Re: Musings on PWP Offline/Online Modes

I like this idea Nick, especially the part about

> This could have many benefits.  Imagine that there are a bunch of scholarly publications that all reference a single image/diagram.  The web-based PWP version can reference a single online canonical URL, whereas the offline PWP can have it's own local instance (meaning less duplication, and the ability to update all the online PWPs at once if there is an update to that image.  This is OPTIONAL, so if someone wanted to do a snapshot, they just reference a local image.


Now lets say there is are extended descriptions for this image, a 3D model of this image, and/or a Tactile representation of this image with a Tour description explaining what the tactile image is.  Now this is done only once and all PWP’s would point to this image with its attached extended descriptions.  The packager which would create the offline version could also grab these extended descriptions as well.  Custom Elements could be used here to interact with these alternative representations of the image.

Thanks.

Charles LaPierre
Sr. Software Engineer
charlesl@benetech.org



> On Jan 4, 2016, at 9:28 AM, Nick Ruffilo <nickruffilo@gmail.com> wrote:
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> The conversation today got me thinking - and maybe it's the new year crazies, but I got to thinking of the true value of having something of a PWP "engine" that would provide unique value.  Below are some use cases and what I feel is an interesting way to handle those cases:
> 
> The "vanilla" fully-offline package
> This is probably closest to what epub is today.  All the files for the PWP are located in the same base, and besides the occasional <a href=""> link that points to an external resource, all items are contained within a package.  With little effort, the package can exist on a server and as long as there is a reading system that can handle the manifest, the content can be read in a linear or whatever method we end up with.
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> I think we're all in agreement here - ignoring word choice like manifest, etc.
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> The web-page-in-a-box
> Fonts live on other servers, images live on other servers, CSS Frameworks live on a CDN, It's a beautiful (messy) web.  How does this become offline?  This would require heavy lifting on the part of the browser or the server (whatever generates the document) but imagine if the packager could take these resources offline.
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> Example: I'm reading a wikipedia article, and I want to download it as a PWP.  Wikipedia could specify a list of resources (heck, even a hyper-minified version of their CSS) as well as all the images related to that Wikipedia article.  All of those get packaged into a PWP that I can download and read whenever.  YES IT WILL BE A SNAPSHOT of the page at that time, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing...  It could even have update instructions (or an update URL).
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> External resources get added to the root path in some way like: /http/somedomaincom/path/to/external/file.css
> 
> This could have many benefits.  Imagine that there are a bunch of scholarly publications that all reference a single image/diagram.  The web-based PWP version can reference a single online canonical URL, whereas the offline PWP can have it's own local instance (meaning less duplication, and the ability to update all the online PWPs at once if there is an update to that image.  This is OPTIONAL, so if someone wanted to do a snapshot, they just reference a local image.
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> For publishers - they could have a common CSS framework that they could keep up-to-date, so that if they found a bug, or decided that they wanted body color to be bright orange, they could update it once, and all new offline PWPs that are generated get that.
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> Since this is 100% optional, those who wanted full control can simply opt to create their content fully within a single root.  The ability to be able to specify certain online resources to be "critical" to an offline package could create production benefits (and yes, I realize it could also create some headaches).
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> 
> --
> - Nick Ruffilo
> @NickRuffilo
> http://Aerbook.com <http://aerbook.com/>
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> http://ZenOfTechnology.com <http://zenoftechnology.com/>
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