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

another dose of reality
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

x.m.l. fans here should read yet another dose of harsh reality, this time surprisingly from one of your leaders, simon st. laurent: > http://www.xml.com/lpt/a/2006/03/15/next-web-xhtml2-ajax.html it's interesting how simon uses the past tense for many of your buzzwords... -bowerbird

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Dutch texts downloaded
by Andrew Sly 28 Mar '06

28 Mar '06

Taking a look at the top-100 list, http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top For the statistics of the last seven days, there seems to be more texts in Dutch than I have noticed before. It's good to see more interest in a wider range of languages... Andrew

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welcome to another week
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Mar '06

27 Mar '06

d-lib has an article on language-translation by machine: > http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march06/smith/03smith.html *** they also have an article on automatic "document recognition", the ability to have a computer ascertain the underlying structure of a document, what i've been talking about here for many years, which my detractors here have repeatedly termed as "impossible": > http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march06/choudhury/03choudhury.html in time, people will laugh at how ridiculously stupid my detractors were. -bowerbird

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36,000 and counting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 25 Mar '06

25 Mar '06

distributed proofreaders just hit 36,000 registered users. congratulations! -bowerbird

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when they act surprised
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 25 Mar '06

25 Mar '06

it was a mere 3-6 months ago that i was informing people here that their scraping of the google books would cause google to become too conservative in displaying scans. it's annoying when people tune out warnings. but it is even _more_ annoying when they act _surprised_ when the consequences show up! > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ebook-community/message/25166 um, yes, bruce, google is being overly cautious. your scan-scraper script is one main reason why. and your catalog is _another_ main reason why... of not quite the magnitude of publisher suits, granted, but big enough to be "main" reasons. so take a look in the mirror, buddy. and we cannot ignore the fact that _scrapers_ are the ones currently spooking publisher fear. their "hackers-will-just-grab the-whole-book" nightmare is tinged in reality when they see you. so you can act all surprised if you want, upon discovering that your actions have consequences. but all the people who have been reading this list know that _i_told_you_so_. and you didn't listen... -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] Sponsors
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Mar '06

22 Mar '06

scott said: > And, even if income tax is involved, > that's hardly a show stopper. > I would guess the ad revenue > would easily cover the tax rate > and an accountant. why would p.g. want to go into the ad-selling business? isn't the internet permeated enough with sales pitches? even "thank you" notes for donors smells "fishy" to me... where _precisely_ is it you expect the proceeds would go? i think michael hart should be the #1 recipient, but i suspect he'd rather go without pay to have his project remain pure... indeed, isn't that pretty much what he just said?... -bowerbird

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perhaps someone should tell david rothman
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Mar '06

22 Mar '06

um, perhaps someone should tell david rothman that if he keeps talking about me over on the d.p. forums, i'll have to go over there and start posting again to clear up the record... and i don't think you d.p. people want me to do that, do you? no, of course you don't. so maybe someone should tell him... and for the record here, regarding "the relationship" between distributed proofreaders and librarycity, i quoted extensively in my post from the _webpage_ whose u.r.l. i listed at the top of my message, so it wasn't _me_ saying all of those things... and people who compounded those quotes with their own misinterpretations should answer for their own mistakes... *** i informed you about one of my newest demo-books: > http://www.greatamericannovel.com/sgfhb/sgfhbc001.html but i forgot to say that i used scans i got from d.p. so as to show people the quality of some of the scans that d.p. does. these scans were good enough for some acceptable o.c.r., presumably, because the final e-text as posted was good, but the scans are not good enough for reading purposes... this is not a criticism -- because that wasn't their intent -- but it does have bearing on those people who try to tell us the d.p. scans can be productively used for those purposes. many (if not most) of the scans that d.p. has in storage are simply not good enough for reading, even if they're cleaned. they're good enough to do "continuous proofreading", yes, but that's about all. if we _really_ will want to put their scans in some kind of "archive" for reading by end-users, then d.p. needs to set a new standard of quality for people scanning... anyway, since my other scan-sets are of very high quality, it was good to have a demo with a lesser-quality scan-set. but in general, i would not consider this level of quality to be of above the minimal level required for public posting... (and i remind people again that this was not its objective.) *** meanwhile, here's a morsel from carlo on the d.p. forums: > Perhaps here we need a new idea. > We need to be sure that the proofreading > is OK before applying the formatting. > This means that we have to check > the proofreading quality before F1, > and in case of need repeat a P round. hey, carlo, perhaps you need an even newer idea -- forgo the formatting rounds entirely for zen markup! (alright, it's the same old idea i suggested long ago...) > Then the project goes to the F rounds > or to an off-line formatting. when i suggested offline formatting "long ago", some d.p. people wanted to tar-and-feather me, suggesting i didn't know what "distributed" meant. well, um, yes, i certainly do, but pushing a whole book worth of scans out at an array of people so they can say "nope, no formatting on that page either..." is retarded... and doing it twice is _doubly_ retarded... -bowerbird

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iRex ebook reader
by Ian Stoba 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

I came across this link today and did not remember seeing it discussed on the list: http://www.irextechnologies.com/shop/products/iliad.htm iRex (a Phillips spinoff) is preparing to launch an e-book reader. Technically it seems most similar to the Sony one, but apparently without the onerous DRM. Engadget is saying it may retail for €650, or about the same as a station wagon full of used paperbacks from my local "Friends of the Library" sale. http://www.engadget.com/2006/03/19/irex-reveals-deets-on-its-iliad- ebook-reader/ This email message may contain information that is confidential and proprietary to Babcock & Brown or a third party. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender and destroy the original and any copies of the original message. Babcock & Brown takes measures to protect the content of its communications. However, Babcock & Brown cannot guarantee that email messages will not be intercepted by third parties or that email messages will be free of errors or viruses. If you do not wish to receive any further e-mail from Babcock & Brown, please send an email to opt-out(a)babcockbrown.com.

