book-brainstorming

Book Brainstorming

Contributors

• Håkon Wium Lie
• Tantek Çelik
• Bert Bos

Introduction

Given analysis and research done on book-examples and book-formats, this page documents various thoughts and strawman proposals for a book microformat.

Background

HTML is a general-purpose markup language used for electronic documents, mostly for onscreen reading. Some content, however, is more suitable for other kinds of presentation and being able to reuse the same content for different media types has been a design goal or HTML and CSS.

It has been shown possible to use HTML as a format for book publishing. In the authoring process, it was helpful to use a set of class name on HTML element to further classify content. The classes, along with their associated structural elements, mostly served as hooks for the associated style sheet. In particular, the class names helped separate the content into different sections of a book.

Parts of a book

The user interface of books is fairly standarized. There is typically a front cover that includes the title of the book and the name of the author(s). Inside the cover, one will find a table of contents, chapters, and index and so forth. The table below lists commonly used sections.

Section name	Description
frontcover	The front cover
halftitlepage	The halftitle page is simple with only the title of the book, and perhaps the name of the authors
titlepage	The title page contains (at least) the book title, the name of the author and the name of the publisher
imprint	The imprint page typically starts with a copyright statement and also contains information about where the book is printed, its ISBN number etc.
dedication	The dedication page is where you find "for mom"
inspiration	Many books contain inspirational quotes by other authors
foreword	Many books contain a foreword written by someone other than the authors
preface	The preface is written by the authors and often contains an acknowledgement of other contributors
toc	Table of Contents
lot	List of Tables
lof	List of Figures
chapter	The content itself content is typically organized in numbered chapters.
uchapter	Many books contain unnumbered chapters, e.g., an introduction.
part	Some books organize sets of chapters into parts
afterword	An additional, often unnumbered chapter at the end of the book
references	References from the text of the book are often listed in a separate section
appendix	Additional information can be organized into appendices
biblio	The bibliography lists other books and sources for further reading
glossary	The glossary defines terms used in the book
index	The index is a list of keyword with page references
colophon	The colophon page contains information about the production of the book
promotion	Promotional material from the publisher, e.g., a list of other titles in the same series
backcover	The back cover

In boom, the section names are used as class names on the <div> element:

<div class="halftitlepage"><h1>Title</h1></div>

Not all books has all sections. A typical novel will have instances of around 10 sections. (My copy of Robert M. Pirsig's "Zen and the art of Motorcycle maintenance" uses these sections: frontcover, inspiration, praise, promotion, titlepage, imprint, preface, inspiration, part, chapter, afterword.) Non-fiction books often use more sections. (My randomly chosen title from O'Reilly uses 16 sections: frontcover, halftitlepage, titlepage, imprint, toc, lof, foreword, preface, part, chapter, appendix, index, bio, colophon, promotion, backcover.)

Complexity

It may be argued that the list of possible section names is too long for a "microformat". While one should always strive for simplicity, a few things should be kept in mind

- the section names only affect on attribute on one element (namely, the class attribute on the div element)

- publishing is an established industry and paper-based books are not likely to change. As such, the format describes something that already exists.

Proposals

• boom - the Book Microformat

See Also

• book-examples
• book-formats