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Wikipedia Offers a Book Creator

Posted by timothy on from the select-all-then-print dept.

Kilrah_il writes "Wikipedia recently added an option to create a book from your chosen entries: 'That's it, the book creator has gone live in the English Wikipedia! A few hours ago, the book creator has been made available to all users of the English Wikipedia. This feature, which allows all readers to create books from Wikipedia articles, has been until now only available to logged-in users. It has been available in other Wikipedias for a longer time, it's now available on the English Wikipedia, for all, without restrictions.' You can either download the book in PDF format for free or have it printed and sent to you via PediaPress with 10% of the total going to the Wikimedia Foundation."

89 comments

  1. DON'T PANIC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    It was inevitable.

    1. Re:DON'T PANIC by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      It was inevitable.

      What is this "book" they speak of? Is that the old thing where each page is printed on one side of its own sheet of paper? What an enormous waste.

      I think I've got one holding the basement window open.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:DON'T PANIC by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0, Troll

      It was inevitable.

      What is this "book" they speak of?

      Is that the smelly old thing where each page is printed on one side of its own sheet of paper and then stuck together with glue from horse hoofs?

      I've got one holding open the basement window.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. Why? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who'd want a Wikipedia book if it doesn't contain porn?

    1. Re:Why? by masshuu · · Score: 1, Insightful

      (all contains graphic images)
      Not porn, but close enough
      Page 1:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina
      Page 2:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_anus
      Page 3:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hentai
      Page 4:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BDSM

      --
      O.o
    2. Re:Why? by ls671 · · Score: 1

      Well thanks for that, now we have another topic going on about Wikipedia being sexist ;-)

      Why is only the female genitals "depilated" ?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_anus

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    3. Re:Why? by ls671 · · Score: 1

      This whole thing is kind of ridiculous. I remember as a kid looking at images in women underwear catalogs and in anatomy books at the school library and things were much more restrictive back then. Note that this was before ARPANET (~1971).

      So, should Wikipedia be more restrictive than those library school books from back then ?

      Granted, Wikipedia might cover topics not covered in my early day school books but either censor the topic entirely or let it be documented like any other topic.

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
    4. Re:Why? by nospam007 · · Score: 1

      "...images in women underwear catalogs..."

      The word you're looking for is "Christian Porn"

    5. Re:Why? by larry+bagina · · Score: 1

      wax your asshole and take a picture.

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    6. Re:Why? by ls671 · · Score: 1

      Dear Larry Bagina, you wrote:

      > wax your asshole and take a picture.

      So it would more like the one in the bagina picture on wikipedia ? ;-)

      --
      Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
  3. PDF Books by Bman21212 · · Score: 1

    PDF books would be very useful. I could "print" them and put them on my phone for offline viewing, since I don't have a data plan. I'm not sure the point of books though, it seems to usually be cheaper to print it out yourself, though maybe a math reference book to always carry around might be useful.

    1. Re:PDF Books by mwvdlee · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Exactly what I thought.
      There are a number of Wikipedia pages I reference a lot while working. Having them printed would be more convenient.
      It would be nice if you had expert-compiled article lists on specific topics, to make it easier to compile such a book.

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
    2. Re:PDF Books by Kashell · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Funny, I was looking at wikipedia on my iPad. It's a pretty awesome form factor, and there's nothing else required.

    3. Re:PDF Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, real awesome form factor right there. Since nothing else is required, I'll just leave my phone at home and shove an iPad in my jeans pocket.

      Besides, any decent smartphone (by decent I mean VGA or better screen and real web browser) can also deal with Wikipedia with "nothing else required", if you have a data plan. Since GP doesn't have one for his phone, I doubt he'd want one for a netbook or tablet, either.

      In short, while your iPad is a perfectly decent way of browsing wikipedia for some people in some situations, it seems completely irrelevant to GP's situation.

    4. Re:PDF Books by Ihmhi · · Score: 4, Funny

      I can see it now...

      To complete the circuit, the next (and most important) step is KYLE STANLEY RULES JIM O'TOOLE IS A COCKSUCKER or else the entire unit will overlord and likely start an electrical fire.

      --
      Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
    5. Re:PDF Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny, I was looking at wikipedia on my iPad. It's a pretty awesome form factor, and there's nothing else required.

      Hey there, Apple fanboy! Do you ever wonder why people deride you just because you like apple products?

      It's comments like this that make you and other apple fans (by association) look like a complete douches, not because you like some product.

    6. Re:PDF Books by Trepidity · · Score: 1

      What if the experts not only compiled the articles, but wrote them? Imagine some sort of multi-volume book filled with nothing but overview articles of various subjects, written by people who were experts in those subjects...

