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[PopTart]

Some suggestions to improve writing, to make books a bigger deal. These aren't too original, but maybe others will have some neat ideas.

1. Writing should require dye, or even ink derived from dye. You shouldn't be able to support scholars until you have enough food that you can devote your precious farming to dimple cups, hide root, or similar.

2. Scribes, in addition to copying books, should be able to illuminate books with colorful illustrations. These could easily be recorded in the codex's description. Illuminating a book should also involve dye/ink, possibly more than one unit. Another option is to illuminate with gold or silver leaf.

3. Sequels and annotations to improve knowledge. Like if a book on farming is read by a scholar, they can then ponder it, research farming further, and write a sequel. A farmer who reads the sequel after the original will have increased knowledge or learn even faster.

4. Bookkeeper should have to use quires or at least sheets to keep the books. Accurate bookkeeping is not necessary early on. It should be a feature of a stable fortress that can afford paper and ink and extra labor.

5. Holy books. Prophecies. Prophecies of doom, of vile forces, of titans.

6. Certain trees, like birch, can be made into low-quality sheets without modern chemical processing.

[LMeire]

I wouldn't say ink absolutely has to involve dye in it's manufacturing, some of the earliest inks from China's Warring States period were just powdered graphite and/or coal mixed with water and/or glue.

[Bumber]

Writing with charcoal. It's the dwarfy way.

[Hase. Oster.]

Not sure if I should reply here instead of creating a new topic...

Here are some thoughts about improving of the book/library/temple systems (I'm not a native english speaker, and not really fluent, so there could be mistakes in text).

First of all, books should have more parameters. So, in a description of a book you should see (besides the information about prose/poetry):
1. Material and quality of it
2. Color, quality and starting material of an ink (or anything else)
3. Script, writing system and quality of handwriting, number of scribes and brief information about them
4. Number of illuminations, descriptions of them
5. Information about markup and the number of lines

This list means, that we need some new features

Writing system
Every civilization that has conditions to creating a writing culture, should have a writing system. It could be logography, syllabary, abugida or alphabet (there could be more specific sorting). Or even some of them at the same time for different purposes. So, after the generation of a world there should be some writing sistems, and, more than that, writing traditions. Writing tradition should have a specific name and contain:
1. Writing system (the unique system with a specific name, for ex.: "The Iceletter, alphabet")
2. Direction of writing
3. Letter case for alphabets (the books could be written in majuscule, minuscule, cursive etc.)
4. Specific things like writing materials, dyes and inks
Writing systems could change over time through the other writing traditions' influences and random changes. Key-figures are scholars, priests and scribes. Every person (every scholar or scribe or priest) knows a writing system and a tradition. So they could change it by borrowing some features from different writing tradition, or adapting to the local conditions, or random changes. Such figures can invent new writing systems and writing traditions (like others can create artifacts, but rarely).
The same thing with the different illumination styles/traditions. There should be ornaments, pictures, initials in the manuscripts.

Temples, books, libraries
There should be strong connection between libraries and temples. Because of religions. Religions should contain different sacred texts, such as prophecies, prayers etc. So, if you have some, you need to write them down somewhere, right? Also, priests should have books for liturgical needs. For example, if religion A demands to perform prayers B and C every day and sacred text D once in a week, and also prayers and texts for every notable date in a year (such as Christianity), any priest of that religion should have a special book with that texts for successful performing.
So, we need also more detailed system of different texts in the game.

Also, what about historical books? Like annals and chronicles? They could have been working like Legends, but about specific time periods and civilizations/sites.
For example, you have a scribe in your fortress, and he/she/whoever writes down every notable event that takes place only in your fortress, or in your civilization, or in the world (of course, every KNOWN event).

And what about clay-tablets, wooden tablets filled with wax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novgorod_Codex) and other exotic writing materials?

Would like to describe more of my thoughts, but it's far more difficult in English.

[FantasticDorf]

I don't have any objections to the OP's method or the charcoal method, since in my eyes its similar but just annotates the book with higher value materials. With multiple layers of illustration dyes silver and gold leaf obviously making a more impressive and valuable book. In the spoilered exerpt a page from the 14th century canterbury tales.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sequels & book consistency/series of books on the same object are a much needed feature, since most codexes tend to peter out in worldgeneration at a few pages without any really worthwhile content before moving onto the next book and not developing their own skills. I do think that requiring charcoal to be able to scribe though is obnoxious, especially when you bring in having to store and juggle small objects like that, wheras a improvement method makes much more sense.

