After spending months seriously evaluating almost every CCK at the JED, and test driving them, I've decided to take the plunge with K2.

But, I have some conceptual issues I cannot find documented anywhere (so my apologies in advance if I'm repeating a question).

I want to use K2 for a literature archive, basically turning Joomla into a publishing platform for long-form writers (we're talking novels, manuals, that level of input).

Here, writers can submit their works (fiction, non-fiction, technical, etc.). The problem I have is with implementing the "book" concept.

A "book" by definition is a collection of chapters unique to a specific author or collection of authors. To make it dead simple, ideally, a member can create a new "book" and then start adding "chapters" to it. Also, other members can be added as "co-authors" and given the right to edit the "book".

Chapters = "special" Articles, so no problem there!

K2 multiple and subcategories... check! (no issues there).

Multi-author collaboration - I'm thinking this can be done at the plugin level to control permissions (this isn't an ACL matter, and co-authors would be manually added anyway to each "book" they work on).

The "book" itself is where I'm stuck.

Anyone who has used Adobe FrameMaker or Corel Ventura will understand the concept I'm going for. :)

So... can someone please give me ideas on how to implement the "book" part of my flow? Thanks in advance for the help!

Instead of trying to relate by author and or authors, why not use subcategories which k2 is best at
books

---

>book1

---

items=chapters

---

book2

---

items=chapters
and if you want two authors to contreibute put them in the same user group with rites

Thanks for the speedy response! :)

This looks good. One question though:

Is there a way to allow those with the user rights to create their own "books"? Because this will be an environment open to registration, not all members should be able to contribute to everyone's "book" if you take my meaning.

Any ideas?

I think users have the right to only create items.
You would need to assign them to a backend access that wouild allow new categories to be created, im not sure exactly which level you would need for that but it would be one way
another way would have a custom routine written for doing that

I've been toying with some ideas.

Basically, a "Story" would consist of two parts: A category and group. A K2 plugin to create special "Story" categories - on submission of article, based upon certain selectors I enable in the additional fields, the plugin would create a new "category" and new "usergroup", each dedicated only to that "story". That way, all other normal category and group functions would be available (and the admin can still have normal backend control).

Adding users would then be a matter of allowing the story's owner (the one who created the story) the right to add members to his "group". Again, admin control is maintained, this just would allow that member to control his story group.

Also, some customizing of template to build a TOC for that "story" category contents.

Again, I'm just in the planning phases and bouncing out ideas. Once I get the concept nailed, I'm diving in. :)