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

Re: Canceling Clearances (Was: [gutvol-d] Top 100 EBooks thisweek(and other stories))
by D. Starner 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

"N Wolcott" writes: > I often submit clearances for books I think I might get around to if only so > that PG knows they are available PD and others can make use of the > clearance. Not a dog in the manger thing. Except in the rare case of renewal notices, if someone cares if they are PD, it's trivial to check. I can't make use of the clearance, as I've to clear my own copy of the book, but your clearance will tell me that I shouldn't bother, since other people are working on it. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Re: Canceling Clearances (Was: [gutvol-d] Top 100 EBooks thisweek(and other stor
by Joshua Hutchinson 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

That's probably not a good idea. The only "list" we have of things people are supposedly working on is the clearance list. I know a lot of people will skip a book if they see someone else has cleared it recently. You should probably only clear something if you plan on working on it... and probably only if you plan on working on it soon. DP churns through a lot of books and if you clear something but don't work on it for a year, you're blocking that content from DP. Josh ----- Original Message ----- From: "N Wolcott" <nwolcott(a)dsdial.net> To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" <gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org> Subject: Re: Canceling Clearances (Was: [gutvol-d] Top 100 EBooks thisweek(and other stories)) Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 09:03:02 -0500 > > I often submit clearances for books I think I might get around to if only so > that PG knows they are available PD and others can make use of the > clearance. Not a dog in the manger thing.

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Canceling Clearances (Was: [gutvol-d] Top 100 EBooks this week (and other stories))
by D. Starner 16 Feb '05

16 Feb '05

> The other story I want to mention has to do with 2 books that I had > cleared that I am not able to proceed with at this time. > > gbn0307140503: Unknown, The Reason Why--Natural History. bill jenness > <cr502(a)freenet.carleton.ca>. 1860c. 7/24/2003. ok. > > and > > gbn0307140507: warren colburn, Arithmetic upon the inductive method of > instruction.... bill jenness <cr502(a)freenet.carleton.ca>. 1856p1826c. > 7/24/2003. > ok. > > These books are no longer in my possesion and my scanner is toast, I am > limping along with a p166 until I can afford to pickup some new equipment. There ought to be a standard way of canceling clearances, at least for the new system. I've got clearances that turned out to be done already, and ones that should be done, but the copy I have isn't in a condition I can get usable scans out of, which sometimes turns up only when I start scanning. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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Issues with links from posted notices failing in Firefox 1.0
by Pauline 11 Feb '05

11 Feb '05

Hi All, I don't think I am the only one with this problem, but I have yet to see this being discussed here... In Firefox 1.0 links to recently posted extexts from the posted mailing list such as: http://www.gutenberg.net/1/4/9/8/14980 fail. I see an error: Files Lookup I see no such file here! (1/4/9/8/14980) The links work perfectly well in IE6. The links start to work in Firefox a few days after a project is posted, but it's very frustrating to not be able to send links to others without knowing whether they will fail or not. There is a discussion at DP on this issue here: http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=109131#109131 Some users say if they change the skin back to the default, links work OK again. No such luck for me. Thanks in advance, P -- Distributed Proofreaders: http://www.pgdp.net "Preserving history one page at a time."

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Re: Can project use legally encumbered scans?
by Juhana Sadeharju 09 Feb '05

09 Feb '05

>From: Jonathan Walther <krooger(a)debian.org> > >I know of a situation. Let's say that it's hypothetical. Someone got >access to some extremely old and rare books, and photographed them. The >photos were scanned and distributed on CDROM by a company. The owners >of the photos say the scans constitute stolen property, and after years >of legal action, stopped the company from distributing the scans. We can and should process the scans privately. Please make them (if the scans were not entirely hypothetical) available privately, only to people who are willing to help. Remember, Hershey fonts were in public domain but the file format was not. The solution was to convert the data to another file format. How that info could be exploited here? I would like to have a copy of every scan. If I develop a solution, the scans may not be available when the solution is ready. That would only waste our time and give false hopes. Best regards, Juhana -- http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-graphics-dev for developers of open source graphics software

