Michel Beaudouin-Lafon

OnePub - Single-Source Collaborative Publishing

ERC Proof-of-concept - 2023-2025

Book publishing involves many stakeholders and a complex set of inflexible tools and formats. Current workflows are inefficient because authors and editors cannot make changes directly to the content once it has been laid out. They are costly because creating different output formats, such as PDF, ePub or HTML requires manual labor. Finally, new requirements such as the European directive on accessibility incur additional costs and delays.

The goal of the OnePub POC project is to demonstrate the feasibility and value of a book production workflow based on a set of collaborative editing tools and a single document source representing the “ground truth” of the book content and layout. The editing tools will be tailored to the needs of each stakeholder, e.g. author, editor or typesetter, and will feature innovative techniques such as Textlets and Transitionals from the PI’s ERC project ONE. They will all modify the same source, so that any change can instantly and automatically be propagated to the different output formats. They will also enable new capabilities such as interactive content. Real-time collaborative editing of the “ground truth” with dedicated tools will save time and therefore cost.

The project will focus on textbooks and academic publications as its testbed because they feature some of the most stringent constraints in terms of content types and content layout. They also run on tight deadlines, emphasizing the need for an efficient process. OnePub will define a unified format for the document source, create several collaborative document editors, and develop an open and extensible architecture so that new editors and add-ons can be added to the workflow. Together, these developments will set the stage for a new ecosystem for the publishing industry, with a level-playing field where software companies can provide components while publishers and their service contractors can decide which components to use for their workflows.

If you are interested in participating in the project, please contact me at jobs@erc.on.

• Miguel A. Renom, Baptiste Caramiaux, and Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (2022). Exploring Technical Reasoning in Digital Tool Use. in Proc. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022). ACM, 17 pages. Honorable Mention Award
• Han L. Han, Junhang Yu, Raphaël Bournet, Alexandre Ciorascu, Wendy E. Mackay, and Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (2022). Passages: Interacting with Text Across Documents. in Proc. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022). ACM, 17 pages. Honorable Mention Award
• Camille Gobert and Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (2022). i-LaTeX: Manipulating Transitional Representations between LaTeX Code and Generated Documents. in Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2022). ACM, 16 pages.
• Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Susanne Bødker, and Wendy Mackay (2021). Generative Theories of Interaction. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.
• Julien Gori, Han L. Han, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (2020). FileWeaver: Flexible File Management with Automatic Dependency Tracking. in Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2020). ACM, pp 22-34.
• Han Han, Miguel Renom, Wendy Mackay, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (2020). Textlets: Supporting Constraints and Consistency in Text Documents. in Proc. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2020). ACM, 14 pages. (Honorable Mention Award)
• Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (2017) Towards Unified Principles of Interaction. In Proc. CHItaly ’17, Cagliari, Italy, September 18–20, 2017, pp 1-2. Invited Keynote.
• Nolwenn Maudet, Ghita Jalal, Philip Tchernavksij, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Wendy E. Mackay (2017) Beyond Grids: Interactive Graphical Substrates to Structure Digital Layout. In Proc. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '17), ACM, pp 5053-5064, 2017.
• Marianela Ciolfi Felice, Nolwenn Maudet, Wendy E. Mackay, Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (2016) Beyond Snapping: Persistent, Tweakable Alignment and Distribution with StickyLines. In Proc. User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2016), ACM Press, pp 133-144.
• Clemens N. Klokmose, James R. Eagan, Siemen Baader, Wendy E. Mackay and Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (2015) Webstrates: Shareable Dynamic Media. In Proc. User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2015). ACM, pp 280-290. Best paper award.
• Michel Beaudouin-Lafon and Wendy Mackay (2000) Reification, Polymorphism and Reuse: Three Principles for Designing Visual Interfaces. In Proc. International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI 2000). ACM, pages 102-109.
• Michel Beaudouin-Lafon (2000) Instrumental interaction: an interaction model for designing post-WIMP user interfaces. In Proc. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2000). ACM, pages 446-453.

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