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

re: [gutvol-d] first pass at a p.g. categorization scheme
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Jul '06

17 Jul '06

joey said: > I see no distinction between your model and mine, > other than what they're called. i can't really say that there _is_ a difference between them, joey, not until your model is fleshed out with a real live app. in my version, a book is represented by alias files that live in various folders. the names of those folders _could_be_ considered as "tags". but that's not how "tagging systems" are generally architected, not if i understand 'em correctly. what i'm looking to create is a simple system that people can understand implicitly, and operate easily on their machines... how that system is labeled is nothing but a semantic matter, just as long as everyone understands exactly how it works. i'll give people a "starter-set" of folders, but after that, they can develop things from there according to their own aims. if they want a category called "phat books", they tell my app to create a "phat books" folder, then they start checking off the books that they want to have represented in that folder. i see this as more disciplined and restrained than tagging, where idiosyncratic tags are more-or-less routinely applied. but, you know, i guess there's nothing to stop a person from generating many folders with just one or two books in each. at any rate, it is this _personalization_ of the categorization that i see as the main difference between folders and tags. tagging systems usually operate in a social network arena. and this is perhaps an important distinction as well, in that i see my system running as an app on a person's machine. although i think people haven't been too clear on it thus far, it seems that most of you see this operating on a webserver. as an aside, y'all might want to look at ning.com for a means by which you can easily create a social-networking web-app. now, it may well be that the best start-set of folders is created via a tagging system, perhaps one that is generated on a wiki. as i said yesterday, though, i'm more interested in doing this _by_myself_, because it seems too difficult to get any helpers, and too unwieldy to build a system that captures all their help. (it's far easier to just write the program for the end-user and leverage the work that's already done in regard to cataloging. for instance, one of the first cuts will be on the _language_, and i can determine that by simply checking that in the file.) but, speaking of a wiki, i think what you would get from that would be more amenable to my "folder" structure than tags, because each "page" on the wiki would represent a "folder". at least that's how _i_ would organize the wiki. for instance, i'd have a "beatrice potter" wikipage that listed all her e-texts. and i'd have an "esperanto" wikipage listing all those e-texts. (of course, you could also organize the wiki with each page representing an e-text, and then apply the tags on the page. but i think you would find that approach to be cumbersome. again, until i can see an actual working example on your end, it's difficult for me to comment positively or negatively on it.) but since i'm doing my thing by myself, the architecture of my catalog depends on being able to collect almost all of the data _programmatically_, via computerized analysis of the e-texts. the other source of information i will use in generating the starter-set of folders is the catalog-structure richard seltzer has set up over at samizdat.com. (and, if i could recover it, i'd add the one that david moynihan had at blackmask.com.) to sum up, i don't want to spend a lot of time generating the initial catalog structure, and i don't want to spend a lot of time assigning e-texts within that catalog structure. ok? my third concern is that people can modify to their desire. there are other concerns, too, such as being able to capture any additional information that people might contribute in the long run while modifying their catalog (the arena where tags really shine), but my 3 main concerns are the ones listed. also, a main goal of the starter-set is to give end-users a way to quickly eliminate the parts of the library they do not want to have downloaded to their machine, and give the rest of it a basic structure that can be navigated easily and intuitively, and i think the "folder" model qualifies well in that regard... so yes, you might be right that the same program that can administer the folder-structure might be an equivalent of one that can administer a tagging model. or it might not. i know what my app will look like. i need to see the other. -bowerbird

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Categorizing PG content
by Andrew Sly 17 Jul '06

17 Jul '06

I've just sent a message to the PG catalog list exploring categorizing posibilities for PG. I've put a copy of it at: http://www.victoria.tc.ca/~sly/pgcat.txt Any extensive discussions might be better placed on the gutcat list. To subscribe, see: http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi Andrew

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re: [gutvol-d] first pass at a p.g. categorization scheme
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 16 Jul '06

