October 2005 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [gutvol-d] Free Beer !
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 29 Oct '05

29 Oct '05

In a message dated 10/24/2005 11:44:41 AM Mountain Daylight Time, gbnewby(a)pglaf.org writes: > More: If we decide to change the wording, we need a new one ("Free > lunch" would anger the libertarian even more :-) ) that conveys the idea > that PG is not just a free book download service. >Any forward progress on this, Marcello? I don't like .>"free as in beer," and have mentioned it once or twice. .I >think there are plenty of alternatives: .">Fostering the Public Domain" >."Expanding the Public Domain" >."Thousands of Free eBooks" >"The World's Great Literature" >."Produced by Thousands of Volunteers" I still like "The Word's Free Public Library." Anne Do you like to breathe? Then save the trees! Begin a personal relationship with an ebook TODAY!

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Re: [gutvol-d] Need help finding a "free" font for Greek letters
by Joshua Hutchinson 28 Oct '05

28 Oct '05

----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcello Perathoner" <marcello(a)perathoner.de> > > > The gentium font already installed at pglaf.org covers basic greek. It > contains alpha thru omega and ALPHA thru OMEGA. > Are you sure? I'm getting this on the PDF conversion: No installed font contains these characters. They will not display in the pdf. GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA there is a line for all the greek I used, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, kappa, my, pi, rho, sigma (all small case). It also chokes on the PRIME and INFINITY characters, but I kind of expected that. And sure enough, in the resulting PDF, those characters are black squares. Josh

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Need help finding a "free" font for Greek letters
by Joshua Hutchinson 28 Oct '05

28 Oct '05

The new version of the PGTEI conversion process is able to "embed" a TrueType Font into the PDF file to handle characters that are not in the default PDF character set. I'm currently working on a math text that makes use the Greek alpha, beta, gamma, etc letters. Greek isn't included in the default PDF generator. However, if someone can find a "good" TTF for those greek letters, Marcello tells me we can add it to the system. I freely admit that I don't know enough about Greek or fonts to tell what font might be good. A google search turned up quite a few that claimed no copyright or licensing encumbrance, but I need some more expert advice. So, you Greek experts out there, what font file do you recommend we use? Josh

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[Press Release] OSoft Partners with OpenReader
by jnoring＠netbeam.net 28 Oct '05

28 Oct '05

Press release located at: http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/051026/265702.html?.v=1 Here's the text version: ********************************************************************** OSoft Partners with OpenReader Wednesday, October 26, 2005 Taking the "Fright" Out of e-books -- With Open Standards TACOMA, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 26, 2005 -- Buying e-books can be Halloween-scary. They come in many electronic formats -- everything from Microsoft Reader to obscure ones cooked up by hobbyists. You can buy 'em online, only to discover you've paid for the wrong format. Have you ever tried to return an e-book? But what if you could download an e-book and know the format was right for your PDA, cell phone, tablet or desktop computer system? Suppose an orange logo on the box reassured you: "OpenReader compatible"? And what if you saw a similar logo at an online retailer, so you could confidently buy the book? "That's our vision for OpenReader -- to help e-publications be as compatible and easy to buy and use as music CDs," says Mark Carey, president of OSoft.com. "We're modifying our existing ThoutReader(TM) technology to adopt XML, an international e-document standard that no one owns and everyone can use." The new format will come from the OpenReader Consortium (openreader.org) headed by e-book standards expert Jon Noring. Among the consortium's cofounders are XML expert Michael Day in Australia and Rick Barry, former information services chief for the World Bank, an archives-and-records specialist. Meanwhile OSoft will turn its XML-based ThoutReader(TM) into OpenReader by next May. "Anyone can build OpenReader-compatible software," says Noring, a veteran of years of standards efforts within the e-book industry. "But OSoft is the first to act. Microsoft and Adobe promote their proprietary formats, and Google and Yahoo are more focused on scanning images of books than promoting a standard format that can be customized and will look great on the screen." Victor McCrary, who initiated e-book standards efforts while at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, has endorsed OpenReader. So have leading e-bookstores like eBooks.com and Fictionwise.com. "Whether it's Google or a small online store, we're eager to help everyone adopt open standards," says co-founder David Rothman, OpenReader's strategy and external relations director. "We'll raze the tower of eBabel so e-books can be reliably read 500 years from now. Reading software may change over time but the basic electronic format can remain the same." Contact: OSoft Mark Carey, 253-284-0475 mcarey(a)osoft.com or OpenReader Jon Noring, 801-253-4037 info(a)openreader.org

