Slashdot Mirror

... and it's called VIGOR. :-)

Some chapters of Karl Fogel's book about CVS, (the Concurrent Version System, the source code control system used by many a free software project) are available under the GPL.

I haven't seen too many solutions to this problem stated. I think I might have one.

We all know that teachers don't have the time and/or energy after teaching a class full of 30 kids (another problem... I'll save that rant for another day) to do the proper research into the topics they are to teach. They mainly stick by the textbook, and follow through their lesson plans. The REALLY lucky students out there get a teacher that takes it a step further, and tries to connect the textbook learning to more practical real life examples and attempts to use other sources of information to supplement the textbook (such as internet info, science shows taped from public TV, and public library visits).

So - how do we get the latest info into the textbooks? How about revisiting the idea of books all together? Wouldn't it be great if the book you owned updated it's self automatically? Well, with the internet and tools such as CVS the idea becomes a little more realistic.

I'm not proposing that CVS be used for anything other than keeping code in check - but what if a tool could be developed to make web publishing and updating textbooks easy and straightforward for publishers?

This might kill the textbook market as we know it - everybody would need palmpads or small notebooks to use as their text for the year - but the great thing is the following year you could just download the newest text from the net - and you have the latest and greatest info!

Publishers would have to charge a yearly renewal fee vs. every 10 years the school would buy new books. Sounds OK to me!

So, who out there is going to be brave enough to offer such a service to schools? In my opinion, if textbook publishers really cared about the quality of education, this would be a no-brainer.

This is SOOOO close to becoming feasable. I saw pictures in EETimes of some of the 'internet appliances' that are coming - and they seem ideal for students! Imagine a $99 dollar keyboard/LCD combo with just enough horsepower to drive a web browser that you could easily pack into your backpack.... very cool. If only they could get the resolution of the LCD up.

Like I said.... close. Might save some trees too!

Patent Pending (tm) ;-)

I have noticed some people have mentioned the need for some sort of client software for Project Gutenberg.

It just so happens that I thought this same thing some time ago.

I am working on my own GPL'd project called Gutenbook. Right now it is not much, just a rapidly prototyped Perl/GTK application. It downloads and parses the Gutenberg index and allows you to select a title. Once selected, that Etext is downloaded and displayed for you to page through.

As I say, it is only a *rough* prototype right now and I have been too busy to work on it as much as I want. I have plans to port it to Objective-C and C with GTK++. (I think Objective-C *rocks*.)

I have exchanged emails with Michael Hart and some other of the Gutenberg people and have their support. I just need more time! I would love to get feedback on this.

Please check out the link above. The prototype is available for download. Please also take it easy on the server. It is a lowly Sparc 2. It enough people are interested, feel free to make a mirror.


Nothing can possiblai go wrong. Er...possibly go wrong.
Strange, that's the first thing that's ever gone wrong.

Agreed, it looks like once more programs start using GUILE for extensibility, it'll be über-cool.

Problem is that, last I looked into it, not too many translators actually exist yet; in fact, I'm not sure that any do yet. Jim Blandy (the guy who maintains GUILE) thinks that some translators, such as Python -> Scheme, would be relatively easy to write, while a Perl -> Scheme translator "...[would be] a herculean task, because Perl's syntax and semantics are so complicated. Hats off to whoever even tries this."

A lot of people know and like Perl, and I'd hazard that the number of people who would be interested in writing extensions for programs in Perl probably outnumber the people interested in doing the same with Python or Scheme by an order of magnitude. A well-implemented way to get Perl and GUILE play nice together (or, more to the point, to speak the same language to each other) would probably accelerate GUILE's acceptance significantly.

A side note or two: I've read somewhere that one of the future plans for emacs (both the GNU flavor and the xemacs flavor) include ultimately replacing emacs lisp with a scheme of some sort. This is going to be a Big Deal when it happens, although probably not as bitching-inducing as libc upgrades. Also.. GUILE's real homepage is at www.red-bean.com/guile/. Check it out.

See


http://www.red-bean.com/ccp.html

for details; this is a "CVS community" project,
designed to ensure the stability of the
CVS maintenance process and of the resources
currently found at www.cyclic.com.

-Karl