Likely they'll have a Sophie Image, or perhaps a Tweak image with  
Sophie loaded. Because of how the Sophie Storage plug-able backend 
logic works a  Sophie Book can come in three forms.

a) A zip file with perhaps a folder containing video/audio media data 
b) A flatten directory containing many files which are video/audio  
and other data plus xml describing the Sophie objects needed to build  
the book. 
c) A networked version which technically is a flattened directory (b)

For file based books it's a simple matter of opening the  Sophie  
document using the *native* file dialogs, or double-clicking. For 
network based books you just supply a URL that points to the  Sophie 
Manifest file hosted by a HTTP Server, data is downloaded from  the 
server as needed to render pages (then cached), and quicktime  makes 
streaming media transparent, mind for the mpeg plugin it needs  to 
download the entire media file first, unless someone has time to  
fiddle with the plugin for it to understand streaming as an option.

The Sophie WebSite is still being worked on, perhaps there will be a  
central registry of books and their URLs, visionary input is always  
welcome.

Sophie Books can be embedded (fully contained) in a containing Sophie  
Book, or be link to via other books, mind finding those books when  
externally linked is an interesting issue. Actions can be assigned to  
object,  for mouse over, down, up, etc... That allows you then to  
manipulate other object in the book and or link to URIs

At some point the user should be able to markup (text, markers,  
indicators, stickies) books he/she is reading and also be able to  
send that information to other people for review, did we mention this 
is a lot of work...

Phase II will consider a Sophie Server which has more integration  
capabilities than what an HTTP server would give, details are non- 
existent since we have not consider yet what this will be.

John M. McIntosh <johnmci_at_smalltalkconsulting.com> 1-800-477-2659 
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  
http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com