January 2010 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: on your planet
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 25 Jan '10

25 Jan '10

jim said: > The main issues I can see here are: > > 1) People are split whether or not they can tolerate reading > on LCD display or whether they require e-Ink type of technology. > > 2) People are split on whether or not they like touch-screen > vs. dislike the reduction in display quality that touch-screens entail. > > 3) How big vs. how little you want your reading device to be. > > 4) What file formats and/or DRM and/or other transfer and > download restrictions a particular e-book reader entails. > > 5) real keyboards vs. virtual keyboards. > > 6) how "general purpose computer " vs. "dedicated reader" a device is. > > 7) cost. those are pretty much all personal preferences, and therefore not worth discussing. -bowerbird

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let's do a book
by bowerbird＠aol.com 23 Jan '10

23 Jan '10

been a while since i digitized a book, so i decided to scrape the files from rfrank's roundless experiment and do them... here's the first pass: > http://z-m-l.com/go/frank/frankp123.html same as it ever was. the first pass was to put it in my format; the next pass will be to do preprocessing. i applaud the roundless experiment, but the fact still stands that if you do a good job of preprocessing (which takes an hour or so with a good tool), you can basically _post_the_book_ for smoothreading, or p1, or p2, or p3, or whatever you wanna call a finish pass. the d.p. workflow is archaic and stupid. -bowerbird

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something really stupid
by bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Jan '10

20 Jan '10

ok, so after about a year or so when the "dissent" at distributed proofreaders had exhausted itself, and nobody was questioning anything any more, the natives have once again become semi-restless. so there is now a whole handful of forum threads where people are once again thrashing stuff out... (ironically, many of the people who worked hardest to shut me up have now become the loudest voices registering their own discontent. rather amusing.) as usual, the discussions are a rats-nest of quality. some people have good observations and ideas, and other people have lousy ones, and the masses are unable to distinguish the good from the lousy. and nobody knows what they need to do in order to make anything actually _happen_, and by this time, most of them have become acutely aware of _that_, so it's amusing to watch their frustration boil over... and it's still good to see that they are _trying_... i made note of rfrank's test of a "roundless" system, which is one of the more positive things going on... (it's interesting that roger's distaste for open debate, which manifested here on this listserve, extends to his action over there as well, so he does his research outside of the purview of d.p. "proper" so he doesn't have to deal with anyone whose input he doesn't like, so he's kept himself "above the fray" using that tactic. he'll also opt out of a thread if it gets "unproductive" in his mind, and just start up a new thread elsewhere.) at any rate, one of the _worst_ ideas being floated now involves attempts to "reduce" output from p1 proofers. this is one of those awful ideas that keeps cropping up, due to a few people with more persistence than brains... the "problem" is that there are lots of p1 proofers who are churning out lots and lots and lots of proofed pages. now, you can be excused if you ask why that's a problem. after all, isn't the whole idea to proof o.c.r. on the pages? well, yes. which is why this is such a stupid ignorant idea. but nonetheless, because some people at d.p. cannot see past their convoluted ridiculous workflow, this "excess" of p1 proofed pages is considered to be a "problem" that needs to be "solved" so that their workflow can be saved. numerous methods have been enacted to try to _force_ the p1 proofers to "move up" to the later proofing rounds. none of these numerous methods seem to have "worked". at times, the effort seems to even be directed specifically at a handful of people in the "top 10 list" of p1 proofers. each of these people has proofed thousands and thousands of pages, which i consider as a very productive contribution, yet they're being portrayed in an extremely negative manner, as people who are causing problems for the site as a whole... now, i haven't looked at the list of p1 proofers to determine just who these "troublemakers" are, but it seems to me that a very nice "solution" has presented itself for this "problem". specifically, those "problem" p1 proofers should move over to rfrank's "roundless" system, where they'll be appreciated. in a roundless system, the faster a page moves to perfection -- and by all accounts, these "problem" p1 proofers provide _excellent_ proofing results -- the better the system works... moreover, instead of being "blamed" for a bad infrastructure, the roundless system will _laud_ these high-profile proofers. so there you go, my suggestion for d.p. for the day... -bowerbird

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say it loud, say it proud
by bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Jan '10

