October 2011 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Copyrigh
by Ricardo F Diogo 27 Jan '12

27 Jan '12

Hi, Can anyone please tell me if PG has ever faced any trouble with any authors or publishers for copyright reasons? Did we ever had to remove any books from our catalog? Were there any copyright related conflicts? Are they documented somewhere? (A postgraduation student needs this info for a college paper). Thanks, Ricardo F. Diogo

10 14

selling your own dogfood
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Jan '12

06 Jan '12

once again, someone over at distributed proofreaders has raised the issue of people selling hard-copy of p.g. e-texts at amazon.com... so a brand-new newcomer, "exilefromgroggs", posted this: > I would suggest an alternative strategy. > Set PG up as an Amazon seller (yes, seller!). > Charge $1/£1 per book for books that are > bought that way, and point out that 100% > of the money that PG receives will be ploughed back > into the project to make further books available. > In the seller's blurb for the book, point out that > the books can, in fact, be downloaded for free > from PG's website, and include a link. I would imagine > that being up-front and open, and being clearly linked > to a "good cause" would mean that PG would rapidly > become a high-profile seller in its own right through > Amazon, and would take the wind out of the sails of > people who are trying to make a fast buck for no effort. because, you understand, that's always the exact way that those d.p. volunteers picture these amazon resellers -- as "people who are trying to make a fast buck for no effort." i fully understand that most of these resellers put as little effort as possible into churning out the "product" they sell. but the truth of the matter is that it takes time and money to turn an e-text into a printed book, and even more work to handle distribution, and the profits aren't _that_ great... but nobody bothered to tell that to the brand new newcomer. because doing so would force the existing volunteers there to confront the fact that their workflow doesn't have a way to create a decent print product. the ascii text is unstyled. the .html product is formatted for a web-browser, not print. the e-book products are formless blobs that barely work in the machines for which they're intended, let alone for print. that's why the vast majority of the resellers start with the text-file, instead of the .html file. so all of the work that post-processors put into making the .html file "look good" is just wasted energy. every one of these html-books is a "snowflake" -- unique unto itself, per the post-processor -- and it's far too much work to try to figure out each one, so you could port it to print. or, for that matter, anything else, including e-books, which is why those turn out rather badly. with a library this big, there has to be some standardization, or else you'll be unable to keep the files updated over time... of course, it's _easy_ to say that now, with all the experience we have from having the books _not_ being _convertable_ to the formats we want. but some of us said it all _years_ ago, that letting each post-processor go off in their own direction was a sure-fire way to make sure their work'd be short-lived. -bowerbird p.s. there is also _another_ newcomer over there who wants to program an html5 web-app that interacts with the d.p. site, and nobody is bothering to tell him not to waste his time and energy, because even if he codes it up, the powers-that-be will ignore it. p.p.s. ...waving back to lucy... :+)

22 99

Re: [gutvol-d] epubeditor.sourceforge.net
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 03 Jan '12