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    7. Re:PDF Books by langelgjm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm kind of suprised the only options available are PDF and ODT... would have been nice to see MOBI or EPUB formats, too, to make this more appealing to ebook users. Of course it's not hard to convert them yourself, just adds an extra step, and I'm not sure how well formatting will be preserved.

      --
      "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
    8. Re:PDF Books by nospam007 · · Score: 1

      "it seems to usually be cheaper to print it out yourself"

      It's not the printing that sucks, it's the binding.

    9. Re:PDF Books by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      ...or else the entire unit will overlord...

      Well, I for one most certainly welcome... Nah. Not going there.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    10. Re:PDF Books by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      See Featured topics and Good topics. These are lists of good articles which have been verified by the community as comprehensive and pertaining to a well-defined topic. (The featured/good topic initiative actually had nothing to do with books originally, but now every single one of these topics includes a working "book" link).

      If your favorite topic is not yet in the list, feel free to help!

      Now all we need is an implementation of the "flagged revisions" extension, so that the article revisions which end up in a printed book can be guaranteed to be OK at all times. Sadly, it's not rare for a formerly featured/good article to degrade in quality as it is edited.

    11. Re:PDF Books by Civil_Disobedient · · Score: 1

      Maybe if you'd bought an e-book reader that supported PDF or ODT you wouldn't have had this problem in the first place.

  4. This could be handy while travelling by BigDXLT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Should be a good way to kill 3 hours on a plane, don't you think? Just need some sort of script where all articles linked from some random topic up to a set depth (let's say 6, for traditional sake) are downloaded into the PDF.

    1. Re:This could be handy while travelling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      6 might be a tad high.

      Say each article links to 10 other articles, and for simplicity we'll assume there are no circular link cycles (a very big assumption, but I reduced the expected number of links to help accommodate this).

      Then a depth of 6 means that you'll end up with 10^6 or a million articles, almost a third of the English wikipedia...

      Though you could probably develop a heuristic to reduce that a huge amount.

    2. Re:This could be handy while travelling by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The "Add Whole Categories" feature might be a better way to go.

      Slightly OT: knew these people who owned a second hand book shop. One day this guy turns up in a Mercedes convertible. He is outfitting a new holiday house with impressive books and can they help him out? Of course they said yes, to the tune of thousands of dollars.

      So I wonder if there is a niche for printing and binding mass quantities of the wikipedia so you can line a wall.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    3. Re:This could be handy while travelling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's kind of sad...:(

    4. Re:This could be handy while travelling by Ihmhi · · Score: 4, Funny

      You could just filter out the Dragonball Z articles, and then that cuts the total down to around 250,000.

      --
      Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
    5. Re:This could be handy while travelling by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Should be a good way to kill 3 hours on a plane, don't you think?

      Good? I'd say it's excellent.

      The other alternatives were peeling my skin off with tweezers and eating my shoes, right?

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re:This could be handy while travelling by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      The book shop owners retired right after that so I am sure they were happy.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    7. Re:This could be handy while travelling by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      The other alternatives were peeling my skin off with tweezers and eating my shoes, right?

      Nah, you're not allowed to have tweezers. Someone might take apart a plane with 'em.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    8. Re:This could be handy while travelling by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      There are actually companies that exist solely to satisfy that niche. You can buy small sets of impressive-looking books for a bit of small shelf space, an entire library, or anything in between. They print public domain books in impressive bindings - basically an upmarket version of Penguin Classics.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    9. Re:This could be handy while travelling by kvezach · · Score: 1

      You're not allowed to try to eat your own shoes, either - you might be the next shoe bomber!

    10. Re:This could be handy while travelling by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      So I wonder if there is a niche for printing and binding mass quantities of the wikipedia so you can line a wall.

      Probably not. The folks who want a wall of 'impressive' books want hardbacks, leathers, fashionable/notable authors &/or titles, etc..., etc...

      Not cheap paperbacks.

    11. Re:This could be handy while travelling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You had a great opportunity for a compound joke and you missed it!

      You could just filter out the Dragonball Z articles, and then that cuts the total down by over 9,000.

    12. Re:This could be handy while travelling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Waste of time. You could easily kill 3 hours on a plane with an actual book. Some of them are even fun to read.

  5. PediaPress? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With a name like that you have to wonder what kinds of content they're publishing....

    1. Re:PediaPress? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

      With a name like that you have to wonder what kinds of content they're publishing....

      You haven't seen the book creator for 4chan yet?

