8.tumblr.com/
ON THE BUSINESS OF LITERATURE
By sauli, 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, 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, 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 initiated 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
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
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.