Fallen Down the Rabbit Hole!

Luckily, we have had more success than Poor Alice. We have successfully uploaded an epub file (created in SIGIL/valid on threepress epub validator), a basic CSS file, and a cover image created by Corey that we have all made comments on. Prateeksha tested the epub file on Google Chrome eReader and Calibre and it works, so we are optimistic that our team work will lend itself to success on Yelba's iPad and Kindle.


The challenges we have had to face while creating this epub file have luckily been few, and we were able to address a lot of them in class as a group and by sending messages through BaseCamp. I am going to run through a final edit read before Tuesday's class to make sure our coding didn't go wonky as we noticed in earlier versions. The CSS looks good, thanks to Randy and Yelba's mad skills and has changed the look and feel of the original copy we pulled from Authorama making this particular edition feel more like a new and awesome work created by Team E. 

We are all looking forward to hearing feedback from the other teams about our ePublication of Alice in Wonderland as well as seeing what you've been able to create.  

Chocolate Recipe E-Book!

Currently, our e-book team (Season, Rob, Debbie, and myself) is working on editing/proofing the structure of the e-book's content i.e. reformatting recipes and so on (Rob has taken the lead on editing). We have completed our CSS, but will also make a final edit and then match it to our edited XHTML file to make sure it validates properly. Once this is done, we will again convert the edited pieces into the Epub and revalidate. We are also commencing our e-book device testing this weekend as well (test on Ipad, Kindle, etc.). As many of you may have noticed, everytime we place any changes to our CSS and XHTML files, we know revalidating is extremely necessary to continue any portion of the project to just note. Lastly, BaseCamp has been a useful communicative tool for our team thus far, and we are also using Campfire as a chat tool so we may collectively work via chat this weekend.

Question/Survey for the Cohorts

So since at least some of you are in STM publishing and/or are involved in operations where there are telecommuters (or off-site reviewers, or other people not physically in your work space) involved, I figured I would attempt to pick the collective brain about ways of going about tracking edits to content from many collaborators:

How do your places of work handle the workflow, especially with lots of collaborators/editors? Is there particular software in place on your servers (that is preferably less unwieldy than Word/Excel)?

Does your workplace's method rely on in-person/on-site contact? How well does your method work as far as the users are concerned?

I've been temping (mostly copyediting and proofing work) for the last month or so and I've been to several sites over that time, and there seem to be quite a few publications departments out there that are looking to streamline their content systems so that they aren't anywhere near as chaotic in tracking multiple editing passes and the like; does anyone's workplace have a particularly good way to manage this?

Like I said, I'm particularly interested in the STM folks and the telecommuters (my background is in directories where we did a lot of our work and content generation on-site), but if anyone's got something that works, I'd be interested to hear about it.

The Dubliners

So, The Dead is actually a story within the Dubliners... but you get the picture. We are working on this ebook of all the stories, and I think it's getting kind of confusing. Although, it might just be me. I am having problems with the CSS! Also, I really do not know what files need to be included. When we looked through the zipped folder of an epub a few weeks ago in class, there were all these elements that I remember each epub had to have... certain file extensions and containers telling the ereader the type of content, etc. However, I do not know what all those elements are, nor do I understand how to create those elements! My group is going to talk about it more tomorrow night in class. Nevertheless, I can actually view our ebook in Calibre, and that's pretty neat!

Oh, Alice!

Great minds think alike! Group D, "The Dementors," (Amy, Elizabeth, Kat, and Lindsey) chose Lewis Carroll, as Shelby's group did. We chose the Through the Looking Glass portion of his classic book though. We chose this book because both the text and the original illustrations are in the public domain. We also got our html from authorama.

We've had a lot of success using zoho for our project management. As you will hear again in class tomorrow... we have compiled all the html chapters into one file and are currently working on validating it. We have been having lots of problems with the "pre" tag, which the validator doesn't seem to like. The "pre" tag is quite important though, as it allows us to retain the line breaks and white spaces in the various poems that are in Through the Looking Glass. Currently the poems appear exactly as they do in the printed books, and we would like to keep them this way if possible. So we will need to find out how to replace the "pre" tags with something that validates.

Additionally, we've got a preliminary CSS design and a cover image chosen. All that's left is to finish validating, link to the images, design the cover image, and test the ebook on two different readers.

The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad

Group A (Devon Carter, Brooke Morris, Heather Norton, Ryan Reeh, and Sarah Weisse)

Our group began by developing a project plan based on specific goals and division of responsibilities.

We first determined our criteria for selecting a title. We agreed by vote that we would like to work with a book that contained images, dialogue, block quotes, and chapter divisions. We decided to develop the CSS based on classes for styling chapter names, chapter numbers, chapter introductions (block quotes), and illustration presentation. Further, as a group we made the basic style decisions regarding fonts, colors, and location of images in relation to text.

We then listed the tasks involved and split up the chapters among group members, giving each member four to five chapters to create according to the style decisions. As a group, we decided that the best way to organize our work and share ideas with each other would be to use Google Docs.

We divided the project plan into four stages: file development, file packaging, proofreading, and validation.

At this point, we have completed the first stage, and we are working to combine our work in order to package the files for the next stage. We will then move into the proofreading and validation stages.

"Chocolate" anyone...

Currently, our e-book team (being myself, Debbie, Rob and Season) has been collectively working to smooth out the structure and layout of the e-book we chose through Project Gutenberg (“Chocolate and Cocoa Recipes” by Miss Parola). Our group decided to utilize Basecamp as an online project management tool that Season helped us create. Basecamp has been a useful tool for our team as were able to see any team member’s suggestion/feedback in one clear-cut medium. We all have taken on specific responsibilities to construct our e-book. Deb is working on the TOC, Season is managing/organizing out the team’s efforts, Rob is working on the editing/proofing of the e-book’s content, while I have taken on the CSS. We have basically finished up our TOC, and are working on our CSS at this time. We then plan on editing the HTML and making sure everything is validating within the next week. These are the updates thus far…. :)