Editing Research/all-in-one publishing (section)

== Introduction ==

The core of our research is the development of '''a workflow in which HTML and CSS''' files are used as the '''primary source for a publication'''. These technologies were originally designed for creating only websites, but in recent years many '''printing capabilities have been added'''. This results in a '''unified''' file format that can be used to publish to '''print, epub, web and mobile'''. This approach offers some unique improvements on the publication workflow:

* '''Design and content are separate''', both can be changed at any time, fully independently of each other. 
* '''Every change''' in content or design can be exported to '''every available publication medium''' with the press of a button.
* '''HTML and CSS are very widespread transparent file formats''' that have been used for decades without much change, and will remain this way for years to come. This makes them much more suitable for '''digital archiving''' than most proprietary formats.
* For largely the same reasons, the resulting publication is very '''suitable for (collaborative) reuse and redesign'''. 

=== About the process ===

For this research, we have chosen to take an existing publication and explore how it could be '''rebuilt from scratch using our newly developed workflow'''. The original publication was only designed for print (a pdf). Our goal was to replicate this design as closely as possible with our new print version, and adapt the design to also fit the other media.   

The global process consisted of the following steps:

# The original '''Word documents''' with the contents of the publication were converted '''to html files using Pandoc''' conversion software.
# These html files were ''''cleaned up'''', deleting everything design-related and leaving only structural information.
# '''Additional HTML''' was added to improve '''semantic value''' and facilitate '''CSS styling'''. 
# '''CSS stylesheets''' were created for every output format.
# The outputs were '''created and tested''' using Pandoc (for epub), PrinceXML and Weasyprint (for pdf), Chrome (for responsive web) and Firefox (for direct browser print) and checked for consistency. PrinceXML is proprietary software, Weasyprint is not.

Of course the process wasn't as linear as it appears here. The process can be better described as being '''iterative, looping through the steps''' continuously. The commits list in github can be a good portrait of this iteration. Available at: https://github.com/arjensuijker/all-in-one-publishing/commits/master