Thanks to Marco Croella of Simplicissimus for generously donating the translation to the open source project!

Users can comment using the web site, read the entire in-progress text of the book (updated as the authors revise it), or follow comments via an Atom feed. Readers who comment will be credited in the final edition of the book.

Authors do not ever need to administer or even visit the web site, as they receive the comments incorporated back into the manuscript source. To my knowledge this is the first public commenting system that works in this way, using
DocBook XML to both render the content and integrate the feedback in a contextually-relevant manner. It wouldn’t be possible without XML.

OFPS was built using the DocBook XSLT, Subversion version control and the Pylons web framework. Two books were on my lap constantly: The Definitive Guide to Pylons (also available for free online!) and Essential SQLAlchemy (I was a technical editor on this but apparently forgot it all).

More information in the post announcing this on the O’Reilly Labs blog.

I’m excited about this initiative for two reasons:

1. The ePub format is gaining ground faster outside of the U.S. than within, because the ePub-unfriendly Kindle is effectively useless anywhere else.
2. Translations are a relatively easy way for people to contribute to Bookworm without any programming knowledge. Unlike software development, half a translation is better than nothing.

My plan is to start making the translated versions available even if the contributed translations aren’t complete. My hope is that seeing it just slightly wrong will be annoying enough for perfectionists that they’ll have no choice but to send in corrections.

Look for German, Spanish, Hebrew and Danish to roll out in the next few weeks, with hopefully many more to follow.

On the O’Reilly Tools of Change blog recently:

1. Processing the deep backlist at the New York Times, a report from OSCON
2. Optimizing web content for the Kindle, using Bookworm screenshots

The latter is part of a series of Kindle articles that I’ll be putting out in the coming weeks, including those on getting inside the device’s operating system (based on Igor Skochinsky’s amazing work).

(You can also read earlier posts by me on TOC.)

I’m also happy to announce that I will be on this year’s TOC Conference program committee.  Proposals for the 2009 conference are due August 25th.

Unlike most other ePub readers, Bookworm allows for full use of stylesheets and images, which is especially critical for technical books which include HTML tables and code samples.

Bookworm is free for us and open source under the BSD license; the code is part of the threepress project and is available here on Google Code.  Currently it should be considered beta software — this is especially true as new publishers begin to release ePub-formatted books in varying methods.

Please be patient if you encounter errors — detailed error reports are automatically emailed to me, but user bug reports are always helpful too.

There will be several major updates to Bookworm in the coming weeks, including:

1. Optimized layouts for mobile readers (including the iPhone)
2. Search within book content
3. Methods for sorting and managing one’s library
4. 100% compliance with the IDPF guidelines for ePub reading systems (in regards to XHTML 1.1 content)

For more information on Bookworm, please see our About page.