Courses/Essential tools for digital publishing

From Publication Station

Course Description

Titel

Essential Tools for Digital Publishing

Instructor

André Castro,

other instructors

Arjen Suiker

Lucia Dossin

Station

Publication Station

About

Wikis form a family of web applications, dedicated to collaborative content creation. In a Wiki, anyone can easily become an editor and start creating content. Compared to other content management systems, Wikis impose little rules on its users, allowing them to develop workflows and structures based on the necessities and specificities of each project. This course will be based on the experience of devising a hybrid publishing workflow for the Beyond Social magazine, centered around a Wiki. The tools, methods, and protocols employed in Beyond Social will be revealed and explored, with the intention of finding ways in which they can be applied and extended to other hybrid publishing projects, within WdKA.

Planning

During three sessions, we'll focus on:

  • getting to know Wikis: Wikis origins, goals, and relevance in todays web; But also its syntax, structure,
  • converting Wiki pages into other formates, using Pandoc: website(HTML pages), EPUB, ICML(inDesign project)
  • Mediawiki API - access content through Mediawiki API, and in conjunction with Pandoc develop scripts which automate publishing tasks; Experiment with retrieving and applying normally hidden information, such as a page's history.

References

For whom

Graphic Design students and anyone else who wants to become familiar the tools necessary for the creation of websites and e-books.

Course Goals

This course will introduce participants to the essential tools for the creation of digital publications, being it a website or an ebook (EPUB).

The participants who complete the course will develop an understanding of

  • The fundamental tool-set of digital publishing, consisting of HTML (content and structure), CSS (style), Javascript (interaction), which will allow them to work expressively and inventively with media, such as ebooks and websites.
  • Web's history, and conception as an interlinked documentation system, that exists withing the Internet network.
  • the steps necessary to create a website from scratch and explore the potential of this medium. And will understand the role of each one of the essential tools - HTML(content and structure), CSS (style), Javascript (interaction) - of digital publishing.
  • of how to use the tools introduced to create experimental works, such as generative posters, VJing tools, sound samplers and synthesizers, animations, to mention just a few.

create an experimental work within a web page. Explore the possibility of creating something that does not

each session will ask the participants to create small prototypes that go to the main elements of the course.

  • does it conflict with publishing intention? try to introdu semantic/structural html elements.


PART 2 - how to translate web based works to other publishing formats?

learn through a the challenges with whicg we are faced, e.g. printing a video.



  • Internet art - works that explode the possibilities and nature of the medium.

self-reflexive works, that ponder on the nature of the web and surrounding protocols.


  • HTML(content and structure), CSS (style), Javascript (interaction)

a structured text format, convertible with other structured text formats.

  • The browser as a interpreter, that interprets the source-code (HTML, CSS, Javascript) into visual forms.

By the end of this course participants should have:

  • developd an understanding of wiki as flexible, customizable and open (read-write) publishing environments on the web.
  • familiarized themselves cultural context in which Wikis developed, as well as the motivations that led to their development and popularity.
  • familiarized themselves with the conventions of wikis, such as syntax, pages' structure, revisions, categories, namespaces.
  • understood and explored the wiki as an inherently hybrid publishing environment, by:
    • comprehending syntax as a structured language - a markup language - compatible to HTML and other markups, which results in the easy and lossless translation to many publishing formats and forms: websites, EPUBs, paper (through Scribus/inDesign), visual maps (SVG).
  • exploring the possibilities of the wiki's API, as a way to programmatically access information from the wiki, opening up the possibilities for creating generative wikis, which are constantly informed by updates on the wiki.

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