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

Re: [gutvol-d] More than you ever wanted to know about XHTML and CSS
by Joshua Hutchinson 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

I apologize. The last paragraph attributed to Robert below is actually mine. * Bad mail editor. Bad. Go to your room. * Josh ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joshua Hutchinson" <joshua(a)hutchinson.net> > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Robert Shimmin" <shimmin(a)uiuc.edu> > > > > > The "standardization" is there ... it just doesn't go as far as to specify > > a > standard style sheet. > > > > > > Now, the TEI has a "working" standard style sheet, but there have already > > > been some changes identified in testing. > > > > > > Once, we have the final transforms worked out, I plan on having an open > > call > for style sheets on DP. > > > > I've worked on enough 'quirky' projects to think this a bad idea. The > > typesetters of the past did things that often make it a complete judgment > > call where the content stops and the presentation begins, and many projects > > will not fit on someone else's Procrustean notions of how a PG project > > 'should' be styled. > > > > > From my experience, this is not the case and I've put together some very > > quirky ones into TEI already. I've picked one text with over 1,000 > > footnotes and over 500 sidenotes. It is complicated, but it renders > > beautifully. I've picked another text that uses editorial sidenotes running > > throughout a Middle English poem. > > Both of these were great test cases that helped us identify bugs in the > transform. > > Now, this isn't to say the layout looks exactly like the original. It does > not in many cases. > > A sidenote in the margin is functionally the same as a sidenote that is > floated as an inset on the side of the page. Worrying that the presentation > of one matches the original book and one doesn't is irrelevant. The publisher > probably didn't slavishly follow the layout the author wrote his original > manuscript in either. > > Now, do I agree that we will eventually find something that goes beyond what > we've covered in the TEI spec? You better believe we will. But when that day > comes, TEI can be expanded to cover the situation. Do I think this will be a > common occurance? Not a chance. > > Josh > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d

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Re: [gutvol-d] More than you ever wanted to know about XHTML and CSS
by Joshua Hutchinson 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

----- Original Message ----- From: "Lee Passey" <lee(a)novomail.net> > > On a related note, let me say that I view internal style declarations as > just plain rude. Style sheets are indeed A Good Thing, but someone > imposing their quirky notions of style on me is not. By placing style > definitions in an external style sheet and simply linking that style > sheet into the main document with a <link> element, it makes it easy for > me to strip away the suggested styles, and return to browser defaults, > by simply deleting or renaming the style sheet. And if the suggested > styles are mostly good, and need only a slight tweaking, it is safer and > easier to edit an external style sheet than the main document. I would > strongly encourage all PG volunteers who are creating HTML documents to > consider putting suggested style definitions in an external style sheet > rather than embedding those styles in the main document. > Let me say that I agree. But right now, the ww'ers have indicated that they want all styles inline. I think this practice should be changed, but it isn't my call. Josh

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Dict of National Biography
by N Wolcott 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

The other day I went to the local library to consult their copy of the Dictionary of National Biography, 22 Vol 1921. It was no longer on the shelf. Upon enquiry, I was informed that it was library policy to surplus all material which might be replaced by an electronic resource: in this case the Gale Biographical Database. This database gives old entries from Who's who. Not at all the same. It was given to their surplus book sale. I note it costs $3000 on Abe. And of course when the books are gone there are no more to replace them. (well there may have been a reprint or two). Also the "books were old and out of date" were "not in use" . The reference books in use were "All the plots of Shakespeare's Plays", "Condensed 100 novels with plot lines" etc. I suggested they were encouraging theft as a mode of preservation. They were not amused. Disposal was up to the local librarian, in this case ssomeone whom I believe probably thought there was no need for English History anyway. N Wolcott nwolcott2(a)post.harvard.edu

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More than you ever wanted to know about XHTML and CSS
by Lee Passey 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

