Variable page sizes or more folds?

[Silth]

Greetings and well met to the MZ3 team! Congratulations on a very powerful and extensible piece of software.

I'm evaluating potential flip book solutions for a customer, and I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and extensibility of the code in MZ3. Before making any decisions though, I am curious as to how difficult it would be to extend the functionality of MZ3 in order to fulfil the particular requirements of this project:

- can MZ3 more page folds? The customer wants to display pages of double size that fold outwards, like this:

The idea is that the left-side page is double in width, folding outwards to reveal its contents. Ideally, this "special layout" should be able to go to the left, right, or both sides.

I understand this goes beyond what MZ3 is programmed to handle, but I'd be happy to hack in a limited solution if it's at all possible. Say, in these "special" pages, add a "fold out" button, that would in turn pause interactivity, reveal the page fold, and wait for the user to "fold in" before resuming normal interactivity.

- Can MZ3 do different page sizes? I need a small sized page that could (ideally) be positioned at any point on a page. Think of those children's storybooks with cutouts one can flip to reveal things, like a door revealing a house interior.

I guess both of these cases could be resolved by implementing MZ page sides that are - or contain - mini MegaZine instances rather than other content. Is this doable?


I'm flexible, open to suggestions and/or creative hacks, and in my short dealings with MZ (trying the code, reading docs and forums) I really like the spirit and mentality of your company and product. Any chance I can resolve these two issues with your aid?

Thanks in advance for any replies!

[Hans Nücke]

Florian hase to give his 2 cents, but just sharing with you what came up to my mind so you can have the look until Florian finds the time to asnwer:

Sidebars

Those do not flip open but slide to the side. So it is something different. But it offers additonal space for content to the left and/or right of the pages.

Regarding the mini book within a page: nice idea! And I also hade the immediate first thougth: book in a book. WIthout claiming to be knowledgable at all (I am jsut sales ;-), I could imagine this is a promising approach.

So let's see what Florian says....

[Silth]

Thank you for the quick reply!

Sidebars could be a way to do fold-outs, I suppose... but it would detract from the immersive experience. I don't discard it as a solution, though I'd prefer something more integrated.

Waiting on Florian's insight then! Let's see what the chances and challenges are for a book-in-a-book!

[Florian Nücke]

Your 'book in the book' idea is nice, I like it. After some testing I fear it's not quite feasible at the current state of the engine, though, there are too many interferences between the two books (outer and inner), be it cursor images, key presses for page turns (if you don't need that for the inner pages, we can scratch that), etc.
I'll fix some of those, the ones that are general problems that could potentially cause problems with other content, too, in the future. The rest might need some custom tweaking for your application.

This aside, there's still another issue with that approach: the masking of the pages, and therefore their content. Currently, no element inside a page can exceed the display area representing the page. A relatively simple workaround for that would be to disable the masks completely while the pages are not turning, though.

So long story short: basically it's doable. I think.

I believe your idea to be the best approach for both cases, in principle. Might be worth checking out if it's possible to reduce the code to make a page "standalone" for the foldout, though, as having a whole "book" just for that might be a bit heavy.

[Silth]

From my limited digging into the code, I found that the way the masks work is the no.1 issue with non-standard page sizes. This might be useful to consider anyway: variable page sizes could be an asset anyway. In traditional print, it is quite expensive to make custom page sizes for publication, but I've come across several really innovative catalog designs in the past making great use of this technique: bookmark-style pages of full height and narrow size that act as chapter separators, full-width, half-height pages playing with what's revealed or hidden on the back side... Utilising transparency this can lead to even more creative options - in Tool's Lateralus album sleeve, there's a whole play with transparencies over a human body revealing body structures, auras, chakras etc. The possibilities are endless, and the benefit of digital media is that it's a whole easier and cheaper to produce such crazy ideas

Back to the issue at hand.

A foldout as a page-standalone could be a good compromise. Not quite the generic solution able to cover all circumstances and use cases, but in my case it would work perfectly! 

A bit of brainstorming on the issues you mention re: internal data structure conflicts with UI elements. It is unreasonable to want a different set of UI elements for each sub-book, it only adds confusion. Perhaps the UI connectivity should be only attached to the "master" book. Each sub-book counts as a single page side in the master book, so the page numbering is consistent with the natural counting order of humans. Navigating a sub-book could only be limited to mouse interaction.

A bit of data abstraction can make local all global variables currently making impossible the existence of more than 1 book - what should be unique is only the master book, allowing for any number of sub-books. This way, even recursion would be possible, with books containing sub-books that can also contain sub-books... am I opening a can of worms?

[Hans Nücke]

no, no can of worms!
Great suggestions and ideas; and I'm sure you'll get Florian's full attention: this is the kind of challenge he likes (he's an expert in recursive thinking ;-)

[Silth]

So, ehm... any chance of this functionality being added "soonish", say within the month or so? Or do you see it as a more long-term goalset, for future versions?

Thanks in advance.

[gtech]

It could be only me, but the way I see it is having 2 books side by side, with the right page of the left book fixed, and the left page of the right book also fixed and with the 2 fixed pages held together.

Hey, it gives me an idea for a suggestion...... another option that could be added to stiff pages is to make them fixed, not flippable when you clik on them. Like the back cover for example that would be forced un-flippable. It would be like a pad with a hard back. Use a flexible front cover (or page should I say) and make the flipping vertical and it would look like the paper pads we use to take notes. Use script for the text for the handwritten effect...

Added: I just realized that it could be done only by adding a background at the end that would look like a cover.


Gilles

[Florian Nücke]

Sorry for the long delay, I had a lot going on over the last weeks (semester at university coming to an end, laptop died, pc died, too... -.-)

I'm hoping be to get back to programming over the weekend, and will definitely have a look into this issue again! Can't promise the native variable page sizes will make it into the next version, but I'm planning to at least get the book-inside-book issues sorted out.