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

blogged by our russian friends
by Marcello Perathoner 21 Sep '04

21 Sep '04

Our russian friends were so charmed by our ebook "Hand Shadows to Be Thrown upon the Wall by Henry Bursill" http://www.gutenberg.net/etext/12962 that they downloaded it 4000 times. Somebody who reads Russian can go to http://www.dirty.ru/comments/16939 and tell us why. Its interesting to see how articles wander from one blog to the next. These are just some of them who carry the "Hand Shadow" story. http://www.di-links.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=419 http://www.robcruickshank.net/2004_09_01_archive.html#109495485107159780 http://exclamationmark.typepad.com/ http://www.wherethreadscomeloose.com/links.html http://www.monkeyfilter.com/ -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.net

3 2

re: posted Digest, Vol 4, Issue 27
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Sep '04

21 Sep '04

this just in from the "posted" list... david said: > This compilation of all Mark Twain's works > published by Project Gutenberg was first posted > three years ago and has been updated with > additions and corrections three times since > -- this is the fourth and most extensive. > On this renovation the entire 15mb file > of 302,000 lines has been reprocessed > using present day PG proofing tools with > the correction of several thousand errors. yay! -bowerbird

1 0

ot: gmail
by Aaron Cannon 19 Sep '04

19 Sep '04

If any volunteers have a need for a gmail account (I.E. sending large book images back and forth) E-mail me off list and I can give you one. -- E-mail: cannona(a)fireantproductions.com Skype: cannona MSN Messenger: cannona(a)hotmail.com (Do not send E-mail to the hotmail address.)

2 1

Re: [gutvol-d] Indexing Editors, etc.
by D. Starner 19 Sep '04

19 Sep '04

Andrew Sly writes: > I did make a > judgement call in some cases. For instance, recording someone > who wrote an introduction as a "contributor". It seems odd that there should be a judgement call here (and it's one I've run into in the copyright clearances, too). A lot of books have introductions, and there should be a standard way of noting them. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

2 1

re: Re: [gutvol-d] Indexing Editors, etc.
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Sep '04

19 Sep '04

greg said: > I am not sure we can automate things > much more than they are already, this speaks volumes. (look, a pun!) in my ever-humble opinion, you _need_ to create files that _can_ be parsed unambiguously. and the number-one test of that is whether _you_ can parse 'em. a digital library where every book has to be handled _individually_ sacrifices far too much potential. > I expect that these types of problems > will go away when we eventually start > having richer (or at least better formatted) > metadata in eBook files "born as XML," > but with our current procedure there's > a little too much variety in the eBook layout, > author names/roles, and so forth to be able to > create completely automatic catalog entries > from the eBooks themselves. no comment. -bowerbird

1 0

Re: [gutvol-d] Indexing Editors, etc.
by D. Starner 19 Sep '04

19 Sep '04

Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> writes: > Sorry about that, David. The reason is that the automatic cataloging > program only picks up the metadata in the book header like Author:, > Title:, etc. So is this something that I should take up within DP? What needs to be done that isn't? -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

6 5

Indexing Editors, etc.
by D. Starner 19 Sep '04

19 Sep '04

There are three books just added to the database that were scanned by me: Essay on Wit, The Story of Sigurd the Volsung, and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste. None of them have all the people listed on the title page included in the index. Why? At least in the case of Sigurd, the missing people rewrote a significant part of the text. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

4 3

Re: [gutvol-d] interesting stat from the news letter
by Joshua Hutchinson 19 Sep '04

19 Sep '04

DP produces about 200+ new books a month. Unfortunately, the proofers at DP, finish about 250 books a month. Which means we have an ungodly backlog of texts that need to be post-processed (over 450 books right now). Our proofing output has scaled up from last year, but our post-processing has not been able to keep up. There are plans for ways to improve the bottleneck. Unfortunately, developers to implement those ideas are another bottleneck. As big_bill at DP always says, though ... Those books aren't going anywhere and we will get to them eventually. :) JHutch ----- Original Message ----- From: Aaron Cannon <cannona(a)fireantproductions.com> Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 12:13:47 -0500 To: gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org Subject: [gutvol-d] interesting stat from the news letter > I usually skim the news letter to see if there is anything new, and I > noticed this little stat: > 352 Average Per Month in 2004 > 355 Average Per Month in 2003. > > Anyone have any theories as to why we are doing fewer books per month on > average this year? Not complaining, just a little curious. > > Sorry if this is old news. > > > Sincerely > Aaron Cannon > > -- > E-mail: cannona(a)fireantproductions.com > Skype: cannona > MSN Messenger: cannona(a)hotmail.com (Do not send E-mail to the hotmail address.) > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d >

5 5

re: Re: [gutvol-d] interesting stat from the news letter
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 18 Sep '04

18 Sep '04

jeroen said: > Then, adding ASCII versions also adds to the delay, > as I can generate HTML from the SGML automatically, > but ASCII simply is too hard to automate, > which means redoing the tables again. i am confused about your work-process, jeroen, perhaps you could explain it to me? it would seem to me that the _output_ of the proofing process is the raw text, which one polishes as the ascii version and then -- if one chooses -- marks up some way. but from what you say, you work a different way, the .sgml (magically?) comes _first_, and is used to generate other versions, including the plain-text. what gives? -bowerbird p.s. i guess i'm also perplexed _why_ it is difficult to generate plain-ascii from .sgml. isn't it a straightforward matter of converting (or, in some cases, stripping away) the markup? or printing to .pdf and recovering text from that?

1 0

Re: [gutvol-d] interesting stat from the news letter
by Frank van Drogen 17 Sep '04

17 Sep '04

>I usually skim the news letter to see if there is anything new, and I >noticed this little stat: > 352 Average Per Month in 2004 > 355 Average Per Month in 2003. > >Anyone have any theories as to why we are doing fewer books per month on >average this year? Not complaining, just a little curious. I think one reason that DP produces a little less texts compared to approximately one year ago is the fact that more and more projects get HTML markup, which makes these texts a lot more usefull (IMHO), but reduces the output because people are still supposed to prepare the text version as well. So having to produce two versions, and the fact that adding markup, images, links between ToC and indices just takes more time reduces the quantity of the output. Having the HTML editions, however, definitely increases quality.... Frank >Sorry if this is old news. > > >Sincerely >Aaron Cannon > >-- >E-mail: cannona(a)fireantproductions.com >Skype: cannona >MSN Messenger: cannona(a)hotmail.com (Do not send E-mail to the hotmail >address.) > >_______________________________________________ >gutvol-d mailing list >gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org >http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d

3 2