Viewers? eBook Creators?

Posted by 22111
Oct 20, 2013 at 10:18 AM

To round up the picture: If you buy some flipbook software for several hundred dollars, it’s not so much for the result you’ll get, since there are numerous free offerings out there, also for the transposition of pdf files into flipbooks. But you pay the money, more or less, for the abilities (and hopefully, strenghts AND ease of use) of the creation software, of the creation process.

Then, it occured to me that we have to consider another aspect for the comparison of outliner exe files / viewers vs. pdf vs. flipbooks: It’s presentation of search results to the “viewer”, to the people expected to view your material with it.

Here, an executable file like the one mentioned above, in MNK, seems to be best IF it preserves, on the viewing side, its “original” “found terms table/list”. On the other hand, when it’s true that with a pdf, you can have a navigation tree, I don’t see good presentation of search results for pdf, it’s “one by one”, by mouse click or by F3, and without the user even knowing IF there are additional finds for the search term in question, so he has to do the F3 just in case of… and let alone context/relevance considerations.

The same is possibly true for all flipbooks, but then, it might be possible that some flipbook creator creates much better flipbooks, unknown to me.

But then, let’s consider pdf’s once more! Since even their regular navigation pane entries ain’t but bookmarks, brought in a tree form, you should be able to build up an alternative tree, or in practice, just ADD some other tree “headings” into the tree, for MORE such booksmarks, and under which you can list “bookmarks as search results”.

This would not replace regular search, but my idea is, most prospects / info users would often search for some standard terms they are interested in (like the main entries within the index of a book), and which are spread all over your navigation tree.

Now why not have, in this second part of the tree, something like “Direct access to…”, and then a list of such relevant search terms the regular user might be interested in, and have just those same booksmarks for the relevant pages, that are already within your navigation tree, too?

Such a system

(that you could also replicate within a flipbook file, and also within the “viewer” file of an outliner: here, if bookmarks/references are not allowed in the tree, just copy (!) the relevant items from “above”, into a “last section” of the tree: since it’s “viewing only” anyway, the distinction between clones and copies isn’t relevant here)

would present the additional advantage of GUIDING the user/prospect to some relevant “search” terms = relevant subjects YOU want him to check about, and this means that such a structure will greatly facilitate your EDITING/WRITING process, since now you can be sure that he will “SEE IT”, even for subjects that logically should be spread over your whole text compound.

Which means, your text can be much more “natural”, from “natural” subject to the next, without your being “forced” to “integrate the whole side-ways picture” into such subjects, but for which this “side-way” subject is secondary only.

This means you will be sure he will “get” those “particular” subjects, from gathering the relevant pages (where only parts of it are treated, those parts constituting a “whole picture” if brought together) under such specials headings, without interrupting the “flow” of “natural reading”.

Of course, you should assure that those “parts being relevant in another context” of your “regular” subjects are visually distinguished within those “regular” subjects (for example, by bolding the passages/“search terms” here that become relevant in the special context, together with even an additional link within the text, in the form “(cf. ThatSubject)”), in order for your “reader” not having to “search” within those pages when he accesses them, in a row, from within that special part of the tree (and as I have said above, he should not have to scroll your content anwhere, on any screen 1280x1024 and above).

Such a text construction would permit you to have your “readers” read your “special” subjects, spread over “natural” subjects, both fast AND within their otherwise-relevant context, which is NOT the case if you try to develop those “gathered” subjects on their own, again, meaning WITHOUT the respective contexts in which you previously had positioned PARTS of this “spread” subject.

It goes without saying that in some instances, such a “particular treatment” would be helpful indeed, but in many, the “leave it spread” construction described above will be preferable.

So we see here that even in texts-to-be-read, “doubling/gathering” of parts, here by “virtual cloning”, is a very interesting concept for “information management”, and which can “straigthen out” your texts, meaning it will spare yourself, and your reader, irrelevant-there-developments of sub-subjects in other contexts, since those developments will be created quite naturally from the gathering of those parts.

It also goes without saying (and especially since such “special subjects” are perhaps only 12 or 15, for a work of perhaps 300 pages/mini-subjects) that you should gather, into an editor for example, those “spread parts”, in order to see if the ORDER of them is ok, in order to make this “spread subject” something “readable on its own”.

Here, remember your “special” subtrees (= the order of your bookmarks to those parts, there) are NOT bound to replicate the order of those pages within the very first, the “natural”/“chronological” part of your tree: Here, in this second part, you can mix up your reference in a way that makes sens for this particular subject!