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

www.gutenberg.org
by Marcello Perathoner 25 Dec '05

25 Dec '05

As of my request ibiblio has changed our apache virtual host ServerName from gutenberg.net to www.gutenberg.org. What? Nothing changes in web site operation except one little particular (if you hit a non-existing url you get redirected to www.gutenberg.org instead of gutenberg.net) Why? The .org top-level domain is meant for non-profit organizations while the .net domain is meant for network infrastructure such as providers, backbones etc. We own both gutenberg.net and gutenberg.org, but using the latter one is just more standard-compliant. Although both urls www.gutenberg.net and www.gutenberg.org give exactly the same results, you should start using www.gutenberg.org in all publications, papers etc. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.org

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Fwd: Project Googleberg
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 24 Feb '05

24 Feb '05

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Re: [gutvol-d] !@!Googleberg eBooks
by D. Starner 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

Michael Hart writes: > > eBooks often have multiple paper sources. PG eBooks verifiably do not often have multiple paper sources. They sometimes, occasionally, have multiple paper sources. It is the exception that they have multiple paper sources, and even more the exception that they come from multiple paper editions. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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'CDDB' for Gutenberg texts
by Jonathan Hendry 03 Jan '05

03 Jan '05

Hi, I'm new here. I hope this isn't out of place. I'm working on a Mac OS X program for reading Gutenberg e-texts. It occurs to me that it would be useful if there were something for Gutenberg e-texts akin to the CDDB database for MP3s. It would hold information about e-texts, keyed to the Gutenberg filename. The sort of information stored would be things like long-format titles, author's name, information about the Gutenberg file if it's a revision, information about the original source text, etc. This would all be useful for developers of ebook readers, or web interfaces to the Gutenberg texts. This information is often available in the files themselves, but it would be difficult to extract it through software. It might be extended to include character lists for novels or plays, synopses, summaries, connections to other works, byte offsets to chapter starts, file-specific aids to parsing, and other useful bits of information. The information would be supplied by users, piece by piece, similar to the way people submit track listings to CDDB. Ideally, etext reader apps would have a UI for entering and uploading new information. There'd be no change to the Gutenberg files themselves. The meta-info would all be kept apart from the e-texts. So the format need not change, old texts wouldn't need updating, and the files would remain universally compatible. If the user has an etext program which supports it, then after downloading a text, they would have the option download the meta-info from a separate 'gtdb' server. The program could then use the meta-info to enhance the user interface. Naturally, the "gtdb" database would be non-commercial, and in some non-proprietary format, and/or available as SQL dumps. So, my questions. 1) Is anyone working on such a thing already? 2) Has such a thing been discussed? 3) Does anyone else think it'd be a good thing? Thanks, Jon

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re: Re: [gutvol-d] Re: barriers to XML posting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 03 Jan '05

03 Jan '05

joshua said: > Honestly, I see an easy compromise here. oh-oh, something smells bad here... :+) > As long as a conformant TEXT file > and a conformant HTML file > show up with the XML file, > I say post all three. well then i'm sure glad you don't _have_ a say... > Granted, right now we don't have a method > for the WW'ers to verify the XML file is valid all these minor details, eh? > so if you want to put a disclaimer to that effect in the file ... fine. a disclaimer? that's your "compromise". yeah, right. for those on the outside, who wonder why this fuss is being made whether an .xml file can be "posted", it's because the x.m.l. people want the imprimatur of being "official". why is that so important? because that's how the x.m.l. ponzi game is being played these days. people are adopting x.m.l. not because they think it's the best route, but rather because they've been "convinced" that it is "inevitable". even though -- in too many situations -- it just plain doesn't work, this "inevitability" makes people shrug and say, "ok, give me some." after all, you don't want to miss out on the ground floor, do you? they will tell you time and time again how there are "so many tools" for dealing with x.m.l., how x.m.l. is gonna be able to do conversions for whatever format anyone wants, but they can't even demonstrate a simple ability to convert out a text file and an .html version now. and when you call them on that, they whine about how unreasonable you are being, and how unfair it is to expect "150% perfection". bull. it is _far_ more sensible -- especially in, as jim delicately put it, a "production environment rather than an experimental one" -- to make the process _work_ before you put it in play, the x.m.l. people don't want to be bothered with that "technicality" before the fact. that's something that someone will figure out "later". yeah, right. if x.m.l. gets the stamp of approval here, what's the motivation for x.m.l. experts to come make it work? after all, there's no money in it for them here. they're off being high-paid consultants, telling the next mark, "look, even project gutenberg is using x.m.l. now too." as marcello puts it: > At this point we need to set a signal that the TEI era has started. he's not interested in actually making t.e.i. _work_ in reality -- he tried, and got a grand total of two simple e-texts done -- he just wants to "set a signal" that the "era has started" here... -bowerbird

