October 2009 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: why the plain-text format is the most useful format for eliciting beauty (and more)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 Jan '10

09 Jan '10

jim said: > Leading and following underscores are not plain text. sure they are. indeed, the underscore even falls in the 7-bit range. so it's as plain-text as plain-text can be, and it has a long and glorious tradition of indicating emphasis. > It is an encoding to signal to the reader that > something is missing -- namely italics. actually, i think of it as an indicator to the "rendering agent" -- a.k.a. the viewer-program -- that the surrounded text is to be displayed with emphasis. (which generally means italics.) > One could have just as well -- or as badly -- used > [i]and[/i] as the signals to indicate to the reader > that italics is missing. i used square-brackets rather than angle-brackets in the quote, but i could have used angle-brackets just like you did, jim... and yes, sir, any of those will work. indeed, .html uses the angle-brackets, and many bulletin-board systems use the square-brackets. and this is fine, because they use those brackets as _markup_, with no intention that the brackets will actually be _seen_ by any human beings. and likewise, i don't intend my underscores to be seen by human beings. just like .html, or forum markup, i expect that a viewer-app will intercede and display the emphasis just as i had intended. however -- and this is a very big _however_ -- in the case that those underscores _are_ being seen by actual human beings, it's not really all that much of a problem, because underscores are relatively non-intrusive, and they seem to provide emphasis, which is why they developed -- spontaneously -- for that purpose. the brackets, on the other hand, are terribly intrusive, and only obliterate the text to be emphasized, rather than emphasize it. likewise, the other bracket commands all serve as _obstacles_ to a human being who happens to be reading the text, and even to those human beings who have to work with the text in other capacities, such as editing it. z.m.l., on the other hand, is zen. that's why light-markup systems are taking over the world now. > I don't doubt that eventually the reader can get used to > what they're missing -- but why should they have to? they shouldn't. that's why i have programmed the viewer-apps that ensure that people don't have to read z.m.l. in its raw form. > If it were really that hard to much more closely follow > author's intent then I could understand the trade-offs. > But with today's technology it really wouldn't be hard > to do much better. i agree. we can do much better than what we have been handed. -bowerbird

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Re: is this the beginning of the end?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 15 Nov '09

15 Nov '09

don said: > It's pretty hollow. not surprising. even the article put it all in the future tense. and h.p. talked about "potential", while amazon merely confirmed. > > This book has not yet been processed, > > but if you preorder we’ll process it faster > > and notify you when it’s ready. > Right. it makes perfect sense to me. how else would you prioritize which books should be done first? as for skepticism on the time-frame, how much time do you think it'll take 'em to prep a book? i would guess that it's a matter of mere minutes. (seconds for the scripts to run, and then a minute or two for a human to execute the quality-control.) *** jim said: > bookprep thanks for running that down, jim. good info. *** gardner said: > What's your point? "what's my point?" well, it's pretty obvious, i would think, isn't it? if h.p. is correcting the o.c.r., that's a big deal. but if they're just printing the scansets, it's not. so there is an informational asymmetry at work. > If there are pages missing or illegible sections, > then it might be better to skip that volume, > versus go ahead selling it to folks who are > likely to complain or return it. ok, i see what you meant when you said "proofing"; i consider checks like that to be "quality control"... those problems were common in the first few years of the google scanning, but are fairly rare nowadays. > But if you're lazy, you'd skip that step and let the > customer inform you if a given volume is unusable. well, we differ on terminology again, because i wouldn't call that "lazy", as it's more like a business decision, but i'd think a quick screening for those types of problems would be cost-effective, as opposed to making good on any complaints that your customers would have later on. shipping is gonna be one of your biggest expenses, and shipping a book twice, to make-good, will be expensive... (not to mention a costly infrastructure to field complaints.) > If you get a lot of complaints about a specific volume, > you can then go and figure out what exactly is wrong > maybe find a fill-in source or what have you. the "fill-in" source is likely right there in the umichigan stacks. > But why take on that work up front? again, google and michigan have each separately worked on correcting these problems, so i'd think very few remain. and a quick check by h.p. can eliminate any glitches that do. i'd guess most of google scanning nowadays is clean-up work. > People will pay the same whether you invest up front or not. but people will only pay once for a book. so if h.p. has to print and ship _two_ books to make that customer happy, they've lost money on that sale. that's why they'd "invest", up-front, to ensure they won't have to face that prospect. at least that's _my_ take on your particular point here... i guess real life will show us whether you're right or i am. -bowerbird