16 Jul '06

brad said: > For stuff that has been created in the last five minutes or even > fifteen months, tags are a fantastic means of categorizing content. perhaps we should define our terms. do you think what i'm using is "tags"? > But for anything that has survived longer than that and > should be preserved, a solid cataloging regime should be used, > supervised by folks who know what they are doing. that's an interesting postulate. at least until we ask about where this "solid cataloging regime" is, and who among us is the "folks who know what they are doing" who should be "supervising"... i dunno, i guess the rest of us, presumably. you seem to be laboring under the impression that there are a fleet of highly-trained employees waiting for your leadership, and will jump to the task as soon as they receive instructions... i'm laying out a system that _i_ can create, all by _myself_, if necessary, which can be deployed easily, using software that i will write myself, all by myself, which i am _certain_ will have some usefulness to some end-users out there, without imposing any requirements on p.g. as a whole, and thus is totally "non-exclusive", which means that you are free to do the same thing, and our two methodologies can compete on the level playing-field of real-life users... so, have at it, my friend, have at it... :+) > But I'm sorry. A Zen ML approach to cataloging? > That dog don't hunt. then i shouldn't be able to come home with any birds. right? so let us see who can actually feed the end-users and who is left standing at the chalkboard in front of an empty classroom while they go hungry, shall we? ;+) the proof will be in the usage. -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] first pass at a p.g. categorization scheme
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 15 Jul '06

15 Jul '06

brad said: > Functionally this is no different from using > Borges' fictional Chinese encyclopedia for > dividing different kinds of animals. > > first cut -- belonging to the Emperor > second cut -- embalmed > third cut -- tame > fourth cut -- sucking pigs > fifth cut -- sirens > sixth cut -- fabulous > seventh cut -- stray dogs > eigth cut -- included in the present classification > ninth cut -- frenzied > tenth cut -- innumerable > eleventh cut -- drawn with a very fine camelhair brush > twelfth cut -- et cetera > thirteenth cut -- having just broken the water pitcher > fifteenth cut -- that from a long way off look like flies ok, brad, you create that categorization scheme, and i'll continue with the work on creating mine (because i'm not looking for help from anyone), and we'll see which one appeals to users more... :+) > Your folders are just as semantically flat as tags. and your "semantically rich" system is a pipedream. :+) > You're also mixing different classes of metadata. which just goes to show how pointless "metadata" is. :+) dublin core. yeah, right... -bowerbird p.s. and if you want the first pass at collaborative filtering, just scrape amazon screens for their recommendations...

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final DVD up on the torrent tracker, with fixes
by Aaron Cannon 15 Jul '06

15 Jul '06

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello all. As you know, we announced a DVD a few days ago and said that it was ready. Well, turns out that it was missing several hundred files. This has been fixed,and you can now download the true final version from http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu:6969 . Thanks Greg for getting this done, and sorry for any inconvenience that this might have caused anyone. Sincerely Aaron Cannon -- Skype: cannona MSN/Windows Messenger: cannona(a)hotmail.com (don't send email to the hotmail address.) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (MingW32) - GPGrelay v0.959 Comment: Key available from all major key servers. iD8DBQFEuPJLI7J99hVZuJcRAqinAKCBTSpqojhT9Vq+mRM2cOGiXqvUAACg+v0X y/7To5652Hj09weFlCpwxlA= =8F32 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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first pass at a p.g. categorization scheme
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 15 Jul '06

15 Jul '06

appended is a "first pass" at a p.g. categorization scheme. unlike the "tagging" models, i'm using here a "folder" model. inside each folder will be a bunch of alias "files" that point to the e-texts proper. this allows you to put one e-text into multiple folders, by simply generating another alias file. the possibility of nesting folders is also present. as i've said, i think the cataloging tool needs to give people an ability to rule out unwanted classes of e-texts, including: first cut -- by language second cut -- human genome third cut -- audio fourth cut -- video fifth cut -- magazines sixth cut -- copyrighted seventh cut -- reference eighth cut -- religious ninth cut -- poetry tenth cut -- plays eleventh cut -- short story collections twelfth cut -- anthologies and once a person has ruled out whatever they don't want, the downloading of the other e-texts can go automatically. -bowerbird p.s. books top-100 titles selected top-100 titles in html fiction nonfiction reference dictionary encyclopedia thesaurus quotations poetry plays short story collections anthologies religious heavily illustrated beatrix potter children's beatrix potter cookbooks how-to guides magazines punch/punchinello scientific american items of interest that are not text and not html audio music human-read books text-to-speech books video copyrighted work human genome project languages other than english french german italian ...

