The project
A textbook that does the mathematics while you read it
Fable is a complete school publishing system: an engine that builds interactive textbooks, a studio to write them in, a pupil's notebook, and the experiments lifted out to stand on their own. It is built, it runs, and everything on this site was made with it.
A figure in a textbook is a photograph of a thought
Someone drew it once, at one set of values, and printed it. It cannot be asked anything. A pupil who wonders what happens at a different angle, a different concentration, a different coefficient has nowhere to put the question — and that question is the moment the lesson was working.
The digital editions mostly reproduce the problem at greater expense: a PDF of the same picture, or a video of one run chosen by someone else. Both are recordings. Neither can be interrogated, and a recording cannot be wrong in an interesting way.
Fable's figures are solved, on the page, from the same few lines of mathematics the lesson is about. That is the whole idea, and everything else here follows from it.
What exists today
counted from the build, not estimatedThose four numbers are printed by the build itself, so they cannot drift from what is actually on disk. Everything on this website — the library, the reader, the notebook, the simulations — is output of the system, not a mock-up of it.
The parts
The engine
builds a book
Takes chapters written in a readable text format and produces one self-contained HTML file per book — figures, styles and scripts inside it. Nothing to install to read one, and nothing to keep running to serve it.
Studio
where a book is written
An authoring environment for teachers: chapters, the 102 figure types with a form for each, themes, and a build button. It writes files and runs builds, so it stays on the author's own machine.
Le Jaguar
the pupil's notebook
Séyès paper in a browser. Clippings arrive from any book with their source attached. Everything stays on the device; an account is optional and only adds a copy that travels.
See the notebook ›See for yourself
the experiments, alone
The simulations lifted out of the books and given their own page, for the lesson where the experiment is the point and the chapter around it is not.
See the simulations ›Le Classeur
the school side
Classes, reports, exam plans, a school calendar and merit badges — the administration a teacher actually carries. It runs on the school's own machine rather than ours.
The console
what goes online
One button builds and publishes the public site, with a rights guard it deliberately cannot override: a scanned book cannot be published by accident, because a book published by accident cannot be unpublished.
Reach into one
live figures, not screenshotsEvery figure below is the real one, lifted straight out of the demonstration textbook and run by the same engine that serves it to a pupil. Nothing here is a picture of the product. It is the product, with the page around it removed.
A cursor works each one for you — pressing a tab, choosing from a list, dragging a slider — and every one of those gestures is a real event on a real control, which is why the figure answers. Touch it and the cursor stands down: from then on you are the one driving.
What it runs on
A browser, and nothing else.
Every book is a single HTML file. It opens on the school's tablets, on a ten-year-old laptop, from a memory stick, and it keeps working when the connection drops mid-lesson — which, in most of the schools this is meant for, it will. There is no app to approve, no account to create for a thirteen-year-old, and no server whose invoice can end the lesson.
After the first load, the network is not needed again.
Reading and writing need no sign-up of any kind.
A book can be emailed, copied or handed over on a stick.
Including right-to-left, which the figures respect too.
Who it is for
Schools
A department adopts one subject's book for one year group. The teacher can edit it — that is the point of Studio — so the book follows the way they already teach instead of the other way round.
- Runs on what the school already owns.
- Pupils' writing stays on pupils' devices.
- Le Classeur covers the register, reports and exam plans.
Training programmes
Anywhere a concept is easier moved than described: apprenticeships, technical certificates, in-house training. The figure types are not school-specific — a titration curve and a load calculation are the same kind of object.
- Course material that can be handed over as one file.
- Written by the trainer, not commissioned from an agency.
Publishers
An existing catalogue becomes interactive without being rewritten: the import pipeline takes a PDF or an EPUB and produces chapters, and the figures are then placed by hand where they earn their place.
- The rights guard refuses to publish what is not ours to publish.
- Output is a file you own, not a licence you rent.
Where it starts
In this order — each step pays for the next and proves something to it.
1 · Private lycées preparing the bac
The first customer. A private school can decide within a term, already equips its classrooms, and competes on results that parents can see. One subject, one year group, one term to begin with — physics-chemistry in the final year is where the figures matter most.
2 · School publishers
Moroccan and French-language publishers with a catalogue to bring to life. Fable converts a title without rewriting it, and the publisher keeps the files and the rights.
3 · Public schools, through pilots
Larger and slower: one pilot at a time, with the regional academies and the ministry. Fable already runs on the machines public schools own, offline, in French and in Arabic.
4 · Beyond Morocco
French-speaking Africa teaches in the same languages. Every book is a single file, and a single file travels.
How it pays for itself
a proposed model — the first pilots will set the pricesSchools — a licence per class
A yearly licence per class and subject: the books, Studio for the teachers, Le Classeur for the administration. Installed on the school’s own machines.
Publishers — conversion, then a licence
A fee per converted title, then a yearly licence for the engine. The publisher owns what comes out.
Teachers and trainers — Studio
A subscription for anyone who wants to write an interactive course of their own.
Pupils — free, for good
Le Jaguar and See for yourself stay free. No advertising, and pupils’ data is never sold: it does not even leave their device.
Why it can win
Figures that compute
A hundred and two kinds of figure that solve themselves. A PDF or a video shows one case; a Fable figure answers the next question.
It runs on what schools own
One file per book, offline, on old laptops and school tablets. No server to maintain, no account to create.
French, Arabic, English
Right-to-left included, from one string table — the languages Moroccan classrooms actually use.
Cheap to make
An import pipeline turns a PDF or an EPUB into chapters, and one person built the whole system. The cost of a new book is the cost of its figures.
What is next
Everything above can be checked against the build. Everything in this section cannot — it is yours to fill in, and it has been left visibly blank rather than filled with a plausible number. A pitch page that invents its own traction is the one mistake that cannot be repaired later.
In use today
Nowhere yet. It is built, it runs, and every page of this site came out of it — but no class has used it in a lesson. The first school to try it will be the first.
What support would buy
A team. This is one person’s work, and one person cannot cover the official Moroccan programmes subject by subject and year by year. Support pays the people who would, and the bills while they do it.
Who is behind it
Mohamed Amine Khadda, on his own so far. The argument is short: a child’s attention is competed for by everything now, and a textbook that cannot answer a question is not in that competition. If school is going to hold them, it has to be as good at holding them as what it is up against.
What I am looking for
- Two or three pilot schools — one subject, one year group, one term.
- A publisher willing to convert one title.
- Funding for a small team: authors who know the official programmes subject by subject, and a developer.
- Advice from people who know how Moroccan schools buy.
Talk to me
If you run a school, a programme or a list, the fastest way to judge this is to open a book and try to break a figure. The demonstration textbook is in the library and uses every one of the 102 types.