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Re: is this the beginning of the end?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 26 Oct '09

26 Oct '09

paul said: > Could it be that a lot of PG's books are rarely read, > and the traffic seen for these books is due to people > downloading the whole collection simply to have it? could be. but i doubt there are many such people. and is there any particular reason why you'd want to doubt that there is actually an audience for a book? if the only people who download unpopular books are the ones who are downloading all books, then you should have a number of unpopular books that have the exact same download-count all the time... so if you need to test your hypothesis, that's a way. p.g. books are different from google books, in that someone has spent a good deal of time on each one, meaning that there has to be some intrinsic interest. -bowerbird

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Re: is this the beginning of the end?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

gardner said: > I think we differ in our assumptions about the economics. i agree. wholeheartedly. > My thinking is that having a huge back-catalogue of titles > is mostly a marketing gimmick. um, i'm not sure how that "gimmick" is supposed to work. having more titles in your catalog isn't going to make me any more (or less) likely to order a specific book from you. if i want a particular book, i'll order it. if i don't, i won't. if i don't want it, i'm not sure why your having a million -- or two million, or twenty million -- other titles would make me decide to change my mind and suddenly want it. > I anticipate that perhaps 1% of the available titles > would ever get ordered by anyone. i anticipate that 50% of the titles will be ordered in any year. but the vast majority of those might only be ordered _once_. and i'd assume that, over the course of 5 years, every title will end up being ordered -- a couple of times, at the very least... > That means that 99% would not have to have any investment > put into them at all in order to fill a slot in the back-catalogue. i agree, that -- until a specific book is ordered -- it won't be fixed. or maybe i don't. it would be nice to think that umichigan itself is thumbing through these scansets to identify any problem children. (and we could certainly hope that students will be using the scans, and bringing glitches to the attention of people who can fix them.) > In my vision, time spent on doing *anything* non-mechanical > to a book is, on average, 99% wasted. i guess it depends on what you would consider "non-mechanical". most of the scripts to handle the scans -- deskewing, centering, noise-removal -- probably don't need any human attention at all. but every single one of these scansets has garbage scans in them, such as excess blank-pages in the beginning and color-correction scans at the end, not to mention library-style check-in pages, etc. so it will absolutely be necessary to have a human thumb through all of the pages, to eliminate these unnecessary pages and also to ensure that odd-numbered pages always occur on the recto and even-numbered pages always occur on the verso, and that there are no missing pages or page-spreads, and no duplicated pages. this quality-control pass only needs to be done _once_ on a book, but it would be stupid to the point of ridiculous to go without it... (and as it's only a minute or two of work, it's economically feasible.) there might be some problems which would evade quality-control, such as a page with a few characters cut off at the end of each line, but for the most part, i'd think a simple pass would catch most stuff. if you look at any particular scanset, you should be able to see immediately why such a quality-control pass would be necessary. > Better to let the market help identify the 1% of valuable titles > and concentrate your scarce fixup attentions on those. any book for which an order has been received is "a valuable title". > Assuming that even without manual review 99% of your titles > are actually fine as far as scan quality and completeness goes none -- 0% -- of the scansets are "actually fine" right out of the box. > you are actually quite likely to get away with a 1 part in 10,000 > return rate. And customers might not actually *read* the > whole book either. If 50% wind up on shelves unread, or > have problems that are annoying, but that don't result in returns, > the return rate drops to 1 in 20,000. i don't think amazon thinks of quality-control issues the way you do. > And if, in the end, they have to ship two copies to a customer, > they only have to do *that* once. After a return they can go > and fix up that exact book, and never have to double-ship > that one again. i think you underestimate their commitment to a quality product... -bowerbird

