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

Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 10 May '10

10 May '10

jim said: > if you guys ever start listening to me. listening? to you? oh jim, don't be naive. if you really wanted people to _listen_ to you, the first thing you'd have to do is start making sense. and stop saying things that are demonstrably false. but even then, nobody would probably listen... that's just not something that people _do_ here. but at least they might start _reading_ your posts a bit less infrequently, and stop shaking their heads when they _do_ read your posts, which is a good start. -bowerbird

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Re: Missing apostrophes in the generated HTML / ePub versions of Madame Bovary
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 May '10

09 May '10

andrew said: > Well, everyone is entitled to their own opinions. > My own opinion is still that > the way microsoft introduced > and have used their character sets > has created unnecessary difficulty > for many people. that's funny, because i have the same opinion about the way the unicode process has gone... but at some point, we need to just let it all go. > I'm sorry if you perceive that as making an excuse. well, yeah, if you're blaming microsoft (on something that they did a few decades back) for a mistake that was made much later, yeah, then i "perceive" that as making an excuse, yes. moreover, i "perceive" it as laughably abysmal... why not just say, "oh, hey, the encoding was wrong", fix it, and move on? why the need to point a finger? then -- as indicated in my previous message -- i would go on to _improve_the_workflow_ so that such problems wouldn't crop up again in the future. so you either make your converter impervious to the incorrect encoding declarations in the library, or you scrub the library to remove the incorrect declarations. i would probably do both, just to be on the safe side... what i would _not_ do is point 30 years into the past to try to deflect responsibility from where it belongs. -bowerbird

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happy mother's day!
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 May '10

09 May '10

moms are special. -bowerbird

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Missing apostrophes in the generated HTML / ePub versions of Madame Bovary
by Joaquin Cuenca Abela 09 May '10

09 May '10

Hi, the ebook http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14155 is missing all the apostrophes in the generated versions (at least HTML and ePub). The two hand-crafted files (plain text and rtf) contain the apostrophes, for instance one of the very first lines in the plain text file is: Permettez-moi d’inscrire This has been converted in the HTML version to: <p id="id00015">Permettez-moi dinscrire Is this due to a bug in the epub-maker used to convert the file, or is there something buggy in the original text? Cheers, -- Joaquin Cuenca Abela

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Re: Missing apostrophes in the generated HTML / ePub versions of Madame Bovary
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 May '10

09 May '10

andrew said: > If you want some history, basically you can blame microsoft. what kind of "history" is that? c'mon, let's go _back_. let's blame the serpent in the garden of eden who tempted eve to take a bite of the forbidden fruit... get real. and stop making excuses. now that marcello knows that the encoding declaration can't be trusted, he can _improve_ his converter script by actually doing some reality-checks on the text itself, to make sure it actually is the encoding it claims to be. and apostrophes would be an _excellent_ way to start... or better yet, run such a checker-program against the entire library, and ferret out the incorrect declarations, so the converter script _can_ know the encoding for sure. -bowerbird

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Re: one million units moved in 28 days
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 08 May '10

