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

Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm?
by Jon Richfield 21 Jun '09

21 Jun '09

First, thanks to all who responded in one way or another. You know who you are (some of the time, I hope!) It seems that Kindle does do most of what I want in ways that I could find usable. My money and I are a bit busy at the moment, so I shall not order one this moment, but my interest is growing, Amazon and rivals are hyperventilating increasingly as I dither over my choice. How long? How long??? You know, I am a bit puzzled about one thing (among many others of course). For most part epaper seems to be the least power hungry choice (not that I am a tree hugger; I am of course, anyway, but in this connection less power means longer battery life etc.) but there is another option that, though it is not power-independent, should get by on very little. I know it exists, but much as epaper did for a couple of decades, it seems to be languishing, or at least limited to special purposes. What I am thinking of is some kinds of heads-up displays that can be worn like glasses, seeing the "screen" through some sort of lens system. I should think them to be perfect for reading etc, and afaik they are mainly LCD based, and accordingly power-conservative. They should be usable hands-off whether walking, driving, lying down, or in the dark. Potentially a 640X 480 or even 800X600 should be cheap. With a modest memory and processor modules they should be nearly everything the Kindles are, or more so. Or am I too optimistic? What am I missing? BB, how about detumescing my optimism? Walter and Michael made good points about screen sizes and changing standards, but the reason for my interest is that it is all very well to be satisfied with tiny screens, but it does bad things to one's capacity for effortless, comfortable, non-injurious, reading for hours and hours. Alex made a good pitch, but I think that between simple cell-phone costs and few-inch screens, as Jim pointed out, Kindle currently sounds like the best bet, though his HTC sounds nice for those who need it. BB made some good points as usual, but some rather unconvincing ones also as usual. Eg: " but don't focus on _books_ per se, because the number of book-readers in the population is very small. (and it's getting even smaller every day.) book-readers won't drive this revolution.". See, BB, I do indeed focus on book reading, not because I am selling, but because I read. And reading I may buy. Only if I change my market do I change my focus. I don't much care about the other things the gadgets can do because I don't do them much. That is why my cell phone is only marginally younger than my microscope. It does what I want of a phone, which is damned little. If it offered reading for me as well without a fancy lens attachment, it would be fatiguing, which is where the charm of epaper or the heads-up display would lie. Does anyone know why such heads ups are not common yet? Note that they need not be dedicated machines, any more than PCs are. You say: " i always said this idea was ridiculous, because a reader has to have a screen and a chip and an operating system, and those are the most expensive parts of any computer, so if you're going to pay for those for a dedicated reader, you might as well get a full-fledged computer instead..." But you see BB, we do not all have your thews and sinews and built-in power sockets. We cannot sit and read in the train or in bed or on a hilltop and read a comfortably sized screen or image weighing a couple of kilos for hours on end. So far epaper has it all its own way. I take your point about its price ans a specialised device, but why should it be specialised? It looks to me like a perfectly usable screen for many purposes. Maybe more than LCD...? Who knows, I might yet still make up my mind before i can afford a kindle... Cheers all, Jon

6 11

Re: macworld review of eucalyptus
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 May '09

27 May '09

i said: > ok, who can tell me why this review is important? nobody wants to bite, eh? that's ok, i understand... it's this phrase: > What sets the app apart from most of its competition > is how it takes the cold, forbidding, and ugly type so > typical of public-domain e-books and makes it gorgeous. there you go, folks. eucalyptus takes your "cold, forbidding, and ugly type" and turns it into something that is "gorgeous". what the reviewer doesn't say, because he probably doesn't recognize the significance of it, is that eucalyptus does this transformational process without the aid of any _markup_... that's because the programmer has realized the zen of the "non-markup" inside project gutenberg's plain-text format. of course, you guys all understand this very well, because i have patiently explained it to you over and over for years. -bowerbird ************** We found the real ‘Hotel California’ and the ‘Seinfeld’ diner. What will you find? Explore WhereItsAt.com. (http://www.whereitsat.com/?ncid=emlwenew00000004)

1 0

macworld review of eucalyptus
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 May '09

27 May '09

ok, who can tell me why this review is important? > http://www.macworld.com/article/140796/2009/05/eucalyptus.html?lsrc=rss_main -bowerbird ************** We found the real ‘Hotel California’ and the ‘Seinfeld’ diner. What will you find? Explore WhereItsAt.com. (http://www.whereitsat.com/?ncid=emlwenew00000004)

1 0

Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 26 May '09

26 May '09

jim said: > what is going wrong with it or with its installation guiguts installation requires a mac user to drop into "terminal" -- the linux command mode -- where a number of dependencies need to be taken care of. this is not something that your "typical" mac user does too often, if at all, so they aren't experienced with it. and because some of the dependencies have dependencies as well, it can get thorny. and since debugging linux thorniness can be thoroughly convoluted, it's very easy for everyone -- helper and helpee -- to get frustrated... to get an idea about all of this, just visit the wiki pages on installation: > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install/Windows > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install/Mac > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install/Linux the problem is largely circumvented for windows users, since a binary is offered to them that shortcircuits a lot of the work. (although they still have to install perl, and several "helpers", e.g., aspell, aspell dictionaries, a graphics viewer, and jeebies.) as a result, d.p. consistently finds itself short on "post-processors" -- the stage where guiguts is used -- and not just because of the trouble with guiguts (which is, once you get it going, not too bad), but rather because the whole workflow is such a patchwork of crap, and the post-processor is the person who has to clean up all of that. -bowerbird ************** We found the real ‘Hotel California’ and the ‘Seinfeld’ diner. What will you find? Explore WhereItsAt.com. (http://www.whereitsat.com/?ncid=emlwenew00000004)

