What's a VBook you ask? A VBook is perhaps the coolest thing ever. Well, I think it is anyway. It most certainly is very unique since I haven't seen it anywhere else! A VBook enables you to create Virtual Books inside threads you start. With VBooks, you can create awesome "How To", "Build Up" or Reference threads. Because only you can decide which parts of the thread is printed in your VBook. This thread is in fact a sample VBook! If you look at the top left of this thread, you'll see a link "Print VBook". The system actually detects automatically this thread contains a VBook, and creates a link to print it.
A Sample Chapter
You have great control over what is printed in your VBook. In fact, only parts of your messages can be printed in your VBook. So nobody else can make changes or add to your VBook. Of course, other people can offer suggestions, in the same thread even.
Just as an example, this sentence will not be printed in my VBook.
And you don't have to put all text of your VBook in one message. You can spread it out over your entire thread. So build your VBook as the thread is build!
Again, as an example, I'll continue in my next message.
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05:45 PM
PFF
System Bot
Cliff Pennock Administrator
Posts: 11800 From: Zandvoort, The Netherlands Registered: Jan 99
This is text coming from my second message. Cool huh?
Some other options You can also add subchapters (like this one) to your VBook. Or add pagebreaks wherever you want. If you hit the "Print VBook" link at the top of the page, it doesn't look like much in your browser. But hit the "Print Preview" or "Print" button in your browser, and all of a sudden the page is converted to a true book!
Let's add a page break now.
On the next page, I will print a sample page of Wells' Time Machine:
The Time Machine
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way--marking the points with a lean forefinger--as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity. 'You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.' 'Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?' said Filby, an argumentative person with red hair. 'I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane. These things are mere abstractions.' 'That is all right,' said the Psychologist. 'Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a real existence.' 'There I object,' said Filby. 'Of course a solid body may exist. All real things--' 'So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube exist?' 'Don't follow you,' said Filby. 'Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real existence?' Filby became pensive. 'Clearly,' the Time Traveller proceeded, 'any real body must have extension in _four_ directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness, and--Duration. But through a natural infirmity of the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however, a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the beginning to the end of our lives.'
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05:55 PM
Cliff Pennock Administrator
Posts: 11800 From: Zandvoort, The Netherlands Registered: Jan 99
If you want, you can add normal style tags to your text if you would like to make clear what is going into your VBook and what's not. Just make sure those tags are placed outside your [booktext] tags, otherwise, they will be rendered in your VBook as well. Let me add some more text from the "Time Machine" to my VBook. If you want, you can click the "Edit" button so you can peek how I placed the tags.
Yellow text is added to my VBook.
'That,' said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his cigar over the lamp; 'that ... very clear indeed.' 'Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,' continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness. 'Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. _There is no difference between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our consciousness moves along it_. But some foolish people have got hold of the wrong side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say about this Fourth Dimension?' 'I have not,' said the Provincial Mayor.
And some more:
'It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical people have been asking why _three_ dimensions particularly--why not another direction at right angles to the other three?--and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three-dimensional solid, and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could represent one of four--if they could master the perspective of the thing. See?'
O.K. took me a minute to comprehend what you did. I love it. I clicked on the print Vbook and it all became clear! So can we put other people's comments in the Vbook? We need a Vbook test thread. Make this thread a sticky! F-I-E-R-O can get the forum Someday, in book format! Brad
------------------ Smoke Free since March 1st 2006
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06:17 PM
Cliff Pennock Administrator
Posts: 11800 From: Zandvoort, The Netherlands Registered: Jan 99
So can we put other people's comments in the Vbook?
Actually, only the thread starter can add to the embedded VBook. So if somebody else offers a piece of text for the VBook, the thread starter will have to add that text in a new message.
