Ftrain: a CMS for Storytelling

Ftrain differs from many CMS systems in that it designed for efficient STORYTELLING; this means that, rather than conveying news or building community, the point of the site is to give people a narrative experience. Currently the code base is only used/developed by a few
individuals, although this will likely change within the next 6 months as a well-known national magazine begins to use the Ftrain system.

My talk would cover the following aspects of the system, some under development, some in play:

* A highly expressive data format that blurs boundaries between category and content.

* XML/XSLT as a means to achieve platform neutrality; the same code runs on most systems (Mac OSX, Unix, Windows, Cygwin), and inside most frameworks (Java, Python, Perl) - which means that the content is incredibly pliable and easy to manipulate regardless of your chosen framework.

* Data sharing between sites: an XPath server that allows for Ted-Nelson style "transclusion" via a RESTian XPath server, allowing individuals to create fully-credited open "magazines" of each other's work (under development), without worrying about web interfaces.

* XML/XSLT/CSS as a framework that allows the easy incorporation of user feedback and rapid development of new features.

* The use of simple RDF as a baseline for storing navigation/linking information.

* A proposed "Reader Services" module which will help readers keep track of what they've read, annotate text, and suggest what they should read next, guiding them through large content frameworks.

* Methods for dynamically generating printable (i.e. PDF) content via XSL:FO.

I would also like to talk about scalability, particularly the limits of the XSLT processing model, and how this can be overcome through the use of XML databases, and explain how a storytelling system differs (and doesn't) from many other content management systems.

To see the site in operation, please visit http://ftrain.com. A sourceforge link for the code (which is currently undergoing a cleanup for more general use) is available on the home page.

Paul Ford
As for myself, I'm a freelance writer/programmer/Semantic Web guy with a
background in web site development.