Talk:Electronic publishing

Latest comment: 3 years ago by John Maynard Friedman in topic Digital typography
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Untitled edit

I offer an external link to the article on electronic publishing -- my new website, readersandwritersblog.com. It is a nonprofit site intended to give writers a place to publish their work -- nonfiction, fiction or poetry of any length, published or unpublished -- and to give readers a chance to read that work and, if they choose, to comment on it. Sid Leavitt 22:02, 13 December 2006 (UTC)Sid LeavittReply

External Links edit

An editor added a spam warning to the external link list. But if Wikipedia is to have an article on electronic publishing (as I think it should), then surely some links to electronic publishers make sense as exemplars and sources of further information. This is, in fact, the most conventional use of external links in articles about industry sectors. The list as it stands seems reasonable, if incomplete. MarkBernstein 11:55, 24 October 2007 (UTC)Reply

  • As a senior figure in one of the technology vendor companies in question you have a conflict of interest which you should declare. The point of the spam warning is to encourage other editors to have a look and make a neutral judgement. I've restored the warning. andy 23:10, 28 October 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • Very recently, you edit-warred to delete the same link on [Hypertext]. As I had just written a COI disclaimed on the Talk page there, and as you raised the identical issue here, I accidentally omitted to repeat it here. It read
"Recent pruning of the external links to Hypertext Fiction included removing links to Eastgate_Systems. I think that's wrong. I'm an employee of Eastgate, but I'm also past program chair of the Hypertext Conference (twice), and I'm program chair of WikiSym 2008, and in this context I'd appreciate extension of assumption of good faith to this discussion. Eastgate has been publishing hypertext fiction since 1990, and its catalog includes the majority of titles discussed in books about literary hypertext, taught in courses on hypertext fiction, and examined in conferences and monographs. I'd prefer links to specific works of hypertext fiction in this place, but understand the desire for a concise list. Concision means trimming the list as much as possible, but not more. (I'd prefer to discuss this by email bernstein@eastgate.com if discussion is necessary) 18:44, 4 November 2007 (UTC)"

Further, all four vendor links connect to wikipedia pages about the vendors. "Wikipedia spam consists of external links. The external links section is haphazard but not wikipedia spam. MarkBernstein (talk) 01:08, 19 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

  • Quite possibly so. On the other hand it's not appropriate for a vendor to remove a {{cleanup-spam}} tag. An independent person who knows the subject will eventually come along and have a look at it and may well agree with you that Eastgate should be kept. Or not. IMHO at least a couple of those WP articles about vendors should go as well, but I don't count myself as sufficiently expert to do it. andy (talk) 17:42, 19 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
  • I see that one of the vendor articles has been tagged as spammy and that Eastgate itself was afd'd recently. That's how the system is supposed to work. QED. andy (talk) 17:46, 19 November 2007 (UTC)Reply
The Eastgate afd was a silly stunt by one admin who had a beef with a writer who we happened to publish. It wasn't close. Stuff like this is a blight on wikipedia. But, in any case, the wikipedia pages ARE wikipedia pages, and so the spam tag cannot be appropriate. MarkBernstein (talk) 18:41, 19 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

MarkBernstein, the Electronic books table while very helpful contains some misleading information and is missing some information. Acrobat is an open source foundation at the engineering level that according to Adobe R&D is not their concern. We are most of us aware that Acrobat is running well on many OS platforms, while Adobe is falling back under a deluge of security issues (No Creative Cloud R&D for two years due to mounting security threats and incidents). Yet under Reading Software, "Adobe Acrobat" is listed: this should be corrected to just "Acrobat". Under Editing, Word is missing. For the last four years, since Word 2010 (released 2009), word saves nicely into PDF format. In Windows 8.1, the saved PDF then automatically opens in the Windows Acrobat reader. With recent Acrobat full versions, full version will open rather than reader, so forget single-line reader edits in rough typeface, full version Acrobat will now touch up your Acrobat documents with full access to required typeface. Create with Word's unrestricted layouts: minor publication edits with Acrobat (in reader interface). Word is easily stepped as source editor for all PDF publications. Can't remember when I published PDF any other way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Codestoned (talkcontribs) 09:32, 2 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Comparison to conventional publishing edit

