The concept of ApacheTutor is one of an interactive, online book. High quality content (which is gradually being written) should be accompanied by genuine interactivity. Subject to permissions, reviewers, editors and readers should be able to attach notes to an article, and authorised editors should be able to work on the document text itself. The system is required to manage this process, including retaining a full revision history.
Coincidentally, while the site was in preparation, I was asked to do the technical review for a forthcoming book. This required me to find out about and use broadly comparable capabilities in a modern wordprocessor, which permits an editor to make changes or enter notes anywhere, while the software takes care of attaching my name and the date to my edits. But publishing on the Web opens this process up, and permits not only expert reviewers but also general readers to participate. So if anything is inaccurate or unclear, there is a readily-available builtin mechanism to ask for review and clarification.
Wearing my other hat, I am concerned about web standards and accessibility, and I am not prepared to accept sub-standard publishing 'solutions'. ApacheTutor is required to ensure that all HTML delivered over the web is both valid and fully accessible. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first and only web-based system that can offer such a guarantee while permitting editors the flexibility of working on 'raw' markup.
