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

Re: DP output is technically obsolete
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 Apr '10

23 Apr '10

vlsimpson said: > http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/ wget is a nice program, for a non-interactive commandline tool. thanks for bringing attention to it... someone will appreciate it... -bowerbird

1 0

Re: DP output is technically obsolete
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 Apr '10

23 Apr '10

kevin said: > In order for the scanned pages to be > similarly available as the PG Text, > the images will need to be available > in a single download 'click' > the hypothetical generic internet user > can understand and make use of. > 'One Click, One Book'. i see. you were discussing p.g. policy... i thought you wanted the scans yourself. -bowerbird

1 0

Re: DP output is technically obsolete
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 Apr '10

23 Apr '10

kevin said: > On the Open Library System, I note that > high resolution gray-scale scans > (at least for the one project I checked) > are not archived, > though the black and white scans are it's my understanding that d.p. has kept all scans, but it's reasonable they wouldn't mount the high-res ones; no sense letting the general public burn your bandwidth. this, of course, is the problem with high-res files in general. they're nice to have, for purposes of "preservation", but you can't really make them "accessible" in a practical way until computer resources become free across-the-board, so -- in a practical sense -- they don't really do any good. it's not just bandwidth, either. storage problems quickly ensue when each page of a book eats multiple megabytes. and computers need lotsa power to crunch through them. and sure, we can all see the day coming when all of these resources _will_ be available to us. but how soon is that? are you willing to bet on it? and don't forget that you are a lucky first-worlder. how soon until _everyone_ on the whole planet has unlimited computing resources? really? are you willing to bet on it? and if the third-worlders can't have what you lucky people have, how long do you think they will sit on the sidelines without a full-out revolution? we need to think in real-world terms, and be _practical_... > I also note that there is no 'bulk' download function > to get a zip of all the files associated with a text. yeah, that would be nice. will d.p. offer that? who knows? in the meantime, you can learn the address of an image by right-clicking it and choosing the appropriate menu-item. for instance, here's the u.r.l. i recovered for one page: > http://pgdp01.us.archive.org/1/pgdp02-archive/texts/documents/43e52c83dd501… subsequent scans have the same u.r.l., except "002.png", "003.png", etc., so it's very easy to scrape them en masse. (if anyone needs a scraper-program, just backchannel me.) -bowerbird

3 2

Re: EBook formats on iPad via wifi
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 Apr '10

23 Apr '10

jim said: > I still think there is some fundamental misunderstanding here. there is. and it will remain here, until you decide to change your tune. > Using the iPad I go on the web to PG. I see a ePub book I like there. you mean that you see a _book_ you like there. a _book_ that is offered in a _number_ of different formats, including .html (which can be read in the web-browser) and as a plain-vanilla .txt file, which can be read in many apps... your problem is that you want to insist on a certain file-format. even though i'm not fully convinced that one cannot find a way to get an .epub onto an ipad to read in the app that one wants, i _might_ be inclined to take your word for it (since i don't care). but don't try to pretend that because you cannot get an .epub, you can't get "an e-book", because i don't play nonsense games. > I don’t see how you can say that the iPad “readily displays” > something when it explicitly tells me that it refuses to > display that something! you just can't give it up, can you, jim? i mean, seriously, you are _incapable_, aren't you? but how long do you expect people to take you seriously when you _persist_ in making such nonsense arguments? what book -- what _book_, not some particular file-format -- what _book_ is it that you claim the ipad is refusing to display? -bowerbird

3 2

Re: EBook formats on iPad via wifi
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

