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

Re: [gutvol-d] Questions on PG and other ebooks
by Jon Niehof 22 Apr '05

22 Apr '05

--- Tony Baechler <tb(a)baechler.net> wrote: > Why not start a subproject either within PG or DP that could > still post the books as long as it is clearly understood that > they are not official PG books and have x pages missing? The concern I'd have with this sort of approach is that, once it's on the web, it tends to get copied all over. Even once a completed version is out, "broken" versions may very well continue to outnumber the other, and the value gets lost in the noise. This isn't an image issue, but rather a "service to posterity" issue. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

1 0

Re: [gutvol-d] speaking of missing pages
by Jon Niehof 21 Apr '05

21 Apr '05

--- Malcolm Farmer <M.J.Farmer(a)bham.ac.uk> wrote: > So this technique has been around a while, long enough to be > shown in use on television. Indeed; have a look at Ars' take: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050420-4827.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

1 0

Re: [gutvol-d] Questions on PG and other ebooks
by Joshua Hutchinson 21 Apr '05

21 Apr '05

----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert Cicconetti" <grythumn(a)gmail.com> > > On 4/21/05, Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 19, 2005 at 04:42:56PM -0500, David Starner wrote: > > > On 4/19/05, Michael Hart <hart(a)pglaf.org> wrote: > > I feel like I might be stepping on a hornet's nest, so please > > try to be gentle with me: > > > > My questions are two: > > > > 1. What is the approximate success rate & timetable for getting missing > > pages for books in DP? (I.e., how many books are stalled for missing > > pages, and how many have had their pages found/restored, and how long > > after proofreading was complete did this happen?) > > Nobody really keeps track. This is true. But, let me offer this completely personal, anecdotal evidence. I've added 691 projects to the DP queue in the last couple years. Granted, many of them are still in the queue waiting to be release (maybe 25% or more). Out of those nearly 700 projects, 2 have been held up by missing pages. The first one was about a year and half ago and I can't remember anymore how that one was resolved. The other just cropped up last week. The images were taken from Cornell's Making of America project and they had one page scan in twice, overwriting one page. An e-mail sent to their administrators promised that they would fix it soon. I'm giving them until next week before I bug them again. If my numbers are any indication ... around 0.29% of our projects will come up missing a page. I have a feeling it is a actually a point or two higher, but I could be wrong. Josh

2 1

re: [gutvol-d] Questions on PG and other ebooks
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Apr '05

21 Apr '05

melissa said: > I'm pretty busy right now, bowerbird, with > post-processing complete texts for upload to PG-- > 90 or so in the last 6-8 months. i understand. :+) thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to come and give your recommendations on what project gutenberg should be doing. i appreciate hearing everyone's input twice as much as i like giving my own, because i have two ears and only one mouth. that's another reason i post every once in a while, because otherwise, y'all lapse into long periods of silence. but when _i_ post, there's a _reaction_... and thanks for post-processing all those e-texts. it's not a pretty job, but somebody's gotta do it... -bowerbird

2 1

speaking of missing pages
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Apr '05

