Bloom offers an integrated approach to book-making, providing a robust and sustainable means for language communities to author, translate, adapt, publish, and distribute books in their own languages.
Despite these awesome qualifications, Bloom is not the right tool for every situation.
When using Bloom is a good choice
Bloom is a good tool to use under the following circumstances:
- The people writing books have limited computer skills.
- The books people want to create are relatively simple in design.
- People want to adapt existing books to new languages and cultures.
- People want to create decodable and leveled books.
- People want to create “talking books” with a synchronized audio recording of the text.
- People want to create sign language books or books for the visually impaired.
- You want to provide writers with reader templates to help them write books that meet certain specifications.
When Bloom may not be a good choice
Bloom is not good for every purpose.
Here are a number of needs that Bloom does not accommodate:
- Text does not flow from one page to the next. Rather, Bloom is page-oriented. If authors have more text than will fit on one page, they must stop typing, insert a new page with a text box, and start typing again.
- There are limitations to Bloom's page layout capability: for example, you cannot create a page where text wraps around a picture. You cannot easily create tables with rows and columns. If authors need complex page layouts, Bloom may not be the right tool.
- There are limitations to Bloom's text formatting capabilities: for example, bulleted and numbered lists are not possible.
- Currently, Bloom does not support tables.
Other limitations of Bloom
- Bloom does not have built-in tools for editing images, audio, or video. Bloom allows you to crop an image, but it cannot make any other changes to it.