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re: [gutvol-d] Page numbers in text e-books
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 Jul '06

14 Jul '06

al said: > I'm looking for examples of how page numbers are handled/ > formatted throughout the main portion of a text e-book > (that material between its Table of Contents and its Index). > Can someone point me to a few examples? i don't know of any _text_ examples in the p.g. library. but here's a demo of one using my zen markup language: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myant.zml this example was created for the purpose of coordinating the _scans_ for the pages with the text, so it's a little more broad that just the incorporation of the page-numbers... to see how these individual pages are presented to people for convenient viewing on the web, go to: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myantp003.html (the number in the u.r.l. indicates the page-number, so you can quickly and easily navigate to any page.) i can't say for sure that this is the _final_ version of how page-oriented markers will be formatted, but the final version won't be much different from this. for instance, here's the break between pages 11 and 12: > she talked. "But first you come down to the > kitchen with me, and have a nice warm bath > > [[9]] > {{myantp010.png}} || My Antonia || > > behind the stove. Bring your things; there's > nobody about. the page-number of a page is put underneath the text for the page, surrounded by double-brackets. (this is irrespective of where it was in the p-book.) and right underneath that is the name of the scan for the next page (in this case, p. 10), surrounded by double-curly-brackets, and the running-head for that page is also included on that same line... (the or-bars indicate left/center/right justification.) in this particular example, there is one blank line above the double-bracketed page-number and one below the double-curly-bracket scan-name. this indicates that the paragraph is continued... in the case where a _new_ paragraph starts at the top of a page, there will be _two_ blank lines above the page-number on the previous page, as well as _two_ blank lines after the scan-name. this is because each page is an entity unto itself. thus, the preceding page needs to know that its bottom line is the concluding line of a paragraph -- because such lines are not to be justified -- and the first line on the following page needs to know that it's the first line of a paragraph, so that it's indented if the user specified such indentation. you can see a case where a new paragraph starts on a page by searching for "{{myantp004.png}}". this situation of new-versus-continued paragraphs is one that even abbyy hasn't quite perfected yet, so it's not at all uncommon to find errors in this regard. and sometimes the decision isn't all that easy to make. for example, look at this scan: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myantp014.png at the page bottom, the last line, is that the end of a paragraph? now look at this one and answer that same question: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myantp040.png and this one: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myantp074.png and this one: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myantp093.png and this one: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myantp113.png and this one: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myantp123.png and this one: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myantp137.png and this one: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myantp268.png and this one: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/myant/myantp407.png (to discover the answers, just add 1 to the number in each u.r.l., which will take you to the next page, where an indentation will indicate that a new paragraph has started, which means that the last line on the previous page was the end of that paragraph. for those who are too lazy to do this, the answers are in the p.s.) and there is another variant on this, the page on which a new _chapter_ starts. search for "{{myantp009.png}}" and you'll find an example of this. whenever this occurs, you'll see there are 3 blank lines above the page-number on the preceding page, and 4 blank lines below the scan-name (and thus above the title of the chapter, as per p.g. standard). pages that start a new _section_ have 3 blank lines above the page-number on the preceding page, and 7 blank lines below the scan-name (and above the title of the section). and yes, of course, the program that presents this z.m.l. file knows how to collapse all of that page-number/scan-name information appropriately, so the person reading the e-text doesn't have to deal with all of that disorienting clutter. the reader gets nicely formatted text -- indented paragraphs if they want, section and chapter headings that are big and bold, if they want, and page-numbers corresponding to the original p-book source, if they want -- but still the task of "authoring" the e-text (doing the zen markup, if you will) is very elementary. even a fourth-grader could do it. -bowerbird p.s. for the answers to the questions posed above, scroll down... respectively, the answers are no/no/no/no/no/yes/yes/yes/yes.