I deleted a proposed section comparing electronic to conventional publishing, finding the proposed text read as advocacy (or advertising?) rather than adding to the reader's knowledge. MarkBernstein (talk) 17:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

We miss an extraordinary opportunity to understand the economic and cultural structure of publishing, when we neglect to include authors of web content as publishers. Specifically, all web authoring software defines the act of committing content to a web server as "publishing". A frankly arrogant component of related cultures asserts that only prestigiously appointed persons and corporations deserve the title "publisher", and only in respect of their specially appointed efforts can anything online be called a "publication". This assertion is as ignorant as it is arrogant. All online content exists online because it was published there. Magazines and online books are just one small part of the World Wide Web. In the Regional Center of Excellence in Health Care Provision where I am employed, all staff are encouraged to publish their professional insights in many venues, online. I find the sentence above, published by Mark Bernstein to be offensive to all our staff, to our Region (spanning several nations in the Americas, and also offensive to everyone, everywhere with an urge to share information using text and other media now prolific... online. Codestoned (talkcontribs) 07:45, 2 December 2013 (UTC)Reply


That's odd, to say the least. five years ago, I deleted a section for the reasons described above. I don't remember the details, but there seems to have been no support for that section then, or in the intervening sixty months. For my own opinions on the economy of new media, see my essay on Designing A New Media Economy in the journal Genre; you may find them less far from your own than you expect. I can't imagine why you feel this 2013 edit suddenly offends your health excellence initiative, MarkBernstein (talk) 04:14, 2 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

My concern is with excellence lacking in ascription of browsers and text markup code to standards that are rigid enough so that all browsers comply with those standards and display media coded to standards. HTML5 and CSS3 are the current standard display code for telecommunication and computing devices. However, the devices cannot display properly coded HTML-CSS code because browser manufacturers are not correctly programming their browsing software. Most often, this failure is due to "security" issues. Which opens another can of worms, heavily tainted by industrial competition, international war mongering and much beyond the scope of this wiki (but mentioned to guide appropriate missing contents inclusion). Code insecurity is a concern for all web coders, those who manually code or program the appearance of their content, rather than use a pre-coded environment like Wikipedia, where publishers simply enter text and the installed server-side application formats and displays entered text. The two publishing environments, prefab and custom, directly impact on the kind and quality of presented media.

This Wiki should mention this distinction, under a comparison of electronic and conventional publishing, so that readers can draw their own conclusions about the presence of 'personal creativity' in electronic publishing.

Security indeed brings up a completely untested focus for this Wiki. The security of the electronic publishing environment. We know a lot about the ancient Mayans, because they wrote with characters carved into stones. Content that has survived for thousands of years, enduring hundreds of direct hit solar storms. Astrologists tell us that we are due within a decade or so for another solar storm, based on their knowledge of the frequency of solar flares. The last storm, about a century ago, turned off all electricity on the planet for a few days. We know, from the experience of occasional solar gustiness, that such storms will permanently wipe our digital data. The solar storms, by the way, send data-terminating energy pulses right through the mass of our planet, to carry on as if we never existed. Frankly, I do not know anyone who has a method to protect digital data against the onslaught of even a single solar storm. So whereas the Mayans, one of our distant ancestors, left us lots to think about, unfortunately, our digital publishing craze condemns us to invisibility. Seriously now, those who view our civilization in a few thousand years can come to no other conclusion than that we were poorly educated and illiterate, but somehow managed to devise amazing technologies. Even education, for kindergarten to PHD has morphed into a digital publication. To what extent has our anatomy adapted to electronic publishing, and how will that inevitable adaptation of our physiology be impacted by the next solar storm? A century ago, the last storm had little effect on rural humans, who made little use of electricity. However, effects reported in major cities were alarming. Today, our minds are 'securely' endowed by far more than a simple light bulb. Yes? This Wiki needs to make mention of cultural permanence, and in that respect must also mention the hazard that mass digital consumption represents. — Preceding signed comment added by Codestoned (talkcontribs) 07:45, 2 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Ummmmm….. OK. There's a good deal of WP:OR original research here, a bit of a conspiracy theory, and a dollop of WP:FRINGE pseudoscience. But, of course, questions of preservation and societal impact are worth considering -- assuming, of course, that they will be treated in an encyclopedic and neutral manner, scrupulously tied to the best and most reliable sources. MarkBernstein (talk) 16:07, 2 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