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Current submissions to PG all go through the DP?
by christine 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

> > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion <gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org> > Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:43:08 -0700 > Subject: [gutvol-d] Re: Current submissions to PG all go through the DP? > On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 09:09:41PM +0200, christine wrote: > > If such demands were to arrived at PG, what would PG do ? > > If you mean, what happens when fixes are reported to the errata > email address below: the answer is, that the problems are dealt > with. > > No, I meant what would happen if PG were to receive a mail from a reader saying something like "the ebook #xxxxxx is of bad quality, could you please do something about that". Would PG just say "sorry, nothing we can do", or post in a forum of a DP asking for that book to be redone ? or .... ? > As for Errata, there have been a call made last year for volunteers, I did > > volunteered, were then told I would receive a mail about how to help ... > I > > am still waiting. > > > > Christine (aka Lostpaces) > > Did you respond to me? Or somewhere else? Apologies if you > sent me a note, and didn't get a follow-up. > > There is still work to be done... Greg > > No, it was a "call" from Charles, to which I responded, and I received an answer from him telling me I would receive a mail from someone else. My offer is still there, if you need help with Errata, you now know where to find some. Christine

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Re: Is this the beginning of the end?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 Oct '09

23 Oct '09

i said: > go try reading my post again, and see if you get it that time. i've been informed the point was missed a second time, so i'm happy to explain it, for anyone else who missed it. if -- and as i've made clear, i don't know if it's the case, and i actually _doubt_ it, but _if_ -- h.p. will "clean up" the o.c.r. and then print the books from that clean-up, then that would likely mean "the beginning of the end" of the way we typically now do digitizations of these books. currently, people o.c.r. the scanset; the o.c.r. results are typically fairly bad, and time is spent on cleaning them... however, if h.p. cleaned the o.c.r. first, and then printed out the paperbacks -- on clean pages, with digital type -- the o.c.r. from such paperbacks would be extremely clean. so, if you bought such a paperback, and did a scan of it, the o.c.r. that you got from it would be extremely clean... you would find that "cleaning" that already-very-clean o.c.r. would go very quickly, especially compared to the old way... so it would be "the beginning of the end" of that old way. now, as most people (including me) have said, it's probably unlikely that h.p. will take on the work of correcting the o.c.r.; it'd be much easier for them to just clean and print the scans. (and, since the end-target is paper anyway, that would be ok.) so we are probably _not_ seeing "the beginning of the end" of the "old" way of doing digitizations -- from the scansets. what i was saying had absolutely nothing to do with e-books versus printed books, or the speed of delivery of p-books, or the number of books available from amazon versus p.g., or anything else other than exactly what i have explained here. (although i'm glad whenever anyone brings up the vital issue of the digital divide, even if it is completely off-topic, since we spend too little time thinking about that important topic.) if anyone has any more questions about what i'm saying here, i would be happy to answer them. -bowerbird

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Re: Current submissions to PG all go through the DP?
by christine 22 Oct '09

