CiviCRM Book Sprint 3 done!

CiviCRM Book Sprint 3 is done. Updated manual, new dev guide and another book that was an experiment in shaping a manual for the human rights sector. All fantastic stuff...more news soon.

@adam [send a reply]
1 year, 8 months ago
#announce

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CiviCRM Book Sprint starts!

The CiviCRM book sprint is starting today! Details coming if you want to participate remotely.

@booki [send a reply]
1 year, 9 months ago
#announce

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FM Meet up

FLOSS Manuals is having a meet up Oct 3-5 in Berlin, Germany. This is a meeting of 'core' individuals and those that wish to step up their involvement and gravitate towards the core. If you are considering attending please contact me : adam@flossmanuals.net

@booki [send a reply]
1 year, 9 months ago
#announce

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Etherpad-Lite added to FM features

We just added a new note system to Fm to aid collaborative development of notes and content. In the 'notes' tab of each book there is now a dedicated 'etherpad-lite' for each book. Etherpad-lite supports simultaneous editing by multiple users, timeline reply, colored text identifiers and much more.

https://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite

@mickfuzz [send a reply]
1 year, 9 months ago
#announce Invite to WordPress Book Jog We invite you to join us on a book jog to update the WordPress manual hosted on Floss Manuals – The existing one is here – http://en.flossmanuals.net/wordpress/ What is a Book Jog? It builds on the concept of Book Sprint but downgrades the concept somewhat (sorry about that). While a book sprint normally has a real life meet up at its core and has a solid time frame of anything from 2-5 days typically, a book jog takes place over a longer time frame and may not have a real life meeting at its core. For this manual there is no real meet up, we are all geographically disparate. We aim to complete it in 10 days from the 12-22nd of August 2011 We want to build on the great documentation that already exists about WordPress to create a manual on Floss Manuals for the following reasons: Creating a concise introduction to WordPress Some might say that there is already too much existing documentation on WordPress, in numerous locations. This manual will be a digest of the most vital aspects of WordPress for those creating a WordPress site. We feel that there is definitely a place for specialized manuals. This manual is aimed at audiences who are; new to using WordPress want to improve the look of their blog and learn more about design in WordPresss wish to extend WordPress to make it the basis for an online community Using an Open and Flexible Documentation Platform Unlike many manuals, Flossmanuals are written with a totally open, do-what-you-want-to-it license. This gives writers the freedom to improve and update the manuals as new software versions are released. Manuals are written collaboratively inviting alterations and improvements from readers and users. The most up-to date-version of the manual is available in several formats, including printed book, epub, html, and open office. Working towards a book is a great focus for a documentation project. Helping to fostering Independent Online Communities We want to share our enthusiasm for WordPress as a great tool for sharing information, publishing all kinds of media and helping to build non-corporate online communities. We believe that good training and follow up support is key to maximizing the involvement of people in on-line communities. With the ability to output the manual as a word document anyone can print various chapters off as supporting handouts. You can also direct your site users to specific chapters of the book online, where they will learn the tools, and perhaps encourage others. Promoting the Open Web Flossmanuals has a track record of supporting projects which embrace collaboration and the open web. We think that the web is best when it is open source and using open standards and decentralised. We believe that independently hosted websites and communities a key part of keeping the web open. The WordPress system is perfectly suited to this because it is intuitive to use, easy to install and keep updated and is free software. For more information on these aspects see the following book – An Open Web http://en.flossmanuals.net/an-open-web/ Supporting this manual In the past this manuals been used and supported by the following groups and organisations, tactical tech, transmission video network, people’s voice media, aktivix and hacktionlab. They have supported the manual by contributing and some by paying for transport and documentation meetings. You can support this version of the manual by giving your time to help us write it, check it, and promote it. You can do this by joining us in irc – #booksprint of #flossmanuals in irc.freenode.net, saying hi, and seeing what you can do to help. To contribute directly you can go here - http://booki.flossmanuals.net/wordpress/_edit/ – You will need to log in or create an account. See you there!

@mickfuzz [send a reply]
1 year, 9 months ago
@booki #announce - check out the Wordpress Book Jog - http://blog.booki.cc/2011/08/wordpress-flossmanuals-book-jog/

@adam [send a reply]
1 year, 10 months ago
#announce

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[PRESS RELEASE] Please Circulate

Call for Proposals Open

Google Summer of Code/ FLOSS Manuals Doc Camp
----------------------------------------------
This is a call for proposals for the 2011 Google Summer of Code Doc Camp. Individuals and projects are invited to submit proposals for the GSoC Doc Camp to be held at Google's Mountain View headquarters (California) 17 October - 21 October.

