November 2004 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [gutvol-d] Perfection
by D. Starner 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

"Norm Wolcott" writes: > Also there are many DOS texts with accents that are hence > unreadable. Any code page should be acceptable? maybe but. . . Can you point to one? I was under the impression that all the texts in old DOS codepages were updated to use Latin-1. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Re: [gutvol-d] PG audience
by Joshua Hutchinson 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Jon Noring <jon(a)noring.name> > > It mystifies me why the original page scans are treated by some here > as some sort of waste product, meant to be flushed down the toilet > when done, or that we don't need to preserve them, or need to have > access to them (I'm still surprised to hear that the scans for some of > the DP texts are not available to the public because of licensing > issues.) > Just to clarify a little... DP produces a large quantity of work based on scans produced by other organizations. At different points in our history, we couldn't have kept up with the proofers any other way. With some organizations, we are able to automate the "harvesting" of images with utilities. Some, though, are willing to work with us, sending us the files or providing an easy access path. In return, we agree (if they ask) not to post the images for use other than as proofing sources. The credit lines always have a reference back to the original site for the images. Basically, if we wanted to be rude, we could post the images any way we wanted to. The copyright laws certainly seem to be in our favor if we did. But these sites are going out of their way to help us, so we return the favor by routing people that want to see the images (the fruits of their labor) back to them. Josh

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Re: [gutvol-d] Scholarly acceptance
by Joshua Hutchinson 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Michael Hart <hart(a)pglaf.org> > > On the other hand, there is always the Darwinian approach: > > Those who do not use eBooks simply won't be able to keep up with > the those who do. > > This might be one of the best reasons for NOT giving them each > eBook as an exact copy of a particular paper edition. Ok, I'm not following the mental jump from point A to point B. How does people being savvey with eBooks lead to not putting good bibliographic information in place in the book? Dead tree editions will usually have information on how the text was obtained. Why not ours? Josh

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Re: [gutvol-d] a few questions that i don't know the answer to
by Joshua Hutchinson 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

----- Original Message ----- From: Bowerbird(a)aol.com > > > the next questions involve long-standing and often-repeated > requests that i have made for other changes to p.g. policy. > having received no satisfaction, in spite of the reasonableness > of these requests, i will pursue a strategy of lobbying for them > to a wider audience, but i make them again here for the record. > > 1. could you _please_ strive for consistency in your e-books? We do. We don't always succeed, but we do strive for it. > > 2. could you please ensure the policy on styled text is upheld? > The whitewashers most definitely do. As far as the style goes (beyond _ and *, we don't specify much). > 3. could you please start including graphic-file-names in your > plain-text versions, so my viewer-app knows what to display where? > Nope. Plain-text means ... plain text, nothing more. > 4. could you please start including page-break information in your > plain-text versions, so my viewer-app can use original page-breaks > for those end-users that might desire that capability? > Once again, nope. Text doesn't provide a way to have this information in the file without it being jarringly placed in the middle of the flow of the text. Other formats can provide this, but plain text cannot. > 5. could you please start including line-break information in your > plain-text versions, for the same reason? > Nope (see answer for the above). This would be even more invasive to the reading experience, because you'd have a character or markup of some kind all over the place. And plain text has to be able to be fully used in any old text editor/reader. We can't assume the reader program will hide the line break information. > my documentation on zen markup language (z.m.l.) will demonstrate > how you can incorporate these requests into your plain-text files... Sigh. And once they are marked up, they are no longer plain text files. They are z.m.l. files. If you want to convert the entire catalog to z.m.l, feel free. No one will use them, but feel free. Josh

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Scholarly acceptance
by bkeir＠pgdp.net 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

The many discussions I've had with academics about PG and DP point to their unshakable distrust, sight unseen, of the quality of work done by "unqualified" volunteer/amateurs. "You mean you let ANYONE do your proofreading??!?!?" is both a question I was asked, and a fair summary of their attitude of incredulity. The open-source, distributed but computer-linked volunteer paradigm is still too new in the world for its strengths, and the quality of its productions, to be trusted by the average academic. Give it a few decades, and population replacement MAY change this.