Out to see some books with 'Masterful' writing that train student & the subject like mechanics with enough refinement of the craft, because in reality books already do impart the student skill. Some personal copies as a posession of dwarves for book-cases put inside their rooms would also be useful.

[bloop_bleep]

Adding more depth to this process doesn't make sense without adding depth to the other industrial processes in DF. Right now, you don't need bowls to cook, knives to butcher, or hammers to forge. If you want to add ink, illustrations, etc. to bookmaking, you'd need to also add the requirements for certain tools to the processes I just described, if you want to keep it consistent.

[Hase. Oster.]

Adding more depth to this process doesn't make sense without adding depth to the other industrial processes in DF. Right now, you don't need bowls to cook, knives to butcher, or hammers to forge. If you want to add ink, illustrations, etc. to bookmaking, you'd need to also add the requirements for certain tools to the processes I just described, if you want to keep it consistent.

Yeah, yeah, and it doesn't make a lot of sense without adding depth to the languages...
But bowls and knives and hammers will not open the whole new layer of interesting stuff (I guess), while adavanced bookcraft definetely will.

But I agree, that adding requirements for tools in all the processes in necessary and important.

[Hase. Oster.]

Also I found a similar topic: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=164211.msg7460087#msg7460087

Is it possible to discuss both themes (writing and language) here, or it will be better to transfer discussion to that topic?

[SixOfSpades]

Is it possible to discuss both themes (writing and language) here, or it will be better to transfer discussion to that topic?

     Language is 100% deserving of its own thread, as it's a gigantic tangle of work. With that said . . .

Every civilization that has conditions to creating a writing culture, should have a writing system. It could be logography, syllabary, abugida or alphabet (there could be more specific sorting). Or even some of them at the same time for different purposes. So, after the generation of a world there should be some writing sistems, and, more than that, writing traditions. Writing tradition should have a specific name and contain:
1. Writing system (the unique system with a specific name, for ex.: "The Iceletter, alphabet")
2. Direction of writing . . .

     There are many things that work well, when procedurally generated in DF. Continents, landforms, mineral deposits, climates, cultures, religious pantheons, these can all be relied upon to be functional and realistic. Language, however, is NOT one of those things. To put it quite bluntly, the existing dwarven language is garbage, and so are all the others: You can't just toss a couple thousand meanings & a handful of rules into a random-word generator, and expect to get a workable language at the other end. At best, the current language system is nothing but a placeholder, and it would be a waste of time to procedurally extrapolate variations on a placeholder.

     A deeper question would be, "What is the purpose of having different languages, or language systems?" Yes, having each civilization randomly generate their own vocabulary / pronunciation / symbology / sentence structure, etc., would be very realistic, and also add both flavor and replay value. But doing so would essentially invalidate having a language_DWARF.txt at all, because no culture would be using it. If the word "dagger" is assigned a different word in every single game, we here on the forums would be unable to talk about Urist. Yes, playing an Adventurer who makes contact with another civilization, and didn't put enough points into Linguistic Ability to be able to understand their language, could make for a very interesting game of translation, transcription, & cultural immersion--which would, incidentally, be NOTHING LIKE what Adventurer Mode is supposed to be. (As Minsc says, "If we be adventurers, let us adventure!")

     So, dragging this kicking & screaming back to the topic, I think that books and scripts should be DESCRIBED as being written in block letters, cursive, uppercase, lowercase, movable type, cuneiform, pictograms, anything, everything, just don't change the actual language itself. That would provide (nearly) the full benefits of realism & flavor, while still preserving a true dwarven language that can be discussed and used between players.

And what about clay-tablets, wooden tablets filled with wax, and other exotic writing materials?

Those weren't exotic so much as they were temporary. They were almost certainly used primarily by students, and would therefore only really come into prominence once dwarven schools become a thing. But they would still be useful for "living" documents that require constant editing, most notably the Bookkeeper's stock records, which would be in a permanent state of flux. In the future, I expect the Bookkeeper won't require an Office any more, so much as temporary writing equipment. (Realistically, a wax tablet would be less well suited for this purpose than wet clay, or chalk on slate, because it's more difficult to update just part of a wax tablet, it was far more typical to just let the whole thing melt back to blank, and start over. But I expect all 3 methods will be given the same implementation.)