gutvol-d-request(a)lists.pglaf.org wrote: > On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 04:20:15PM -0400, Bowerbird(a)aol.com wrote: > > > i'm trying to look at the .html version of #15701, which i > > downloaded as a zip file to my own machine, and it seems to require > > an open internet connection. it wants to call the w3 or something. > > why? > > I don't know. It doesn't for me. It's conceivable--just-- that your > browser is trying to pre-fetch the W3 DTD as defined in the DOCTYPE > declaration, but it's the first time I ever heard of something like > that happening. And the same declaration is in lots of texts; nothing > new or strange about this one. Internet Explorer 5.5 is the only browser I have for which my firewall is configured to prevent outgoing access without permission. Opening this file in IE 5.5 does not create any outgoing connections. Examination of the file reveals that there are no resources referenced in the file external to the file itself except: 1. the DTD declaration, and 2. an image of the Burke coat of arms. Given the fact that your browser is attempting to contact the W3C (the "owners" of the XHTML DTD) I would agree with Mr. Tinsley that your browser seems to be attempting to fetch the declared DTD. In fact, given that Opera seems to have fairly good support for most XML vocabularies other than XHTML, I would bet that you're seeing this behavior when using the Opera browser. When you refuse the outgoing connection, is the document displayed anyway? (not that it will make any difference, but I _am_ curious). [snip] > > and the .html version of #15698 won't work in either one... > > > > That one is more interesting; it doesn't have a terminating HTML > comment mark after the <style>. However, the W3C validators have no > problem with it, and the parse tree is recognized, and I've given up > trying to track all the ways that foreign command-sets or languages > can be embedded in HTML. Maybe a newer browser will help. What is > Opera on now? 8? The problem is, indeed, the unterminated comment. The XHTML DTD defines the <style> element as containing #PCDATA, which is to say textual 'stuff' which may or may not be HTML. An HTML User Agent should _not_ attempt to parse any of the data between <style> and </style>, but should pass that text on to the stylesheet parser. It has become common to embed an internal style declaration inside HTML comments () for compatibility with older browsers which did not support style sheets. If a browser did not support style sheets it would encounter the <style> tag and ignore it, as all good browsers are designed to do. It would then encounter the HTML comment tag and ignore everything until the closing tag was encountered. That way the browser wouldn't display the style definitions as just more text. On the other hand, stylesheet parsers are designed to ignore the comment tags themselves, so all the stylesheet goodness is visible to a stylesheet parser. While the lack of a closing comment tag in the <style> element is a bug in the document, the failure of your browser(s) to ignore comment tags in a <style> element is also a bug in those programs. While I don't have a working installation of IE prior to 5.5, which does _not_ have this problem, the problem also presents itself in Opera 7.11, but has been fixed in Opera 7.51. My experience has been that in the past Opera has been somewhat slavishly devoted to mimicing the behavior of IE, even when that behavior is contrary to internet standards (Javascript implementations come to mind). It is therefore not surprising that early versions of Opera should have the same behavior as early versions of IE. Despite the bugginess of your browsers, the HTML text at Project Gutenberg really should be fixed, as this will cause the failure to display the text in any browser which does not support the <style> element. Because the contents of a <style> element is #PCDATA, HTML validators will generally not be able to catch this type of error. I have examined the source code for HTML Tidy, and when it encounters a <style> tag it simple creates a text node for the entire text up to the </style> tag. No validation of the actual style sheets is performed. I suspect that the W3C validator operates the same way. Validators are good tools, but satisfying a validator does not mean that the HTML is, in fact, valid -- only that there are no errors of the type that the validators are designed to catch. On a related note, let me say that I view internal style declarations as just plain rude. Style sheets are indeed A Good Thing, but someone imposing their quirky notions of style on me is not. By placing style definitions in an external style sheet and simply linking that style sheet into the main document with a <link> element, it makes it easy for me to strip away the suggested styles, and return to browser defaults, by simply deleting or renaming the style sheet. And if the suggested styles are mostly good, and need only a slight tweaking, it is safer and easier to edit an external style sheet than the main document. I would strongly encourage all PG volunteers who are creating HTML documents to consider putting suggested style definitions in an external style sheet rather than embedding those styles in the main document.

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Re: [gutvol-d] Update on Harvesting of the Internet Archive's Ca
by Jonathan Ingram 25 Apr '05

25 Apr '05

--- Robert Shimmin <shimmin(a)uiuc.edu> wrote: > > I've always found it a let down when a book I've laboured over > > pops up in PG 3 days before my year-long effort is finally finished. > > I have dibs on this: hands off. > > Despair not, but instead Rejoice! Having two independent transcriptions > is a great way to catch errors, since two transcribers working from > different copies of the book, by different methods, are unlikely to make > the same error. Assuming there aren't major textual differences, > diffing two independent transcriptions and checking the discrepancies is > one of the best way to get our quality up to five or even six nines. Very true. Although we're not aiming to redo books that people are currently working on, I see nothing wrong with running books through DP which are already in PG. There are several reasons for this, including error correction, and the creation of HTML editions, which are basically standard these days for DP-produced texts. -- Jon Ingram __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Update on Harvesting of the Internet Archive's Canadian Libraries collection
by Jonathan Ingram 25 Apr '05