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
  6. Hasn't this been done before? by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wikipedia is just following in the footsteps of Alphascript

    1. Re:Hasn't this been done before? by value_added · · Score: 1

      Has this been done before? From the "samplebook.pdf" (page 6) provided:

      [citation needed]

      I'd say it's never been done, at least not in any of the books I've owned. ;-)

  7. link by dnwq · · Score: 4, Informative

    the book creator.

    the Wikimedia press release

    (note the date - yes, december 2007!)

    1. Re:link by Kilrah_il · · Score: 1

      Yes, December 2007, but then it was a first public beta, for registered users only. According TFA, now it's out of beta and open to all.

      --
      Whenever in an argument, remember this.
    2. Re:link by xtracto · · Score: 1

      So, are there any interesting books already made? It may be a good idea if people start sharing pre-made books with coherent chapters.

      Also, I always wondered how difficult could it be to get an article wiki source, translate it to Latex and compile it into a PDF... If someone made a program that performed the 3 steps it would be easy to create a book from any wiki article in any language. Is there anything like that?

      --
      Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
    3. Re:link by elgaard · · Score: 1

      Well it is not that hard to translate normal wiki markup to Latex. Parsewiki is old but does the trick.
      http://paginas.fe.up.pt/~villate/parsewiki/README.html

      The problem is that Mediawiki has a lot of templates, tables, tags, special pages, permitted HTML, etc.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Wiki_markup
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_in_wikitext

      I once tried to do it for Wikitravel but end up going via HTML.

  8. But what about the links! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Half the fun of wikipedia is jumping from hyperlink to hyperlink going from ketchup to quantum physics. Losing the functionality makes it feel...not so wikipedia anymore.

    WHY ARE WE MOVING BACKWARDS WITH OUR MEDIA? FUCK, WE MADE E-MAIL AND TEXT MESSAGING AFTER THE TELEPHONE WHAT THE HELL?

    1. Re:But what about the links! by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Besides your annoying drunken all-caps, you raise a good point:

      Wikipedia and Google are implicitly dependent on each other. Google something you don't know about and the wikipedia article is always in the top 3. Become engorged in the Wikipedia article, drift, and your trail of links represents your stream of consciousness -- your thought processes, which are a lot easier to quantifiy(and exploit) when you stay in the Wikipedia instead of jumping from site-to-site.

      Putting on the tinfoil hat, that's probably the reason why Wikipedia dosen't charge for the "free" PDFs as passes off the printed versions as an Ubuntu-style charity.

    2. Re:But what about the links! by icebraining · · Score: 1

      Well, both the software and the data are openly licensed, so you can just download the whole set and browse locally.

      --
      Dilbert RSS feed
    3. Re:But what about the links! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because just like email and telephone are very different (each better than the other in specific circumstances), WEB AND BOOKS ARE DIFFERENT FORMS OF MEDIA ISNT THIS OBVIOUS?

  9. Ooh, ooh! by MostAwesomeDude · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I'm gonna make ones of all the porn articles! No problem with that, right?

    --
    ~ C.
    1. Re:Ooh, ooh! by wmac · · Score: 1

      yes, you could. If you like.

      But i suggest you to visit a porn website instead. It is as easy as visiting wikipedia. BTW you need to install a PDF creator extension on your PC which is as smallas 2Mb.

    2. Re:Ooh, ooh! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The books are printed in Germany, and according to the FAQ there are restrictions on the printing of porn.

    3. Re:Ooh, ooh! by MostAwesomeDude · · Score: 1

      Exactly!

      --
      ~ C.
  10. I have absolutely no use for this service... by calmofthestorm · · Score: 1

    But I'll defend to minor inconvenience their right to offer it.

    --
    93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
  11. Pointless by WinstonWolfIT · · Score: 1

    Before you had to have a valid e-mail address to use this feature. Now you don't?

  12. Nice by nephridium · · Score: 1

    With the current proliferation of handheld computers (i.e. book replacements) this comes in real handy. I kept most of my books already as PDFs on my tablet. For webpages where previously I usually kept the Firefox tabs open with interesting Wikipedia articles (e.g. to read later during a flight) I can now save them (without worrying about thousands of little files clogging up my harddrive), which simplifies things quite a bit.

    Another advantage is that you instantly know how it will look like when printed. Not to mention that PDF is an open standard, so there are free tools (at least on Linux) that let you easily add images/pages or otherwise modify it any way you like.

    The whole point of IT is making information accessible, this is another step in the right direction.

    --


    And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
    1. Re:Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rather than dick around with PDF editors, if you want to add to or modify anything you can click the edit button on any Wikipedia page.

