[Mod] Books Redux [books_rx]

[sorcerykid]

Books Redux Mod v1.0
books (by sorcerykid)

Books Redux is full rewrite of default books from Minetest Game, offering players a rich selection of books and papers for highly personalized in-game communication.

• Choose from 4 different cover and page styles for books
• Choose from 12 different page styles for papers
• Choose from a wide variety of background color schemes
• Page sizes can range from small, large, wide, and tall
• Bookmarks can be added, removed, or recalled on-the-fly
• Edits to books and papers can be previewed before saving
• Simple page navigation for editing and viewing books
• All content is encrypted using a 128-bit block cipher
• Legacy books can still be viewed in compatibility mode

Even better still, books and papers are both easily craftable using the same traditional recipes as before: 3 papyrus for one paper, and 3 paper for one book.

With so many possible combinations of sizes, colors, and styles, the design possibilities are virtually endless! Moreover, custom layout and formatting of text is also possible using the Bedrock Markup Language. In fact, the editor for books and papers should be very familiar to those accustomed to the Signs Redux mod

Of course, plain-text messages are acceptable as well, as they will render exactly as they are input, without any fancy colors or styles. Then again, that would be boring ;)

Now for an important word about security....

• Last year one of my more vigilant players made me aware that it is possible for anyone to inspect locked chests on servers with only basic CSM knowledge. This means that confidential information in written books is vulnerable to intrusion.
  
  Fortunately, Books Redux addresses this very concern by encrypting the content of all written books and written papers via the Simple Cipher mod. This means that if anyone gains access to a copy of the map, without the server operator's private key, they won't be able to examine the personal correspondence of other players.

Currently there is no way to automatically convert legacy books to the new format. It must be done manually by copying and pasting text into a new book.

I will try to put together a tutorial video in the coming weeks that explains how to create and edit books. So stay tuned!

Repository:

https://bitbucket.org/sorcerykid/books_rx

Download Archive (.zip)
Download Archive (.tar.gz)

Dependencies:

Default Mod (required)

ActiveFormspecs Mod (required)

Bedrock Markup Language Mod (required)

Simple Cipher Mod (required)

Source Code License:

GNU Lesser General Public License v3 (LGPL-3.0)

Multimedia License:

Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

[sorcerykid]

As promised, I made is a step-by-step guide for using Books Redux, which covers all the basics of viewing and editing books and papers. Sometimes being able to follow along with a video makes it so much easier. I hope it is helpful!


Demonstration of Books Redux
https://vimeo.com/401725158

[TenPlus1]

Nicely done :) these books are a lot better than default...

[PolySaken]

Ack no you've killed me ahg
My guidebooks mod is useless now ;(
Edit: unless people want a standalone mod lol

[v-rob]

Now all it needs is spellcheck. caragaeous? :P

[medienfux]

Hello... I try to use Books Redux on minetest-server but I get this error-message:

2020-12-31 03:59:50: ERROR[Main]: ModError: Failed to load and run script from /var/games/minetest-server/.minetest/worlds/minetest4educators/worldmods/cipher/init.lua:
2020-12-31 03:59:50: ERROR[Main]: Mod security: Blocked attempted read from /var/game/minetest-server/.minetest/worlds/minetest4educators/worldmods/bitwise/init.lua
2020-12-31 03:59:50: ERROR[Main]: stack traceback:
2020-12-31 03:59:50: ERROR[Main]: [C]: in function 'dofile'
2020-12-31 03:59:50: ERROR[Main]: ...test/worlds/minetest4educators/worldmods/cipher/init.lua:11: in main chunk


I have no glue ... what to do ... already changed the path from home to the server worldmods ... but what to do now?

