The Book

The Empowerment started as a book first and became a web site that will become a book last. It originally weighed in at 630 pages of 10pt type. Book text has since been integrated into and deprecated by the wiki. When publication-worthy sections of the content are ready, a book will be produced. The text is on this wiki for community editing and iceberg symbiosis with the print edition.

Iceberg Format

The book is like the tip of an online iceberg called the ideapedia. It introduces the subject matter covered in detail in the ideapedia.

• Every section of the book links directly to an ideapedia URL.
• You can download the book in PDF
• You can download the wiki in PDF
• You can sync the wiki to a local wiki on your Mac

Books Have Limitations

• Concision: To be an effective printed work, the books' contents must meet page count restrictions. This necessitates selecting a limited amount of content to print.
• Static: A printed book is not easily revised once it has been printed except in the form of online Errata.

The Wiki Compensates

Fortunately, the wiki can pick up where the book leaves off. The wiki can have more numerous and detailed articles with links in the book directing readers to explore further online. The wiki contents can be updated continuously. The wiki also serves as an excellent interactive edition for readers who seek specific information quickly without cracking the book.

Book Design

Like the text itself, book layout is also collaborative process.

Drupal Dynamic Book Output

Drupal's "printer-friendly version" link at the bottom of every book page lets you output your page and every page underneath it in the outline. There are several caveats with this system:

• Columns: 2-column layouts don't paginate and end up continuing their split on the next page.
• CSS-based pagination could make paginating content that is actually a single-column without the use of tables possible somehow.
  
• The printer CSS would omit those columnizations and output a single column except where sidebaring was explicitly necessary and print-safe such as for the top of sections with a limited length.
• Layout: Web layout is generally constrained compared to the WIREDesque layout that will be most compelling.
• There should be bette-designed custom layout PDF versions of as many sections as possible, with multiple versions and the best elected and maintained.
• It would be cool if you could printer-friendly a version that appended auto-generated PDFs with custom layout PDFs.