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Re: [gutvol-d] Arabic eTexts
by D. Starner 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

"maitri venkat-ramani" writes: > Some of these books may be in the public domain and worth looking into. > Anyone particularly interested in developing an Arabic language > partnership with the project mentioned below? It sounds like they're writing software, not transcribing books. I'm not sure why this is news that everyone's carrying; <http://www.hf.uib.no/smi/ksv/arabocr.html> is a ten-year old review of Arabic OCRs. <http://www.translation.net/sakhr_automatic_reader.html> is a commercially available Arabic OCR program, even if it's a touch expensive. <http://www.translation.net/ocr.html> is a nice list of OCR programs if you're looking for something beyond what ABBYY supports. -- ___________________________________________________________ Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm

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how long to distribute dp project management?
by Jonathan Walther 07 Feb '05

07 Feb '05

Joshua mentioned that the final stage of preparing a book, after the scanning, OCR, and proofing are done, will also be distributed. This is fantastic news. Is there any timeframe for that? I have high quality scans of some extremely RARE books, which have been out of print for more than 100 years, and would like to see them in Project Gutenberg. I plan to upload them soon. Many of the scans are from copies that are more than 300 years old, with all that entails in regard to fonts and typography. Hope PG doesn't choke on them. Jonathan -- Puritan: Purity of faith, Purity of doctrine. Sola Scriptura! Eukleia: Jonathan Walther Address: 12706 99 Ave, Surrey, BC V3V2P8 (Canada) Contact: 604-582-9308 (between 7am and 11pm, PST) Website: http://reactor-core.org/ Patriarchy, Polygamy, Slavery === Fatherhood, Husbandry, Mastery Matriarchy, Monogamy, Prisons === Wickedness, Stupidity, Buggery It's not true unless it makes you laugh, but you don't understand it until it makes you weep.

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Error rate statistics
by Wallace J.McLean 05 Feb '05

05 Feb '05

As I previously discussed, these are the figures from a project I've been working on for several years. It's a massive, three-volume job, for print publication. After each round, described below, I would reprint the text, verify the correction of the previous round's errors, and then do another round. I also did a batch-verify of ALL previous rounds' corrections, finding one or two that I had missed along the way. Round Type Errors 1/1a p/a 944 2 p 415 3 a 454 4&5 p/a 154 sc 35-40 6 rb 170 7 sr 0 8 rb 64 "9" rb 0 Explanation: Round = round, Type = type of reading: p/roofreading, a/ttestation, s/pell c/heck, r/ead b/ack using voice synthesis. I keyed most of the text, apart from a small sample (about 15-20pp) which I OCRd near the end of the text-entry phase. This made it imperative that I not only proofread the typescript in the conventional sense, but also attest it, compare it back to the original, para by para, line by line, word by word. There were many errors that I introduced to the text that would pass spellcheck or proofread; they weren't "errors", but they weren't faithful to the text, either. They had to be exterminated Some - many, actually - of the errors were native to the original. As I keyed the text, I retained them, but corrected them afterwards. Thus, the error stats are somewhat inflated, in that a good number of them, probably 10 or 12 percent, weren't my fault. Rounds 1 and 1a, my first attestation and proof, I did on the same copy, so I couldn't do separate stats. After rounds 4-5, I did a spellcheck, which returned about 35-40 spelling errors which my eyes hadn't caught. This was a bit of a shock to my own esteem of my proofing skills, so I went out and got some speech synthesis software to do readbacks. I'd clip a few hundred words at a time, and follow in the original, highlighting discrepancies as I went along. 7 was a skimread of the whole thing. 8 was a second full readback. I know I did a third full readback, but didn't seem to keep stats on it. "9" was a partial readback. At 64 errors in round 8, that works out to about one discrepency every 15 pages or 4500 words. I did a bunch of batches of 15 pages and 4500 words, and also did a complete readback of several of the most error-prone sections of the book. Even with the long breaks I took in between rounds, round "9", with no moments of sheer "d'uh" to break up the monotony, was where the law of diminishing returns kicked in. I re-did perhaps 15% of the entire text without finding any further errors. At that point, I estimated the number of remaining typos or text discrepencies in the entire book to be somewhere between 6 and 20, and I'll be damned if I'm going to spend another three months of evenings hunting the buggers down. (At the same time, in my second readback pass, I at times would go 100 pages without finding ANY errors, then hit three or four on the same page.) The total number of native typos, my typos, and my transcription errors, worked out to about 2 per 300-word page. Not great, but not bad. It was, probably, actually higher, but in my early eyeball rounds, if I came across an error that I thought I had repeatedly made, I would do a global search, attest, and replace on it when I did the corrections at the end of that round. However, I only caught under 50% by eye on my first round, and fewer than 90% by eye, overall, on subsequent rounds. About 12%, I would not have caught at all, but for speech synthesis and spellcheck.