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Re: [gutvol-d] [Press Release] OSoft Partners with OpenReader
by Joshua Hutchinson 27 Oct '05

27 Oct '05

----- Original Message ----- From: "Lee Passey" <lee(a)novomail.net> > What you are suggesting here is a recipe for inaction. The OpenReader format > can hardly be called a standard, as widespread recognition, adoption, and > employment is still a way off, but _proposals_ must always precede adoption. You are right in that the proposal comes first. But anyone can propose anything. (See: bowerbird) Granted, the openreader proposal is well documented and from what little I've seen, well-though out. BUT... It is still nothing more than a proposal because no one can really DO anything with it. Let me draw a parallel. The MPEG standards were first a proposal (draft) and then a crude implementation was created by the group. It was by no means a fully realized application, but it was enough that people could see what the heck the long dreary draft was talking about. THEN other groups created bazillion different implementations that we have today. Put together a crude OpenReader compliant application so that people can see what the heck it is. Josh PS And you could say that the lack of a reader IS a red-herring ... it is distracting from the fact that there is proposed standard because no one can ACCESS texts marked in the proposed standard.

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re: [gutvol-d] [Press Release] OSoft Partners with OpenReader
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Oct '05

27 Oct '05

oh geez, stop throwing rocks... let the openreader people go about their work. the idea that any one format will become "the" standard is a pipedream, but why harass the people who dream? the o.c.a. has just made another announcement about a $5-million contribution from microsoft, and debuted an e-book viewer-using-ajax-in-a-browser, and you guys are debating a frickin' _press_release_... i roll my eyes... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] [Press Release] OSoft Partners with OpenReader
by Joshua Hutchinson 27 Oct '05

27 Oct '05

----- Original Message ----- From: "Lee Passey" <lee(a)novomail.net> > I suspect we are in violent agreement on this point. The OpenReader proposal > is even now in the early stages of exactly the same historical process you > have described for the MPEG standard. The proposal has been made, and is being > discussed. The very announcement that started this thread is an indication > that a first implementation is being worked on. The Thout Reader developed by > OSoft is, in fact, an open-source, GPLed, User Agent written in Java (see > http://sourceforge.net/projects/thout/) > Excellent. For my part, I'd be happy to help test a conversion process to go from our TEI master document to OpenReader's format. The software would have to be open source and run on a linux box, but beyond that, knock yourself out. The above offer is not necessary to Lee (or just to Lee) but anyone that wants to work on conversion routines. The more formats PG can support, the better, imo. JHutch PS TEI can currently output txt, html and pdf ... if there is a converter out there that will go from HTML to openreader or txt to openreader, that might be a good starting point to work from.

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Re: [gutvol-d] Free Beer !
by Joshua Hutchinson 27 Oct '05

27 Oct '05

----- Original Message ----- From: "Dave Fawthrop" <hyphen(a)hyphenologist.co.uk> > > Just to point out that "free as in beer," must be a purely American > expression which means nothing to the English, and I am unable to work out > exactly why beer should be free. Don't worry. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to us American's either. It is a hacker expression mostly. Though where they are getting free beer all the time from I certainly don't know ... Josh PS The expression is part of a two phrase dichotomy. Free speech (rights) and free stuff (beer). The two types of free.

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re: [gutvol-d] [Press Release] OSoft Partners with OpenReader
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 26 Oct '05

26 Oct '05

e-book viewer-programs are cool. i wish the best of luck to mark carey in his programming! -bowerbird

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[forward] Bookscanning Launch and Vision of an Open Library
by Jon Noring 26 Oct '05

26 Oct '05

[Note: Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive posted last night the following article to 'archivists-talk'. Enjoy! Jon Noring] At an Internet Archive event in San Francisco tonight 14 libraries and MSN joined the Open Content Alliance. MSN kicked off their association by committing to scan 150k books in 2006! (this is a big deal, in my opinion). Also, a vision website has a cool bookviewer, the first books from the University of California in a cool bookviewer, and a book on the vision of an Open Library: http://www.openlibrary.org Here is a posting about the event http://www.archive.org/iathreads/ post-view.php?id=45685 -brewster

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