The reason for standardization of the topic.... edit

Can some sharp eyes tell if the page number for the term of Aspartame is a bold type or not in the following...???

--222.64.211.100 (talk) 07:10, 16 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

  • This is meaningless. andy (talk) 10:01, 16 January 2010 (UTC)Reply

Well, have a look at my comment at

--222.64.29.88 (talk) 01:17, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

and
the search results of

--222.64.29.88 (talk) 01:33, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

See how many website of international cities in China are of genuine dual-language publishing--222.64.29.88 (talk) 01:54, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

--222.64.29.88 (talk) 01:58, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

--222.64.29.88 (talk) 02:00, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

By looking at the above government pages, I'm not sure whether all the foreign journalists travelling to china are capable of comprehension of Chinese--222.64.29.88 (talk) 02:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

You see the function of English version is not equivalent to the one of Chinese which is of search capabilities

--222.64.29.88 (talk) 01:49, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

You can see from the following how may journalism courses offer SEO training

--222.64.29.88 (talk) 02:05, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

--222.64.29.88 (talk) 02:06, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

--222.64.29.88 (talk) 02:09, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Again, all the search engine producers needs to be aware of the above results —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.64.29.88 (talk) 02:12, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Oh Lord, he's back! andy (talk) 09:29, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

What is a "publication" edit

I propose adding online video media (youtube and the like) to the list of new media examples Kcalmond (talk) 15:55, 5 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hybridity of publishing forms edit

I would suggest adding this information regarding Hybridity of publishing for into the main Electronic Publishing entry. This information comes from a peer reviewed source.

According to a study by Brown et. al. there are three different forms of “hybrid publication” (publication that is produced simultaneously in print and digital form):

(Redacted) An example of hybrid form publication would be an electronic version of a book containing elements that remind us of a parallel printed version. This is not solely through page facsimiles but through the use of tools provided by the print version. For instance, a table of contents where instead of providing page numbers, it would provide hyperlinks directing the reader to specific page locations within the electronic version of the book. [1]

Hectorlopez17 (talk) 23:05, 17 February 2017 (UTC)Reply

Hi Hectorlopez17. Unfortunately, I cannot add those sentences since some were copied word-for-word from the journal article. The journal article is licensed CC-BY-NC-ND 2.5, which is incompatible with Wikipedia's CC-BY-SA 3.0 license – the journal does not permit commercial reuse but Wikipedia does. You'll have to paraphrase that sentence if it is to be incorporated into the article. Best, Altamel (talk) 04:17, 4 May 2017 (UTC)Reply

References edit

  1. ^ Brown, Susan; Cameron, Linda; Cutic, Anita; Ilocan, Mihaela; Ivanova, Olga; Knechtel, Ruth; MacDonald, Andrew; Nelson, Brent; Ruecker, Stan; Sinclair, Stefan (2016). "An Experiment in Hybrid Open-Access Online Scholarly Publishing: Regenerations". Scholarly and Research Communication. 7 (2/3). Retrieved 17 February 2017.

Digital typography edit

There is a discussion at Talk:Typography#"Digital typography" that may interest editors. The present redirect target of Digital typography is being debated. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 13:11, 24 March 2021 (UTC)Reply