21 Apr '05

speaking of "missing pages", i got this today... -bowerbird ------------------------------------------------------------------- Fresh from London's "Independent" Some possibly very exciting news: Decoded at last: the 'classical holy grail' that may rewrite the history of the world Scientists begin to unlock the secrets of papyrus scraps bearing long-lost words by the literary giants of Greece and Rome By David Keys and Nicholas Pyke 17 April 2005 For more than a century, it has caused excitement and frustration in equal measure - a collection of Greek and Roman writings so vast it could redraw the map of classical civilisation. If only it was legible. Now, in a breakthrough described as the classical equivalent of finding the holy grail, Oxford University scientists have employed infra-red technology to open up the hoard, known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, and with it the prospect that hundreds of lost Greek comedies, tragedies and epic poems will soon be revealed. In the past four days alone, Oxford's classicists have used it to make a series of astonishing discoveries, including writing by Sophocles, Euripides, Hesiod and other literary giants of the ancient world, lost for millennia. They even believe they are likely to find lost Christian gospels, the originals of which were written around the time of the earliest books of the New Testament. The original papyrus documents, discovered in an ancient rubbish dump in central Egypt, are often meaningless to the naked eye - decayed, worm-eaten and blackened by the passage of time. But scientists using the new photographic technique, developed from satellite imaging, are bringing the original writing back into view. Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a "second Renaissance". Christopher Pelling, Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford, described the new works as "central texts which scholars have been speculating about for centuries". Professor Richard Janko, a leading British scholar, formerly of University College London, now head of classics at the University of Michigan, said: "Normally we are lucky to get one such find per decade." One discovery in particular, a 30-line passage from the poet Archilocos, of whom only 500 lines survive in total, is described as "invaluable" by Dr Peter Jones, author and co-founder of the Friends of Classics campaign. The papyrus fragments were discovered in historic dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus ("city of the sharp-nosed fish") in central Egypt at the end of the 19th century. Running to 400,000 fragments, stored in 800 boxes at Oxford's Sackler Library, it is the biggest hoard of classical manuscripts in the world. The previously unknown texts, read for the first time last week, include parts of a long-lost tragedy - the Epigonoi ("Progeny") by the 5th-century BC Greek playwright Sophocles; part of a lost novel by the 2nd-century Greek writer Lucian; unknown material by Euripides; mythological poetry by the 1st-century BC Greek poet Parthenios; work by the 7th-century BC poet Hesiod; and an epic poem by Archilochos, a 7th-century successor of Homer, describing events leading up to the Trojan War. Additional material from Hesiod, Euripides and Sophocles almost certainly await discovery. Oxford academics have been working alongside infra-red specialists from Brigham Young University, Utah. Their operation is likely to increase the number of great literary works fully or partially surviving from the ancient Greek world by up to a fifth. It could easily double the surviving body of lesser work - the pulp fiction and sitcoms of the day. "The Oxyrhynchus collection is of unparalleled importance - especially now that it can be read fully and relatively quickly," said the Oxford academic directing the research, Dr Dirk Obbink. "The material will shed light on virtually every aspect of life in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and, by extension, in the classical world as a whole." The breakthrough has also caught the imagination of cultural commentators. Melvyn Bragg, author and presenter, said: "It's the most fantastic news. There are two things here. The first is how enormously influential the Greeks were in science and the arts. The second is how little of their writing we have. The prospect of having more to look at is wonderful." Bettany Hughes, historian and broadcaster, who has presented TV series including Mysteries of the Ancients and The Spartans, said: "Egyptian rubbish dumps were gold mines. The classical corpus is like a jigsaw puzzle picked up at a jumble sale - many more pieces missing than are there. Scholars have always mourned the loss of works of genius - plays by Sophocles, Sappho's other poems, epics. These discoveries promise to change the textual map of the golden ages of Greece and Rome." When it has all been read - mainly in Greek, but sometimes in Latin, Hebrew, Coptic, Syriac, Aramaic, Arabic, Nubian and early Persian - the new material will probably add up to around five million words. Texts deciphered over the past few days will be published next month by the London-based Egypt Exploration Society, which financed the discovery and owns the collection. A 21st-century technique reveals antiquity's secrets Since it was unearthed more than a century ago, the hoard of documents known as the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has fascinated classical scholars. There are 400,000 fragments, many containing text from the great writers of antiquity. But only a small proportion have been read so far. Many were illegible. Now scientists are using multi-spectral imaging techniques developed from satellite technology to read the papyri at Oxford University's Sackler Library. The fragments, preserved between sheets of glass, respond to the infra-red spectrum - ink invisible to the naked eye can be seen and photographed. The fragments form part of a giant "jigsaw puzzle" to be reassembled. Missing "pieces" can be supplied from quotations by later authors, and grammatical analysis. Key words from the master of Greek tragedy Speaker A: . . . gobbling the whole, sharpening the flashing iron. Speaker B: And the helmets are shaking their purple-dyed crests, and for the wearers of breast-plates the weavers are striking up the wise shuttle's songs, that wakes up those who are asleep. Speaker A: And he is gluing together the chariot's rail. These words were written by the Greek dramatist Sophocles, and are the only known fragment we have of his lost play Epigonoi (literally "The Progeny"), the story of the siege of Thebes. Until last week's hi-tech analysis of ancient scripts at Oxford University, no one knew of their existence, and this is the first time they have been published. Sophocles (495-405 BC), was a giant of the golden age of Greek civilisation, a dramatist who work alongside and competed with Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristophanes. His best-known work is Oedipus Rex, the play that later gave its name to the Freudian theory, in which the hero kills his father and marries his mother - in a doomed attempt to escape the curse he brings upon himself. His other masterpieces include Antigone and Electra. Sophocles was the cultured son of a wealthy Greek merchant, living at the height of the Greek empire. An accomplished actor, he performed in many of his own plays. He also served as a priest and sat on the committee that administered Athens. A great dramatic innovator, he wrote more than 120 plays, but only seven survive in full. Last week's remarkable finds also include work by Euripides, Hesiod and Lucian, plus a large and particularly significant paragraph of text from the Elegies, by Archilochos, a Greek poet of the 7th century BC.

