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

all the validation you've been looking for, now you can die happy
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

here's a skeleton of what the validated version looks like, for people who might want to implement navigational links (like the ones that are in my alice) in the .html files which they submit to project gutenberg... > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/skeleton-401.html i would also recommend the style guide that was created over at distributed proofreaders by dcortesi, by the way... -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] what a difference a day makes
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

aaron said: > Sorry, but dropping in > a couple hooks to a text to speech engine > doesn't make a program accessible. i appreciate your input, aaron. making software that blind people can use, and use well, is a challenge for which i don't have much expertise, that's for sure... which e-book programs do you find are particularly effective for you? specifically, how is adobe acrobat? mobipocket? e-reader? ms-reader? if i can learn anything from those apps, or from anything that you can tell me, do please let me know. thank you... otherwise, i'm operating in the dark here. (sorry, that's some awful blind humor...) :+) -bowerbird

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what a difference a day makes
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

what a difference a day makes. one day it's summer, and the next day it's fall. one day my alice has 159 "validation errors", and the next day none at all... if anyone needs a copy of my .html alice that will pass the validator, request it backchannel. i can generate it with the flip of a few switches in my conversion routine, so it's really no trouble. i understand the need for project gutenberg to require "validation" to ensure _some_ kind of "minimum standard" from the files they get from a multitude of different sources. so i understand if some of you out there would care about that... but from my standpoint, the preoccupation with "passing" the "validator" that some people have is just another "small behavior modification" ritual the technoids require if you wanna be in their cult. and ya know what? i ain't interested in joining. i will continue to be far more concerned with how well the e-book works for the end-user, rather than the "political correctness" of the markup, and whether i might've "sinned" by "abusing" some tag to get a desired effect... in the meantime, it certainly is entertaining to see how worked up some people can get when you use an [i] tag instead of an [em]. :+) it throws them into a _tizzy_, it does, and when you toss in a couple [br /] tags too, they get so agitated it becomes a frenzy. it is a triumph of power-struggle ("you must do it so") over functionality. (does this code do what it should?) -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] what a difference a day makes
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Sep '05

22 Sep '05

melissa said: > And how well DOES your software work for the end user, > if he is a blind person who gets crap instead of content > when his screenreader is processing your files? first, you don't have to be blind to have use for text-to-speech. lots of people love audio-books... anyone who has a problem with text-to-speech in the .html file i uploaded should let me know... i would certainly recommend instead the .zml file itself for text-to-speech, since it is the-text-and-only-the-text. it's also worth noting that my "viewer" program has text-to-speech capability. so melissa, you can try it out yourself, and let me know how it works for you. it works just fine for me... my program can also create an audio-file, if you wanna send that to another player. (at least it can on the mac side, i haven't got that working yet for the windows side.) but i only support .aiff files at the moment, and those things are just _huge_. oh well, i guess disk-space is cheap these days... thanks for asking, melissa... -bowerbird p.s. for those people who do not have tools that handle files with non-native line-endings, i've uploaded a copy of alice.zml for the p.c. > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/alice01/alice01/alice01pc.zml and one with linefeed end-of-lines for linux: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/alice01/alice01/alice01ll.zml

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open-source text-to-html converters
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Sep '05

21 Sep '05

by the way, if anyone is interested in open-source routines that will convert plain-ascii text into .html, you can find a _bunch_ of them out in the world... a google search on "text2html" returns "about 152,000 hits", to get you started. if that overwhelms you, try "markdown". john gruber, of the "daring fireball" blog -- http://www.daringfireball.net -- invented this one, along with aaron swartz, and it has an active community of developers. some converters have even grown directly out of project gutenberg and distribute proofreaders. donovan, over at d.p., has written one. and guiguts, by thundergnat, also of d.p., includes a routine that will output .html... likewise with bill flis, and his "gut" toolset. and lest we forget, ron burkey did some very early work on a pg-to-html converter. you can still learn a lot by visiting his site: > http://www.sandroid.org/GutenMark/ finally, it is worth noting that blogs and wikis allow you to provide your input as plain-text, which is then automatically converted into .html. likewise, many listserves have web-based archives, where the plain-text e-mails are converted into .html. so you could also scour these conversion routines, and learn about the process of such a conversion. all in all, there are lots of places where you can contribute to the development of a converter that will translate plain-text into an .html file... you can also just go grab the work of the people who have gone before you, if you don't want to contribute yourself... -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] re: the happy summer days -- alice is up
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Sep '05

