"Book" authoring

Another neat feature of this site is its ability to le a group of users collaborate and edit a book. We are going to use it here to edit the Canadian Competition Rule Book as it is rather outdated and is a big job for one person to handle.

So how does it work!?

Access You need special authorization to get access to these features so email me (mark@dowsett.ca) to request permission.

Creating New Content Once you get access, when you click on the "create content" link on the right side you are now given the ability create a new page for the "books" available. Create a title for this new page (and try to work it in to the existing numbering system to make it sort properly). Don't worry about the "Path alias" unless you can figure it out. Under the "Parent" drop down menu be sure to select the proper Book or Chapter you want your page to go under. And then write out your content - it does accept HTML tagging so if you know it, feel free to use it. Thre is one more field down below the Body of the page called "Log message" - this is a space to share your ideas as to what should go on the page for other authors to view. Use this for point form ideas of content to incorporate into the body or discuss reasons for changes you are making.

Editing Existing Content You can read through the existing pages in the book and choose to edit that page. Just click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the page. This will take you into the same looking page as when you were creating a new page. The one CRITICAL thing you need to do when editing a page is click on the "Create new revision" check box in the "Options" section. This creates a new revision of the page and saves the old one for reference. I wish I could set it as a default to automatically check that box when editing but you can't. Once you do check that box, you can rest assured that the previous work isn't destroyed.

Rollbacks Once you edit a page and create new revisions, you can 'rollback' to a previous version and also simply read thru the previous versions. This shows why it is critcal to check the "Create new revision" checkbox while editing pages.

Collecting for Output At anytime, you can process a "printer-friendly version" of the entire book. This step will be used to run it through a proper word processor to check for spelling, format headers and submit for final approval.

Enjoy!