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!@!Googleberg eBooks
by Michael Hart 31 Dec '04

31 Dec '04

How many of you have tried Google Print? Have you noticed that the intitial offering of eBooks strongly resembles the Project Gutenberg catalogue??? We'd love to hear your experiences with Google Print. Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart

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Re: [gutvol-d] !@!Googleberg eBooks
by Dennis McCarthy 29 Dec '04

29 Dec '04

There is no "Google Print" library in a sense that I would think of one: i.e. I cannot seem to get any catalog of its collection or just browse Google Print. It works as an added feature to its regular search--so Google Print titles come up, as well as external links. This is fine in a way, because if I search for a text, and PG has it, the search results usually have a high ranking link to the a P.G. server. (So in a way, all of P.G. is essentially as findable to Google clients as Google Print is.) The lack of a catalog is bad in a way, for there is no easy way to see just what is available at Google that is in the public domain--in case you actually wanted to read an entire book on-line. You have to seach for topics or people and try to wend through what comes up in the search results. Of course Google does not claim to be a library. From its own website: "In general, Google Print is designed to help you discover books, not read them from start to finish. It's like going to a bookstore and browsing only with a Google twist." I do not find it a very useful service. But it is something that was not there before. I am not going to complain about it--that would be like looking a semi-lame-gift-nag-with-a-google-twist in the mouth. -----Original Message----- From: Michael Hart <hart(a)pglaf.org> Sent: Dec 28, 2004 6:49 AM To: undisclosed-recipients: ; Subject: [gutvol-d] !@!Googleberg eBooks How many of you have tried Google Print? Have you noticed that the intitial offering of eBooks strongly resembles the Project Gutenberg catalogue??? We'd love to hear your experiences with Google Print. Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d --------------------------- Dennis McCarthy nihil_obstat(a)mindspring.com

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!@!Re: E-DOCS: Google Print Questions [J. Roland]
by Michael Hart 27 Dec '04