21 Sep '05

marcello said: > Lets mercifully overlook the fact that you have > stolen my XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX "stolen"? this material is in the public domain. > you did not take the `raw' Alice from gutenberg.org > as basis for your zml file of course not. that file doesn't have styled text. you went and created a version that identified the text in italics, but didn't share it with people. now it will be shared. but surely you don't think you're the only person in the whole world who has styled that text, do you? > but you took the TXT file which was > generated from a PGTEI master by the PGTEI converter ... you don't want to admit the point, so there's little use in restating it, but the point is that, given the dirt-simple rules of z.m.l., plain-text is fully capable of expressing the structure that is necessary to transform this text into a very-high-powered e-book. since this is a relatively straightforward book, with few complications, that's to be expected. but as time goes on, i will also share examples of books that are much more complicated too. > you still have just posted two files. > You have not demonstrated that the one file was > algorithmically derived from the other. To do this > you would have to post the source code (or at least > a working executable) of your zml converter for us to see. i won't be posting any source-code, so don't hold your breath. but if anyone has any difficulty seeing how the plain-text file can be analyzed to "algorithmically derive" its .html brother, do please feel free to ask me, and i will 'splain it to you promptly. *** now, marcello, i really gave you some calm and friendly advice when i told you that your best course of action is to be quiet... i am going to methodically show heavy markup is unnecessary to maintain the project gutenberg library of e-texts, so you can yelp like a little girl when i do it, to try your best to interrupt me, or you can sit back and learn something instead. take your pick... -bowerbird

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re: the happy summer days -- alice is up
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Sep '05

20 Sep '05

my versions of "alice in wonderland" are up now. the z.m.l. text-file is at: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/alice01/alice01/alice01.zml a representative .html file: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/alice01/alice01/alice01.html i believe the .html version is as good as any you'll find on the net. (there are a _lot_ of .html versions of alice all around cyberspace. which is why i was amazed project gutenberg doesn't have one...) but please do feel free to give feedback about what might be wrong; i assure you i can take it. (even if i don't happen to agree with it...) because i used only a bare minimum of tags (appended to this post), i expect that this .html version would be fine for generating versions for the rocketbook, ereader, mobipocket, and the other p.d.a programs. so the question now is, if we can generate an .html version, as well as all the other versions stemming from the plain-text file, why do x.m.l.? david moynihan over at blackmask.com proved that _one_person_ could keep up with all the files being posted, converting each text-file (which he had to rework slightly) into a half-dozen different formats. in other words, the _promise_ that x.m.l. will give different versions -- which is, as yet, unproven, i must remind you -- has already been _realized_ -- for 15,000+ e-texts -- using the _plain-text_ version! so take a good hard look at the plain-text version i have just posted, and then take a good hard look at the various x.m.l. versions around, and decide for yourself which version _you_ would rather maintain... -bowerbird p.s. tags used in my .html file: [p][/p] [p id="..."][/p] [a href="#..."][/a] [br /] [hr /] [img src] [i][/i] [pre][/pre] [center][/center] [ul][/ul] [h1][/h1] [h2][/h2] [h3][/h3] [h4][/h4] [small][/small] [html][/html] [head][/head] [title][/title] [style][/style] [body][/body]

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TEI and CSS
by Lee Passey 20 Sep '05