1 0

Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 May '09

23 May '09

jim said: > If it is a tool that takes less than a day on my end to reverse-engineer > what is going wrong with it or with its installation then I’m interested. well, jim, as i said, this is just a _skeleton_. none of the routines have been written yet. (after all, i only just made the offer today.) i mounted this merely to show that i am operating in good faith, and ready to go, just as soon as i get those 18 statements. i'll consider your download to be the first. current status: 1 requests. -bowerbird p.s. even in this skeletal form, however, the app does indicate how the user can traverse through the pages of the book, with the text and scan for each in sync... just click the arrow-buttons at the top, or use the cursor-keys on the keyboard. it also shows how the app will download each of the scans from a remote source as it becomes needed to perform the job. ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlc…)

1 0

Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 May '09

23 May '09

nice try, christine. but i won't waste a substantial amount of time programming a tool that nobody is gonna use. what would be the point? current status: 0 requests. -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlc…)

2 1

Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 May '09

22 May '09

got the skeleton done on my guiguts clone, which i've named "gutsgooey" to be clear... for the p.c.: > http://z-m-l.com/gutsgooey/gutsgooey.exe for linux: > http://z-m-l.com/gutsgooey/gutsgooey.x86 for mac o.s.x.: > http://z-m-l.com/gutsgooey/gutsgooey.zip put it in its own folder, because it will download the images associated with the embedded text... (it has its own scan-image-viewer built-in, so you don't have to fiddle with an external viewer, like guiguts requires you to do. more convenient, since it automatically synchs the text and image.) type a number into the top box and press return to jump automatically to the text for that page... no testing done on it yet, but it runs on my mac... current status: 0 requests. installation instructions: 1. download. 2. decompress (mac only). 3. double-click. -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlc…)

1 0

Re: remember eucalyptus?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 May '09

22 May '09

it ends up that having the app rejected (stupidly) by apple is probably the best thing that could've happened to eucalyptus. twitter is atwitter, with tweets coming about one per minute... and the news is on a number of blogs, including boing boing. that's a ton of publicity you couldn't buy... :+) the app hasn't even been released yet, and people already love it. good thing lexcycle sold out while stanza still had the spotlight... -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlc…)

1 0

15,000, and yet another offer to help
by christine travers 22 May '09

22 May '09

Don't talk about it, don't wait for post-processors to ask for it. If you know what is needed, write it, test it, share it on sourceforge near guiguts and wait for the feedback. If the tool is good, it will find takers, if it isn't, they will stick to their old method. Christine (aka Lostpaces)

1 0

15,000, and yet another offer to help
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 May '09

22 May '09

d.p. hit 15,000 e-texts a while back when i wasn't paying much attention... congratulations to the volunteers who've worked so hard on this vital task! i and many others appreciate deeply the time and energy you've contributed. i recently hit a milestone myself. for the first time ever, i have now installed guiguts on my mac. (after having first upgraded from tiger to leopard.) yay! and boy, what a hassle it was. (not to mention all the earlier failed attempts.) these kinds of installation difficulties are _not_ what us mac users are used to. of course, this crap isn't unique to guiguts in any way, shape, or form. i chuckle at _all_ of the open-source programmers who think that just because a linux program _can_ be inflicted on a mac, they can call it "mac compatible"... maybe it will _run_. but we mac users expect a much higher standard than that. we expect a program to be _friendly_ to us, very friendly, not outright _hostile_. and any time we have to scrounge around in "terminal", that is _hostile_. (and no, it's not because we're incapable of doing that. no, it's because we know that it's not _necessary_ that one has to deal with crap like that.) but those poor people over at d.p. are used to being abused... they just sit and take it. and every once in a while, make a little pipsqueak. lately, for instance, lvl wondered it he could skip a round if he used an independent digitization to compare against the output from a round... after the tons and tons of research that i've shared about that method, both over on the d.p. forums and in _countless_ posts on this listserve, you'd think that they'd be past the asking stage on that particular matter. and meanwhile carlos is still whining because there's no .html generator. first of all, there _is_ one, in guiguts. and donovan scripted another one. and i've programmed my own, and shown that it's _not_ all that difficult, and have even offered to make mine available to distributed proofreaders. and i'll repeat the offer again, right now. but they won't take my help. they're too stubborn. they'd rather whine. still, i continue to offer it. indeed, here's my newest pledge. i'll create a clone of guiguts, one with these installation instructions: download, decompress, and double-click. (if you want to know how radical that is, read any one of a _large_ number of d.p. forum threads where people have battled with guiguts installation.) the only catch is that 1.5 dozen people have to say they'd like such a tool. just 18 people, sending messages to this listserve, saying "please make it". that's all i need to start working on it... -bowerbird ************** Recession-proof vacation ideas. Find free things to do in the U.S. (http://travel.aol.com/travel-ideas/domestic/national-tourism-week?ncid=emlc…)

1 0