jim said: > No, I mean I see an ePub book there > because Steve Jobs among other people at Apple > claims that the iPad supports ePub, and it doesn’t really. blah blah blah. i'm done talking to you about this, jim. > No my problem is that I insist on a certain reader experience i can relate to that. as i told you earlier, if you woulda said "i can't get the e-books that i want from the sites that i want in the format that i want", then you _might_ have received a sympathetic response. but instead, you said you couldn't get an e-book. that's false, so you get the scorn that people receive when they tell a lie... > you have lower expectations about what a “book” is than I have i'm quite sure my ideal e-book surpasses an .epub in many ways. but i'm not foolish enough to think that my idea of an e-book is the only one that deserves to be called "an e-book", and that every other idea of an e-book can be discarded _by_definition_... > I expect to ... > I expect to ... > I expect to ... > I expect to ... > I expect to ... > I expect to ... > I expect to ... > I expect to ... that's a nice list; i applaud the thought that went into its creation. if the ipad comes up short of your expectations, just don't buy it... you might even tell us -- _once_ -- how it falls short via your list. but let me tell you a little something about listserve conversations; if they're not sufficiently interesting to the majority of the lurkers, then they aren't worth having. this conversation stopped being "sufficiently interesting" to them a long, long, long time ago. that's when you should have stopped. that's also when _i_ should've stopped, and michael too, and we both should know better than to make such a stupid mistake, but we'll both be smarter about having a dialog with you in the future. (i keep giving you "one more chance", and you keep blowing it, so i'm not going to be doing that any more, jim. you made your bed. now you're going to find that nobody wants to talk with you at all. worse, you might find nobody even bothers to _read_ your posts.) > well I guess I can read #32085 in pgtxt70 mode > but I refuse to read “books” in pgtxt70 mode i see. so it isn't that the ipad "refuses to display" this book, it's that _you_ refuse to read it the way the ipad displayed it. well, yes, then _that_ is a different matter entirely, yes it is... > And the book that I am currently working on for submission to PG. am i some kind of mind-reader, or what? > Look its pretty simple: iPad is actually a PDF machine > NOT an ePub machine in spite of Job’s claims to the contrary. i think you're sputtering out of control, jim... > If you and Michael actually want to support iPad > rather than claim it can do things that it can not do > -- THEN SUPPORT IT! the ipad doesn't need our support. and we're not "claiming" that it can do anything it can't. then again, neither are we claiming that it "cannot" do something -- like display an e-book -- just because it won't display it in the way we want in the app we want. in sum, just because i don't like the format of an e-book doesn't mean that it magically ceases to _be_ an e-book. and i can't believe that i am willing to make yet another message that repeats something so inane, and therefore contributes absolutely nothing to the signal/noise ratio. so i will stop! now! my apologies to the subscribers... -bowerbird

1 0

Re: Typesetting (unwrap.pl)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

jim- i'm sorry you can't make my unwrap script work for you. you haven't given me enough info that i can help you out. and your attitude is so bad that i am not inclined even to give you simple advice that would sidestep the problem... i'm _quite_ sure the program works just fine; after all, it's nothing but a set of reg-ex changes. nonetheless... if _anyone_else_ finds that you can't make it work either, then i _invite_ you to make a post here on this listserve, and i will do my best to get to the root of your problem. unfortunately, jim's problem is rooted _far_ too deeply for me to be able to do anything about it... and if you don't want to mess with a perl script at all, go ahead and use the web-service that i've created: > http://z-m-l.com/go/unwrap.pl paste your text into the field, then click "unwrap it!", and then copy the unwrapped text from the window... -bowerbird

1 0

Re: Typesetting (unwrap.pl)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

jim, you really need to learn the art of asking what you are doing wrong, instead of just making a report that "the tool doesn't work". you say the text shows up unwrapped; that indicates the script is working... if the linebreaks "reappear", then you are doing something wrong... _you_... what i imagine is happening is this: you're doing a "select-all" before you copy text from the browser-window. that copies the text from the _field_ as well as the unwrapped text below. so when you paste the text elsewhere, the text you see (because it's on top) is the wrapped text from in the field. you need to copy the _unwrapped_ text out of the browser window that appears, and _only_ that unwrapped text. get it? -bowerbird

2 1

Tidy -c and tables
by Lee Passey 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

