The book editor is a javascript browser application that allows editing an ebook in your browser and storing the ebook itself in a github repo.
More information can be found in the documentation repository as well as in the docs directory.
- Backbone.js
- Marionette
- Bootstrap
- Font Awesome
- Jquery
- Requirejs and helpers such as require-css and require-less
- Phil Schatz's Octokit.js
- Our own OERPub specific version of Aloha-Editor
- NodeJS and associated development tools such as npm and Bower.
Below are instructions for building the book editor yourself and a layout of how the code is organized.
- Install virtualbox
- Install vagrant
- Clone github book editor repo to somewhere
- Inside the repo run
vagrant up
from the command line- There is currently a bug in the build that makes it not run fully on the
first pass, the workaround is to log into the vm after running
vagrant up
withvagrant ssh
, then go into/vagrant
and runnpm install
. That will finish the build for you.
- There is currently a bug in the build that makes it not run fully on the
first pass, the workaround is to log into the vm after running
- Vagrant will take a while to configure the new vm. When it's done you will be able to hit http:https://33.33.33.10/ in a web browser and see the editor.
This is tested on Ubuntu 12.04.
First you need to install a copy of nodejs and the required utilities. Because the version of nodejs that ships with your favourite linux distribution is likely out of date, the easiest way is to install a basic development environment and then compile nodejs from source.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential openssl libssl-dev pkg-config
Now download the source tarball and compile it:
cd /tmp
wget http:https://nodejs.org/dist/v0.10.22/node-v0.10.22.tar.gz
tar zxf node-v0.10.22.tar.gz
cd node-v0.10.22
./configure --prefix=$HOME/nodejs
make && make install
For ease of use, I recommend that you add the npm bin directory to your PATH by typing
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/nodejs/bin
You can also add this line to the end of $HOME/.profile
so it gets added to
the PATH every time you open a shell session.
Once you have node installed, you can use npm to install the rest of what you need. You will need coffee script and lessc if you're going to hack on the Aloha code.
npm install -g coffee-script
npm install -g less
Next clone the bookeditor repo. For this example we will clone it into your home directory:
cd $HOME
git clone [email protected]:oerpub/github-bookeditor.git
Then use npm to install all dependencies:
cd github-bookeditor
npm install
-
The simplest way to get going, is to install the node package called http-server:
npm install -g http-server
Then you can launch a web-server by typing:
http-server
The application itself can then be found at http:https://localhost:8080/
-
Another option is to install apache and symlink your development directory into the default document root:
sudo apt-get install apache2 sudo ln -s $HOME/github-bookeditor /var/www/github-bookeditor
The application can then be found at http:https://localhost/github-bookeditor/
The github bookeditor depends on several several components.
These components can be found in the bower_components
directory. Some of
these are themselves checkouts from github, but unfortunately these are not
real clones, so direct development on these are not possible.
To develop these products, you need to remove the existing checkout, and
replace it with a clone. Because running npm install
blows away any
changes you made in bower_components, the suggested method is to clone it to
an alternate directory and use symlinks. It is much simpler to replace a
symlink than it is to re-clone a large product such as aloha-editor.
For example, if I want to develop on Aloha-Editor, I would link it like this:
cd bower_components
git clone [email protected]:oerpub/Aloha-Editor.git aloha-editor-dev
rm -rf aloha-editor && ln -s aloha-editor-dev aloha-editor
This will create a symlink in bower_components that point to a real checkout in aloha-editor-dev, allowing you to do development in a familiar setting.
If your operating system doesn't support symlinks, you have no choice but to name your git clone correctly. If you accidentally blow it away, you'd have to repeat the above steps to clone it again.
To avoid blowing away your development clone in bower_components, you can
edit bower.json
and temporarily remove that item from the dependencies. Just
take care not to accidentally commit bower.json in this shape.
Documentation is built using docco
.
find . -name "*.coffee" | grep -v './bower_components/' | grep -v './node_modules' | xargs ./node_modules/docco/bin/docco
Check the ./docs
directory to read through the different modules.
Except for the technologies listed above, the book editor itself is made up of three other products that each live in its own repository. The editor itself started its life as atc, but was soon used as the basis for the a github based book editor.
At the time of writing, work is in progress to make atc generic enough that github-book would consist of only a hand full of extensions and replacements.
A further progression in this process would be to split the common part from atc so that atc and the bookeditor can each have their own customisations.
You should find all the relevant components in the bower_components
directory
inside the github-bookeditor checkout.
TODO: Update this once the product is split.
scripts/collections/
Backbone Collectionsscripts/configs/
App and 3rd party configsscripts/controllers/
Marionette Controllersscripts/helpers/
Miscellaneous helper functionsscripts/models/
Backbone Models and Marionette Modulesscripts/nls/
Internationalized stringsscripts/routers/
Marionette Routersscripts/views/
Backbone and Marionette Viewsscripts/views/layouts/
Marionette Layoutsscripts/app.coffee
Marionette Applicationscripts/config.coffee
Requirejs Configscripts/main.js
Initial Requirejs Loaderscripts/session.coffee
Model of Sessionstyles/
LESS and CSS Stylingtemplates/
Handlebars Templatestemplates/helpers/
Handlebars Helperstest/
Testable mock data and scriptsindex.html
App's HTML Page
This software is subject to the provisions of the GNU Affero General Public License Version 3.0 (AGPL). See license.txt for details.
Code contributed by Rice University employees and contractors is Copyright (c) 2013 Rice University. Code contributed by contractors to the OERPUB project is Copyright (c) 2013 Kathi Fletcher.
Development by the OERPUB project was funded by the Shuttleworth Foundation, through a fellowship and project funds granted to Kathi Fletcher.