    2. Re:Nice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But they'd revert it before you know. No, this way you can make your own improved version of the articles, e. g. a porn book containing all the porn articles from wikipedia INCLUDING many, many illustrative pictures, all in a nice easy to handle PDF.

  13. Ob by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    It has been available in other Wikipedias for a longer time, it's now available on the English Wikipedia, for all, without restrictions.'

    Run-on sentences at no extra charge, what happens if somebody writes "cuntbugger" in all the articles just before you print it?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    1. Re:Ob by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      You wear out the 'u' and 'g' letters on your daisywheel printer?

  14. PediaPress by Dexter+Herbivore · · Score: 1

    I am the only one that thinks the PediaPress name is unfortunate and am I the only one that misread it at first?

    1. Re:PediaPress by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes.

  15. Previous Slashdot article by alanw · · Score: 2, Informative

    A month ago is was mentioned here that parasites were advertising on Amazon print-on-demand articles from Wikipedia

    http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/03/2112203/Print-On-Demand-Publisher-VDM-Infects-Amazon

    1. Re:Previous Slashdot article by The+Archon+V2.0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A month ago is was mentioned here that parasites were advertising on Amazon print-on-demand articles from Wikipedia

      http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/04/03/2112203/Print-On-Demand-Publisher-VDM-Infects-Amazon

      Oh, now you're being unfair. Surely a book called "Vreni Schneider: Annemarie Moser-Pröll, FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, Winter Olympic Games, Slalom Skiing, Giant Slalom Skiing, Half Man Half Biscuit." couldn't be all bad, could it?

  16. Books by anarche · · Score: 1

    hmmmm, books hey?

    So what do you guys think, are these "books" gonna be the next big thing? should I put my money into some form of book-com

    --
    Wait! Whats a sig?
  17. Already done by identity0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sadly, this is already being done as fraud by These guys, who have over 39,000 separate titles printed, all apparently just wikipedia articles bound with stock photos. It seems to be done by machine, given the amount of books and the odd titles and stock photos.

    And they're selling them for over $50 each, with no notice that they are just wikipedia articles!! I only noticed because I was searching for books on an obscure topic and found multiple books by this "author".

    tl;dr: DO NOT BUY BOOKS FROM Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster

    1. Re:Already done by dr_canak · · Score: 1

      I'm not necessarily condoning their business model,

      But in two of the first four links from what you posted, there is a direct mention in the "Editorial Reviews" specifically stating that the content is from Wikipedia articles. Of course, the value of this "disclaimer" is predicated on the purchaser seeing that and still making a choice to purchase one of these titles, which may or may not be happening. And it doesn't appear to be there for all titles. But it is there for some.

      jeff

    2. Re:Already done by dangitman · · Score: 1

      DO NOT BUY BOOKS FROM Frederic P. Miller, Agnes F. Vandome, and John McBrewster

      What about Art Vandalay? Are his books OK?

      --
      ... and then they built the supercollider.
    3. Re:Already done by jonnat · · Score: 1

      Although questionable, what they are doing seems not to be fraud if they inform the buyers that they are editors compiling Wikipedia articles.

      From Wikipedia:
      "All text in Wikipedia was covered by GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL), a copyleft license permitting the redistribution, creation of derivative works, and commercial use of content while authors retain copyright of their work, up until June 2009, when the site switched to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-by-SA) 3.0."

      It appears to be just like burning Linux copies into CDs and selling them for outrageous prices, something you can legally do without problems.

  18. Writing a paper for school by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wish I was still in school. This would be perfect when the teacher demands that I need to cite X "non-internet" sources.

    1. Re:Writing a paper for school by tepples · · Score: 1

      This would be perfect when the teacher demands that I need to cite X "non-internet" sources.

      If you need reliable sources, that's what each article's "References" section is for.

  19. Non-free by tepples · · Score: 1

    If you're referring to traditional encyclopedias, they exist, but they're not free.

    1. Re:Non-free by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And they are not any more accurate, so they point is lost. http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/12/69844

    2. Re:Non-free by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Citizendium follows that model and is free, but has a lot less content than Wikipedia.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    3. Re:Non-free by Trepidity · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      True, but mostly I was hoping for a +1, Funny moderation. I've been told that once I hit 1,000 "funny" mods I'm allowed to retire.

      --
      10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  20. no epub? by cas2000 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    PDF is crap for ebook readers. why not epub?