08 May '10

> projecting Kindle to be at 7 Million "projections" of future numbers are pure bunk. even estimates of the current number are suspect, since amazon resolutely refuses to announce it, but at least we have auxiliary measures that will provide some kind of realistic bounding restraints, one of the most important being e-book _sales_... in this regard, the best observer to pay attention to is david moynihan -- over at blackmask/munsey's -- who has been paying very close attention for years... david was the one who rang the bell when the kindle started moving substantial units. (and pooh-poohed everything else as mere hype and marketing bullcrap.) he has his finger on the pulse; he's the only one i trust. of course, i'm interested in the ipad _regardless_ of the numbers it rings up, because it presents opportunities in a number of new arenas, so i think it will springboard a lot of creativity that the kindle was too crude to free up. current estimates of the kindle weigh in at about 3 million. i don't see them selling more in the next 5 months than they have sold up to this point in time. but i can see them selling a lot of units nonetheless. and i can definitely say that i absolutely love the t.v. commercials they're running. one of 'em has a tune that knocks my socks off every time. i love it. it makes me feel _joy_. i replay it over and over. > in the early innings of ebook reader development. oh please. we've had worthwhile "e-book readers" for a decade, in the realm of both hardware and software. so these are hardly "early innings". that was long ago. and the development of a mobile computer has been a widespread vision ever since the early days of star trek. yes, things _will_ move a lot faster now, thanks to apple showing the world the direction in which it should move. and we'll be amazed by how far we go in the next 5 years. but let's not pretend we couldn't have taken these steps 5 years earlier, if the hardware businesses didn't have a policy of rolling out innovation as _slowly_ as they can, and soak up as much profit as possible from each step... previous tablets were crude, now that we've seen apple do them _correctly_. but if those crude tablets would've cost $500, instead of $1500, people woulda bought 'em, and the world could have started moving forward earlier. but those hardware guys are greedy greedy greedy boys... > I'm wondering why we don't see them more often. . . ? it's purely a coincidence thing. i noticed i didn't see many iphones until their number got to about 5 million or so. and it was only when it got up to 15 million that i started seeing them on a "regular" basis... but kindles _are_ out there... my girlfriend belongs to a women's philanthropic education organization, and there are three women in her chapter (of 45) who own a kindle. -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 08 May '10

08 May '10

jim- your rewrapping of the p.g. e-text to the original linebreaks was pretty good, but i should have specified more carefully... it would've been best to retain the _end-line_hyphenates_ too (or else justification is unworkable), as well as _pagebreaks_ (because one objective is to compare the text with the scans.) i'll handle this one from here... but note that for next time... :+) -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 08 May '10

08 May '10

jim said: > In any case, take a look at: thanks jim. isn't it more fun to be useful? > You might also want to compare your approach > to those of Ronald Burkey, circa 2001: if you're really interested, you can check the archives. -bowerbird

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Re: spill baby spill
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 07 May '10

07 May '10

a week later, and the gulf oil spill is one week worse. ok, well, one person wrote me backchannel to say "this is off-topic", so let me tell you why it's not... you know when people complain about corporations extending copyright, thus robbing the public domain? that's certainly on-topic, and it's worth fighting them. but if you're gonna fight, you must know your enemy. so lesson number one: the big corporations who are paying politicians to extend copyright are the _same_ corporations who exploit the environment shamelessly, including the off-shore drilling that made this disaster. don't confuse the issue by saying "b.p. isn't disney". look, and you will find the same people behind both. 5% of the people in the world own 95% of the wealth, which means the rest of us just split up the crumbs... lesson number two: those people are _very_greedy_ they already own 95% of the wealth of the world, but they want _more_. it is an insidious disease, greed... lesson number three: greed makes them _dangerous._ they're the ones behind war, slavery, and exploitation. these people regard plain human lives as expendable. lesson number four: greed makes them very _reckless._ it's now become as obvious as the slick in the gulf coast that these people are willing to put the _planet_ at risk. 40% of the estuaries in the u.s. are located in the gulf. migrating birds are passing through there right now... many of them -- who thought they were just taking a short rest-stop -- will find their trip has gone wrong, badly wrong, in a tragedy that just might end their life. plus depending on the various currents that pick it up, that oil might touch land all up the eastern seaboard. so we're talking about some very far-reaching effects. and the gulf itself? quite dead for many years to come, and half-dead for perhaps decades, as mother nature tries to wash away the stain that human greed created. so what does this all mean? perhaps you consider debate on "intellectual property" to be philosophical exercise aimed at social progress. that's nice. very polite. like the way soldiers used to interrupt battle at tea-time, so they could do a ritual. four words for you: you will lose. badly. because your enemy has all the money, all the power, and your enemy also has deep-seated greed, which is causing them to be very dangerous, and to act rashly, taking _huge_ risks. the oil slick in the gulf gives you an idea of how badly some of their risks can backfire. they knew before; they didn't care; they wanted more. now you know. do you care? are you gonna stop 'em? this is your enemy. if you don't know your enemy, if you don't comprehend the intensity of the battle, you will never stand a chance. stop whining about "off-topic threads" and start fighting. -bowerbird