03 Jan '12

here's that post to lee which i started over a week ago, and part of what started making me feel that "despair". this post started out as a straightforward review of the difference between lee's tool and my methods. but i felt i needed to preface that with commentary on why a discussion with lee always is so frustrating, and why i eventually had to put him in my kill-folder, and how i wish that i wouldn't have reviewed his app, and the "preface" soon overwhelmed the "review"... so... if you want to skip the back-and-forth scratching, jump down to the two long lines of asterisks below, surrounding a section saying "take a deep breath"... *** lee's post (fri, oct 21st, at 17:47) can be found here: > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-October/008200.html dear lee... ok, first, lee, let me be perfectly clear to you... i understand all of your points -- every one -- about your program in your latest reply to me. indeed, i understood all of those points when you made them in your _previous_ reply to me. so you didn't need to make them _again_, and you won't need to make them again in a reply to _this_. because i understand 'em. honest! every one! totally and completely, lee! really! i had simply forgotten how tedious it can be to have a "conversation" with you, even when you're _not_ trying to spin it or sabotage me. but now i remember. so i will give you a few reminders, and other people here can see what i'm talking about. i said: > > or, ya know, you can always > > give 'em _your_ source-code. lee said: > But that's exactly what I did! yes, lee. i knew your code was open-source. i downloaded your code from sourceforge. and sourceforge is a host for open-source. anyone with minimal experience knows that. anyone who's been around a while knows that. anyone who can read the blurb that describes sourceforge, on the download page, knows that. so yes, i knew your code was open-source... and if you had thought about it for a second, or given me 1/10 of the credit i "deserve" for paying attention, or being a programmer, or putting in time, or being a web-surfer who isn't totally asleep, you woulda _known_ that i knew that your code was open-source, and you wouldn't have made the reply you made. so i wondered why you made that reply? but i stop wondering, after two seconds or so, because i've learned it simply doesn't matter... what it means, though, is that you missed that my suggestion was _ironic_, a bit _sarcastic_, and thus you missed the point i was making, which is that you -- and others just like you -- make noise about the "open-source" aspect, when -- in actuality -- the overwhelming mass of open-source projects _don't_ get treatment of the sort that you so-called "advocates" are so fond of talking about, namely that the code is worked over by a large number of people, who not only ensure that it is solid but also continually extend it to all kinds of new uses. oh sure, that happens with _some_ programs. but the vast majority of them are maintained by one person, who does all the work on it, until they tire of it, and then they respond to further requests with a "you can do it yourself". but nobody ever does. you know who's gonna work on your app, lee? you. and only you, lee. you. and nobody else. when i told d.p. i would code a _spellchecker_ for them, they told me they weren't interested, because "it won't be open-source"... so they went without a spellchecker instead, for years. and when they decided to take up the task of adapting an open-source spellchecker, it took a ton of time for them to get it to work, and it _still_, to this very day, doesn't always do what they would like it to do. and guess what? have they _ever_ went in to rewrite that code, so it would behave like they want it behave? no, they haven't. as it would be too difficult. is open-source a good idea? yes sir, it sure is! is free software an even better idea? you betcha! but let's not confuse the _real_ with the _ideal_. just because somebody else _can_ work on it does _not_ mean that they _will_ do that. ever. that's the long explanation of the point that i was making with my simple "suggestion"... i didn't want to have to type all of _that_, though, because then _i_ would've been the tedious one. but as you don't "get the joke", then even having any discussion with you becomes very tedious... *** here's another example, for you, and the others... i said: > > isn't it the "trivially easy" tasks that we want > > our computers to be performing _for_ us? lee said: > No, I don't think so. First you have to understand > that there are tasks that are > trivially easy /for a human bean/ that are > extraordinarily complex for a computer. > And there are tasks that are > enormously complex for a "human bean" > (primarily because they are so detailed) > that are trivially easy for a computer. well, gee, lee, thanks for the grand exposition there. i bet your friends think that you're really really smart. i grant that you're thorough, even as you manage to miss the point completely, and by 3.85 country miles. because we were talking about a task that is: 1. trivial for a human being. 2. trivial for a computer. 3. trivial for a human being to code a computer to do. and i think that we can all agree that your exposition is completely overblown in regard to that type of task. yet that's what we were talking about. (go look it up, if you need to, but the task was exactly like one that you'd just talked about by saying your program did it, so as "to relieve the tedium and avoid simple errors".) *** plowing through these diversions becomes very tiring. it's as if you're intentionally _trying_ to miss the point. (i'm not saying that you _are_ doing it "intentionally", mind you, because that _might_ be the "fundamental attributional error" raising its ugly head... but i have had to slash through the underbrush of these dodges so often that they sure do _seem_ to be "intentional". if they are not, then you would appear to have some serious problems when it comes to staying on-point.) i said: > one of the "themes" of the event is "beautiful books". lee said: > Hopefully, you have your tongue > planted firmly in your cheek. not only do you _not_ get my humor when i put it out, you _think_ i'm joking when i'm relating a simple fact, combined with a link which you must not have checked. these little misunderstandings cumulate to great frustration. i will say that yes, i did find that theme to be _ironic_... so maybe you can catch irony when i direct it at others, but not when i direct it at you. however, i wasn't poking _fun_ at that theme; i was appalled they would choose it! that being the case, though, no need for your "hopefully". their text is ugly, and thus they have no right to even use the term "beautiful" in conjunction with their text-versions. *** lee said: > I have no Mac, no access to a Mac, > and little interest in the Mac. > The promise of Java was "write once run everywhere." > Well, I wrote it once, now we'll just have to hope > that some Mac developer out there can > troubleshoot the problem (and tell me > what the solution is once s/he figures it out). this is exactly the type of attitude i was making fun of, in my post to which you wrote this response... for the record, let us note that "the promise of java" has once again gone unfulfilled in a real-life instance. *** i'll wrap this up, focusing on lee's post on wed oct 26 07:31. > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-October/008216.html > /Your/ file is > http://ia700600.us.archive.org/16/items/artofbook00holm/artofbook00holm_djv…. > There it is, the text, the whole text, and nothing but the text. i discussed why that text-file -- and all of the .djvu.txt files over at at archive.org have problems -- but my post might have _followed_ this one, in which case we couldn't blame lee for not knowing that. except that lee _should_ know all that. he has heard it before. nonetheless, he keeps trying to distort what i mean by "a text file". he keeps trying to talk about text-files as if _all_ of them had the deficiencies of the archive.org text-files, as if _all_ of them were lacking any structural information, and as if this was _required_... you can make a text-file "smart" if you want to, and it does _not_ require any angle-brackets at all. and anything that someone can do with angle-brackets can _also_ be achieved _some_other_way_, in a plain-text file, and it's just ridiculous to say that it can not... there's nothing magical about angle-brackets... nothing at all... > I'm just being a little more demanding. no, lee. you just _misinterpret_ what i am "demanding" as being much less than it really is, and then you think you have "more"... a direct and one-to-one correspondence can be made between what _you_ are asking for, and what _i_ am asking for. the job