Book and Quill

Books and Quills are used to write books the player may read. They will appear in the next public update. They are available in snapshot 12w17a.

Crafting
Books and Quills are crafted using one Book, Feather, and Ink Sac in any arrangement.

Writing
Using this item, the player can write a single book up to 50 pages long, with up to 256 characters per page. No page may be longer than 13 lines. On Single Player, the world will pause while a book is being edited. The player has the ability to copy and paste into books. However, the paste will fail if the text being pasted is longer than a single page.

Text in a book can be styled using codes starting with the § character (section sign), which may be copied and pasted into the book.
 * §k creates randomly changing characters.
 * §l creates bold text.
 * §m creates text with a strikethrough.
 * §n creates underlined text.
 * §o creates italic text.
 * §[0-f, hexadecimal] creates colored text. See Color codes.
 * §r resets any of the previous styles so text after it appears normally.

To use multiple formatting codes, the color code must be used first: it will cancel out all preceding codes. If you use multiple codes, and continue typing past the end of a line, the next line will exhibit only the last formatting code used. Hitting Enter to manually start a new line will also clear all formatting codes.

Most Unicode characters are available in books, and although alt-codes do not work, they may be pasted in without issue. One notable use of Unicode is fullwidth characters: in Minecraft, these appear as a different font altogether, which can be useful for titles or chapter headings. Convertors exist which can take normal text and output fullwidth text, which can serve as a large convenience for those wishing to use it.

When signed, a book will have the name of the player who wrote it, or "Player" if signed while playing offline. The title of the book can be up to 16 characters long, and the player cannot paste into a title. Special characters can be used in the title, if typed from a keyboard which has them. Alt codes do not work, and the § character (section sign) cannot be typed even using a keyboard which has it, meaning titles cannot be colored or formatted.

Written Book
Written Books are created after a Book and Quill is signed. In the inventory, Written Books have a purple hue (enchanted items also have this) when obtained. The label does not say Written Book, but what the player titles it, unless the item is spawned in through /give or with an inventory editor. It will say the title on the top line of the label, and "by username" on the bottom. Username is the username of the player who wrote the book, or "Player" if signed while playing offline. The icon of the Written Book is slightly different from the Book and Quill's icon, showing the same red book, but without the quill.

When Written Books are obtained with /give or inventory editors, the label will only show "Written Book" and will be blank when opened. The book is signed and cannot be edited.

How a Book's Contents are Stored
The contents of a book are an extra set of data attached to the item. This means that when a book is destroyed, its contents are lost with it (unlike the case with maps).

The extra data is a 'compound' labeled "tag" which contains a 'list' of data named "pages". Inside the list is a series of 'string's, each representing a page of the book, in the order that they appear in-game. For Written Books, there are also "author" and "title" strings, within the "tag" compound - these of course represent the book's author and title, respectively.

Ideas for what to Write

 * One could keep record logs of various things, such as mining or farm returns
 * Write a small story, which could be sold on SMP
 * Use as a private chat by passing to others
 * As a navigation book, recording directions and/or coordinates to follow

Bugs

 * There is a glitch with formatting codes, where it is possible to get lines of text to overlap each other. It occurs when you type a word which can technically fit in the current line, but the game first tries putting it on a new line. Ordinarily, hitting space would make it go back to the previous line, and you can continue typing on the new line. However, if it is two characters longer, then it will still go to the previous line, but the cursor goes two lines down. The next time you hit Enter, you will begin typing at the start of the last line with text on it, causing an entire line of overlap. You can try this with the phrase "§lThis is an odd bug ".

Trivia

 * In theory, a player may make a short flip book by making consecutive ASCII images on each of the 50 pages.
 * In order to make the § symbol, hold down ALT and press 21 on your number pad (far right side) (Option-6 on a Mac). Note, however, that you cannot do this in-game, so you must copy the character and paste it into the game.
 * Various in-game restrictions on books are not hard limits. Third party editors can make books have more than 50 pages, more than 256 characters per page, change author names, and have colored titles, among other things. These books will then function properly in vanilla Minecraft, meaning you may encounter such books on adventure maps or multiplayer servers.