2 1

re: [gutvol-d] Questions on PG and other ebooks
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Apr '05

20 Apr '05

jon said: > But isn't that a form of markup? i don't know. periods are markup, some people say. and blank lines between paragraphs. even the space between two words. so i don't know. define it however you want. > I thought markup was bad? who told you that? markup, depending on how you define it, is whatever it is. it's not bad or good. it just is. having to _apply_ markup -- especially heavy markup -- takes a lot of time and energy, so that can be _costly_. but if it delivers _benefits_, though, especially benefits that cannot be obtained another way, then it _might_ be cost-efficient. you have to put it on a scale and weigh it. costs are bad. benefits are good. so you find the balance... if i could wave a magic wand, and have the entire library marked up, in x.m.l. or some other form of markup, i would love it. why not? or, alternately, if someone else is willing to do all that heavy markup for me, while i sit back and drink beer, i would love that too. why not? but if y'all are gonna sit around, for year after year after year after year, all the while intending to do x.m.l. markup, but never actually getting any done, what's the point? myself, i like my markup to be "invisible" -- to be _zen_. like spaces between words, blank lines between paragraphs. to _facilitate_ my understanding of the intent of the author. (illustrated by the underscores i just used to indicate italics, so you'd know that my intention was to emphasize that word. of course, it's nice if your viewer-program would _convert_ an underscored word to an italicized one when displaying it, as some viewer-programs will -- like ubook, for instance -- but in the absence of that, i'll trust your imagination to do it.) all of which has absolutely nothing to do with the case here. if there are two pages missing inside an e-text, _say_so_. say it right where they're missing, at the top of the e-text, on the webpage that lists all the e-texts with missing pages, in the newsletter, and anywhere else where you believe that it might come to the attention of someone who can and will _provide_ those missing pages. all of this is in keeping with a systemic effort to incorporate end-users as _co-creators_ and _co-owners_ of their planetary digital library. you dig? because the quickest way to get 20 million books digitized is for 20 million people to do one book each, then check one other. now _that_ would be distributing the workload! if anyone else wants to converse with me, today is your day. it won't be 4/20 tomorrow, so speak up now if you want... -bowerbird

1 0

re: [gutvol-d] Questions on PG and other ebooks
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Apr '05