has some inherent demands, and if those demands are satisfied, then both of us can do the job... but if not, neither of us can... > What /I/ want is the output from FineReader > as though the "Save as HTML" option was selected, > with all the markup that FineReader was able to intuit if i get "all the markup that finereader was able to intuit", then i can do the job just as well as you can. maybe better. the point is that archive.org isn't giving us that information; they tell us we need to trawl their pile of x.m.l. crap to get it. > Does anyone want to furnish me > a *nix server with a fat pipe? i had pointed out that, although it would be _possible_ to run a script against all 3 million books at archive.org, the machinery and bandwidth required make it impractical. lee's solution? ask someone to "furnish" all that to him... i guess it never hurts to ask, 'eh? good luck with that, lee. *** anyway, there are your examples, folks... like i said, _tedious_. and then he repeats everything. this is why i point lee in my kill-file. now i remember. so let's bring this to a close. ************************************************************ take a deep breath to clear your system... take another deep breath to clear your system... take a third deep breath to clear your system... ************************************************************ i now direct the remainder of this post _back_ to the audience at large, not lee specifically... *** the main point of departure between lee and me is that he _starts_ with "the text is in .html form". _then_ his tool takes over. which is fine, i guess... except for the fact that it doesn't match the reality of how us regular humans actually make e-books. it doesn't describe the task that is being done by post-processors over at distributed proofreaders. it doesn't even reflect how the e-book designers who do the job _professionally_ go about the task. because _we_ all start with text. maybe the text is in a word-processing file, maybe it's raw ascii, but it's most assuredly not already marked up in .html. that's what _we_ have to do, to make it an _e-book_. if it was already in .html format, we'd call it "done", or mighty close to it. you might have noticed, up above, when i said the text _might_ be "in a word-processing file", yeah? so maybe you're just thinking that we could ask the word-processing app to convert the text into .html? well, yes, we could. and some of us novices do... but the professional book-designers don't do that. and they strongly advise even us amateurs not to... because what they have found is that the .html which is applied by word-processing apps is _very_crappy_. it gives poor results in most all the e-book viewers, and it is extremely difficult to work with, when you need to make changes. (and you almost always do.) so the admonition is fairly universal: don't do that! what do the professionals advise us amateurs to do? they advise us to save the file as plain-ascii text, and then to apply the .html to that plain text, including the reapplication of styling (e.g., italics) which gets _lost_ when the file is saved in plain-ascii format... indeed, that is precisely what those professionals do. preach what they practice, practice what they preach. (if you don't trust me, ask me to provide some links. or research it yourself. it's easy to find such advice. joshua tallent, liz castro, or thebookdesigner.com...) now, i think it's utterly ridiculous to strip away styling and then have to _reapply_ it. but that's what they do. the application of good solid .html, though, is wise, so _that_ part of the advice i can thoroughly second... even if you do it by hand, it's more economical than letting a word-processor apply crap, which you then waste more time -- long run -- trying to "improve". now, the truth is that those pros have "scripts" that apply the markup automatically. plus they _know_ .html already, well, so this comes naturally to 'em, even if they have to do some of the work manually. but their advice is still good advice for us amateurs, because we get _totally_ confused by crappy .html... without the slightest notions of how to "improve" it, or even to make those inevitably-required changes but whether you are a professional or an amateur, the reality of making an e-book these days is that you _start_ with text, which you mark up in .html... (actually, for .epub, it's .xhtml, but we don't need to even bother making such fine-grained distinctions.) sometimes -- as with d.p. -- the text is from o.c.r. other times, it was "born digital". whatever the case, however, the reality is that we all start with _text_... and the nature of the _job_ is doing .html markup... it _is_ true that -- once you have done the markup into .html, there's _still_ a bit more work after that. and it's also true that this "bit more work" is often _very_ confusing and time-consuming, _especially_ to us amateurs, because the i.d.p.f. -- which is the organization that maintains the .epub standard -- has _never_ provided solid information concerning just exactly what this "bit more work" really entails. even the pros get confused, sometimes hopelessly. (i'd give a link, but i don't want to embarrass them.) however, if you do enough grunt work, and are ready (if not willing) to power through frustrating failures that can number in the dozens, or even _hundreds_, you too can eventually discover the things that work, and you can develop templates that ease future pain. after you've done that, the "bit more work" that is required _after_ you've done your .html markup is fairly easy -- it's basically just filling in information that's included in some "auxiliary" files in an .epub. two of those files are the .opf file and the .ncx file. you might recognize those extensions, since they're the files about which i've lately been speaking to lee. his epubeditor produces the auxiliary files for you, and helps you put the required information in them. so if you're one of the amateurs who are _struggling_ with the proper creation of these files, lee's program would be a _godsend_ to you, saving time and hassle. if you're a professional, you're not spending any time or energy producing these files anyway, because you already have scripts which make them automatically. so you might use lee's tool to do occasional reviews of your .epub files, or make minor corrections, but it probably won't be an app you consider as "crucial". more to the point, though, is that there are lots of programs out there that already create .epub files -- from text -- which generate the auxiliary files (like .opf and .ncx) required _inside_ the .epub file. they apply the .html _and_ create the auxiliary files. so, to sum up, there are two steps to making an .epub: 1. transform the text of your book into an .html file. 2. create the auxiliary files required inside an .epub. total novices, with no tools or experience, will spend _much_ time on the first, and _much_ on the second... professionals, operating with their pro tools, will spend a good amount of time on the first, little on the second. and amateurs, with the decent tools out now, will spend a good amount of time on the first, little on the second. in other words, lee's tool helps with the second step, but no one except unexperienced novices spend time on the second step to begin with. the second step is the "paperwork" that must be done to "finish the job", as the old expression puts it. lee's tool totally ignores the first step, .html markup, which is where everybody spends most of their time... this makes me suspect that lee simply doesn't know how real people in the real world make real e-books. namely, we start with text, and we mark it up in .html. then we do whatever little dance needed to turn it into an e-book file that's viewable on our e-book machines. now, if we only had some kind of a program that would take plain old text, and automagically turn it into .html, plus then create the auxiliary files required in an .epub, _then_ we'd have an app we could call "an epub editor". wait, isn't there such an app coming out real soon now? well, yes, son, there is. called "jaguar". real soon now. in the meantime, while you are eagerly awaiting that, if you're on a mac, you might want to buy a program called "multimarkdown composer", by fletcher penney, which is an editor that incorporates "multimarkdown". multimarkdown, also penney's, is a variant of markdown. markdown is a light-markup system which converts text into .html output that validates as standards-compliant. thus "composer" is a great tool to help with the first step listed above -- the hard step that takes most of the time. "composer" is new in the app store, and it's just $7.99... or, you know, you can use sigil. free/free. and it works. as far as i know, it works fine. couldn't be much better. -bowerbird