OK guys, we have a problem. When one uses the "--clean" option, tidy removes any "<center>" elements and replaces them with "<div class='c1'>", and adds "div.c1 {text-align: center}" to the internal style sheet. This seems reasonable, because according to the HTML spec, "The CENTER element is exactly equivalent to specifying the DIV element with the align attribute set to 'center'." In a bit of a chained dependency, it turns out the "align" attribute is /also/ deprecated in favor of the CSS "text-align" style. So Tidy's behavior is completely consistent with the HTML spec, and in theory should cause no presentational differences before and after a page is Tidy'ed. In theory, there is no difference between theory and reality; in reality, there is. Consider the following snippet: <center> <table> <tr> <td> line one<br /> a longer line two<br /> a very much longer line three </td> </tr> </table> <center> Using my four test browsers, Firefox 3,5, IE 8, Opera 9 and Safari 4, in each case the above table was center in the browser, but the text inside the table data element remained left justified. When I changed the "<center>" element to "<div style='text-align: center'>" the text inside the table data element became centered as well. This is the behavior I would expect; the whole notion of "Cascading" in CSS indicates that style continue down the tree until changed. But it does illustrate the fact that there is a distinction between centering an /element/ (in this case the table), and centering the text /inside/ an element. So while, in theory, the "<center>" element should be equivalent to "<div style='text-align:center'>", in practice it seems that not only are they not equivalent in /some/ browsers, they are not equivalent in /any/ browser. I believe one of our design goals was that Tidy would make no change to otherwise valid HTML that would cause it to render differently using browser defaults after Tidying. Thus, empty paragraphs, which are forbidden, are converted to /two/ "br />" elements, to match the default paragraph presentation in browsers. Leaving aside the fact that the use of tables to control layout is simply morally reprehensible, the fact is that there a many, many pages 'in the wild' that do so. And Tidy's current behavior will cause those pages' presentations to change after running Tidy. I think that in this case we have not met our design goal. Now I can fix the code so that this doesn't happen in the future, if only I knew what the right fix /is/. I could simply remove "center" from the list of elements that get 'cleaned', and print a warning that the resulting contains elements that are deprecated (this warning probably ought to be there whenever deprecated elements remain in the output). Or I could focus more directly on this specific issue and whenever a "<table>" is a descendant of a "<center>" element I could add "style='text-align:left'" to the "<table>" element (assuming a "text-align" style is not already attached to that element) /before/ cleaning (both styles should then be moved to the internal style sheet). Or perhaps there is yet another solution that I haven't thought of? I don't think that simply telling the end user "your HTML doesn't follow the rules; we could fix it but we won't" is an option; after all, that's what Tidy is for right? So, what should I do? ps. I don't like the behavior that the "--drop-font-tags" option also drops "<center>" elements; page layout is not in the same classification as font appearance, and I can envision situations where I would want to drop "<font>" elements but retain "<center>" elements. But that is an argument for another day.

4 6

Re: APRIL 21, 2013 BOWERBIRD/HART WAGER
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

michael said: > iPad have to BE iPads, Kindles have to BE Kindles, Sonys=Sonys, > and nooks have to be nooks. . .not virtual. . .not clones. > April 21, 2013 you say there will be more iPads than the rest. > Period! yes sir! or i'll buy you an all-you-can-eat dinner every night for a week! _plus_ you can say you once won one bet against me! :+) -bowerbird p.s. do i win automatically if ipad surges ahead _before_then_? or is it only what the sales figures happen to be on _that_date_? p.s. heck, i'll make it all-you-can-eat every night for _two_ weeks!

1 0

Re: a longstanding question has finally been answered
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

michael said: > You are really willing to bet that on April 21, 2013 there > will be more iPads than Kindles plus Sonys plus nooks. . . . well, every ipad and iphone and ipodtouch can run the kindle software, as can a slew of phones, even today, so all of those machines can act as "virtual kindles"... but in terms of dedicated kindle machines, you betcha. > Say it in print for the folks, and > I'll start practicing turducken recipes. . . . well, if you're even willing to take such a stupendous bet, it means you're gonna rewrite the terms of engagement, but i'll go for it anyway, to see how you're gonna do that. :+) *** while i've got the crystal ball out, might as well use it... amazon will drop the price of a kindle to nearly nothing. indeed, they'll have a "subscription" offer that will actually make the kindle _free_ if you agree to buy so many books. they will also offer an "all-you-can-eat" option that will attempt to do for books what "netflix" has done for films. similarly, they'll offer the kindle to school-districts with a _guarantee_ that their overall textbook-costs will drop, and increasingly-cash-starved schools will jump at that. all of these initiatives -- and more! -- will ensure that lots and lots and lots and lots of kindle units are moved. but it _still_ won't compare with the ipad juggernaut... (not even in quantity, and especially not in profitability.) why not? because amazon can't do software like apple. so they will always be three-and-a-half-steps behind... -bowerbird

2 1