Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex Cormier
Why does it have to be a book. Why not make it all online?
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I had a plan to do this last year. Bascially, I was writing a specialized wiki program specifically for robot articles. However, work and school got in the way of completing the project (I was essentially writing MediaWiki - not the easiest of tasks). Later, I determined that the difference between my software (DRD, as I was calling it) and MediaWiki was significantly smaller than the similarity; so, I halfway hatched a plan to just customize MediaWiki. Then, university started...
Anyway, going fully online offeres some significant advantages over a purely text-based system. Image notes (like on Flickr) come to mind for better captioning of photos. The Web also offers a better ability to link to resources and references. For example, if a team makes something using Kalman filters, they could link to a site discussing the theoretical basis for Kalman filters instead of cluttering the article with overly technical explanations. (A real world example would be team 121 linking to
http://mizugaki.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/st...F/EV_Trans.pdf) Online resources also allow for video, and downloadable content (such as CAD files for a swerve module or gearbox).