[Dragonop]

Hello... I try to use Books Redux on minetest-server but I get this error-message:

2020-12-31 03:59:50: ERROR[Main]: ModError: Failed to load and run script from /var/games/minetest-server/.minetest/worlds/minetest4educators/worldmods/cipher/init.lua:
2020-12-31 03:59:50: ERROR[Main]: Mod security: Blocked attempted read from /var/game/minetest-server/.minetest/worlds/minetest4educators/worldmods/bitwise/init.lua
2020-12-31 03:59:50: ERROR[Main]: stack traceback:
2020-12-31 03:59:50: ERROR[Main]: [C]: in function 'dofile'
2020-12-31 03:59:50: ERROR[Main]: ...test/worlds/minetest4educators/worldmods/cipher/init.lua:11: in main chunk


I have no glue ... what to do ... already changed the path from home to the server worldmods ... but what to do now?

Seems to be an issue with the 'cipher' and 'bitwise' mods relating to Mod Security rather than 'books_rx' mod... which is still weird regardless, since these two mods don't require you to list them as trusted mods afaik. Did you download both 'cipher' and 'bitwise' from their respective repositories?

[medienfux]

yes, i did and i wrote them into the security-thingy in minetest.conf ... nothing worked out :(

edit ... installed it now by single steps + counter check and it looks like the cipher mod causes the issues.

[Wuzzy]

The good:

• I absolutely obsessed over books in JT2 and wrote so so many of them. So they have an appeal. As you know, I built a giant library filled with books on the New World of JT2. Note to server owners: You still need a way for players to show off books to other players without giving them away.
• Books from other players are also fun to read.
• Lots of styles to choose from. Gives books some individuality. Nice paper and book cover styles.
• Writable papers! Good for simple, short messages or letters when books would be overkill.
• Colored text! Images! Bedrock Markup Language has some nice features.
• Really good for servers for players to share their stories or whatever, as evidenced by JT2.
• Encryption. Although I want to bet if someone tries hard enough it will be broken. ;) IMHO you should never trust sensitive information to a Minetest server.

The bad:

• While reading an already-written book is nice and fun, writing a book is very painful. And that's my biggest criticism of the mod. If you want to write longer texts, you have to carefully find the hard cut-off points for each page and constantly shift text around. There's no automation for that whatsoever. This is also quite dangerous as you can destroy all your data that way if you accidentally Esc out. I know from experience on JT2 that writing any longer book is really painful to do. What I usually did is write all the text in an external text editor first and then copy it bit by bit into the book so I don't lose it all by one unlucky keypress. Not nice, but much safer.
• On top there is the overall buggyness of the 0.4.17 text field in Minetest but that's not your fault.
• The error message when your text is too long doesn't tell me how much I was above the limit, making finding the correct length hard.
• Getting tables to align right is hard. If you add 1 simple 2×2 table, the texts will stretch out all over the page. And a large crammed table has a chance to overflow and cut off texts.
• Alignment in general is hard, I often end up with text going to places where I don't want to. Probably a problem with Bedrock Markup Language?
• Players have no guarantee their text is readable to everyone. It depends on your screen size. Crammed pages are likely to be cut off at some point. But you might not notice it if you have a large screen, as only players with small screens will notice the cut-off. That's the inherent downside of having pages. That's where the uglier but more simple "one big scrollable text area" approach of MTG is actually superior to books_rx, sad as it may sound, because at least the MTG books guarantee the full text can always be read.
• Depends on default.

The ugly:

• Inventory items are always "Book With Text", the tooltip doesn't change. (I believe per-item item descriptions are available even in 0.4.17.)
  Although you can change the book color, the inventory image is always brown.
• Some text colors are hard to read on some backgrounds.
  Bookmarks seem pointless. I never used them seriously. In practice, books can't really be much longer than only 10 pages or so as you ususally hit the length limit at that point already. So the bookmarks are basically just UI clutter that could be removed safely IMHO.
• Minetest's default gray buttons are ugly and ruin the style. Not your fault tho as you have to be compatible with 0.4.17. (or maybe image buttons could come to the rescue? idk)

The buggy:

• If you get "Your content is too long", your book will save anyway, possibly leading to a series of even more hilarious bugs. And the reason seems obvious, there's no return statement ...
• Not sure if it's fixed already, but the text color on the left page looksd different than on the right page.
• If you flip the page, you go only 1 page forward instead of 2. That's not how books work, lol.

[runs]

Oh a hidden gem aroused:-)