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{Disarmed} Internet Archive makes more than 1 milllion books available online to blind, dyslexic
by Kimo Crossman 06 May '10

06 May '10

San Francisco organization makes more than 1 million books available online to blind, dyslexic By: BROOKE DONALD Associated Press 05/06/10 8:21 AM PDT SAN FRANCISCO — Even as audio versions of best-sellers fill store shelves and new technology fuels the popularity of digitized books, the number of titles accessible to people who are blind or dyslexic is minuscule. A new service being announced Thursday by the nonprofit Internet Archive in San Francisco is trying to change that. The group has hired hundreds of people to scan thousands of books into its digital database — more than doubling the titles available to people who aren't able to read a hard copy. Brewster Kahle, the organization's founder, says the project will initially make 1 million books available to the visually impaired, using money from foundations, libraries, corporations and the government. He's hoping a subsequent book drive will add even more titles to the collection. "We'll offer current novels, educational books, anything. If somebody then donates a book to the archive, we can digitize it and add it to the collection," he said. The problems with many of the digitized books sold commercially is that they're expensive, they're often abridged, and they don't come in a format that is easily accessed by the visually impaired. The collections are also limited to the most popular titles published within the past several years. The Internet Archive is scanning a variety of books in many languages so they can be read by the software and devices blind people use to convert written pages into speech. The organization has 20 scanning centers in five countries, including one in the Library of Congress. "Publishers mostly concentrate on their newest, profitable books. We are working to get all books online," Kahle said. Marc Maurer, president of the National Federation of the Blind, says getting access to books has been a big challenge for blind people. "Now, for the first time, we're going to have access to an enormous quantity," he said. Maurer, who is blind, said that when he was in college, he hired people to read books to him because the Braille and audio libraries were so limited. "That has been the way most students have gotten through school," he said. "This kind of initiative by the Internet Archive will change that for many people." Only about 5 percent of published books are available in a digital form that's accessible to the visually impaired, Maurer said, and there are even fewer books produced in Braille. Ben Foss, a San Francisco man with dyslexia, says having so many more books available is liberating. He compares it to a million more ramps being added throughout a city for a person who uses a wheelchair. "For me, it's about access. They have provided flexibility and freedom to get books in a format that I use every day," said Foss, 36, who is the director of access technology in the digital health group at Intel Corp. The digitized books scanned by the Internet Archive will be available for free to visually impaired people through the organization's website. The organization does not run into copyright concerns because the law allows libraries to make books available to people with disabilities, Kahle said. Jessie Lorenz, an associate director at the Independent Living Resource Center San Francisco who has been blind since birth, said it has been hard to find controversial or edgy titles in a format she can use, and choices are often dictated by institutions or service groups who have selected certain books for scanning. "For individuals living with print-related disabilities, this is groundbreaking," she said. "This project will enable people like me to choose what we read." Lorenz, 31, has already decided what she wants: Howard Stern's autobiography "Private Parts," Andrew Weil's "The Natural Mind," and, perhaps most importantly, her grandmother's cookbook. ___ On the Net: The Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org The National Federation of the Blind: http://www.nfb.org Open Library: http://www.openlibrary.org Read more at the San Francisco Examiner: http://www.sfexaminer.com/nation/san-francisco-organization-makes-more-than… __._,_.___ Reply to sender<john33sf@yahoo.com?subject=San+Francisco+organization+makes+more+than+1+milllion+books+available+online+to+blind,+dyslexic>| Reply to group<District6inSF@yahoogroups.com?subject=San+Francisco+organization+makes+more+than+1+milllion+books+available+online+to+blind,+dyslexic>| Reply via web post<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/District6inSF/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJxYnBwZnViBF9TA…>| Start a New Topic<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/District6inSF/post;_ylc=X3oDMTJmcGRtbjZpBF9TA…> Messages in this topic<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/District6inSF/message/2353;_ylc=X3oDMTM1a21za…>( 1) Recent Activity: Visit Your Group<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/District6inSF;_ylc=X3oDMTJmcTExbWlkBF9TAzk3Mz…> MARKETPLACE Stay on top of your group activity without leaving the page you're on - Get the Yahoo! 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