25 Apr '05

A week ago, DP started systematically working through the Internet Archive's Canadian Libraries collection. In that week, we have looked at 208 of the 798 books in the archive. Of these, 22 books are identical to books which have previously been through DP, so will not need to be looked at further, and 18 books have errors (missing or blurred pages) -- the remaining 168 are being processed and should eventually all move through DP. The aim is to eventually process *every* book in this collection, and then move on to others. You can monitor the current progress of our harvesting effort here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jenjonliz/jon/tia/canadianlibraries.html And (if you are a DP project manager) claim texts using the following thread in the DP forum: http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14768 -- Jon Ingram __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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the .html version of e-text #15701
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 24 Apr '05

24 Apr '05

i'm trying to look at the .html version of #15701, which i downloaded as a zip file to my own machine, and it seems to require an open internet connection. it wants to call the w3 or something. why? even with such a connection, it won't display in ie5.1. works in opera 5, but not internet explorer. why not? and the .html version of #15698 won't work in either one... help, anyone? -bowerbird

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RE: [gutvol-d] Update on Harvesting of the Internet Archive's Ca
by Jonathan Ingram 24 Apr '05

24 Apr '05

--- Gardner Buchanan <gbuchana(a)rogers.com> wrote: > I have done some work developing scripts to re-process the page > image sets from the Toronto archive. If you're interested, maybe > we should compare notes. I've found the images to be quite high > quality. Almost all of the people working on the Toronto archive, and the other archive.org page image archives, are using the generated DjVu files, as we don't have the bandwidth to download half a gig or more of images per book. These are usually of good enough quality to OCR. > You didn't mention reconciling your list with the cleared/books in > progress list The reconciliation is done by people informing me when material on this list is already in progress. It might be possible to do some of this by automatically comparing David's In Progress List with this list, but nothing along those lines has yet been done. It's up to the individuals who claim books from this list to check their status. , and looking at your web page, I see that you intend to > process at least one of those books in progress - by me - namely: > <snip> > Also, your list also has a duplicate entry for this title. Thanks for reporting these in the thread on the DP forum. Both entries have been marked as already in progress. -- Jon Ingram __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Questions on GP and other ebooks
by Ben Bradley 23 Apr '05

23 Apr '05

It looks like a lively, lightly-moderated list here. As a long-term participant on Usenet as well as many email lists, this is nothing new to me and I feel perfectly welcome. :) My first question involves the book "On The Sensations of Tone" by Herman Helmholtz. I recently saw mention of it online and decided that since its copyright has long expired I might find it on the GP site. I don't see it, nor did I find the text elsewhere online, but further investigation (reading much of the PG FAQ) led me to this page with list of books in progress: http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html The relevant portion of that webpage is: Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von (31aug1821-8sep1894) The Mystery of Creation - Copyright cleared 23 Nov 1997 On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music - Copyright cleared 17 Sep 2003 How do I find the "real" status of this book, whose copyright was cleared seven months ago but is not yet online? If it's not actively being converted to text by someone else, I'd like to do it (as soon as I get my own physical copy). Apparently, I should email Mr. Price at the address indicated on that webpage to see what he might know, but I'd also like to know if I'm missing something in relation to this. Second question: Why are there two copies of Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" on the GP site? And a third: I just came across yet another copyrighted book online. All such books I've seen on the web are apparently put online legally by the author or with the author's permission. Is there a list of these books, perhaps as a part of an index of "all books online"? And yes, I know this is fairly tangential to the purpose of the GP, as most such authors generally choose to retain full copyright and have their books available ONLY on their sites, so they can have some control, such as using the site to advertise/selling physical copies of the book.

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suggestions for volunteer page
by Scott Lawton 23 Apr '05

23 Apr '05

i.e. for http://www.gutenberg.org/info/volunteer This seems like a good place to put requests for missing pages and such. Incidentally, I just came across a different sort of "missing page" issue: a possible error in a posted text that requires verification against the original scan -- which is (apparently) long gone. Also, I really hope that PG soon links to scans for all books where scans exist. -- Cheers, Scott S. Lawton http://Classicosm.com/ - classic books http://ProductArchitect.com/ - consulting

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