January 2006 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '06

31 Jan '06

a concrete example might help... here's the table of contents from "free culture" by lawrence lessig, in zen markup language format, generated automatically from a simple straightforward analysis in about one-half of a second... even though there are 3 levels of headers, they are very clear, indicated by varying indentation (which represents, at the headers themselves, a varying number of preceding blank lines, of course.) text-structures even more complex than the one shown in this outline can be communicated easily by the number of preceding blank lines -- _if_ the rule is followed _consistently_ -- and grokked by routines consisting of just a few lines of dirt-simple code... by the way, just to say something "obvious" that lee probably had not considered before, one of the many ways my routines determine the headers in a digitized text is to look for a "table of contents" section -- usually toward the start of the file, and usually marked with "contents" or "table of contents" as a header -- and then examine that section quite carefully. ends up it does a very good job of telling you what specific phrases "might be" header-lines. and if you're cleaning up the o.c.r. of a p-book, for instance, there are usually _page-numbers_ there too, telling what _page_ each header is on. pretty handy, eh? indeed, in the .pdf of this book, which you can download at http://www.lessig.org, you will see that the page-numbers _are_ there, and chapter 11, chimera, for instance, starts on page 177. like i said, if you know what a header is likely to be, and on what page it is located, it's fairly easy to find. indeed, people have been using the "table of contents" for precisely that reason for several hundred years now. this is just one of the reasons why it ain't that hard to write routines to ascertain the headers in a book. like i said, it sounds very obvious when you hear it. but have you ever heard anyone say it here before? -bowerbird --------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS Free Culture Table of Contents License Publisher Page Library of Congress Cataloging Dedication Preface Introduction 'Piracy' Chapter 1: Creators Chapter 2: "Mere Copyists" Chapter 3: Catalogs Chapter 4: "Pirates" Film Recorded Music Radio Cable TV Chapter 5: "Piracy" Piracy I Piracy II 'Property' Chapter 6: Founders Chapter 7: Recorders Chapter 8: Transformers Chapter 9: Collectors Chapter 10: "Property" Why Hollywood Is Right Beginnings Law: Duration Law: Scope Law and Architecture: Reach Architecture and Law: Force Market: Concentration Together Puzzles Chapter 11: Chimera Chapter 12: Harms Constraining Creators Constraining Innovators Corrupting Citizens Balances Chapter 13: Eldred I Chapter 14: Eldred II Conclusion Afterword Us, Now Rebuilding Freedoms Previously Presumed: Examples Rebuilding Free Culture: One Idea Them, Soon More Formalities Shorter Terms Free Use Vs. Fair Use Liberate the Music -- Again Fire Lots of Lawyers Footnotes Hyperlinks Acknowledgments Index About the Author Jacket Typos Corrected Permissions The Dead-Tree Hardback Version of this Work zero markup language -- z.m.l. -- the future of electronic-books --------------------------------------------- p.s. extra points for everyone who realized that -- since the lines in the table of contents section are not to be rewrapped -- that is the reason that all are prefaced with at least one leading space...

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re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '06

31 Jan '06

lee said: > I believe that at some point in the future computers will be > capable of resolving all the ambiguities inherent in PG e-texts, > but that day is not yet here, and until then the software is > going to require some human help. well, my computer routines can already resolve _most_ ambiguities, as i pointed out in the blog entry. i've even offered to do this for p.g., providing p.g. makes a commitment to stay consistent in the future... but there seemed to me no recognition for the need for consistency, let alone any desire to make a commitment to attain it... *** michael said: > Can't it just lay there, out of the process, and just let me read? sure, it could. but sometimes -- in the course of reading, and even outside of it -- there are things you want to know, or find out, or have the computer do for you, or figure out for you. take my headings example, for instance. it's nice if the computer can figure out the headings for you, because then it can produce a nice "table of contents" menu, which you can look at to get a quick overview on the e-text, or use to jump directly to the "dance of the quadrille" chapter (even if you hadn't yet known that there was such a chapter)... or, as lee has remarked, if the program knows the headers, it can do nice things like start a chapter on a new screen, and make the header big and bold. these nice touches are... nice. or take my text-wrapping example, as yet another instance. sometimes you want to reflow the text to a narrow window. if the non-rewrap lines have been clearly indicated -- e.g., with the leading space that i suggested -- then the computer can do the rewrap for you quickly and easily, with no errors... (and this goes beyond "a nice touch" into basic functionality.) consistency also goes a _long_ way in making _conversions_. surely you must realize that many of your e-texts are finding their highest popularity as a result of some sort of conversion, whether over at blackmask.com or manytexts.com or wherever. i think it behooves you to groom your texts for such conversions, whether you do those conversions or someone else does them... (heck, the time that has been spent doing .html conversions alone could have been reduced _significantly_ by improving consistency and then depending upon automatic .html generation by computer. and then all of the .html versions would have been consistent too!) unless you have a _commitment_ to removing the inconsistencies, though, you won't understand the depth of the processes required. for instance, staying with the rewrap example, you wouldn't realize that if you're creating a book of poetry, where _none_ of the lines should be rewrapped, you should preface _all_ lines with a space. other examples abound. if footnotes are marked consistently, the computer can be programmed to treat them appropriately. a "table of illustrations" can become a more-useful hotlinked list, or the launching point for a slideshow of all the book's pictures... basically, it means thinking in terms of the _library_, not the _book_. consistency is the foundation that can allow _all_kinds_ of neat new features, limited only by the imaginations of programmers. the reason you haven't seen this exhibited already is because programmers have been flustered by massive inconsistencies. even your own p.g. people can't produce the best possible tools to help them do their jobs because of all the parsing difficulties. *** so yeah, the computer could just lay there. but why not put it to work? -bowerbird

