In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#1

Post by lightveil » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

I have recently been using the Linear Algebra book by Jim Hefferon to study the subject. This is because I'm taking a linear algebra course in college, I am visually impaired, and the books I get from college are literally unusable.

As a person who has to use a Screen Reader, math in PDFs is almost impossible to read for me. The problem is almost insurmountable if the PDF is a collection of images, but even if it is a LaTeX-generated PDF, reading anything but the simplest of equations is very, very hard. In these cases, having the LaTeX source to read is a godsend.

To the authors who publish the source of their books: thank you, thank you. I cannot express how grateful I am. To anyone who is related to /working in the publisher space: it would be incredibly useful if there was a process to get the LaTeX source of books upon request, although I understand how copyrights/etc might make this difficult.

Some other books I would like to point out for being open source: Apex Calculus, Open Data Structures.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#2

Post by enriquto » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

not about the subjects that you mention, but if you ever need to learn probability and inference, this is easily among the best books on the subject: http://www.inference.org.uk/mackay/itila/book.html

if you read the latex source, there are even some easter eggs in the comments

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#3

Post by adolph » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

There is a lot of knowledge where the world would benefit from a basic level of open ubiquity and the participation of experts who might be incented to contribute in a manner similar to Wikipedia.

Here are two publishers releasing in the open:

https://www.openintro.org/

https://openstax.org/

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#4

Post by HDMI_Cable » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

It would be nice to have this thread as a "collection" place for different open textbooks. I personally use OpenStacks, they're quite good. https://openstax.org/

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#5

Post by bluenose69 » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 5:22 PM UTC

I had a student with limited vision in a class once, who had a reader. Luckily, I had written the course notes (basically a textbook) in latex.

I consulted with the student and saw how the reader worked. All was fine, but it was slow because it said e.g. "backslash begin open brace equation close brace", so I made a perlscript to remove backslash and braces (and a few other things) and then it all worked really well.

People, especially those who don't use mathematics much, think latex is hard for humans. I think exactly the reverse is true.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#6

Post by sodality2 » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

We use openstax currently in our AP Biology class. It's incredible to not have to scroll through a scanned PDF for an obscure 2010 textbook. In addition, the questions that we are assigned are completely unique so I don't believe that this will contribute to the (very pervasive) problem of cheating.

I donated to Openstax as well: https://riceconnect.rice.edu/donation/support-openstax

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#7

Post by ravenstine » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #4

It would be nice to have this thread as a "collection" place for different open textbooks. I personally use OpenStacks, they're quite good. https://openstax.org/

The thing that disappoints me about Openstax is that, while they're free/libre, they don't seem to be open source anymore. They used to provide access to the raw XML (CNXML) used to generate the books, but I can't find that anywhere.

It would be nice if there was something like OpenStax, maybe even a fork of it, that could be held in a Git repo and anyone could make pull requests.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#8

Post by myself248 » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #4

It would be nice to have this thread as a "collection" place for different open textbooks. I personally use OpenStacks, they're quite good. https://openstax.org/

This is my favorite text on electronics, open or otherwise: https://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/

The explanation of impedance (volume II, chapter 14) was the first one that made intuitive sense to me, after struggling with the concept for years. The whole thing is beautiful, but that chapter especially.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#9

Post by dehrmann » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

I have no idea how commercial textbooks for anything up to specialized, college-level classes are viable. You'd think that enough states (and countries) would put the work into the Wikibooks calculus book so it meets their standards and just use that.

Re: In Praise of Open Source Textbooks

#10

Post by 533474 » Sun, Jun 06, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

When I publish my book, I will also publish the source. Knowledge is universal. Praise all the authors who release their sources.