EmilyCarrU / social-book

A Digital Book with commentary created with Web Technology

Emily Carr eBook Application

A prototype ebook for Emily Carr University’s Social + Interactive Media Centre.

Running the ebook

This ebook is build with Harp, which uses Node.js. Install Node.js. It will come with npm, the Node Package Manager. Open the terminal, and you can install Harp using the following command:

npm install -g harp

Next, you can clone this repository locally:

# drag the location you want the project to be, into the terminal
cd ~/Sites/
git clone https://github.com/emilycarru/social-ebook
# this repo would now be in ~/Sites/social-ebook

You can now serve this project using Harp.

harp server social-ebook
# social-ebook is being served in your browser at http://localhost:9000

Structure

The platform accommodates different kinds of books with commenting at multiple levels. The basic structure is as follows:

Generic Book

• Section
  • Chapter
    • Sub-Chapter

Table of Contents

There is no explicit Table of Contents; the structure of the book is the table of contents.

Commenting

Comments may be made at either the Section, Chapter, or Sub-Chapter level. If commenting is permitted at the Section level, that book will have no Chapters or Sub-sections. If commenting is permitted at the Chapter level, that book will have no Sub-Chapters.

Sections

Sections are at the top level of the book’s content.

It is likely that most books linear books will only have one section. Books with multiple sections could include a play with acts, or a technical book with multiple major topics.

Chapters

Chapters are children of Sections.

Sub-Chapters

Sub-Chapters are children of Chapters.

Sub-Chapters may be any amount of content within a chapter. In some books, it could be appropriate to allow commenting at the paragraph level, so Sub-Chapters will be paragraphs.

In another book, an author may only want comments halfway through the book and at the end. Here, the first Sub-Chapter would be the first half of the book. The second Sub-Chapter would be the remainder of the chapter.

Sub-Chapters may also have commenting disabled. This way, an author could have comments enabled at the paragraph level, but only for specific paragraphs.

Example

The following is an example of how Frankenstein would work as a social book with comments at the paragraph level.

Frankenstein

1. Preface Section
2. Foreward Chapter
   1. Paragraph 1 Sub-Chapter
   2. Paragraph 2
   3. Paragraph 3
   4. Paragraph 4
   5. Paragraph 5
3. Letter I
4. Letter II
5. Letter III
6. Letter IV
7. Part I Section
8. Chapter 1 Chapter
   1. Paragraph 1 Sub-Chapter
   2. Paragraph 2
   3. Paragraph 3
   4. and so on
   5. Paragraph 10
9. Chapter 2
10. Chapter 3
11. and so on
12. Chapter 12
13. Part II Section
14. Chapter 13 Chapter
    1. Paragraph 1 Sub-Chapter
    2. Paragraph 2
    3. Paragraph 3
    4. and so on
    5. Paragraph 22
15. Chapter 14
16. Chapter 15
17. and so on
18. Chapter 24