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

Re: Fwd: Programmatic fetching books from Gutenberg
by Joshua Hutchinson 11 Aug '09

11 Aug '09

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Re: Fwd: Programmatic fetching books from Gutenberg
by Marcello Perathoner 09 Aug '09

09 Aug '09

David A. Desrosiers wrote: > On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 8:28 PM, Paulo Levi<i30817(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> So, i like to know how from the etext1802 number can i get a working url to >> download the book, and how to construct variants for each format. > > I do something very similar on the Plucker "samples" page: > > http://www.plkr.org/samples > > I check HEAD on each resource (using an intelligent caching mechanism > on my side), and then either present a working link, or a striked-out > link, depending on whether the format is available or not. That seems an horrible waste of resources seeing that you only need to scan the rdf file to see what files we have.

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Re: Fwd: Programmatic fetching books from Gutenberg
by Greg Newby 09 Aug '09

09 Aug '09

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 12:17:23PM -0400, David A. Desrosiers wrote: > On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Greg Newby<gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> wrote: > > A more general approach would be to let visitors to www.gutenberg.org > > put their selected files (including those generated on-the-fly) > > on a bookshelf (i.e., shopping cart), then download in one big file, > > or several small ones. > > If you're looking at it at that level, why not just offer some > streaming audio of the books as well? You could do this very simply > with any number of dozens of dynamic content streaming applications in > whatever language you choose (Perl, PHP, Python, Java, etc.) This is a good point. I don't know why we don't have streaming, especially since iBiblio does have streaming (I think). If you could suggest some software that seems likely to work on the iBiblio server (Apache, PHP, Perl all on Linux; free), especially that could just be dropped into bibrec.php that I sent earlier, that would be a tremendous help. The funny part is that I get inquiries all the time via help@ on "how do I save an audio file locally?" It seems the most common audio listening experience is to download & play back (perhaps with a delay for the download to complete), so people are doing the same thing as streaming (i.e., immediate listening), but needing to wait for the download to complete. It would be nice to offer streaming, instead. -- Greg > I actually used one to demo for a DJ/Amtrak train conductor several > months back. He wanted a way to pull the tags/artists out of his > enormous mp3 collection, and in 15 minutes on the train (with 'net), I > found one that would let him "radio-enable" his entire mp3 collection, > including a web interface to stream, play, download, view, sort, > browse all of the artists by collection, tag, album art, date, etc. > all in Perl. > > It should be a simple matter to have something similar latched onto > the Gutenberg audio collection, so anyone can click on the audiobook > to either download, stream, convert, etc. the book in whatever format > they prefer. > > Just an idea...

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Re: [Fwd: Re: someone needs to (fwd)] (fwd)
by Greg Newby 31 Jul '09

31 Jul '09

Forwarding from Brewster Kahle: > From: Brewster Kahle <brewster(a)archive.org> > To: gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org, Bowerbird(a)aol.com > CC: "Michael S. Hart" <hart(a)pglaf.org>, John Guagliardo <john(a)gutenberg.cc> > Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] someone needs to (fwd) > > > bowerbird-- > > some very active volunteers have been taking the downloadeable pdf's > from google's site and uploading them to the archive. the archive > stores these, OCR's them to make them searchable, and if someone wants > the pdf-- points them back to google. > > we would like to see more of this. if there are volunteers to expand > this program, we would like to play our part. > > -brewster > > > > Michael S. Hart wrote: >> >> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >> Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2009 18:00:16 EDT >> From: Bowerbird(a)aol.com >> Reply-To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion <gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org> >> To: gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org, Bowerbird(a)aol.com >> Subject: [gutvol-d] someone needs to >> >> someone needs to remount independently the scan-set from >> every single public-domain book that google has scanned... >> >> might that be project gutenberg? >> >> if not, then someone else needs to do it. >> >> because it needs to be done... >> >> those books don't belong to google, or to sony, or to >> barnes & noble, or to anyone else that google decides >> to share them with. those books belong to the public. >> >> -bowerbird

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brewster kahle responds -- someone needs to (fwd)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jul '09

31 Jul '09

michael hart forwarded my post to brewster kahle, who responded: > bowerbird-- > > some very active volunteers have been taking the downloadable > pdf's from google's site and uploading them to the archive. > the archive stores these, OCR's them to make them searchable, > and if someone wants the pdf-- points them back to google. > > we would like to see more of this. if there are volunteers > to expand this program, we would like to play our part. > > -brewster i admit the internet archive has fallen off my radar somewhat -- ever since i was banned from their listserves because i had the temerity to continue complaining about their o.c.r. flaws -- but i should have remembered that they are indeed remounting google's public-domain scans, and deserve kudos for doing so. so thank you, brewster, and internet archive. "universal access to knowledge" has always appealed to me, by virtue of its deep simplicity, but i find that more and more, lately, brewster, i am chagrined that google has subverted it... instead of a global library, we're getting a global book-store... and "free to all" increasingly means "dig out your wallet"... -bowerbird ************** An Excellent Credit Score is 750. See Yours in Just 2 Easy Steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1222846709x1201493018/aol?redir=htt… bcd=JulyExcfooterNO62)

