Re: Book Introducing Free Software to Laypeople

[Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss <libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org>]

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Hi All

Thank you for this. Just to say firstly, I agree with Andrew here about 
me getting things messed up. This is a good reason for this project is 
to also help challenge areas were people don't quite understand something.

Hopefully, this project will be useful to people going forward.  I have 
also suggested on IRC that as there is the 
https://www.gnu.org/help/priority-projects.html which could be a way in 
for people to help with fsf once they are confident.

I think the idea of Lulu is good, as it provides an easy way to get 
printed documentation on demand,  so order a book,  it gets printed and 
sent to you.

Lets see what, as a community we can do.

Regards

Paul




On 06/07/2022 17:08, Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss wrote:
> On 22/07/05 08:47PM, Nicholas Johnson via libreplanet-discuss wrote:
>> There is loads of free software, but relatively few people using it for
>> their personal computing. So I thought "Why not write a book
>> introducing laypeople to free software?" I'm not sure if something
>> like it has been done before.
> 
> This is quite a coincidence---zleap, Noisytoot and I have started
> drafting such a book.  A basic draft is available at
> git://git.andrewyu.org/zleap-guide.git, but many improvements are
> needed.  As of now it primarily focuses on the command line, but I do
> believe that a more general introduction to Free Software is
> appropriate.  The main author/editor is zleap, he's really into
> spreading ideas and participates in many computing-related clubs locally
> near him, taking chances to introduce people (mainly younger people) to
> Free Software.  However I do find that sometimes he can get some
> concepts a bit messed up himself, so we work together in assistance to
> try to provide more accurate information.  Maybe we could work together
> on this, don't know.
>   
>> I've never written a book before. I know little about publishing or
>> marketing, so it would be a first for me. I do have a few ideas:
>>
>> * Use LibreOffice.
> 
> I find using LibreOffice for writing documents generally and especially
> larger documents to be a bad idea.  Documents produced with word
> processors are prone to subtle formatting problems, flexibility issues
> (no true macro definitions), is quite bad at typography (i.e. does not
> hyphenate at correct points many times and doesn't support kerning
> properly) and is generally cumbersome.  For normal ``books'', I'd
> probably use plain TeX or LaTeX.  In this specific case it may be very
> helpful to produce both printed versions (with device independent
> formats like TeX DVI, PostScript and Portable Document Format), World
> Wide Web pages written in HTML, and plain text versions for people who
> want those (i.e. me, for example).  GNU TeXinfo fits this job, and while
> the info(1) online manual browser isn't that great, the format is easily
> compilable to LaTeX (then to PDF for example), HTML, and plain text,
> with outstanding typography for the PDF as it uses LaTeX and TeX under
> the hood, and still enough flexibility more than possible with
> LibreOffice for other formats.
> 
>> * Make the book available both as a hard copy and as an eBook.
>> * Make the eBook available as a pdf and epub.
>> * Design a website for the book.
> 
> TeXinfo is quite good at this.  I haven't tried to produce ePub output
> before, however I know for a fact it's doable without much hassle with
> TeXinfo and Pandoc.
> 
>> * Design a cover page and edit the book.
> 
> Sure!
> 
>> * Integrate the lulu API into the website?
> 
> I have absolutely no idea what that is.  A quick WWW search told me that
> it's a HTTP RESTful API for printing?  Why is this needed?
> 
>> I'll probably pay people to do the cover page design, website design,
>> and edit the book. The target demographic is non-techie software users
>> and the goal is inspiring them to use free software for their personal
>> computing.
> 
> You could probably also rely on volunteers in the Free Software
> community first, many of us would be really happy to help.
> 
>> I don't have a detailed outline of the book yet, but I think the first
>> chapter should get the reader interested in free software and point out
>> some ways proprietary software harms them. Then, in the later chapters
>> after the reader is hooked, I'll tie it all together by explaining the
>> philosophy of free software. I don't want to start with the philosophy.
>> I feel that may come off as preachy, too abstract, and turn people off.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> --
> Andrew Yu <https://www.andrewyu.org/>
> 
> 
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-- 
Paul Sutton, Cert Cont Sci (Open)
https://personaljournal.ca/paulsutton/
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