22 Oct '09

If such demands were to arrived at PG, what would PG do ? As for Errata, there have been a call made last year for volunteers, I did volunteered, were then told I would receive a mail about how to help ... I am still waiting. Christine (aka Lostpaces) > >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> From: "Al Haines \(shaw\)" <ajhaines(a)shaw.ca> >> > > So far as I know, DP itself has no mechanism for refurbishing its old >> texts. >> >> However, error reports, on any existing PG text, can be sent to >> errata_AT_pglaf.org. (change _AT_ to @). >> >> A report can be as simple as extracting a copy of the problem line and >> submitting it and the proprosed corrected line, up to submitting a fully >> corrected version of the existing etext. In the latter case, the PG header >> and footer should not be tampered with, nor should the file be reformatted, >> so that the Errata team can more easily compare it to the existing text. All >> error reports should mention the book's author, title, and etext number. >> >> For Mr. McCunney's information, not all submissions to PG arrive via DP. >> Most do, but there are a few independent contributors to PG. >> >> Al Haines >> Project Gutenberg >> >> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ricardo F Diogo" < >> ricardofdiogo(a)gmail.com> >> >> DMcCunney at Mobileread has stated that «Current submissions to PG >> all go through the DP proofing process, but there seems no way to get >> existing PG texts dating from before DP resubmitted for cleanup and >> quality control.» >> >> Is this any way true? When did that happen? >> >> Ricardo F. Diogo >> >> > >

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for the love of god
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Oct '09

22 Oct '09

for the love of god, will somebody -- anybody! -- please pull piggy off his "confidence in page" project over at distributed proofreaders... please! anyone! i sincerely believe that piggy is well intentioned... but... the whole thing has been a disaster all the way through. and now he's proposing an even bigger waste of time: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=30951&start=450 please have the good sense to say "no" to this stupidity. (and for those of you out there who don't know the issue, but take offense at my label of "stupidity", before you bitch, go and actually read the "research" that has been done and then come back and _explain_ it to the best of your ability. because i understand statistics -- took it in grad school -- and i can assure you that these statistics are entirely bogus.) *** as i have said, many times now, time after time after time, there is an _excellent_ way to determine "confidence" that it is not worthwhile to spend more time looking for errors on a page, and that's when 2 people have checked the page and found no errors. or if you wanna be even more certain, draw the cutoff line when _3_ people fail to find any errors... and the easiest way to put in place a "roundless" d.p. system is to simply set the number of rounds to a very high number (such as 11), and then automatically mark a page as "done" in a particular round if it matches exactly the last 2 rounds. (or, to be stricter, the last _3_ rounds.) -bowerbird

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Re: Is this the beginning of the end?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Oct '09

22 Oct '09

jay said: > No. > Amazon will charge money, and then there is > mail delivery time of a few days. > Except when you buy from another country, then delivery is weeks. > Gutenberg is free, and delivery is immediate -- worldwide. > Let's see . . . Immediate delivery verses days or a week. > Hmm, hard choice. > . . . free verses costly. Hmm, another hard choice. > Not to flagellate the deceased equine here, but > much of the world can't afford Amazon; > No matter how precious books are. > If you are a seamstress in India, and > you make your business work on 50 Rupees a day, > you'll never buy a book. > But you might go to an internet cafe, rent their computer, > and download several books for free. Especially if they > help you with your business. > How much is 50 Rupees? Look it up. > Gutenberg and Amazon/HP are two completely different services. > Apples and Oranges. wow, jay, you managed to miss the point entirely. entirely. go try reading my post again, and see if you get it that time. -bowerbird

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Re: Is this the beginning of the end?
by Christa & Jay Toser 22 Oct '09

22 Oct '09

From Bowerbird: "then, relevant to the point here on this listserve, is this observation: if hp cleans up all the scansets, and prints them nicely to an inexpensive paperback, why should anyone here bother doing a digitization? instead, just buy the paperback . . ." No. Amazon will charge money, and then there is mail delivery time of a few days. Except when you buy from another country, then delivery is weeks. Gutenberg is free, and delivery is immediate -- worldwide. Let's see . . . Immediate delivery verses days or a week. Hmm, hard choice. . . . free verses costly. Hmm, another hard choice. Not to flagellate the deceased equine here, but much of the world can't afford Amazon; No matter how precious books are. If you are a seamstress in India, and you make your business work on 50 Rupees a day, you'll never buy a book. But you might go to an internet cafe, rent their computer, and download several books for free. Especially if they help you with your business. How much is 50 Rupees? Look it up. Gutenberg and Amazon/HP are two completely different services. Apples and Oranges. Jay Toser

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