Introduction
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.