10 25

let's concentrate on helping users who need help
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Nov '11

02 Nov '11

jim said: > I know how to hack browsers to do this > but your average book-reader customer does not. i think the "average" person knows how to resize text in their web-browser. but if not, let's teach 'em now! in firefox, which is the browser we are talking about, look under the "view" menu, where you will find "zoom". select "zoom in" for bigger text, "zoom out" for smaller. see, that wasn't so hard, was it? now you're smarter! > If you make the lines shorter it still doesn't wrap lines. ok, so now everyone is in complete agreement here, right? firefox does not wrap the lines when displaying a .txt file. and there's no need for anyone to repeat this yet again, ok? we finally found something that everyone agrees on! great! > ...if one has a display capable of > usably displaying 80 chars per line, > a display which is known generically > as a "teletype display" -- circa 1970. > The teletype was set at this number of chars to use up > the entire width of a standard 8.5 wide roll of paper. gosh darn, jim, thanks so much for that history lesson. if anyone is running firefox on a machine with a screen that is incapable of displaying an eighty-character-line, please say so, and we'll figure out how we can help you. our first suggestion will likely be to abandon the .txt file, and use the .html version instead, because it can reflow... so try that. if it doesn't work, come back for more help! *** walter said: > And this is precisely the kind of message > which makes volunteers go away. > There is nothing constructive about this. walter, i thought you said i was in your kill-file? so how come you're reading my posts, and even quoting them, and replying to them? why, walter? -bowerbird

4 5

ok, keith, sorry i didn't get to you sooner
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Nov '11