19 Jan '10

happy martin luther king jr. day! i am again being amused by stuff over at distributed proofreaders... you might remember that in the past, i reviewed a lot of work by roger frank. even though he was doing some of the most advanced work over there at d.p., he was still wasting lots and lots of time being donated by the volunteers there, and i pointed out this truth with evidence. roger took all kinds of offense, and ended up calling me all kinds of names before storming out of here without engaging in any discussion. and that's sad, because he coulda learned a lot... as it is, though, he's teaching himself, slowly and surely, and will eventually -- after a long time -- find himself in the positions i advocated all along. it's just that he could have advanced himself to that point a whole lot faster if he would've listened to me. but, you know, everybody chooses their own pathway... anyway, roger's newest project is a test of a "roundless" system for digitizing books. you can see discussion here: > http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=42331 -bowerbird

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help finalizing the January 2010 DVD
by Aaron Cannon 17 Jan '10

17 Jan '10

Hi all. Finally, the DVD is all but done. I just need some help from folks more qualified than I with these last few items: 1. Editorial help: I need a few eyes to look over the main page and other content in the root directory of the DVD. I'm looking for suggestions on spelling/grammar changes, as well as suggestions for text that should be added. 2. Design help. I need someone who knows HTML and especially CSS to create a CSS file for the DVD. None of the HTML elements have class attributes, but I can add those easily. Just tell me where you want them. Also, if other changes need to be made to the HTML, again just let me know what. I believe all of the pages validate, but if you find any that don't, please let me know. 3. Image help. This has 3 parts: A. Some sort of image should probably be added to the main page on the DVD, and optionally to the tops of all of the HTML pages on the disc. Again, just send me the code to add, and I will add it to each page. You don't need to edit all 30,000 files your self. B. It would be nice to have a small .ico file created so that the DVD will display an icon when inserted into a Windows computer. Also, if anyone knows how to do the same for Macs, that would be great. C. There is a DVD label which was created for the original Project Gutenberg DVD. It needs to be updated for this new DVD. ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/images/GutenbergDVDCover.psd Also see ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/images/GutenbergCD-DVDCover.… You can download a .tar.bz2 file containing all of the content on the DVD minus the books themselves at http://fireantproductions.com/dvdindexes.tar.bz2 It's about 5MB. If you don't have a way to open .tar.bz2 files, you can download the much larger .zip version of the same thing: http://fireantproductions.com/dvdindexes.zip (about 25MB) or you can browse the content online at http://fireantproductions.com/dvd/ Thanks in advance! Aaron Cannon

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What happens to page images these days?
by Gardner Buchanan 11 Jan '10

11 Jan '10

A dumb question... It's been a while since I've submitted a project based on a physical volume (rather than on scans from somewhere online). It seems like once upon a time there was a place the scans were meant to go. The PG submission system does not seem geared to take original page scans. Is there somewhere they would like to be? Thanks, ============================================================ Gardner Buchanan <gbuchana(a)teksavvy.com> Ottawa, ON FreeBSD: Where you want to go. Today.

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Help with the DVD
by Greg M. Johnson 10 Jan '10

10 Jan '10

Hi. I have a current version a DVD with 3850 PG books in HTML format. It's biased towards my tastes, but I did try to use some objective "Best Of ..." lists to choose books, and with a number as high as 3850, it may beyond a bias from my personal tastes. Here is the Wordle for the titles: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pterandon/3758402023/in/photostream/ I also did a lot of culling of large MB books in favor of getting a larger selection of high quality material. For example, just about all of Mark Twain is gone, and every one of the "Quotes and Images" creations. :-P I have them accessible by an HTML file, grouped by a genre. One interesting thing is that I used a linux box to burn the DVD, and in so doing was able to remove the Windows thumbnails file-thing, greatly increasing the number of works again. I wanted someone to look at this with a critical eye to see how it affects the usability on a Windows box. I'm guessing that Windows only *needs* those files when you're browsing the folders with Windows Explorer-- something we don't necessarily want to prevent but don't need to encourage either. But will Windows' resources be consumed with making those thumbnail things each and every time the DVD is put in a Windows box? -- Greg M. Johnson http://pterandon.blogspot.com

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Bold New E-readers Grab Attention at CES
by Michael S. Hart 10 Jan '10

10 Jan '10

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/08/ces.ereader/index.html

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books without a zip version
by Aaron Cannon 09 Jan '10

09 Jan '10

Hi all. I've noticed that there are a few .txt books, and a few .rtf books in the collection that don't have zip versions. Is there any reason for this? One example is: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/30152 This rtf file could be compressed to about 16% of its uncompressed size. Was there some stipulation from this particular copyright holder that his books not be zipped? Thanks. Aaron

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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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