MattD commented on Catherine’s blog entry about pyxlin’. Here is what he wrote:

…Blurb just released (a month or two ago) a “blog slurper” which is meant to do almost exactly what pyxlin seems to want to do: automatically create a hardbound book of your blog. I wonder what pyxlin will offer to make it different.

Great question Matt. I can see why you think these two applications might be the same, both Blurb and pyxlin print hardbound books and both have the ability to publish a blog or a blook (blog + book). Beyond the blook, pyxlin is different from blurb in pretty much every way.

Similarity - Blooks (i.e., blog import)

A recent study showed that 37 percent of blogs are personal journals. Technorati’s most recent estimate of blogs world-wide is over 70 millions blogs! This means that approximately 25.9 millions blogs are used as personal journals.

For the same reason that pyxlin is going to include a MS Word Import, we are creating a blog import for the purpose of easily sucking in digital personal journals and converting them into readable books for your posterity. This is the only reason we have created an import for bloggers. Pyxlin will turn your personal online diary in to a “personal journal blook”.

Blurb’s primary purpose in creating a blog import is to give the opportunity for bloggers to sell their countless hours of blogging in book form. For example, I would love to buy excerpts of Seth Godin’s blog in the form of a book. I hate reading on a computer all day. My eyes just begin to wig out on me.

blooks vs blooks

Beyond the fact that pyxlin’s personal journals are for personal use while Blurb’s books are made primarily for resell, there are significant differences between pyxlin and blurbs typesetting abilities. Typesetting is the part that makes the text and photos in your book look nice.

To help illustrate the differences I created a book on blurb and then copied what it looked like with pyxlin. As you can see below the differences in margins, leading, kerning, ligatures, small-caps, paragraphs, justification, headers & footers, captions, widows, orphans, and so on are extreme.

Here is a screen shot of Blurb’s system

(click to see a full image and break down of the differences):

pyxlin’s professional typesetting system powered by TeX:

*I used Latin Filler Text to create these example books.

Pyxlin is all online

Because pyxlin is all online, there is nothing to download to your computer. Sharing is easy. So is publishing because you don’t have to wait for a 2 hour upload when you are ready to publish, it is already there. Most surprising is that because it is online, it is actually even faster than blurb’s application when you are working with more than 100 pages of text.

Even though it would be difficult to consider pyxlin’s journals a direct competitor to blurb’s books, I hope that this post helps you understand the differences between the two companies.

Overall blurb is a sweet company—located in San Fransisco— with a great name, great prices, and loads of funding. I am excited to see how they turn out against our friends at LuLu, their main competitor. Blurb is an On-Demand self-publisher that is really built primarily for authors to create and resell their books.

Pyxlin is simply a journaling application that allows you to keep your personal journal online, drag in your favorite photos, and then publish a beautiful hardbound journal.

Pyxlin is owned by FamilyLearn Inc. FamilyLearn is a small family history company founded by Neal Harmon. Neal grew up on the potato farms of Idaho. What little funding we have comes from family and close friends. Half of us are still students at Brigham Young University. We are probably just too stupid to know better but we hope to make pyxlin work without venture capital funding.

26 percent of journal (or diary) keepers use a Mac or PC. We are safe to assume that the vast majority of computer diaries and journals are kept on Microsoft Word, considering that Macs have only 5 percent of the market share.

Aside from computer crashes and other dangers we have previously discussed, typesetting is the greatest difference between MS Word and pyxlin which is powered by TeX.

Example 1 - Common Ligatures

Example 2 - Real Small Caps

Example 3 - Real World Example

TeX (professionally typeset) Microsoft Word (many errors)

When typesetting just one small example of words in Alice in Wonderland, note three major differences between professional typesetting, powered by TeX, and Microsoft Word. First, look carefully how TeX uses contextual intelligence to determine that a ligature is needed to combine the “f” and “i” in the word “finishing.” Second, TeX avoids placing “So” on its own line, making the sentence easier to read. Finally, TeX also produces a more balanced text block by extending the last sentence out on the final line, instead of leaving “been” hanging. Professional books are built upon this attention to balance and detail. If MS Word makes this many mistakes in a simple 86 word excerpt of Alice and Wonderland, how many mistakes are their going to be in your whole journal?