The GSoC Doc Camp is a place for documentors to meet, work on documentation, and share their documentation experiences. The camp aims to improve free documentation materials and skills in GSoC projects and individuals and help form the identity of the emergent free documentation sector.

The Doc Camp will consist of 2 major components - an unconference and 3-5 short form Book Sprints to produce 'Quick Start' guides for specific GSoC projects.

The unconference will explore topics proposed by the participants. Any topic on free documentation of free software can be proposed for discussion during the event.

Each Quick Start Sprint will bring together 5-8 individuals to produce a
book on a specific GSoC project. All participants of the Doc Camp must
attend a sprint. The Quick Start books will be launched at the opening party for the GSoC Mentors summit immediately following the event.

Individuals with a passion for free documentation about free software may apply to attend by filling out the application form [1] and submitting before 5 August. Those wishing to attend do not need to be from a GSoC project. Accommodation and food will be covered by the GSoC Doc Camp. Part or complete travel costs can also be applied for as part of the application process.

Quick Start Sprint projects will be chosen from proposals submitted to the GSoC Doc Camp before 5 August through the application form [1]. Applications for Quick Start Sprints are invited from projects that are part of the 2011 GSoC program. Quick Start Sprint proposals can nominate up to 5 individuals to attend and participate in the proposed sprint. A Quick Sprint proposal does not have to nominate individuals to participate - you can also use this as an opportunity to promote your project to Doc Camp participants. If the proposal is accepted the accommodation and food costs will be covered by the Doc Camp for any listed individuals and part or complete travel costs for each can be applied for (if applicable).

The GSoC Doc Camp is co-organised by GSoC and FLOSS Manuals. Books Sprints and unconference facilitation conducted by Adam Hyde.

[1] - https://sites.google.com/site/docsprintsummit/

@booksprinter [send a reply]
1 year, 10 months ago
#announce

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FM @ Libre Software Meeting

http://2011.rmll.info/?lang=en
(July 0-14, Strasbourg, France).

FLOSS Manuals English and French crews will be meeting to make Free Manuals (Books) about Free Software and give them away. Adam Hyde will travel by the Bookimobile (http://blog.booki.cc/2010/11/booki-mobile-takes-to-the-road/) to Strasbourg and meet up with the French FM crew. Elisa de Castro Guerra and Adam will then do a presentation on the 11th (http://2011.rmll.info/FLOSS-Manual-Francophone-une-association-qui-promouvoit-la-documentation-libre-sur-les-logiciels?lang=fr).

The books will be made by hand on site with the Bookimobile and given away for free. Supported by Organisation int. de la Francophonie.

@nicestep [send a reply]
1 year, 10 months ago
#announce

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I have finally posted the first edition of E-Book Enlightenment to the Internet Archive at:

http://www.archive.org/details/EBookEnlightenment

PDF and hand crafted EPUB and MOBI are available. The MOBI will also be put on the Kindle Store once I have a chance to check it over.

@adam [send a reply]
1 year, 10 months ago
#announce

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Doc Camp

FLOSS Manuals and Google Summer of Code Doc Camp applications opening shortly...the application process will be online...anyone can apply...get your CV ready! Hopefully launched next week. Watch this space...

@adam [send a reply]
1 year, 10 months ago
#announce

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New FM Features!

So...Aco, Tuukkah and I have been hard at work putting together some new features for booki. FM is the debut of some exciting stuff...big thanks and hurrah goes to Aco and Tuukkah for all the time they spent working on these - planning, implementing, testing. I think these changes represent a big step forward for Booki and thanks from all of 'us' is due to them both.

We also need to stretch out our thanks to that rather fantastic org that has supported FM alot - Internews France. They got behind this dev and supported it by including FM in a grant. Many many thanks for this - they had their own reasons for doing this and I am sure they were also generously inclined to 'just' help us improve booki. Big cheers especially to Laurent (a huge supporter of Fm from the early days) and Sandra and Thomas.

ok...so. What are the changes? well they are numerous. So, first of all...there are now Admin roles for manuals. This is managed in the 'settings' tab in any manual. You will only see this settings tab if you are already an admin for that book. You become an admin by creating a new manual or via the settings tab (you need to ask the admin). It is possible to make others admins for the manuals. Ad admin gets some special abilities. You change attribution information, define language and text direction (important for sending to objavi), *manage chapter statuses* (more on this below), and define who can edit the manual (intended to be used only if spam is an issue).