02 Nov '11

keith said: > Hi BB, > You ought to use your brain!! i'm sorry, keith. are you feeling left out? i didn't mean to ignore you. it's just that all these people sprung from the woodwork so i got busy responding to their nonsense. but you're right, i shouldn't ignore you. you are a regular contributor here, and it's not right to make you wait on them. kind of like how the quiet behaving kids lose the teacher's attention whenever the troublemakers decide to act out again... not that i'm the "teacher" here. i might be pedantic, but i'm no teacher... so i'm gonna handle you _first_ this morning. > 1) I NEVER said that I agreed > with the use of a revision control system! well, you described some complications with such an approach, to be sure, but you also prefaced all of them by saying: > A revision control system could work. so it's pretty easy to view what you said as showing how to make such a system work. thus it's kind of a mixed bag about whether you "agreed" with what lee was proposing... and lee was most definitely proposing that "a revision control system" be used. indeed, he used that phrase, _word-for-word_, and he even mentioned r.c.s. and c.v.s. by name. and, as shown in the quote from you above, you used that exact same phrase yourself... i mean, if you tell me now that you do _not_ agree with it, i believe you. but from what you wrote in your post, that is very unclear. > I did say in is a possibility, > not that I agree with it. you didn't really just call it a "possibility" -- that word didn't appear in your post -- you said _explicitly_ that it "could work"... if you want to scale that back a bit now, i can accept that. but at the same time, your new position isn't too much better. so you now call it "a possibility" to use a revision control system (e.g., c.v.s.). well, of course, one _could_ certainly use a revision control system for digitization being performed in a collaborative way... but... i'd say it's such a stupid idea that to even consider it "a possibility" is a stupid path. i would rule it out, completely, in 1 second. (surely an idea needs more viability than a 1-second lifespan to be "a possibility".) remember, the idea (which i say is clearly _stupid_) is to put hundreds and hundreds of files -- most of which _never_ change -- in a type of system that's perversely complex, a system designed to keep track of revisions. and even the files that _do_ change are just tiny little text-files, with a couple dozen lines, and most changes are to words in those lines, the kind of edits that do not need (or want!) the dense branching and reversion features that revision control systems are devised for. and "hundreds and hundreds of files" means _for_a_single_book_, and we are discussing doing quite literally _thousands_ of books... so you'd be putting _millions_of_files_ into your very complex revision control system. so if there is any system that "doesn't scale", i would say that it would be _this_ system... i bet the _vast_majority_ of d.p. volunteers have _never_ used a revision control system. heck, i bet a majority of them couldn't even tell you what a revision control system _is_. and if you're gonna depend on volunteers to digitize your books, you've got to view the volunteers at distributed proofreaders as the type of people you will be getting, since they are the only known people on the planet who've stepped up to volunteer. so, in a nutshell, bluntly, if you're counting on "a revision control system", you will fail. because those systems are very complex. so that idea is just ridiculous on its face... for the many reasons which i've described. and to say _anything_else_ is just _stupid_. but hey, i'd love to hear counterarguments. oh wait, you know what? i already have a system that i've written that does the job, simply and efficiently. and it ain't broke, so i have no need to "fix" it, so unless you have a working system already in place that demonstrates what _you_ suggest, then we don't even need to discuss it, ok? thanks. > As a matter of fact I suggest > using a different approach. is this a new suggestion you're now making? because i don't recall you describing it before. in fact, i note that you don't say -- even now -- what this "different approach" is... > 2) I said your approach is workable, > but not scale. sorry, keith, but i can't humor you any more. because i already described how it _would_ scale -- that being the main point -- and i'm not going to repeat the arguments just because you didn't read them the first time. > You talk about a book and > a few people working on it. i talk about how one script handles one book, and the dozen people who will do work on it... at maximum, since if you have more than that, all they're doing is getting in each other's way. in practice, you could have a hundred people operating on it, and the script could handle it, but that's not the optimal way to do this job... and yes, the point is that one script can handle the task of one book with the greatest of ease... > What happens to your system with > thousands of books and lot more people. you seem to have missed the whole point, keith. which is that the system scales easily by having each book in a folder handled by its own script. so to deal with thousands of books, you will create thousands of copies of the script, with each copy handling one book, with great ease. you could have _a_million_ books, and the mantra is the same -- one script per book, handling the task with the greatest of ease. -bowerbird

2 1

can't say i blame you, ben
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Oct '11

31 Oct '11

ben said: > I "love you dearly," Uncle Bowerbird. > But I am unsubscribing from this list. can't say that i blame you, ben, can't blame you a bit... i'd leave myself if they weren't trying to chase me away. this month has been quite distasteful and unproductive. the digest for this month is 206k, which makes it the fifth-largest digest dating back to mid-2004. > 2010/02 = 210k > 2005/09 = 258k > 2005/05 = 222k > 2004/08 = 290k for comparison, from may through august, when i was doing an experiment to see if anyone else would pick up the slack if i just stopped posting, the size ranged from 11k all the way down to 1k. while this month's conflicts recalled the old days... but the nature of this month's traffic was different. back in the old days, it was everybody versus me. this month, with the "build our own d.p." thread, a number of my antagonists turned on each other. and i even had a few people actually _defend_ me, which was novel, especially now with michael gone. of course, in the past, i always cautioned people _not_ to defend me, as it put them in harm's way; it's bad to be in the middle of a wolf-pack attack. but these whippersnappers, like ben, survived it! because the wolves, like all bullies, are cowards... but the bullies do make this an unpleasant place. and to think that it was only just last month that i ran my "sweet grapes" series, a model of positivity. on the other hand, maybe that's what set this all off... "we can't let bowerbird be upbeat; throw mud at him!" -bowerbird

1 0

jim, really, just give it up
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Oct '11

31 Oct '11

jim said: > The font that comes up is too small. make it bigger. > The lines are clipped and do not display the right end. that's because firefox doesn't wrap the lines. and that's the very point which i was making. > The line lengths are too long. except the "lines" will be even _longer_ when each of them is a full paragraph... so once again, jim, you are arguing on both sides of the fence, which is why i rarely deign to reply to you any more, and usually regret the few times i do... > The topic, actually, is "Talking about TXT" no, jim. that's the subject-header. but you directly quoted my post, where i was answering _this_ question, posed by andrew: > I wonder what reasoning was used to > settle on the txt-less-than-80 format... so your reaction to my post was off its topic... plus, as we just saw above, you are arguing from both sides of the position anyway, so there's nothing solid in your points anyway. > so I think you had better find something else > better to whine about in my posting -- and > I am sure you will do so. i don't need to "find something else", jim, as i'm capable of staying on the same side of an argument, with solid logic backing me. > should read "Machines that > can show the left half of the txt." you might try making your browser-window wider. > I think we would be happy if you were > simply busy supporting customers my software is cost-free, jim, so i won't have any "customers". just end-users who love me dearly... you're in over your head, jim. really, just give it up. -bowerbird