  21. Wikipedia should publish to iTunes, iBook by mattr · · Score: 1

    Wikipedia should make books on specific subjects, with an editor who knows the area, and then sell them on iTunes or iBook. The money would be a good way to support Wikipedia and their might be enough to even hire an expert to contribute to that subject or edit it.

    1. Re:Wikipedia should publish to iTunes, iBook by jonnat · · Score: 1

      Good point! Because that's exactly what Wikipedia has been waiting for an opportunity to do: get their hands on some money so they can completely subvert their creation system and ultimately prove that their model is flawed, or at least limited.

      Joking aside, people have to start understanding that the collaborative nature of Wikipedia is not a transition phase to success that will allow them to morph into a traditional publisher. It is the core of Wikipedia and, frankly, I'm one who believes they've gone beyond proving that their system is much more effective than having hired experts as content creators.

      The fascinating issue is that the Wikipedia model is still so counter intuitive to so many people. For a nice analysis of the topic and a parallel to Darwinian Evolution and prediction markets, see this article:
      http://karmatics.com/docs/evolution-and-wisdom-of-crowds.html

    2. Re:Wikipedia should publish to iTunes, iBook by mattr · · Score: 1

      Hello, thank you for the reply. I looked at the link. Yes, I'm familiar with the idea however when Wikipedia assembles a subject area into a book you get somewhat less than Wales' "sausage". Whereas evolution might work in a single page, evolution does not seem to replace an editor who can bring together multiple pages to make an understandable book. Perhaps there are not enough people willing to do it or who yet see the issue, and possibly they will appear once it becomes a more obvious problem.

  22. Algorithms, algorithms, algorithms! by gwappo · · Score: 1
    Could someone make an algorithm book please and then share with the rest of us?

    Just grab the Algorithm category and all its subcategories - unfortunately it does not recursively descent to grab all pages by itself nor does it categorize into chapters so this will be a bit of work:-(

    When done, please share and post a PDF here, or if possible (even better) share the book so it can be printed and wikipedia can get its dues!

    Thanks!

    1. Re:Algorithms, algorithms, algorithms! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is your Google broken?

      More books than you can read about algorithms.

    2. Re:Algorithms, algorithms, algorithms! by gwappo · · Score: 1

      You do realise that wikipedia is a very complete collection of algorithms? Show me eg. Tarjan's strongly connected components algorithm in your freebookcentre - infact, clicking a few links, show me a book in your freebookcentre!

  23. For ****'s sake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The contents page in the .pdf does not even have clickable pdf-links. What irony.

  24. A great opportunity by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 1

    Well, my Christmas and birthday present shopping just got a whole lot easier. I can give everyone I know a customized encyclopedia about where they're from, their ancestry, their interests, etc.

    --
    Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
  25. Wikitravel does something similar by Qwavel · · Score: 1

    Periodically they take a snapshot of content from their site, on a particular region, clean it up, and then make a book.

    Then customers can buy the book (getting both printed and eBook) and take it with them on their trip.

    I would be interested in something similar from Wikipedia. For those of us who like to read non-fiction, a book of Wikipedia content (edited and cleaned up) would be worth something.

  26. lol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so i can backup interesting articles before wikipedia deletes them as "not noteworthy"?

    this is outsourcing to the media wikipedia wanted to obsolete..

  27. Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can now carry around all the mis-information, politically slanted articles, and a lot of just plain bullshit with me in convenient book form!

  28. Oh snap! You told me! by langelgjm · · Score: 1

    Oh Snap! You told me!

    I have an ebook reader that supports PDFs, it's just that PDFs make crappy ebooks.

    Maybe there's some ebook reader that supports ODT, but I haven't heard of it. ODT isn't even on this table that describes file format support of various ebook readers.

    Epub, on the other hand, is a free and open standard. In any case, people interested in this topic should look into calibre, a cross-platform, open-source program that can convert practically anything to any ebook format (this would include, for example, ODT to EPUB or MOBI).

    --
    "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
  29. Textbooks? by Slur · · Score: 1

    Ha! Now we can just make our own school textbooks on any subject we want. Take that Texas school board!

    --
    -- thinkyhead software and media
  30. Sounds useful by SandwichINK · · Score: 1

    Sounds like a useful tool for teachers and homeschoolers. Not to useful for most school kids though. I know my grandchildren's school won't let them use Wikipedia for resources for their papers. :)

    --
    A Sandwich Generation Granny Nanny who is also caring for elderly parents, writing, and striving to share words and vers
  31. Re:Just before you print it. by TaoPhoenix · · Score: 1

    I know this one!

    "By sending benign text to your proposed ebook and then replacing it at the last minute, someone can exploit your creation!"

    --
    My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine