[Sugar-devel] Book bundles and Read

[Aleksey Lim]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 06:31:18PM -0400, Samuel Klein wrote:
> This makes perfect sense to me.   In particular, Read should be able to read
> .xol files and display books contained within them if they are in a
> known/readable format.  Adding support over time for alternatives to
> catalog.atom would not be difficult (there are some learning-objects formats
> that have different canonical names and formats for their catalog files) but
> I'd like to see this become the recommended way to store a set of books,
> even if it is part of a more complex activity/object/content bundle.
> 
> SJ
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 5:06 PM, Sayamindu Dasgupta <sayamindu at gmail.com>wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > While looking at the existing Library Bundle mechanism, I was
> > wondering if it would be possible to bypass the Browser altogether and
> > launch the catalog inside Read itself (for library bundles that have
> > ebooks in them). If we use a zip archive format, with the following
> > internal layout, it will be possible to load the catalog directly into
> > Read (once I have support for the draft OPDS standard in Read):
> >
> > .
> > |-- books
> > |   |-- Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.epub
> > |   |-- Verne - A Journey into the Interior of the Earth.epub
> > |   |-- Verne - Around the World in Eighty Days.epub
> > |   |-- Verne - From the Earth to the Moon.epub
> > |   `-- Verne - The Mysterious Island.epub
> > `-- catalog.atom
> >
> >
> > Only the catalog name needs to be constant (catalog.atom) - the books
> > would be referenced from the catalog, along with optional thumbnail
> > icons etc.
> >
> > This may be useful in scenarios where the deployment or a distributor
> > wants to distribute multiple (but of a similar theme) books together
> > (eg: beginning of the school session, books for a specific subject).
> >
> > Does this make sense ?
> > Thanks,
> > Sayamindu

IMHO, its really bad to not follow KISS(and UNIX way with small but
powerful tools). Now we have list-of-objects/catalogs in Browse(for
.xols), proposed catalogs in Read. At the same time we can provide
catalog feature in Journal. I hope in 0.86 we will have more powerful
filter[1]/tag[2] and thumbs[3] features. 0.88 could have Journal
which would have plugins for specific needs like browsing books[4].

[1] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Proposals/Journal#What.2FAnything_palette
[2] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Proposals/Journal#Tags_palette
[3] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Design_Team/Designs/Journal#10
[4] http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Features/Unified_Browser_for_Objects

-- 
Aleksey