Pyxlin not only looks more professional but it will also be much easier to use as a journal tool than MS Word.

Related Post: History of TeX

Related Post: pyxlin - powered by TeX

The following is a brief history of TeX, the system that powers pyxlin. You will better understand why pyxlin is the solution to writing, printing, and binding your personal journal. Pyxlin is not like simple word processors, blogs, or cheap book making systems.

In 1969, Professor Donald Knuth, at Stanford University, published his first book. Knuth’s publisher produced a beautifully typeset book using the classical process, called mono-type, a century old technology for laying out the text in books. Years later, in 1977, he completed the manuscript for a new volume of his book. This time Knuth decided to try out the new computerized typesetting systems. He received the galley proofs–previews of what his book would look like–and compared them to the classical book he had previously published. The galley proofs were awful. After a futile search for a computerized typesetting solution, Knuth decided to take a year off his work to create the needed solution. He got hooked and he started on a 12 year journey creating TeX, one of the world’s most stable and advanced typesetting systems.

Related Post: pyxlin - powered by TeX

Typesetting is the single greatest challenge we have faced in creating pyxlin. Along side its sister application, MemoryPress, pyxlin is the world’s first online typesetting program.

Typesetting started with Johannes Gutenberg who invented movable type (seen above) to typeset the Bible. As you can see in the photo above, each letter had to be placed by hand in backwards order. Gutenberg’s invention of movable type was rated by LIFE Magazine as the single greatest event in history.

Pyxlin’s online typesetting application is powered by TeX. Unlike word processing applications, blogs, and email, pyxlin automatically takes care of details like, dates, alignment, spacing, font size, headers, footers, page numbers, and table of contents. Using pyxlin is like having a personal designer that worries about the visual aspect of your journal, so that you can devout your attention to journaling.

Typesetting separates pyxlin from blogs. Typesetting separates pyxlin from photobooks. Typesetting separates pyxlin from word processors.

Three powerful typesetting systems are responsible for almost every modern book, magazine, catalog, and newspaper you have ever seen or read: TeX, Quark Xpress ($749.00 software package), and Adobe InDesign ($699.00 software package). Hiring a professional typesetter to run these systems for you would only set you back $1,000 to $2,000 per book. Pyxlin delivers the power of TeX to your personal journal or diary, making it simple for you to create a book that even Gutenberg could be proud of.

Related post: History of TeX

Last I counted there were over 40 photo book companies on the web. A simple search for “photo book” on Google will bring up dozens of results. They range in quality and cost.

Photo books are basically the modern day photo album. Per photo, they are much less expensive than the traditional photo album. Most photo books allow you to add captions or small sections of text to your photos.

Why can’t I create my journal on a photo book?

Great as photo books are, they are still just photo books, not journals. In a photo book, short captions or stories revolve around your photos. In pyxlin, your photos revolve around beautifully typeset journal entries. Pyxlin is all about your life’s stories. It is the story behind the photo.

Writing is my brother’s passion. In the past few months he has written his journal on our first version of pyxlin. Out of a 120 page journal, he only added four photos to his journal. If you don’t want photos in your pyxlin journal, you don’t have to add them. Your journal, or diary, can be all text or it can be mostly photos, it is up to you.

Here is another great comment:

“This differs from Google’s services (blogs, sweet email(aka: journal), etc) by making it printable into a book, but I’m not going to pay money for stuff Google already provides for me. I think what you’re doing is great, but unless I am capable of customizing the book PRECISELY (before printing), then quite frankly I’m not really interested. I would suggest that you get into the AJAX programming that Google utilizes to create little web apps so a person can interactively position pictures, text, etc. Particularly Google Notebook and Google Docs, as they already have a built-in publish to PDF feature. If I could send you a PDF and you could print my book exactly as the PDF looks and then send it back to me (including several options for page sizes, etc) then you have yourself a customer.”

Response: I loved this comment. Everything this person talked about from customizing PRECISELY to AJAX are already in the works. We are currently building the world’s first online typesetting system (meaning you won’t be stuck with internet fonts). I think you will be pleased.