4 3

epubeditor.sourceforge.net
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Oct '11

31 Oct '11

jim said: > If you do that, then certainly > I will begin to treat you with respect. that's good to know, jim... i will keep that firmly in mind, just i case i should ever develop any inkling of desire for your respect. -bowerbird

2 1

Re: [gutvol-d] Talking about TXT
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Oct '11

31 Oct '11

jim said: > I go to PG. I open any > of the txt files in firefox. > Q: Is the result something > in practice that is > useful to actually read? > A: No it is not. > It is "too unwieldy" > to try to read > PG txt files this way. you'll need to tell us _why_ the .txt files are not "useful" for you to read, so we can evaluate what you're saying. for instance, i find lines that are up-to-80-characters-long are simply too wide for me... i like lines that are shorter... much shorter... ;+) -bowerbird p.s. but the point of the point that i was making is that the maximum number of machines that can show an e-text is obtained _if_ you pre-wrap the lines... if you have an argument against _that_ point, you would be on-topic...

2 1

bastien's fantasy island
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

bastien asked me to use my imagination. so i did. if you're not interested in my imagination, then kindly skip reading this post. thanks. there is some good stuff in here, though, about how the text-format didn't _start_ as "my passion", but _earned_ the honor... that's right. when i first came to p.g., i thought the plain-text thing _sucked_. thought i'd have to re-work every file! and then i found gold in the river-bed... -bowerbird =================================== bastien said: > Bowerbird, imagine one minute you are > the Robinson Crusoe of a new mailing list > 100% dedicated to your passion: > ebooks in structured plain text format(s). hey, if i'm gonna use my imagination for something dedicated to my _passion_, it's not gonna be some crummy listserve! i'll tell you _that_ right off the bat! ;+) > How would you make people join the mailing list? i don't think you can "make" people join a listserve. > How would you "moderate" it? i wouldn't. i would let kindness prevail. i would let honesty speak truth to power. i would entice lurkers out of the corners. i would reward intelligence with attention. i would raise the bar up by raising the bar. comfort the afflicted; afflict the comfortable. i read once that there are 3 rules for a good listserve. 1. don't offend. 2. don't be offended. 3. rule #2 is more important than rule #1. > What kind of encouragement would you send to people? i would award trophies for participation. (this is my way of saying "that's a stupid question.") true creativity doesn't require "encouragement". it has a drive to express itself -- no matter what. the trick is to couple creativity with _discipline_, so that the end-product will have _high_quality_. > What kind of effective project > would you make people work on? you cannot "make" volunteers work on a project. and even if you could, _i_ wouldn't. why would i? let each decide for themselves. a thousand flowers. the masses will always be more creative -- by far -- than any one individual could ever "make" them be. > What kind of tone would you use in your emails > so that people feel like they want to follow you? why would i want people to follow me? (that's my way of saying "i don't want people to follow me.") i don't want people to follow me. i would prefer that they follow their own path. but i realize that they will do what they want anyway -- which usually means they will follow _someone_, because most people appear to be sheep, and thus are incapable of developing their own path, which makes me feel sorry for them, but i don't have any kind of ideas about how i could improve their lot -- so i usually just don't _think_ about where _they_ go, just as long as they don't follow me around, because it bugs me when people follow me around too closely. if they can do it without me noticing, fine. otherwise, i will make sure i shake them at the first opportunity. because it _bugs_ me to have someone follow me... and i pretty much have the same rule _about_ bugs. my rule is that you can be a bug in my house and it's totally cool. just so long as i cannot _see_ you. but once i _see_ you, i am _obligated_ to kill you... i always announce this, out loud, to any bug i see: "ok, sorry, bug, but you know the rule, that i must kill you if i see you, thus now that i have seen you, i have to kill you." and then i get a kleenex and kill the bug, and flush bug-and-kleenex down the toilet. this is how i serve full notice to all of the other bugs. that is the rule. i have no choice. no exceptions. but if you're a bug in my house and i do not see you, you're totally cool. you have nothing to worry about. > Again, you are Robinson and you are alone. > Robinson had the Bible with him -- > you "only" have the Gutenberg project. my thoughts on project gutenberg are convoluted. i loved michael hart. he might have been a rascal, but deep down, he was my type of iconoclast guy. and he made e-books work, which -- to my mind -- is the same thing as "inventing" them, so _there_... not only that, but he built the premiere e-library! (in its day, anyway.) further, it was a cooperative, community e-library, which is _exactly_ what i think a library should be. when the top-down people were telling us that it would be "too expensive" to digitize all books, michael answered with a bottom-up reply that we'll do the books ourselves, _one_at_a_time..._ and _that_ was a revolutionary act, a pure one... plus -- as if all of that weren't enough already -- michael grokked the most important thing about digital content, namely that it costs _nothing_ to reproduce it and _nothing_ to distribute it either. tell me who said "unlimited distribution" first... and loudest. no, i'll tell you -- it was _michael_. now, for a long