[IAEP] Please review E-Book Enlightenment

ana.cichero ana.cichero at gmail.com
Sat Jul 2 02:08:12 EDT 2011


I describe the experience I had with the translation of "Make Your Own

> Sugar Activities!" in the other chapter on Booki.  If you participated
> in this effort you may have seen things differently than I did, and
> I'd like to hear about that.
>

Hello,

I read thoroughly chapters that talk about using Booki and now can add some
feedback.

First.
Congratulations James for this book As a teacher,  I say that you are very
clear explaining how to do things and why.  That is why I want them to be
available for spanish speaking people.

Second.
I think that spanish speakers could realize reading this book the important
job they have getting books into public domain libraries as gutemberg and
internet archive.
There are really few titles in spanish.

Third.
About Booki installation ( i think that as you say if you intend to share
the results of your work you don t need to install it on your own server,
despite this, it is a pleasure to try new tools on our machines and it helps
the admins of all bookis to gather experience)

About working on booki and the Collaboration issues, where I am envolved, I
share everything that you say here
http://en.flossmanuals.net/e-book-enlightenment/booki/

Finally.
I will add some comments (  can be very boring for those not related to the
work )

1. I strongly believe in using machines as translators. But when  a book
goes to children --I think that the best use of language is important in
itself.  I am math teacher and the spanish teacher in my school is always
pointing out the relationship between mastering your first native language
and the mastering of formal languages, maths and structures in general. I
agree with her.

2. About setting a deadline for publishing it was just to encourage the team
and myself. Using winter solstice a natural event, worked in a psychological
way but
I dont recommend trying publishing at the end of the work. It is better to
publish and to check intermediate results specially in a long book. ( We had
the extremely useful help of Olga Mattos, that is professionally used to
correct and translate, but I think without her unusual talent this final
edition of the book would have been impossible.
We would have been in the need to send every of the translators involved the
request to look at the html of their chapters.

3.External editors are not recommended at all.
I personally worked on booki, but when I finished i pasted my chapters on my
open office to check spelling: bad idea. The text came back with some added
format.
I also tried  (luckily with jut a pair of parographs) the new functions of
google translator  (dragging and moving and choosing from a list) ... all
these meant lots of tags on the pasted html.
Using Microsoft Word it is known as a bad practice and was specially
harmfull to the html, much more than writer.
Some chapters I received on google doc was awfully full of added format too.

4. Some special spanish issues.
Dont try the broom for cleaning html on booki,it removes all the accented
vowels.
For aid in checking spelling libre or open office are the cleanest options.

5. Where to coordinate easily with the team.
 Good experiencie using the index of the book ( writing after the titles of
the chapters ) to share the the progress of the work and the names of the
people working on each chapter or a ??? if the chapter had not a volunteer.
 "Inherit Activity from sugar.activity " Juan 80% ( Juan translated 80% of
the chapter)
"Packaging Activity" Ana 100% Olga 2 ( that meant it was finished by
translator Ana and global editor Olga had checked it twice)
Good experience talking on the Notes of the book.
Not so good experience using the chat because there is no way of saving what
you write on the chat panel.

6. Using booki was a good choice because it is very easy for everyone so it
is easy to ask someone:
"Hey friend,  can you translate a chapter of this book? You just have to add
your name to name of the chapter for others not do the same work"
That was possible because any instructions was necesary.
Below you find the image I used enclosed to the link for editing the manual
I used for recruiting possible translators,  that then added to the team
that finished the book

7. About volunteer work.
Most of the team really felt the need of having a good booki for spanish
speaking children to start trying to program sugar activities. So that was
the first motivation.
http://escuelab.org/ wil use it soon as a text with kids.
it is important not to forget quality standards when you do volunteer work
it is as important as doing what you like and you feel you must.

I am really proud and happy of having this done and all of the people
envolved James, Mokurai, Adam, and the team shown on the credits were nice
to work with.

Please forgive my mistakes in english and thank you all for this great
community tools
:)

[image:
?ui=2&ik=40622d14bb&view=att&th=13020c64df045d62&attid=0.1&disp=emb&realattid=ii_13020ba550f8e39b&zw]
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