20 Sep '05

As threatened, I have started preparing a CSS file that will allow TEI files, at least PG-TEI files, to be displayed natively in a web browser. I started with html4.css, which can be found on the w3c web site, and which purports to be a style sheet reflecting the prevailing implementation of HTML styles by common web browsers. I began replacing HTML tags with their more-or-less-corresponding TEI tags, and continued by tweaking the actual styles associated with them, principally by replacing absolute sizes (e.g. 1.17) with relative sizes (e.g. 125%). By the time I got done, there was virtually nothing left of the original HTML styles. The principal work in creating the style sheet was in determining which TEI tags suggested a block presentation, which tags suggested an inline presentation, and which tags are primarily "metadataish" and which should not be displayed at all (but which are useful, if not essential, for creating catalogs). Most of the tags fell easily into one of these three categories (ignoring, for the moment, tables) but some are somewhat ambiguous; I made a judgement call with these tags, recognizing that someone else's judgment is probably equally valid. Of particular interest are quotations. TEI has two tags for quotations, one apparently for long quotations (<quote>) and one apparently for short quotations, (<q>). I opted to treat <quote> as block-level tags (similar to the HTML <blockquote>) and <q> as inline (similar to the HTML <q>). To test the CSS file, I grabbed Mr. Perathoner's version of _Alice in Wonderland_ from http://www.gutenberg.org/tei/marcello/0.3/examples/alice/, and added an 'xml-stylesheet' declaration including 'pgtei.css'. There were a few constructs in the file which needed styling, so I also created a document-specific CSS file (alice.css) and linked to that as well. While Mr. Perathoner's version of _Alice_ has a fairly complete <teiHeader> section, it did not have a title page; in my pgtei.css file I set <teiHeader> to "display:none", and added a <titlePage> to the file. I also fixed a small number of abuses of the <p> tag, and changed the tag for block-style quotations from <q> to <quote>. The resulting file can be found at http://www.passkeysoft.com/~lee/alice.xml. The resulting XML+CSS renders quite nicely in both Opera 7.4 and Firefox 1.0.4. It does _not_ render quite so well in Internet Explorer 6.0.29. Apparently IE does not support the CSS :before or :after pseudo-selectors, causing the file to lose quotation marks, nor does it correctly interpret the *[attribute~="value"] syntax, making such markup as 'rend="italic"' or 'rend="center"' inoperative. The biggest obstacle remains how to make the images appear; I haven't yet found anything in the CSS spec that will permit this. The CSS file can be found at http://www.passkeysoft.com/~lee/pgtei.css. Comments are solicited.

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re: [gutvol-d] re: the happy summer days -- alice is up
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Sep '05

20 Sep '05

marcello said: > Failed validation, 159 errors i don't give a whit about validation. as long as it works, and it works fine, in all browsers, that's what i care about... when i submit a file for posting, you can be sure it will pass the validator. but otherwise, for the time being, my conversion routines will _not_ give .html that passes the validator. and that's a conscious decision. that way, i can make sure that none of my various enemies here can use my work to further their aims. now, if someone has a report about the file not working, tell me _that_... any questions about how it works? or why i did things the way i did? feel free to ask me anything like that. but complaints about "passing a validator"? well, you might as well be passing gas... -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] TEI and CSS
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Sep '05

20 Sep '05

lee said: > I note that Bowerbird > did not comment on this problem, > and when it comes to fault-finding > one can usually rely on Bowerbird. well, we usually call it "quality control" in my neck of the woods, i kid you not. :+) but yeah, i'm usually pretty good at it. (and i can take it, as well as dish it out.) i _did_ fall down on the job yesterday, however, by inexplicably failing to notice -- in firefox -- that text was not styled... emphasized text was marked in the x.m.l., but it wasn't displayed in any distinct way. so once you get that problem fixed, and you get the images displayed ok, your cutting-edge fourth-quarter-2005 x.m.l. solution that only runs in the new (bloated) browsers will begin to approach the capabilities .html gave us back in 1997. but hey, as long as _you_ are having fun, what does it really matter, eh? :+) -bowerbird

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