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Re: [gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by D. Starner 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

Andrew Sly writes: > Something very similar to this has been attempted before, with > rather dismal results. Hardly anyone seemed interested in writing > a little synopsis (or "blurb") What do you mean "has been attempted before"? If you mean the newsletter, you've got less than a week to write it up, and last time I submitted something to the newsletter, it got dropped into the void. If you're interested in synopsises, then express that interest and where we can direct the result to, and I'm sure people will respond. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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goodbye
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

nearly exactly one year ago, i came on the gutvol listserves, challenging the gutvol-p markup wonks as all-talk/no-action, noting that in spite of years of discussion, they hadn't made any of the promises of a heavy-markup strategy materialize, and indeed hadn't even gotten many of the e-texts marked up! a year later, after an exchange of literally hundreds of messages -- maybe thousands, i don't know, i wasn't really counting them -- many of them inflammatory, the situation is essentially the same. i tried to wake people up to a simpler way that was still effective. but nobody here was willing to hear it. in fact, i was "moderated", blamed for the flaming that my detractors used to victimize me. i don't play the victim role though, so i'm off now, to work on my own. i'll drop by again in another year, and see if y'all have made any progress by then, or if you're still stuck in the same old merry-go-round circles... in the meantime, i'll start up a blog, telling the world all the things that i think you're doing wrong. because i think they deserve to learn them. i tried to tell you all this personally, as friends, here on your own lists, but you weren't willing to listen. so now i'm going public. i tell you this so you know i'm not going "behind your backs". heck, you might want to read the blog yourself; maybe it'll help you see what you've been missing. here's a message i posted a while back. you can call it "21 steps to happiness". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ here's a little _overview_ to help you get your bearings, at least in regard to _my_ work, _my_ viewer-program, _my_ format, _my_ markup system, and _my_ philosophy. 1. the e-texts -- as they are now -- must be regularized. 2. i can write programs to do most of that automatically. 3. the results need to be checked for quality control, and 4. some missing information will need to be re-inserted. 5. once that is done, the files will be _finished_, in that 6. my viewer will present them as high-powered e-books. 7. users can push a button to create high-end .html files, 8. or save text as an .rtf file, or print out to paper or .pdf, 9. in a way that gives 'em customized high-quality output. 10. my program will do text-to-speech, and screenshots, 11. and let people explore the project gutenberg library, 12. and easily report errors they encounter in any e-text. 13. those error-correction reports will be automatically 14. routed to a system that presents all the material, so 15. a human only has to say "yes" to approve the mod, and 16. change-logs will be updated and a notice distributed. 17. this e-text standardization and ease of handling will 18. nurture a flowering of synergistic uses of the library 19. by an array of creative and imaginative programmers 20. that will engender a book-driven revolution in thought. 21. and everyone will live happily ever after. the end. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ in the absence of a more compelling vision from anyone else, i now depart... -bowerbird

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Sources for PG texts
by Andrew Sly 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

On Thu, 11 Nov 2004, Jon Noring wrote: > Let me clarify (again) below, what I wrote in a separate message. You > may still reject it, but PG's past carelessness and looseness leads to > legitimate questions about the accuracy and acceptance of the pre-DP- > era texts. "Corrupt" may be a strong word (and inaccurate), but not > placing "textual integrity" as #1 (including the perception of textual > integrity) is simply wrong. Note that perceptions are just as real as > reality itself. I would be careful about making a distinction between pre and post DP-era texts. Since the creation of DP, there have been countless texts added to the PG collection from other sources, without page images saved, or indication of exact editions used. Project Gutenberg has always been open to accepting texts from any source, as long as they can be copyright-cleared. I don't see any likelihood of this changing. Andrew

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a few questions that i don't know the answer to
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Nov '04