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"Lady Chatterly's Lover" public domain in the U.S.?
by Jon Noring 31 Jan '06

31 Jan '06

Everyone, Even though D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterly's Lover" was published in 1928, some of the publishing details in the following web site indicate the possibility it may be public domain in the U.S.: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/rananim/lawrence/lcl.html Anyone have more knowledge on the U.S. public domain status of this work? Jon

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blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 28 Jan '06

28 Jan '06

as promised, i'm morphing myself to my blah blah blog. don't want to talk about you behind your back, though... > http://journals.aol.com/bowerbird/bowerbirdseyeview -bowerbird

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Re: Ebook reading devices
by Juhana Sadeharju 26 Jan '06

26 Jan '06

Most important property of such a reader would be that there is no need to install any upload-software to the computer. Only then I could go to public library, browse and download free ebooks to the reader. If the device has the USB cable, then the device should be seen in the computer as an usb/portable disk. The books saved to this usb/portable disk then must also be readable in the reader. Note, some mp3 players are seen as a usb/portable disk, but the music files saved to the disk are not playable. Some proprietary formats may have been reverse engineered but that is illegal in USA and Europe. In Europe, one is not even allowed to tell what unofficial software could be used to convert the text to the proprietary format. And reverse engineering would not help at all, because one cannot install anything in public libraries. Does eBookWise require a software installation? Sony devices are known for requiring a software installation. Note, the requirement for the software installation hits harder the digital camera. Most popular cameras require the software installation, and therefore one is not able, e.g., to transfer the photos to safe, to home, via a public library, an internet cafe, or a hotel. Think about travelling and a possibility that your camera gets stolen or otherwise damaged, or that you're short of the memory cards. Juhana -- http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-graphics-dev for developers of open source graphics software

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re: [gutvol-d] Language free version of guiguts?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Jan '06

22 Jan '06

anyway, it's a good thing command-line programs are back "in" these days... thus gutcheck was able to just "skip over" that messy graphical-user-interface period, thank heaven... -bowerbird p.s. and no, i am _not_ suggesting that it was anyone's _individual_ responsibility or failure.

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Re: [gutvol-d] Ebook reading devices
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 21 Jan '06

21 Jan '06

In a message dated 1/12/2006 12:15:48 P.M. Mountain Standard Time, robsuth(a)robsuth.plus.com writes: enquiries as far as I could, but found no product among the DVD portable readers that would deal with text, nor was any of the manufacturers interested in producing one. Apart from the French reader Cybook (which I think is too expensive for the task and market although otherwise for the most part ideal) there seems still to be no special ebook reading device available in UK or the EU generally: laptops are still too big and heavy, and PDAs still have far too small a screen My enquiries confirmed my strong impression that there are protectionist interests holding this back, presumably in the interests of proprietary issues of ebooks. I suggest you go to eBookWise and FictionWise. Although they do not deal with DVD portable readers, they are seeking input into what people need and want, and would be very glad to hear from you. My husband, two of my daughters, several of my friends, and I all use the eBookWise reader which you can find for sale for about $100 at eBookWise.com. By using extra memory cards, you can build immense libraries, or you can use only the memory built into the device and build an immense library on your computer, realizing that you'll have to download often. I have six memory cards and would like to have about sixty more, but they aren't free. Anne Wingate

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Re: [gutvol-d] Ebook reading devices
by Gutenberg9443＠aol.com 21 Jan '06

21 Jan '06

In a message dated 1/13/2006 10:07:27 P.M. Mountain Standard Time, imaclean(a)gmail.com writes: It directly supports PDF, XHTML and Text (Unicode?) formats. An ebook that will support PDF is a good thing, but I wouldn't want it if it will support ONLY these formats.

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Re: [gutvol-d] Language free version of guiguts?
by Joshua Hutchinson 19 Jan '06

19 Jan '06

> > I do not do windoze programming. > You are essentially saying that a non programmer can work for PG. :-( > Did you really mean that? > > You have agreed with me above that gutcheck is the standard which must be > passed to get. I am just trying to find a version of that standard which > will run on my machine, with the text > Well, I'll try to be nice even though you are being very confrontational... No one but you ever said any of the above. 1 - GutCheck is *not* required. Jim, who is probably the end-all on the subject since he wrote the thing, flat out said it is not required. 2 - GuiGuts and GutCheck are *not* the same thing. GuiGuts is a text editor written in PERL. GutCheck is a text checker written in C. You can run GutCheck from GuiGuts (among many, many other things). 3 - Asking for GuiGuts support here is a waste of time. The developer of GuiGuts isn't here, he is on the DP forums. Which you've flat out refused to go to. Fine, just don't expect help for a Dell laptop when you call HP tech support, either. 4 - No one said you had to work/create tools for PG. But if you want a tool for something that doesn't currently exist, you either create it yourself or do without (or wait until someone else needs it and decides to do the work you don't want to do). Personally, I've done all three over the years. 5 - *AND MOST IMPORTANT!* GutCheck is not a test that must be passed. It is better thought of as a checker that will flag things that are wrong more often than right. You should run it, because it *will* help you find mistakes that exist in your text. You, as an intelligent, thinking human being, must check each item and verify whether it is correct. Sometimes it is right. Sometimes it is wrong. If the system was 100% infalliable, we wouldn't need humans anywhere in the process. Josh

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re: [gutvol-d] Language free version of guiguts?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Jan '06

19 Jan '06

seems like you should welcome new tools... anyway, when are scans going to go online? until the general public can compare e-texts to the page-scans, you simply aren't using the best "checker" at your disposal -- all of their eyeballs. "debugging is parallelizable" (a.k.a. distributable), but hey, _only_ if you actually _set_it_up_ that way... of course, if you _want_ to do all the checking yourself... -bowerbird

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