Bates dilemma #1 - feature request

#1

As Bates (2014) noted " an editor or a co-author cannot mark up drafts in Pressbooks"

TinyMCE Annotate (https://wordpress.org/plugins/tinymce-annotate/) provides that function. However, it is not compatible with Pressbooks. In addition, testing revealed that markup is displayed to anonymous users as I have found no granular control to hide markup.

A granular accounting visibility control and a clear all markup (in addition to the individual default) could be useful.

Although Hypothesis is great for those how want to login again to another site, for open e-textbook sites having internal authoring markup functional is useful for developing content.

Cheers,
Steve

Reference
Bates, T. (2014, September 26). Writing an open textbook: a mid-term report on the technology [blog]. Retrieved November 6, 2017, from https://www.tonybates.ca/2014/09/26/writing-an-open-textbook-a-mid-term-report-on-the-technology/

#2

Hi Steve,

Collaborative editing in the Pressbooks interface is definitely not what it could be, but as with everything, we try not to reinvent the wheel (mainly because we can’t!), and look to third party options whenever we can. We’ll never match Google Docs, for example, but we can spend some time looking at how to port content over from GDocs to PB.

Hypothesis is a bit the same, but we also like it because it supports all kinds of uses beyond internal editing/review. A few of us in the PB team also work with the Rebus Community developing open textbooks, and we’ve used Hypothesis for collaborative editing, review, beta testing, student feedback, classroom activities, accessibility checks… all sorts. We also like that the separate account mechanism means we can invite people to engage with the book without having them in the editing interface, as that’s not always appropriate (or practical). We also have an ongoing dialogue with Hypothesis about how we can work with them to create more useful tools for open educational content - it’s a powerful tool and we’re excited about the possibilities! (E.g. the learning lens tool here.)

To come back to editing in particular, the plugin you linked to looks interesting, and we’d be happy to assess what it would take to make it work with Pressbooks. We’re just about to launch a plugin request process, so you can be the first to use it if you like! Just fill in this form and we’ll see if and how it might be made to work with Pressbooks. We can’t make any promises around timeframes, as we have to see how things fit in with our roadmap, but we can definitely see the potential of this kind of tool.

Thanks,
Zoe (PB Product Manager)

#3

Done - thanks for the form Zoe!

In my opinion, while API is all the rage, it is the Achilles heel of the Tower of Babel in the digital application stack phenomenon of the net.

Cheers,
Steve

#4

Great! I see your requests in my inbox and will follow up with you soon. I’m away for the next 10 days or so at conferences sorry, but it will be soon after I’m back!

Best,
Zoe