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so much to chat about, i'll have to go outline
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Mar '06

21 Mar '06

so much to chat about, i'll have to go outline: 1. agility=ability for zen markup viewer-apps 2. sloppy thinking lumps donations with ads 3. #3 of "monday morning quarterback" is up 4. thanks for the support, brent, but stay low 5. i've just posted another demonstration-book *** 1. because the format of the z.m.l. format is so very transparent, it's easy for apps to grok it. and to manipulate it. and to slap it into output. thus the programs will become especially _agile_. 100k of script, 90k boilerplate, so you write 10k just do the specific job you want done right now, and you're debugging, with the whole wide world (if you want) to help you find and fix that mistake. the job gets done, and you're off to the next one... your xml programs, however, will be bloatware, with that heavy-markup requiring complex code that'll be a nightmare to try to modify on the fly. and thus improvements will be slow in coming... and, as usual, the race goes to the swift. the truth of the matter will be that the abundance of the _zml_ viewer-programs, not the _xml_ ones, plus their _agility_, will be the defining features that tips things _to_ me (and not _away_ as you suggest). *** 2. ok, i will explain how donations differ from ads. a donation is a _reward_ giving a stamp of affirmation signing a relationship whose past has _proven_ worth, a firm avowal of underlying root in a _gift_economy_. it says, "job well done, my friend, thank you very much." an ad-sale is an _exchange_ that sets an expectation that the relationship will _deliver_ worth in the future, and becomes a symbol of foundation based on _barter_. it says, "ok, i'd better get my money's worth out of this." to the greatest extent possible now, the world needs relations built on a cornerstone of _gift_, not _barter_. project gutenberg is one of the leading lights in that move to future that is gift-based, not barter-based... and besides, in an organization that runs so completely on volunteer labor, a little money would be a bad thing. a terrible thing. the only person who can reasonably expect _anything_ out of project gutenberg is michael, and even for him, it's only due to all the years he spent in the wilderness, not for being on a now-heavily-populated bandwagon. *** 3. issue #3 of "monday morning quarterback" is out. this one is short and sweet, focusing on just one point: ================================== each scan you make should have, in its filename, the _page-number_ of the page which it pictures. ================================== > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bpsuper/message/7 > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/mmq/mmq03.txt *** 4. while i appreciate your agreement with me, brent, there's no real need to speak. you'll only draw flames, and it's better just to let these lying dogs die peacefully. we're past the debate stage, anyway, and eating pudding. hey, i'm gonna use something like that as my slogan -- we _would_ eat our own dogfood, but we don't _make_ dogfood; we make _pudding_, and we _love_ to eat it! it's _good_! *** 5. another demo-book went up today, this one titled "the hacker manifesto", by mckenzie wark. wark is writing a new book in public, via a blog, a test of the institute for the future of the book: > http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/ the u.r.l. of my demo is: > http://www.greatamericannovel.com/ahmmw/ahmmwc001.html i think i've forgotten to remind you so far that it's a better overall reading experience if you go into full-screen mode to do your reading. (or hide all the toolbars if that's all you can do.) not only does it remove unnecessary distraction, allowing you to immerse yourself in the material, but it also means the type and scans can be bigger. (no one should complain e-books are hard to read, because they can easily make e-books _easier_ to read than paper, just by making the type _bigger_.) also, if you hadn't noticed yet, clicking the image "turns the page" to the next page. (clicking the left image on the 2-up interface "turns back to" the preceding facing-pages spread in the book.) as i said before, on a fast pipe, where scans take less than a second or two to download, you can speed through a book fairly quickly. anyway, that's 5 demo-books up now: > http://www.greatamericannovel.com/mabie/mabiep001.html > http://www.greatamericannovel.com/myant/myantc001.html > http://www.greatamericannovel.com/tolbk/tolbkp001.html > http://www.greatamericannovel.com/sgfhb/sgfhbc001.html > http://www.greatamericannovel.com/ahmmw/ahmmwc001.html pudding is served. it's the beginning of the end for heavy markup... :+) -bowerbird

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the secret garden demo
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Mar '06

20 Mar '06

i have put up my newest demo, "the secret garden": > http://www.greatamericannovel.com/sgfhb/sgfhbc001.html these demos are aimed at "continuous proofreading", but with this latest example i've also begun doing the _formatting_ expected for the purpose of pure reading. for example, the chapter-headers are now _displayed_ as headers (i.e., big and bold), and they are hotlinked back to the "hot table of contents" for easy navigation. in addition, the "table of contents" pages are hotlinked to the items listed. (these hotlinks are in addition to the ones on the specialized "table of contents" pages which are auto-generated and were always hotlinked.) i've also changed from internet-style block-paragraphs (with a blank line between paragraphs) to book-style indented paragraphs (with no blank line between 'em)... with this formatting, the auto-generated .html display is starting to look _highly_similar_ to the original pages... page-numbers are also colorized, to make 'em stand out. i've also included "chapter-jump" links, so the reader can jump from any chapter to the one before or the one after. finally, i included links on each page that allow the reader to conveniently switch from the 1-page display to 2-up... *** for years now, many people here wanted to refuse to accept my position that a plain-text format could serve as "master", so they "challenged" me to "prove it" with some "examples"... now that i am doing so, they have grown strangely silent. just as i knew they would. at any rate, i welcome any constructive criticism of my work. -bowerbird

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