27 Dec '04

On Wed, 22 Dec 2004, Lloyd Benson wrote: > From: Jon Roland <jon.roland(a)constitution.org> > Date: Tue, 21 Dec 2004 14:50:22 -0600 > Subject: Google Print questions > > The announcements would seem to suggest that Google intends to not only scan > the images of all these books, but to OCR and correct the recognition errors > of all of them, so they can be made searchable, offer the complete texts of > all the public domain works, and excerpts of the copyrighted ones (presumably > under the fair use doctrine). One announcement also estimated a cost of $10 > per volume. Project Gutenberg has already produced and distributed nearly 15,000 eBooks, with a budget that has yet to reach a significant total for all 33+ years, and is projected to reach a million eBooks without undue expense or effort. We'll just have to wait and see if either Google Print, or any of the various "Million eBook Projects" will ever come up with even 1% of a million eBooks that you can carry with you on a one inch stack of plain homemade DVDs. If it hasn't been proofread, and if you can't take it with you, it is only of limited value. . .sort of like reading over someone's shoulder. With Project Gutenberg eBooks, you OWN them. . .forever. . .and can save them in your own favorite formats, fonts, margination, pagination, or whatever, and you can search, quote, print, and do all the normal eBook fuctions. "A picture of a book is not an eBook." The term eBook should not be used to describe raw scans or raw OCR, as has been tried by some of the Google and "Million eBook" particpants over the past decade. I would say that an eBook has to be at least 99.9% accurate, and that it should then be a process as people read the eBooks, to send in corrections. Most of the Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofeaders would say it has to be over 99.99% and perhaps even over 99.999%. 99.999% would be one error perhaps every 100 pages or so, and I'm pretty sure the source materals we have are not that accurate. . .not that eBooks won't become more and more accurate, closer and closer to 100% accuracy, but I'm not sure they have to be all the much better than 99.9% before they can be made available. > This is highly ambitious, even to scan the images. The experience of the U. > of Michigan should show that it is not feasible to OCR these works accurately > for that cost, or in that timeframe. While uncorrected OCRs might enable > search, since most words appear more than once in a work, and at least one of > them might be expected to be recognized accurately, searching on entire > phrases could be expected to be much more problematic. I have heard this described before. . .has anyone tried their test eBooks??? > As one who works from a lot of older works to not only scan and OCR but > correct them, I know how much human labor is involved. There are volunteer > efforts like Distributed Proofreaders http://www.pgdp.net/c/default.php , but > I have concluded that it takes me more time to set up a project for them than > it would take for me to do the proofreading myself, and my work would likely > be more accurate, since I would understand the underlying content and know > how to render obscure text. While it does take a little time to set up one's first project with the Distributed Proofreaders, it is usually quite a bit easier the second time, not to mention that we have volunteers who will walk you through processes the first few times around, which seems to do the trick for nearly everyone. > So my basic question and concern is, how do we ensure that this project does > not release too many uncorrected texts into the world that never get > corrected, and perhaps propagate errors that come to be accepted as accurate > even when they are not? I wonder how many of these will be "released into the world". . .I have a strong suspicion that the answer is "none." Unless some outside source does it. > I would submit that it would be better to prioritize these works and release > fully corrected and annotated digital editions of the most important first, > going for quality rather than quantity. This has been the approach used by > the online collections such as ours at > http://www.constitution.org/liberlib.htm Although we do put some works up > before the correcting and reformatting is finished, we always flag those that > are still in progress, indicating the state of completion, and we stand by to > quickly make corrections that outsiders may discover are needed. I view all eBooks as "still in progress" as I have never proofread one in which I didn't find any mistakes. . . . My own views are that I would prefer to have access to twice as many eBooks at the 99.95% accuracy level [the Library on Congress standard] than half as many at the 99.995% level I think is being suggested here. After all, the books that get read the most will be the ones that get the most corrections. . .an obvious way to aim effort at the proper targets! Not only that, but, viewing the entire eBook effort as a 50 year process, of which I have walked 33+ years, I must state for the record that I think OCR, spellcheckers, grammarcheckers., etc. will be so much better a decade from now that doing the proofreading on the more obscure works will require so much less effort than it does today, that it will be a great trade-off. I'm not at all sure why people want eBooks to be so perfect to start with. I would prefer to get all 10 million public domain works we can find. . . or at least a million of them. . .online and freely downloadable before we try to approach the 100% accuracy level. Of course, I don't believe in the "raw OCR" idea that seems to be what the Google Print idea has in mind, even with spelling and "scanno" checkers, and I also don't believe in going so far in the other direction that we try for such accuracy levels that the number of eBooks only grows at half the rate it has been growing. The path is obviously somewhere in the middle. . .machine production is obviously not accurate enough [except in certain tests I have seen run with high contrast new materials] and after a certain point it becomes inefficient to keep proofreading before letting the public have access. After all, the public IS what this is all about, is it not? So let's let the public do the final proofreading, as a process, for all the years to come. . .at least until we have OCR that makes only 1 error in a million characters. . .and thus most of the errors we find are from the original publications. [Bye the bye, this is one of the reasons for using more than one paper edition to produce an eBook, when multiples of paper editions are available. Then the machine processes can compare to find even more errors. Well, enough now. . .let's make more eBooks!!! Thanks!!! So Nice To Hear From You! Happy Holidays!!! Michael Give FreeBooks!!! In 39 Languages!!! As of December 23, 2004 ~14,780 FreeBooks at: ~220 to go to 15,000 http://www.gutenberg.org http://www.gutenberg.net We are ~95% of the way from 10,000 to 15,000. Now even more PG eBooks In 104 Languages!!! http://gutenberg.cc http://gutenberg.us Michael S. Hart <hart(a)pobox.com> Project Gutenberg Executive Coordinator^M "*Internet User ~#100*" If you do not receive a prompt reply, please resend, keep resending.

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Project Gutenberg as musty library?
by Andrew Sly 27 Dec '04

27 Dec '04

Snippet of conversation found on usenet: > > I have probably 2,000 books and > > perhaps 50 videos, not a single one of them clutter. Getting them from the > > library and then returning them just isn't the same as rereading > well-worn, familiar pages, either, for instance. > > > Yes, it's quite different. Tho come to think of it, I feel that way about a > few books I get from the library once a year or so to reread. Elizabeth > Goudge's CITY OF BELLS for one. But those are old books themselves, been > there a long time, nice old pictures and nice old typeface.... > > What I'm trying to do is transfer that feeling to Project Gutenberg's 'plain > vanilla' texts. I already kind of feel like their site is a very old shabby > library, smelling of leather, mice, and I forget what all else.... > >

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Re: [gutvol-d] Ibn Batuta
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 26 Dec '04

26 Dec '04

In a message dated 12/26/2004 12:17:36 AM Mountain Standard Time, sly(a)victoria.tc.ca writes: <<<Hmmm... you may not need to go that far afield. I really appreciate the way that people are looking for ibn Batuta. He's enjoyable both because of his interesting writing and the interesting tales he has to tell, and because of his unique world-view that illuminates history from this period. Anne

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