My post is related to posts “Sharing .bloomd files online” and “Multiple people working on the same book or collection,” but slightly different.
I am wondering what the current most advisable way it for someone with a Bloom collection on their computer to transfer it to someone else, who will not be collaborating on it but just looking at it or using it as a base for other materials of their own.
Thanks.
who will not be collaborating on it but just looking at it or using it as a base for other materials of their own.
If you want both options available (viewing and modifying), the safest and best way to proceed is to upload your books to the Bloom Library. In this way, others can freely view them online or download the .bloomd and view it on a device, or download into the Bloom editor to translate/adapt them.This of course assumes the books are completed and ready to be shared.
If your books are not yet finished/complete, then I would hesitate sharing them with others to use “as a base for other materials” because they could then prematurely propagate your text and images when in fact your text or images are not yet ready for sharing. This could lead to problems. For example, suppose you haven’t yet set credits for your images, then share your collection with others, then that person uses those images and attributes inaccurate credits to those images? That would not be desirable. Or suppose your text is still a work-in-progress, do you really want that text to be translated into other languages?
If by “use as a base”, you mean “use the structure of my book but not the actual content”, then what you want is to create a custom template for others to use using the Template Starter.
Yes, thank you Colin. If the situation were more like your second example, what would you recommend doing to share the files?
The situation is that someone wants to share a Bloom Collection with me and since I have never seen it before, I am not sure whether I will just want to browse it and look and the content and structure (including how pages were formatted) and then go and make my own new thing using some ideas I got from it, or perhaps make a book using it as a custom template.
My hesitancy to share unfinished Bloom source materials with others is about mitigating the risk of propagating half-translated stories embedded in books in a second or third language. This could get messy very quickly. On the other hand, if your friend is creating a book in just one language – the same as you are working in – then there is little risk. In this case, that person could “zip” up their Bloom collection (which resides in the Bloom folder under “Documents” on your computer) and send it to you (email, or dropbox).
In my opinion, a risk-free and better way of sharing unfinished books is to simply generate a PDF of your book(s), and send that draft to the interested party to look at. Using a free program like Adobe Acrobat Reader, that person could comment on your draft (or vice-versa).
Hi Colin,
I understand your concern about risk of transmitting half-translated stories. However, in this case, that is not a concern. We intentionally want to transmit a partial book (one that will likely never be finished, it just shows some prototype lessons) in one language so a person can see how it is set up and get ideas for how they might go about doing the formatting and layout for a similar type of product (but not translating) in their own language. It’s just about sharing ideas, not translating something or collaborating on a project.
The PDF file would unfortunately not give the recipient the formatting and layout details the way getting a raw Bloom book would.
I realize this is probably not the typical case of what someone desires to do with sharing a book through Bloom.
Fortunately, we were able to get the sharing through a zip file to work.
Thanks!