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someone needs to
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Jul '09

30 Jul '09

someone needs to remount independently the scan-set from every single public-domain book that google has scanned... might that be project gutenberg? if not, then someone else needs to do it. because it needs to be done... those books don't belong to google, or to sony, or to barnes & noble, or to anyone else that google decides to share them with. those books belong to the public. -bowerbird ************** Hot Deals at Dell on Popular Laptops perfect for Back to School (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1223106546x1201717234/aol?redir=htt…)

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How To Get and Use eBooks on Cell Phones
by Michael S. Hart 30 Jul '09

30 Jul '09

How To Get and Use eBooks on Cell Phones This is a request for anyone to submit ideas for little "How To's" for their particular brands and models of cell phones. Nothing fancy to start off with, just the bare bones of how to get the eBook into the phones and how to read them in comfortable ways in terms of setting font size, zoom, or the like. Eventually we hope to create "How To" files for each model, and in ways that will encourage a greater usage of the nearly 4.5 billion cell phones now in use, and to give some worthwhile uses to phones that are no longer in service, but still work well as eReaders. If your phone has WiFi built in, so much the better. If nothing more, please just send the barest outline, and we would hope to get others to fill it in to make it more user friendly. Many Many Thanks!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg Inventor of ebooks If you ever do not get a prompt response, please resend, then keep resending, I won't mind getting several copies per week.

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Re: !@! Barnes & Noble Unveils Online Bookstore to Compete Directly With Amazon
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Jul '09

27 Jul '09

b&n won't be able to compete with the kindle 3: > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GI0Zry_R4RQ "i can't hear you; i'm reading!" -bowerbird ************** An Excellent Credit Score is 750. See Yours in Just 2 Easy Steps! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100126575x1221823322x1201398723/aol?redir=htt… bcd=JulyExcfooterNO62)

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Compilation ideas
by Greg M. Johnson 27 Jul '09

27 Jul '09

First of all, apologies for the triplicate submissions on the same topic. I wasn't getting through to the list. Secondly, the question about resource use with the plucker list underscores my idea that we should be encouraging torrent-downloads of format-specific DVDs, arranged with some sort of genre or index stronger than merely alphabetical author & title. In a real bookstore, folks might want to peek at the first two pages of dozens of books before they buy. In ebooks, is there a way to serve the customer and save bandwidth? This is one way. I'm working on a compilation DVD in HTML format. If I were to do it over again, and had a computer to select things, I'd do something like this: 1) Find "Best of" lists. Some IIRC were on the pg web site. I'd start with the one about 100 books to read for a liberal education. Then add a well-rounded selection of items from "best of " lists for other genres: mystery, history of science, history, scifi, religion, etc., etc... 2) Figure out how much space you have and what format sceme (all, plucker, zipped txt's, HTML, etc.) you're going to concentrate on. 3) Start with the #1 item on every list. Add the complete works of each author. (My idea is that the most obscure work of Author #1 may be more fun to read than the everyone-knows item from Author #99. ) Continue down the list until you've filled up your space requirement. (If you're doing HTML format, skip the >20 MB books. ) 4) Indices: Author Alphabetical, Title Alphabetical, LOC classification (not my original idea this one), and editors' picks. ( Strongly encourage 3-12 well-read and opinionated folks to come up with "Editor's Picks" lists.) -- Greg M. Johnson http://pterandon.blogspot.com

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Fwd: Programmatic fetching books from Gutenberg
by Paulo Levi 27 Jul '09

27 Jul '09

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Paulo Levi <i30817(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 1:25 AM Subject: Programmatic fetching books from Gutenberg To: gutvol-p(a)lists.pglaf.org I made a ebook reader (here) http://code.google.com/p/bookjar/downloads/list and i'd like to search and download Gutenberg books. I already have a searcher prototype using LuceneSail a library that uses Lucene to index rdf documents and only indexing what i want from the catalog.rdf.zip. Now i'd like to know how from the url inside the catalog i can fetch the book itself, and what are the variants for the formats. A example query result: author: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 url: http://www.gutenberg.org/feeds/catalog.rdf#etext1802 title: King Henry VIII So, i like to know how from the etext1802 number can i get a working url to download the book, and how to construct variants for each format. Thank you in advance.

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