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Fwd: Proposed CD Navigation Files now available for review
by Aaron Cannon 05 Feb '05

05 Feb '05

>From: "John Hagerson" <j.hagerson(a)comcast.net> >To: "'Aaron Cannon'" <cannona(a)fireantproductions.com> >Subject: Proposed CD Navigation Files now available for review >Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 08:04:16 -0600 >X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook, Build 10.0.6626 > >Four navigation files built for a new Project Gutenberg CD-ROM which >contains primarily non-English electronic books are now available for review >at http://www.aaronandgabby.com/pgcd/ The files allow one to browse the CD >by Author, Language and Author, Language and Title, or Title. > >The files were developed from the Project Gutenberg production prior to book >14700. The Distributed Proofreaders have been especially prolific in >non-English books recently, so it seems that a number of books of recent >production will be omitted regardless of where we draw the line. > >I believe I have included every non-English book produced prior to 14700 >with the exception of three books (7216, 7337, and 12407) where the title >and author were both in Unicode characters that most fonts do not support. >Each of the omitted works is in Chinese. If someone could help me obtain >more information on these works, there is ample space to include them. > >Please respond to the list or directly to mailto:j.hagerson@comcast.net with >your comments regarding the files. > >Thank you. > >Aaron: Before you forward this to the list, please make sure that the http >download works. My attempts to view the directory were met with a 403 error. >Thank you. -- E-mail: cannona(a)fireantproductions.com Skype: cannona MSN Messenger: cannona(a)hotmail.com (Do not send E-mail to the hotmail address.)

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Re Error Correction Data Needed
by Wallace J.McLean 03 Feb '05

03 Feb '05

I'm inclined to think that the 1/3 figure, AT MOST, may be closer to the truth. I've been working on a massive (300,000 word) publication for a number of years now. (It's FINALLY in pre-press, hooray!) My workflow was: handkey text (except for 16 pages I OCRd as a test.) Proofread 1 Attestation* 1 Proofread 2 Attestation* 2 Skimread (very superficial, but often you find stupid errors that way. Like the one on PAGE 1!!!) Software spellcheck Proofread 3 Readback** 1 Readback 2 And IIRC, Readback 3 * Attestation: Comparing my typescript to the original, word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase. ** Readback: After the HUGE error rates I was still getting after each prevous pass, I bought voice synthesis software, and had the work read back to me, while I followed along in the original. I've kept stats somewhere on the error catch-rate at each stage; I'll dig them up later. The caveat, of course, is that the only way for me to get "fresh eyes" on the project was to put it aside for a few weeks or months; I can't afford to hire someone else. The error rate on the last pass was so small that, even if I had only caught 30% of the remaining errors, the few that are statistically expectable are no longer worth it on the law of diminishing returns curve. ----- Original Message ----- >From Michael Hart <hart(a)pglaf.org> Date Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:06:10 -0800 (PST) Subject [gutvol-d] Error Correction Data Needed [Please excuse cross-posting.] However, my most recent research, in conjunctions with the head of error correction at a major publisher, leads me to think 1/3 of errors might be found per pass, instead of the previous 1/2. If any of you have any suggestions as to what these figures are, please let me know.

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