Hi Sebastian–pinging @zoe and @apurva here because though the chapter outline is now closed for comment I don’t know if the intention was to close from viewing at all. I do see now that only a few people are invited to view that doc, and I am not sure if that is what was supposed to happen.
So you can see the outline and the chapter descriptions there! Perhaps, then, the original document that was open for comment doesn’t need to be available for all to read because the outline is also on the spreadsheet. But in that case, maybe we take that document that is not open for reading off the forum! Or open it for all to view, at least.
Thanks, @clhendricksbc. We’d like to keep the outlines public, for anyone with the link to view, and I’ve looked at the permissions on the document to make sure that this is the case.
@sebastian-higherlearning, you should be able to view the outline. If you still have trouble accessing the file, please let me know. Thanks for leaving your comments here in the forum. Since we won’t actively be checking the document for new comments, it would be best to leave your feedback in this thread.
@sebastian.higherlearning Hi Sebastian. Thanks for posting.
Firstly, I hope the access problems you were having have now been sorted.
Secondly, thanks for your suggestions. The Open Textbook is intended for a first-year introductory audience, and so I’m concerned that both discussions of the relationship of formal logic to computer science and the foundations of mathematics would be lost on the audience. The last section of the Logic Part is aimed at explaining the role that form plays within modern logic. I think this would certainly provide an opportunity to explain the special status of the logical constants, and their applicability to machines. However, each section only has ~2500 words to play with.
Do let us know what you think after having a read of the outline.
Hi everyone! We’re pleased to announce that Rebus Projects is now live! This is our new platform that guides open textbook projects through the publishing workflow and makes it easy to find, recruit, and organize collaborators. The main listing for this project is now found on the new site.
To stay involved & updated on this project’s progress, head to Rebus Projects, log in with the same details you use on the Rebus Forum. Then, find this project in the listing, and click on “Join the Project” in the new platform! We look forward to seeing you there!
Just an update because it’s been awhile! This book has been through peer review and review by me as the series editor. After final revisions by the authors we will put it into Pressbooks and it will be ready for viewing and distribution!
And another update! The chapters are ready for copy editing and this book should be published in the next couple of months. It may be a little longer to get this one in production than our other ones because there is a good deal of logical notation in the text and we want to make sure it looks right in all of the book’s export formats. Stay tuned!
@metatechne The Ethics book is now finished (almost published officially…just waiting on a release statement) and it’s time to turn to the next one–Logic!
I have created a new folder in our “publishing copies” google folder, for Logic. It has five chapters plus an introduction, and then a glossary, exercise solutions, references, and further reading. The references and further reading are for the whole book rather than each chapter, but we can split the references at least up into their respective chapters just to be consistent with the other books (I can work on that).
The other thing is that the editor has already inputted the five chapters into Pressbooks, because Apurva and I were chatting with him about how there may be some issues with some of the logical notation in Pressbooks and that he might want to test it out. So I wonder if it would be most useful to do copyediting of those directly in Pressbooks?
I sent you an invitation to the Pressbooks site for the Logic book.
Thank you so much for agreeing to work with us on another book!
Thanks, @christina.hendricks. Making the edits directly is fine since they’re already imported. The only wrinkle would be if I need to make comments outside the text (i.e. asking you questions, flagging things for myself to return to later, etc). Is there a feature in Pressbooks I could use for that?
If not, I’d probably flag those things in the google docs. On that note, I can’t seem to see any of the gdocs or gfolders for the Logic book. Could you try to re-send the invitation?
I just sent an invitation to the folder with the Logic docs. I think I was under the impression that you were on a bigger folder that included this one, but I think that’s not the case. At any rate, you should have gotten a link to that folder now.
As for making comments on the chapters outside the text…the only way I know how to do that is through hypothes.is, which can be enabled on the book itself. I have enabled it for the chapters and the frontmatter/backmatter (of which there isn’t much yet…I haven’t copied over most of those items from the other books yet). You should be able to see it if you’re logged into the book site and go to “visit book” and then go to the intro or one of the chapters.
Have you used that before? If you want to try it, we could make a private group for you and me so your comments wouldn’t be public. Not everyone needs to see the copy editing suggestings/questions I think!
Please let me know what you think. We can also just do it on the google doc versions of the text!
Great, thanks @christina.hendricks ! I have access to the gfolder now in addition to the Pressbooks chapters.
I’ve used hypothesis before but I think I’ll need to create a new account associated with the preferred email I’d want to use. I think it might just be easier to use the gdocs since those are available. (BTW, I plan on starting the edits tonight.)
I’d be happy to do the private-group option in hypothesis for the next book, though!