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Re: [gutvol-d] Page numbers in text e-books
by Joshua Hutchinson 14 Jul '06

14 Jul '06

Here is one I posted yesterday. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/18827 The HTML and PDF (well, and the TEI master) versions have original page numbers, the plain text does not. Josh > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Al Haines (shaw)" <ajhaines(a)shaw.ca> > To: "Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion" <gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org> > Subject: [gutvol-d] Page numbers in text e-books > Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:38:46 -0700 > > > I'm looking for examples of how page numbers are handled/formatted throughout > the main portion of a text e-book (that material between its Table of Contents > and its Index). Can someone point me to a few examples? > > I've tried looking myself, but finding a text e-book with page numbers (aside > from those in its TOC and Index), in a collection of nearly 19,000 e-books, is > kind of needle-in-haystackish <g>. > > Thanks, > Al _______________________________________________ > 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] Categorizing PG content
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 Jul '06

14 Jul '06

kevin said: > Instead of embedding it into the e-book, > I think it would work better as a seperate file. if i had to choose between the two, i'd agree with you. but there's no reason we can't do it both ways. > If you embed it into the ebooks, you will need to > put it in all the versions (html, text, pdf, tei, etc..), > and keep ALL of them up-to-date. you put it in the master version (z.m.l.) and then re-propagate the auxiliary versions... > Also, if you want to make it "user" editable, > however you want to define "user", it would be > better as seperate file, so that the original files > don't constantly get flagged as modified. social tagging is an ongoing process, so yes, it doesn't make sense to put that into the file, because your files will be constantly changing. you could roll social tags into your documents on a regular basis, however, and that might be useful. (and every e-text should have a changelog anyway. until you install that, you'll never have a good handle on controlling the contents of your library. never.) but until we see a social tagging system that really works for our purposes, this planning is premature. > make it easy to join the meta-files into a single file > (cat *.meta > all.meta would be ideal) yes, of course. indeed the single-file version should be the one that is public-facing, for easy download. we can give 'em a tool that splits it on their machine. > The format could be text, or XML, or even tei. If you use an > XML based version, a text version could be easily created. at one time, i looked at the x.m.l. version of the catalog. what a bloated crufty mess! kevin, please demonstrate that there is some reality behind what you have said here by showing us "the text version that could be easily created". because in order to make any of these plans really _work_, we will need a simple list of the e-texts. i'd like to see one with about 20,000 lines, each line looking something like this: > 00011 -- alice's advertures in wonderland -- lewis carroll > Instead of just category, you could store all sorts of information > in the "meta" file. Authors name, copyright date(s), categories > (science finction, horticulture, cook-book), available formats > (text, html, tei, pdf, etc.), language(s), links to web sites, > link to author meta file, and any other information > like you would like to find in a card catalog, you'll find much of that data in the existing x.m.l. catalog. so have at it. show us what you can do with it. > Which one has the most correct information, > the text version or the html one? if such a difference comes into existence, you have a bigger problem, which is that your workflow has some bug in it that needs to be fixed. > If you wanted to search for all polish math books, > how would you write the query program so that > you would get all of them, without duplicates because > of the different formats, and without wasting a > lot of CPU cycles. Not all texts have a .txt version good question. got an answer? -bowerbird

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Page numbers in text e-books
by Al Haines (shaw) 14 Jul '06

14 Jul '06

I'm looking for examples of how page numbers are handled/formatted throughout the main portion of a text e-book (that material between its Table of Contents and its Index). Can someone point me to a few examples? I've tried looking myself, but finding a text e-book with page numbers (aside from those in its TOC and Index), in a collection of nearly 19,000 e-books, is kind of needle-in-haystackish <g>. Thanks, Al

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