20 Apr '05

melissa said: > If we are going to post incomplete books, the notice should not be > just for 'our own people' but should be very clearly stated to the > users of PG. i agree. it should be noted right there in the e-text itself. which, in the sole example given, was precisely the case... > Anything less is deceit, in my mind. well, "deceit" is a pretty strong word, with ugly implications. let's save that for where it applies, like with our government. > Such books should go in a section for incomplete projects, > and the end-user's help should be specifically solicited, > creating a partnership with him i agree. and have said as much in the past, several times, not just for the specific case of incomplete projects, but for the larger arena of which it is a subset -- error-correction... i even offered to set up a user-based error-correction system, which is _desperately_ needed by this ever-growing e-library. my offer was rebuffed. but melissa, since you're on this kick today, how about if _you_ offer to set up such a system. maybe they'll accept your offer. one task you'd do is to scour the library for incomplete e-texts. > rather than putting him off by trying to > pass off a 'broken' project as one in good condition. i don't believe anyone was ever suggesting that we should try to "pass off" a "broken" e-text as if it were "one in good condition". i believe michael was suggesting exactly what you've suggested, namely that we involve the end-users to help solve the problem. after all, all of "our own people" are end-user volunteers, right? the "missing pages wiki" over at distributed proofreaders is a start, but since that's only known to people at d.p. (and only some of them), it is no more than a start. make it bigger, melissa. take it public... -bowerbird

2 1

re: [gutvol-d] Questions on PG and other ebooks
by Jon Niehof 20 Apr '05

20 Apr '05

--- Bowerbird(a)aol.com wrote: > melissa said: > > If we are going to post incomplete books, the notice > > should not be just for 'our own people' but should be very > > clearly stated to the users of PG. > > i agree. it should be noted right there in the e-text itself. > which, in the sole example given, was precisely the case... But isn't that a form of markup? I thought markup was bad? __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

1 0

re: [gutvol-d] New Copyright law
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Apr '05

20 Apr '05

tom said: > I'm new to all this...is there some well-established reason > why you seem to hate everyone on this list so much, > and yet continue to subscribe to it? it's simply not true that i "hate everyone on this list so much". to begin with, i know very few of the people here _personally_, and i wouldn't hold an emotion as strong as "hate" for anyone that i didn't know personally. in fact, i rarely "hate" anyone, even if i _do_ know them personally. life is too short for that. i'm certainly not gonna be putting up webpages about anyone. indeed, i have a fond feeling for most of the people here, just as i do for project gutenberg as an abstract entity, because the people here are one with me in the cause of electronic-books, which is why i subscribe to this listserve. i've been active in e-books for 25 years. why wouldn't i be here? i _do_ have some impatience with an inability or unwillingness to consider things in their broader context, a shortcoming that i see here on a not-infrequent basis, so i mount an attack on that. for instance, i still ain't seen one word on this list about the recent amazon purchases, and how they might affect the world of e-books. so i think you people here need a wake-up call. so i give it to you. you shouldn't take my posts personally though. unless you're one of the people putting up webpages about me. :+) as for the posts _today_, i'm just celebrating 4/20 with a little fun, and reminding dave (and you, and everyone else ) that whether or not i choose to post here is up to me... at least until greg bans me again... i'm also writing backchannels today, and posts to another listserve, about the issue of error-correction, so i thought i would post here too. i want to make it clear that i have _tried_ to communicate with y'all, even though there are many people here trying to get me to shut up... i have guts to say it to your face, even if you don't have guts to hear it. so, tom, now, do you want to talk about issues? or about me? and if you _do_ want to talk about me, one measly post ain't much. after all, i've got people putting up webpages about me... :+) > (I mean, I know there are people who are just born that way) i see... -bowerbird

1 0

please test pg website cache
by Marcello Perathoner 20 Apr '05

20 Apr '05

We are planning to speed up the pg website by deploying a set of squid cache servers. The first experimental squid cache is now online at: http://de.cache.gutenberg.org This site should look and behave exactly the same as the original www.gutenberg.org site. This site caches all static pages from www.gutenberg.org like the /browse/* and /etext/* pages. It does not cache dynamic generated pages like your search results. It does not cache the etext files. If you are located in Western Europe (especially Germany) you should notice some speed improvement over www.gutenberg.org. (This of course will be marginal unless a considerable number of people start using it.) This url is for testing only and will be removed once testing is complete, so don't publish this url on other web sites. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.org

1 0