That makes sense, @metatechne! We are working on some formatting issues with the logical notation in the book, but the text remains the same from the google doc version to the Pressbooks version I think (the book editor did the importing into Pressbooks and I don’t think he changed anything in the process but I haven’t checked).
What that has meant is that in the truth tables, e.g., in chapter 3, if I use LaTeX for the top row with the logical notation it turns it into a different font than the rest of the table because the table is styled with a different font than the rest of the text (Lato, I think). So I just changed the font in the cells of the table using CSS (thank you web search for helping me learn how!) so that the tables are now all in the same font as the rest of the chapters (Crimson Text).
The text boxes are still in a different font, which I think it okay because they are a different sort of “thing” than the rest of the chapter. So were the tables but this just looks better I think, than having the header rows in the truth tables be in one font, and the rest of the tables (the T’s and F’s) be in a different font.
Here are some further issues we have run into with the Logic book, which I have been discussing with the book editor @benjamin.martin and with @apurva, and which I’d like to move here just in case others can learn from them.
And Apurva and Benjamin, if you have thoughts on any of these, please do reply!
There are a few diagrams in one of the chapters, and the exercise solutions, that aren’t rendering well. See this screenshot for an example:
I was hoping we could do these in LaTeX but doing so with TikZ doesn’t work with MathJax, according to a discussion thread about logical symbols and accessibility.. We’re still working on that. It might be that we end up creating svg files and using alternative text to make the images accessible.
I am trying to figure out how best to render the arguments in standard form (with numbered premises and conclusions with a line between the premises and conclusion). In the google docs versions of the chapters we had them just as numbered text on different lines, with the last premise before the conclusion underlined to represent the line between the premises and conclusion. I think it’s more accessible (and it looks better) to have them be ordered lists with a horizontal line between using <hr> (I had to style the <hr> element using CSS to make it look right, which meant 1em left indent and also I’m playing with the width (30%, 40%, etc.). But to do this I have to end the ordered list before the horizontal line, and then start a new ordered list starting at a new number (e.g., if there are two premises, the conclusion is rendered with a new ordered list starting at number 3).
I don’t know how accessible it is to have one ordered list and then a new one starting at a new number after a horizontal line. Will that indicate that the three things are part of one, single argument?
In chapter 3 there are a few places where there are two sets of arguments with premises & conclusions side by side on a page, which is rendered using padding and then spaces or tabs I think. This seems like it might not work so well on all exports and might look strange on some browsers or sizes of windows. See the screen shot below:
I am not sure how best to do this sort of thing so that it is both accessible and renders well in all formats. I doubt a table would work well because the information is not really table-like (I’d have to add row and column headers and that doesn’t really fit here I think). We may just have to move these to be one after the other, vertically.
Thanks for the updates, and for moving over the conversation here so others can join.
For 1, I think we have a good solution in our thread about Logical symbols and accessibility - #14 by christina.hendricks. We will use MathJax to render equations written in LaTeX, and will use Inkscape to create SVG images of diagrams (like the one in your screenshot). The SVG images will be accompanied by alt-text to ensure that they are accessible.
Yes, I think they will, but I would be eager to hear from others who might be more certain.
I’ve pulled an example from the book to demonstrate what this might look like in the Text Editor (Christina, please correct me if this isn’t what you were describing): <ol> <li>All tigers are felines.</li> <li>All lions are felines.</li> </ol> <hr/> <ol start="3"> <li>/[latex]\therefore [/latex]All tigers are lions. </li> </ol>
And below is what it would display like in the final book formats:
All tigers are felines.
All lions are felines.
/∴ All tigers are lions.
Avoiding the table format and simply displaying them vertically sounds like a good solution.
@christina.hendricks While you’re working out the LaTeX stuff, here’s a quick update:
Chapters 1-5 are all set in Press Books except for some questions I had. You should have gotten some google-doc notifications, as I raised the questions there so that you’d have the context.
Just need to copyedit the Solutions, References/Works Cited, and Further Reading.
Thank you, @metatechne! Good to know we’re pretty close with copy editing of chapters. Soon (I hope!) I’ll have the symbols and diagrams issue solved. I’ll check on the questions you raised in the next couple of days.
We do still need to have the Acknowledgements written up, and we’re still waiting on a couple of author bios I think, so there’s a bit more copy editing before we’re completely ready with the content!
Sounds good, Apurva. And yes, that example with the ordered list is the kind of thing I’m thinking of. I’m going to see if I can do a bit more digging about the accessibility question regarding breaking ordered lists like that up. But right now that seems like the best way to handle those aspects of the text.
