HTML Book Creator

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I'm creating a toolkit to help people create books using HTML. The ultimate idea is to allow them (without having to know or worry about technical details) to create books that
  • will show well on lots of devices, screen sizes, etc.
  • use HTML5 caching techniques to allow readers to read the books offline
  • can mix lots of different media (videos, etc.) in their book
  • can offer different 'paths' through the book, including allowing others to define 'paths' and let readers import these 'paths'
  • mixing the two above, an author could define a 'video' path through the book, and a 'text' path, or a mixture of the two, etc.
  • allow readers to take and store notes, bookmarks, etc.
  • allow the importing of notes, bookmarks, etc.
  • allow (for authors who want it) collaborative authoring / editing of the book, both before and after 'official publication'

Pretty ambitious, but I've got time, and I've also already gotten a good start. (It's not quite ready yet for 'public consumption', but you're welcome to pull down the 'engine' as it stands and see what you can do with it. Here are some temporary instructions for that.

The idea is that there will be some html and javascript (main.html, app.js, etc.) that will accomplish all the functionality and will not change from book to book. Then by the inclusiion of a javascript file generated by the author named 'homunculus.js' (ultimately using a tool, see below) along with the existing files and the author's actual 'source files' (html, jpgs etc.), the book will be created.

Right now I'm working on building the first version of a toolkit to allow the creation, identification, etc. of the files the author would create.

I can envision this being useful for creating, for instance, books and articles related to your profession, which helps people establish a body of work to show to potential employers, help get their colleagues on the same page when trying to introduce changes, etc.

I'm building in 'hooks' to put unobtrusive Google-like link ads in the right pane, although it might be awhile (or never) before I have the infrastructure to 'turn that on'. If I do, I would envision sharing the revenue with the author of the book, and giving them large autonomy / leeway in determining what sort of ads would be displayed.

And, I also (at least for now, unless this project somehow doesn't prove as useful) intend to use this vehicle to produce my own books and articles, etc.