Together with colleagues at TU Delft we regularly hold lunch meetings with a small community of book enthusiasts to share experiences and updates. Here is a list of updates we shared with this community at the lunch lecture, it gives a nice overview of our activities over the last few months.
Remember, if you haven’t already done so, you can sign up for our mailing list here!
First up, a summary of tool development!
NEW Custom colors Sphinx extension (more info: blog post, page in Manual, GitHub repo)
NEW Dependabot for automatically updating requirements and submodules (more info: blog post, page in Manual)
NEW Rich plug-and-play hover-over tooltips via Sphinx-tippy, see it in action here! (more info: page in Manual, GitHub repo)
IMPROVED Image inverter (done with custom colors, described above; GitHub repo)
IMPROVED Multilingual book (more info: Manual page)
In addition, we have several tools that are WORK IN PROGRESS, so reach out if you are interested now, or stay tuned via our mailing list and blog for when they are ready to use.
iframes: easy-to-use iframes and customization (more info: example book).
Annotator plugin: take digital notes and share with others (Google Chrome Plugin)
Auto-processing of single files: imagine writing content in one place, but allowing it to be formatted differently depending on whether it is a book page or standalone file. For example, a Jupyter notebook file that can be used interactively in a page, then downloaded for use by a student (see the download link replacer tool) on their computer without the distracting Jupyter Book markup! This tool will automatically carry out this process, so you no longer have to do it manually.
Manual and Template Book
We put a lot of work on improving our TeachBooks Manual, especially based on recent workshop that we gave: improved guidance for using tools on GitHub, description and guidance for teamwork, how to specify multiple URLโs for a given book and GitHub repository.
This led to an improvement of our Template Book, where we added exercises for anyone that is interested in learning about our tools and workflow (we also use them in our book workshops).
TU Delft-specific Updates
We have a Sphinx extension that makes it very easy to apply a TU Delft theme to your book, check it out here in the demo book! (more info: blog post, page in Manual, GitHub repo).
In discussion with the Jupyter Book-oriented round table, we are moving our books away from the TeachBooks GitHub Organization, so that this group can focus more on tools and workflows, rather than hosting books. This resulted in two new book-oriented websites, specifically for the open interactive textbooks created by employees from Delft University of Technology.
github.com/tudelft-books/ is a GitHub Organization that serves as a place to help our community share and manage source code.
oit.tudelft.nl is a place where books can be listed, regardless of which website at which the source code repository or book is available.
Information for access and listing your book can be found on this web page. In addition, there is a Template Book with the TU Delft Theme included by default: in other words, if you are making a book for TU Delft students, we recommend you start with this template book, rather than the default TeachBooks Template: your book is only 10 clicks away after clicking this link!
Last but not least…we carried out a number of workshops internationally!
Freek showcased his Show the Physics book at a physics conference in St. Louis Missouri, USA.
Tom, Julie, Robert led a TeachBooks Workshop for Dutch high school physics teachers.
Robert (and two colleagues) gave a MUDE workshop at IIT Madras in India where TeachBooks played a prominent role.
That’s all for now, we hope you enjoyed this update!
