bowerbird

excellent! thanks!

-bowerbird

another interesting topic that floats by on hackernews, with no upvotes (except mine) and no comments (except mine).

does anybody have any suggestions for a smarter site?

-bowerbird

i've developed a system. should be out "real soon now".

but if you want something that's been out for a while, and has been shaken down pretty well, try leanpub.com.

there's also pressbooks.com, and penflip.com, and more.

-bowerbird

ya know, i've see you pointing to this before.

and i should have realized then how cool it is.

but it only occurred to me now. good job, dude!

i will be in touch with you.

-bowerbird

perhaps you meant penflip's loren, not the original poster?

if so, then yes, what i'm saying exactly is that _loren_ could have saved himself time and trouble, in the long run, by coding a purpose-built system, instead of hacking github.

what it would've cost him, however, is the huge "jumpstart" he received by proclaiming his goal as "github for writers".

the kneejerk response to that, from the tech circles, was something that created huge word-of-mouth and mind-share, not to mention a great starting user-base, of technoids.

but that was months ago, and now there's some sense of "whatever happened to penflip?" and when he goes out to sell the system to writers, the "github" label will not be a benefit at all. (if anything, it will be a liability; but i think in general writers are fully unaware of it.)

all of this is my opinion. you, like loren, may disagree.

-bowerbird

i wasn't saying this person should've built a new system.

indeed, what i said is, if you already know git/hub, use it, as you can sidestep its problem areas, to get what you need.

but in the long run, github won't work for most writers. so a purpose-built system needs to be built for them/us...

-bowerbird

don't know why you're getting no discussion here.

couple typos: "the the" and "this is can".

-bowerbird

um... leanpub.com has been around for several years now.

and they only introduced the github integration this month.

so you can't really say that is "_exactly_ what it's about."

or even that it has yet had much of a shakeout in testing.

-bowerbird

if you already know git (or github), it'll work for books.

but i doubt it's the best change-tracking system for them.

too much irrelevant crap, and it doesn't cut to the heart of those things that actually need to be done for a book.

plus, most writers will never slog through learning github.

to make a system that is writer-friendly _and_ does what a book-writing change-tracking system ideally _should_ do, you'd have to hack github so much that -- in the end -- it would have been order-of-magnitude simpler (and better) to program a purpose-built system instead, from scratch.

and yes, i told loren this from day one.

he didn't believe me then.

but if you ask him now, i'll bet he won't be quite so sure.

and by the time he's done, i have no doubt he will agree.

yes, writers need a version-control system.

but no, it is most definitely _not_ github.

-bowerbird

hi. bowerbird here, checking in with you two. i haven't forgotten you, just been working on smoothing out the latest wrinkle in my thinking, which i do believe has made a huge improvement. i'll get some stuff to both of you, quite pronto.

-bowerbird

on the other hand, i know photographers in art/advertising -- working for some of the biggest companies, like apple -- who brag that "not one pixel goes out without being touched".

-bowerbird

> I grew up just as computers were becoming mainstream,

> the spread of the internet coincided with my teens,

> saw the rise of “Web 2.0” during college

i usually eat up these stories.

but your vague phrases, on both sides of the equation, make it impossible to make any sense out of the piece.

you recognize great change has occurred during this time, but without specifying the years, _exactly,_ the message you've sent (and any meaning it might have) is confused.

attaching solid dates -- the exact year when you born, the exact year when you graduated from college, etc. -- would give remarkably more meaningful reference points.

-bowerbird

loved this program when i was working with book-scans!

it saved me _so_ much time and hassle! my best wishes!

-bowerbird