time, michael was just a talker, like all of us back then. talking was all we did, since talking was pretty much all we could do... so for a long time, as a fellow talker myself, i dismissed michael as just yet another talker. even when he started typing in actual books, i dismissed it, because he had, what?, 100?... talking about a "library" with just 100 books is pretty hyperbolic, don't you think, mr. hart? i have more books than that in my living room. you _talk_ about digitizing more. but we all do! all of that changed, though, on a day in 1997. i can still remember it -- and quite vividly too. i was in a drugstore aisle, reading magazines -- since i was too poor to buy or subscribe -- and i picked up a "wired", which had an article on michael. it was the article i posted recently, where the writer talked about how michael was sprinkling sugar on his pizza, to "get energy" for an upcoming all-nighter to type in a book. i ask, how can you not love that image? :+) as proof, i can also tell you that there was an article in that issue about some school in isreal where they were buying some computers, and a few of the teachers were voicing complaints that the funds would be better spent on books. the link for me was that, with michael's library, each computer could become an access-point to -- quite literally -- _thousands_ of books... so to anyone who could make that connection, the question of "how best to spend the money" would be one that was dead-simple to answer. it was striking, to me, to see one magazine with such a stark contrast contained within, shortsightedness in the teachers versus the brilliant vision of michael's heady project... and i said to myself, in that drugstore aisle, "yeah, ya know, this hart character might be 'merely-a-talker', just like me, but at least he has gained the ear of _wired_magazine_." which -- back then -- was a very big deal... and i decided, then and there, that i would be a michael supporter, even as i continued to beat the drum about e-books myself as well. when i first met him on a listserve, i heaped sloppy-wet love-kisses all over michael hart, because i knew we were cyberlibrary brothers. but it was that day, in that drugstore, with that "wired", that i become a fan of michael. and even though he picked on me quite a bit -- which always perplexed me to no end -- i continued to love him, and do to this day... one of my best days on this list was when someone said i was brown-nosing michael. as if michael was the type of person who wanted to have his ass kissed, and as if i am the type of person who will kiss ass. but it let me know that my love was clear. to _everyone_ here. that made me happy. still, that's michael, and i long ago separated michael hart the man from project gutenberg. because as time went by, it become clear that michael was mostly a figurehead. by design! he wanted it that way! the only thing that he absolutely insisted on was plain-text format. and even that wasn't exclusive. yes, it had to be there. but it didn't have to be the only way. anyway, it was soon clear that the whitewashers were the real power. they determined what was "acceptable" and what wasn't. they set the rules. and they weren't open to input. not in the least. they'd heard it from so many directions already they'd put the "do not disturb" sign on the door. so i might as well be doing dialog with the wall. plus then marcello took over as the web-master. and has effectively set much policy by virtue of the decisions he has made there. (unilaterally?) all of that made me not care much about p.g. i could love michael, but be apathetic to p.g. besides, those weren't the only reasons, either. i have a real problem with the fact that p.g. is a library containing predominately old books. yes, i love the _concept_ of "the public domain". but we're talkin' 'bout books born before 1923. yes, that includes some "classics", yes it does. lots and lots of classics, to be sure. but still, "classics" are things that bore kids in school. i mean, seriously... the world has changed a lot since 1923. a lot. heck, 1923 was _before_ "the great depression". i'm a musician, and even as a kid, i _loved_ a lot of classical music. i loved to play mozart. i loved beethoven. and my most favorite of all was bach. i _loved_ playing bach. over and over. i wore out a batch of bach sheet-music. really. and that was _before_ i memorized the works... (after that, there was no way you could stop me.) i didn't know any kids who loved classical music as much as i did... and most certainly not bach! but guess what? i also loved the beatles. a lot. and the turtles... the rolling stones... and dc5... later i came to love r&b, and folk, and even c&w. prince and springsteen, johnny cash and punk... motown, all by itself, could fill up my juke-box. so if you told me i had to give all that up, that i could only get pre-1923 music from now on, i'd probably rather kill myself than keep living. heck, flappers had only begun to appear then! the world changed a lot in the 20th century. (how is that for a massive understatement?) it has even changed quite a bit in the 21st... but little of the post-1922 change is reflected in the "library" of project gutenberg. so little. (there _are_ those nut-grower manuals, but...) it's more like a _museum_ than a _library_... a museum from an ancient time, one that has very little to do with the one we live in now... so even if i love some of those classic books, a library which is _missing_ so much content that is _so_ very important to our reality now is simply not gonna be too compelling to me. there's a hole in our public knowledge-base. a big hole... from 1923 right up until today... and the content cartel ain't gonna let us fill it. they've got it hooked up to their cash-register, so if we wanna play it, we're gonna have to pay. so i'm just saying "to hell with their content". i don't wanna read their 20th-century books, i don't wanna watch their movies or tv shows, i