XSweet is a finely crafted tool. It takes docx files, those horrible mangy MS Word files, and translates them into clean, lovely, HTML. XSweet is open source, modular, and very nicely done.
A huge tip of the hat to Wendell Piez (XML guru), and to Alex Theg. As geeky as it sounds, I loved watching these two chat about the issues they encountered making this software. The attention to detail was really unbelievable. Amazing work. XSweet is a finely crafted tool.
When in NZ, I often have meetings at 1am, 2am, 6am… since most of the team is ‘somewhere else’ 😉 That can be pretty tiring but a bonus is that if I can muster the energy I can sometimes slip away on a weekday, during the day, and enjoy Northland. Some photos from such an adventure today. I took my neighbor Mike out for a day’s surf’n at Ahipara.
The first two photos show a car we passed that had tried to get around the rocks (we drove around there today – it needs a good 4WD). The car broke an axle and then the tide came in and wrecked the car… it was a sad sight to see and a sober reminder of how treacherous the coast can be.
These photos of us returning to the Hokianga on the Rawene ferry. The end of a great day.
Coko is looking for a hosting provider to provide half a dozen instances of the book production system Editoria (see earlier post). These are not for production, but for early adopters to try it out. I want to avoid taking this load on internally as it’s not our forte. Contact me if you can help us out 🙂
There is sooooo much going on at Coko…I was getting some links together to help someone understand Editoria… the list is long! Providing them below in case you are interested!
Matauri Bay today… I was the only one in the surf for quite a while. Not in the photos, but I was thinking…’all this scene needs now is some dolphins…’ and of course… a pod of dolphins swam by further out… no kidding…
Two interesting releases coming up that I am involved with. PagedJS is what Fred Chasen and Julie Blanc are working on as part of the PagedMedia project. Its coming close to some interesting releases.
Also, XSweet, the docx -> HTML suite will be released as 1.0 in the first week of may. Look for announcements on the Coko site.
Yep, today – for the third time in a row, the US gov validated my status as an Alien of Extraordinary Ability. Its the actual title of my visa – best visa title ever. I didn’t even have to show them my spangly green head antennae. The visa is also known as the O1. Another 3 years I can work in the US 🙂
Editoria is the book production platform we have been working on with the University of California Press and the Californian Digital Library. If you’d like to know more there is a webinar coming up (May 15) led by Editoria Community Manager Alison McGonagle-O’Connell.
So, you may never have heard of OLPC, but it was quite a thing. OLPC = One Laptop per Child. A project initiated by MIT. Its mission was to change the world – essentially to educate millions of kids that did not have much in the way of educational resources. The basic idea was to make really really cheap laptops and then get them to kids that needed them. The Laptop was pretty innovative at the time as there was no such thing as a ‘small factor’ laptop back then. You just had big, expensive, laptops. OLPC tried to get the price down by innovating in form factor and the attendant technologies like screens…
It was a pretty cool thing.
Anyways… there was an interesting article that a friend passed to me about it. I just landed in NZ, so I’m pretty knackered and can’t quite write what I want to write about this now. But here is the link:
I’m writing about it here as I was pretty close to the project. In fact, I facilitated all the documentation and worked closely with Walter Bender and the crew. We (FLOSS Manuals) did a few Book Sprints to create the docs and as it happens I found this old, old vid online from that time:
I found the OLPC project deeply flawed. It was a movement without proper resourcing and an untethered ambitious aim. But I liked Walter and many of the people involved. It was interesting to watch this whole thing unpack slowly infront of me. Anyways… will read the article more thoroughly when I’m more present and make some more comments from my own experience of the project.
continued…. actually, I slurped up a coffee and read the article more closely. It’s pretty accurate. I realised things were topsy with the OLPC when I discovered the reason why we were doing docs (apart from them not having any in the first place) was because the laptops were selling at (something like) $180 a unit, but costing $186 (0r something) per unit in support costs alone. They were making a loss on each machine purely on support costs. It wasn’t a surprise to me as many people needed a manual just to work out how to open it up…
But I have to say, Walter Bender was the real deal. Super smart and humble as pie. He had his heart and vision in the right place, and if he had been supported the OLPC project would not have lived and died as a hardware project. His vision was much greater and worthy but, as the article discussed, didn’t get the traction over the sexy hardware sell.
Anyway… some of the manuals we made are still online 🙂
It was even translated to Farsi and a heap of other languages that are only to be found now in the Internet Archive (eg Greek, Arabic and others). The docs were also available in book form, electronic book, and on the laptops themselves.
These photos of us returning to the Hokianga on the Rawene ferry. The end of a great day.
.jpg){kind=link}