I do think that requiring charcoal to be able to scribe though is obnoxious

Why? Is it not just as realistic, and vital to the process, as the paper? But of course, requiring a whole bar of charcoal for every writing job is overkill. I'd rather see 1 charcoal be used in a reaction to produce 100 (black) ink, and each page of text requires 1 ink.

[Anandar]

Writing and language should be separate in this particular thread as it is about bookmaking and the writing within said books, i would like to suggest maybe a set of pregened blurbs or excerpts related to book topics similar to books in elder scrolls games, and maybe books of fiction for non scholar dwarves to read be they horror story or joke books etc, regarding charcoal why not make 1 charcoal turn into 10 sticks similar to adamantine wafers and these sticks are used by scholars to do their work in books? Not too much pain and doesnt need to work on tools for everything else... another placeholder...

[FantasticDorf]

I do think that requiring charcoal to be able to scribe though is obnoxious

Why? Is it not just as realistic, and vital to the process, as the paper? But of course, requiring a whole bar of charcoal for every writing job is overkill. I'd rather see 1 charcoal be used in a reaction to produce 100 (black) ink, and each page of text requires 1 ink.

That's much more agreeable and fits in with the suggestion, but it seems to be a little different to using charcoal as a black dye in itself (which only comes from those evil plants that give gutter crour) also ink as a liquid would either need vials or to be moved around in barrels, which without additional jug options might be tricky.

[Hase. Oster.]

There are many things that work well, when procedurally generated in DF. Continents, landforms, mineral deposits, climates, cultures, religious pantheons, these can all be relied upon to be functional and realistic. Language, however, is NOT one of those things. To put it quite bluntly, the existing dwarven language is garbage, and so are all the others: You can't just toss a couple thousand meanings & a handful of rules into a random-word generator, and expect to get a workable language at the other end. At best, the current language system is nothing but a placeholder, and it would be a waste of time to procedurally extrapolate variations on a placeholder.

I thought, there could be like two different language systems:
1. Languages, randomly generating through the worldgen, that will be unique for every new world. They will be described in game like any real language, but without one aspect - vocabulary.
2. The one we have now, "for players". Like universal intermediate languages between the game and the player.
So, there could be, for example, ten different dwarf-languages in that specific world, but player will see all names in the "dwarf language" we have now.

Realistically, a wax tablet would be less well suited for this purpose than wet clay, or chalk on slate, because it's more difficult to update just part of a wax tablet, it was far more typical to just let the whole thing melt back to blank, and start over. But I expect all 3 methods will be given the same implementation.

As far as I know, there is no need in melting wax for getting the blank space. Styluses were flat at one end for to erasing writen text from the tablet.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stylus

i would like to suggest maybe a set of pregened blurbs or excerpts related to book topics similar to books in elder scrolls games, and maybe books of fiction for non scholar dwarves to read be they horror story or joke books etc

It depends on the level of literacy in every specific dwarfs' culture. Maybe, if the player wants to have a rich literary culture with a lot of genres etc, he need to build schools and find scholars and teachers.

[GoblinCookie]

That's much more agreeable and fits in with the suggestion, but it seems to be a little different to using charcoal as a black dye in itself (which only comes from those evil plants that give gutter crour) also ink as a liquid would either need vials or to be moved around in barrels, which without additional jug options might be tricky.

One more reason the game requires fractional amounts.

[Nahere]

That's much more agreeable and fits in with the suggestion, but it seems to be a little different to using charcoal as a black dye in itself (which only comes from those evil plants that give gutter crour) also ink as a liquid would either need vials or to be moved around in barrels, which without additional jug options might be tricky.

One more reason the game requires fractional amounts.

It has them. Charcoal is a bar, bars come in portions of 150.

[JezaGaia]

The feature that I most wish existed is the ability to commission a book on a certain topic.
It could be done by a noble but there also should be an option for the player to do so.

And also an option to ask the scribes to copy a book immediately, for example I have one of the monster slayers residing in my fort that has a book, I don't want to steal it but I would like to ahve copies of it for my library.
She has been in the fort for 8 years and I have 6 scribes and sadly none has ever made a copy of said book