We will also add to this list of admin abilities the ability to push content to www.flossmanuals.net. That means you dont need two accounts - one on the publisher and one on booki - you can publish content of www.flossmanuals.net directly (I hope to have this up in the next days).

The manage status messages is probably the control that will be most used in the settings tab. On each chapter you can set a status for that chapter. You can see on the right of a chapter on the TOC (Table of Contents) that there is a status. If you click on this you see a pop up and can change the status for that chapter from a selected list (to be proofed, to be published etc). Until now the status possibilities were universal but now they can be defined per manual via the settings tab. This is very very cool and Aco did a really great job of making this work in a way that is straightforward and easy to use. Very very rockn.

I am actually very excited as I am writing all this...:))) I think all this is a huge step forward for fm and booki. Ok..onto more features..Aco also made a really nice diff feature. You can now get side by side highlighted diffs from the history tab.

Revision viewing -if you choose 'view' for a chapter in the ToC you get a dropdown with all the revisions for that chapter. You can simply choose them and browse back and forward with the drop down if you want to see quickly how the chapter has advanced.

The same view can be accessed by the 'view chapter' button on the editing window - the window where you actually edit a chapter. This view can be floated and moved anywhere so you can see the original text of the chapter as you change it. This is *very* useful for translators of course (this is actually why we built it - so translators can see the source as they translate).

In addition to all this Aco built a very nice info interface for all manuals. Each manual now can be viewed in three ways :
_edit (note: changed from /edit/) - edit interface
_info - gives you information about the manual
_draft - draft view

eg:
http://booki.flossmanuals.net/ardour/_edit/
http://booki.flossmanuals.net/ardour/_info/
http://booki.flossmanuals.net/ardour/_draft

The info page has info on the book including recent activity etc including:
* 'owner' (we will change this as there is no 'owner' - creator might be a better word but suggestions welcome)
* what group it belongs to
* when it was created
* recent activity
* who has worked on it
* who is working on it now
* link to rss to track changes

I have not yet linked this page to the fm interface - need to think where it goes but I will do today or tomorrow - you can get to it directly via any book url ending with _info

Eventually we want to add other info to the _info but and ideas are very welcome.

So thanks thanks thanks to Aco for all of this and for managing the upgrade and merging etc.

Ok...next up and equally exciting. Fm now has micromessaging services. Tuukkah (who we were introduced to via FM finland) has done an outstanding job building in messaging services. When you log in you will see a 'post a message' text appear at the top right of the content box. This persists no matter where you are on the site. Ifyou click on this you get a pop up and you can send messages from it. Messages have the same syntax as status.net (which in turn follows twitter) -
@username - direct message to user
!groupname - message to group
#hashtag - create your own hashtags
βbookname - message book

You can also follow any user/hash/book and if you *join* a group you are then auto following the groups tag

That is not all - the message box allows you to send images ('add option attachment') and it *excitingly* it allows you to include a content snippet through a WYSIWYG editor in the message dialog. The snippet feature is built in so you can send anyone in the fm booki universe a snippet to translate/check/proof read etc. The same is true for the image attchments (you can also pass odt files/pdf etc with this).

thats not all - you can access this dialog from the editor - if you are editing a chapter there is a little button in the editor that pops open the message dialog with the chapter included in the snippet box already. This will shortly include only the highlighted area if there is something highlighted...

Also, messages are sent via email to notify you if there is a message. Youcan control this from the 'my settings' page. The syntax is obscure but in the 'notification filter' you can put (separated by space):
@* - block emails for direct messages to you
#* - block messages from hashtags you are following
!* - block group messages from groups you belong to
~* - block messages form people you are following
ℬ* - block messages from boosk you are following

by default you only get emails from direct messages

You can see all your messages from your profile page.

ok...thats all for now. there is a bit more but digest this. I am really excited by all of this. The tools Aco and Tuukkah have built aid the working process and the possibilities for collaboration. I would *love* for us to discuss this further on the list or at #talk - both in general and specifics. How can we best use these new tools? How can they be improved? also, all bug reports either to http://booki-dev.flossmanuals.net or to the list AND http://booki-dev.flossmanuals.net (please dont *only* send them to the list unless you are trying to work out if it is really a bug)

Many thanks again to Internews, especially the long time allie Laurent, and also of course to Aco and Tuukkah

@adam [send a reply]
1 year, 10 months ago
the new messaging system for FLOSS Manuals is now in place. It looks like a short messaging system but there is no character limit. So use for what ever you like. You can use hashtags, groups syntax, and even message books. Direct messages to other people is also supported using the usernames. #announce

@adam [send a reply]
1 year, 10 months ago
#announce flossmanuals messaging in place