[Bf-docboard] Blender books -> official reference

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi Ira,

It was always my intention that our printed guides would be created  
using wiki, and donating all new stuff back to wiki. We do that  
already since 2003.

-Ton-

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands

On 6 Mar, 2010, at 8:03, Ira Krakow wrote:

> An idea just came to me.  Please feel free to poke holes in it.    
> Why not publish the wiki, with the author as The Blender  
> Foundation?   The principle is just like Durian or Elephant's  
> Dream.   The title would be "The Blender 3D Wiki", by The Blender  
> Foundation.  The benefits:
>
> 1)  The content not only exists, but has been peer reviewed, edited  
> (by the community), and known to be high quality and useful.
>
> 2)   The authors can be given credit for their efforts, just as was  
> the case with the community generated movies.  We could even give  
> anyone who buys the book author credit, just like the Blender based  
> movies.
>
> 3)   It's useful.  How many of us would buy it?  I definitely  
> would.  There are many people who feel more comfortable with a  
> printed book than with always looking things up online.   We could  
> even have a Kindle edition of the wiki, which would give the content  
> search capability.  It would be published under the same GNU license  
> that applies to Blender, or the variant that applies to books, where  
> the Foundation keeps the copyright and grants publishing rights to  
> the publisher without giving up creative control.
>
> 4)   It's in the same spirit of open source that has made Blender  
> such a success.  It's been proven, for example, in the Linux  
> community, that these types of books are profitable.  Look at:
>
> http://oreilly.com/openbook/
>
> Tim O'Reilly has been very successful with this model.  I even think  
> O'Reilly Media would be interested in publishing it.
>
> 5)   Last, but certainly not least, this would be nice revenue for  
> The Blender Foundation :).  It would be our way of saying thanks to  
> everyone who has made Blender such a wonderful program.
>
> What do you think?
>
>
>
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 12:19 PM, Mike Belanger <mikejamesbelanger at gmail.com 
> > wrote:
>>
>>
>> We already have excellent online documentation, in the form of the  
>> wiki.  It is organized very closely to the ideas that have been  
>> proposed.  Reading the wiki has helped me tremendously.  Between  
>> the wiki and Google, what more would the reference book(s) provide?
>
>
>
> There should be a distinction between what sort of topics the wiki  
> covers, and what the books do.  The books should be
> value-added over the wiki.
>
> I agree with Ton et all on organizing books by common areas, ie  
> Animation, Modeling, Texturing, etc.  Those
> could all have specific tutorials, step-by-steps, on creating  
> something.
>
> I think the wiki should be a generic glossary of tools, terminology,  
> and settings.  Specific tutorials in the wiki shouldn't have as much  
> priority.
>
>
> Mike Belanger ( Mikahl )
> www.watchmike.ca
>
>
>
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