12 Nov '04

here are a few questions before i skip on out of here... first, for jon, and/or any other c.s.s. supporters out there: my finding is that, at least using internet explorer, when i copy c.s.s.-indented text (such as that in a block-quote) out of the browser-window, the indentation gets lost... (i'm not sure whether other browsers are able to retain the indentation.) do you have a solution to this problem? second, for greg. people over at distributed proofreaders have reported that the f.a.q. here at project gutenberg do not state that styled text (specifically, italics and bold) be marked with underbars and asterisks in the text files. the understanding i have from you is that this has become the official policy of project gutenberg. if that's not the case, would you please inform people here? and if it _is_ the case, when you next update the f.a.q., could you include this policy? thank you. the next questions involve long-standing and often-repeated requests that i have made for other changes to p.g. policy. having received no satisfaction, in spite of the reasonableness of these requests, i will pursue a strategy of lobbying for them to a wider audience, but i make them again here for the record. 1. could you _please_ strive for consistency in your e-books? 2. could you please ensure the policy on styled text is upheld? 3. could you please start including graphic-file-names in your plain-text versions, so my viewer-app knows what to display where? 4. could you please start including page-break information in your plain-text versions, so my viewer-app can use original page-breaks for those end-users that might desire that capability? 5. could you please start including line-break information in your plain-text versions, for the same reason? my documentation on zen markup language (z.m.l.) will demonstrate how you can incorporate these requests into your plain-text files... i'll continue to monitor this listserve until the end of the year, so you can respond here, or backchannel, whichever you prefer. not that i expect a response, since i've never gotten one so far. david widger and jim tinsley, i salute you for all the hard work you do. j. michael, thanks for being the one person who always treated me fairly here. and carlo, your record was almost as good; and as i've told you backchannel, you are one of the very few people here who quite consistently demonstrates a solid grasp on the problems and has good ideas about how to build the solutions to those problems, so keep on asserting yourself, because these people really need you. michael hart, if there's anything i can do for you, let me know. -bowerbird

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Re:[gutvol-d] [BP] The Future of eBooks
by Andrew Sly 11 Nov '04

11 Nov '04

== Resent message; It was bounced the first time == On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Steve Thomas wrote: > This was all well and good, and eventually we ended up with > around 3,800 records for PG titles in our catalogue. > > However, the advent of DP put paid to all that. The volume of > works appearing each month very quickly overwhelmed me, and I > was forced to abandon the effort, so that an unfortunate side > effect of DP was that I could no longer add MARC records to our > catalogue. I believe something like this is also faced by John Mark Ockerbloom, who maintains the Online Books page. He has cataloged a large portion of PG, as well as thousands of online books from other sources. However, as you say, one person cannot keep up with the increasing number of old books being digitized. > I believe that recent changes and enhancements to the PG archive > may make a similar effort possible once more. First, I am told > that there is now an XML file of the PG database, and that this > contains much more and better detail than the old GUTINDEX list. I would qualify this with a "yes, but..." Yes, this does exist (see the link Greg gave, or here's a link directly to the compressed rdf file: http://www.gutenberg.org/feeds/catalog.rdf.bz2) But, as is PG custom, it has its own inconsistancies. All new records are generated automatically from information in the headers of newly posted files (and this is not always accurate) Many older records were copied from the old catalog from promo.net, which sometimes had "interesting" variations. Many records have additional information such as subject headings LOC classifications and sometimes other material of bibliographical interest in a "notes" field. But many records have only very basic information. Additional information is generally added when one of the volunteers who has write access to the catalog takes an interest in looking it up. So this happens somewhat irregularly. Taken all together, the PG online catalog does present plently of information that can help people interact with the collection in meaningful ways; but it may make professional librarians roll their eyes. > Second, PG now has a neater way of accessing texts, > using a simple URL like http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/1234 > Previously, one could only link directly to the individual files > in the archive, and this complicated matters, since every title > has at least two files (.txt and .zip) and often there are > multiple versions and formats. Yes. In my own opinion, the ability to do this is perhaps the best thing to have happened for PG in the last year. This provides a much more ideal way to link to a PG title from any place such as newsgroups, websites, catalogs, whatever. (Thanks Marcello!) This also makes it easier to present selections from PG, organized by whatever criteria you choose. (eg, Marcello's list of "Top 100" downloads, my list of Canadiana.) All of this only encourages more exposure for PG, and a greater chance that some computer user will come across (perhaps by accident) a PG text that interests him. > Of course, one has to ask whether the effort of creating and > *maintaining* catalogue records for PG is worth while. We live > in the age of Google, and it is a lament frequently heard from > librarians that the user is more often likely to search the 'net > with Google than to use the Library catalogue. I believe the effort is worth while. Good cataloging can lead to a user finding an item of interest that may have been missed otherwise. And yes, google does index the PG "bibrec" pages, so any additional work done in cataloging could possibly lead to a text being found from someone searching with google. > However, redundancy is no bad thing with information, and the > more ways of getting at it the better -- so long as those ways > remain accurate. So I believe many libraries would welcome the > chance to load marc records pointing at PG texts -- provided > that they can be sure the record contents are accurate and the > links remain so. At this point in time, I would say a good deal of manual tweaking would be needed to get a result that would be somewhat satisfactory for librarians. Links should not be a problem, as the canonical URLs discussed above show every sign of being much more permanent than most. Andrew

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