don't care about their sports or reality shows. choke on your content, you greedy bastards, because i'm not paying you another _nickel_. i'm cutting you middlemen out of the equation. the only content i'm interested in from now on is the stuff that artists willingly share for free... i'll pay them, voluntarily, what i think it's worth, but i'm not interested if i have to pay in advance. if you're trying to sell me a pig in a poke, then don't bother. keep your pig _and_ your poke... to that end, i'm interested in helping any artists who wanna kickstart this "gift-exchange" mode, who want to remove the commercial imperative from our day-to-day existence as human beings. that's why i'll be releasing my authoring-tools... so today's authors can easily make their e-books. my tools are free -- pay me only if you want -- so those new authors can make their e-books at no cost, so they can in turn offer them cost-free to readers -- pay the authors only if you want... so i don't care too much about project gutenberg. not any more, no. not now that michael is gone. distributed proofreaders drank its own kool-aid, so it'll soon be on its last legs and spinning away. the whitewashers will soon burn themselves out, completely, and disarray will surely follow after... marcello will try to take over, and screw it all up, either because he didn't get control, or he _did_. and even if a white knight rides in to the rescue, google and amazon have now seized the future, and neither of them is gonna give up their grip... so there's no future here. this is a great project, with a wonderful legacy as the original pioneer... but there's no future here. just old men like me. *** and even old men like me are deserting the ship. like i said, i'm more interested in "born-digital" books these days, specifically being a mid-wife. because the "gift-exchange" model is _more_ than merely a different way of doing business. it's part of what will save the whole human race, providing there is still time to accomplish that... we've gotta get over our violence problem, and our selfishness problem, and our greed problem. we've gotta learn how to live with each other, and trust each other again, and believe in ourselves... we need leaders who can move us to a new place. the only people who can do that are the artists. artists who can live off the kindness of strangers. i want to help those artists come into existence... i want to put tools at their disposal... *** oh, yeah, one more thing that i should add here. this might take a little while, but it'll be worth it. the plain-text thing? that didn't _start_out_ as "my passion". frankly, i couldn't care less about _formats_ of any type. as a programmer, i can create any "format" to fill my needs at the time, and i routinely _do_ do that, and exactly that... i take data in, in whatever form it exists, and convert it into something that i can work with. so the "format" is quite meaningless to me... as long as my app can deal with it, i'm cool... indeed, when i first started doing e-book apps, in the 1980s, when we were still calling them "programs" and not "apps", my input files were _terminal_sessions_. you'd log onto a network, like compuserve, and "capture the session" into a text file. so i'd input the saved text-sessions, formatting 'em so they'd paginate on the screen. later, when listserves became a common thing, i would take the "digest" of a listserve as input. the top of the digest has a list of the messages -- a line for each, giving its subject-header -- and i would turn those lines into hot-links that would jump a user to the appropriate message. i also split each message to its own screen, so each could be individually deleted or annotated. i did desktop publishing with ventura publisher, which saved its text in regular text-files which it would import. learning that system intimately taught me how you can optimize such a method. i handled poetry chapbooks, and magazines, and dc-10 manuals, all kinds and types of documents. (my first o.c.r. experience was the dc-10 content, a combination of o.c.r. and vydec conversions.) i've pulled content out of spreadsheets, mysql, dbase databases, sas and spss (statistics files), and for one project even off 10-inch "floppies". heck, the first time i saw angle-brackets was in wordstar, for crying out loud. and wordperfect had to be different, so it used square-brackets. then, with sgml (again, those dc-10 manuals) and .html, we got the angle-brackets again... one of my early triumphs, for which i was paid very well, was a simple program for "tagging" the structural elements in those dc-10 manuals. for instance, one common element is "notes". each note has the word "note" as the header, and the body of the note follows, indented on both sides. so my routine searched for a line that consisted simply of the word "note", and tagged that as "note-header", and then also tagged the following paragraph as "note-body". tens of thousands of notes, tagged immediately, across dozens of manuals, for dozens of airlines. for people who had been tagging each note _manually_, by clicking into its header and then clicking the "header" button, and then clicking into the body and clicking "body", my simple 30-line program saved tons of time. all of this is just to say that i'm fluent in formats. i can sling them with the best of 'em. and i also know that a format gives very little functionality. (it can, however, cause you no shortage of grief.) indeed, when i first looked at project gutenberg, i saw its plain-text format as its largest drawback. i was used to "text files" in the mac world, which invisibly support bold, italics, and other "styling". but plain-ascii files supported _none_ of that... and markup of those styles was _erratic_ then... it was present in _some_ books, but not _most_. so i felt i'd need to re-work the entire library... plus it was another era in terms of bandwidth, so i thought i'd also need to _compress_ files, and i worked out a very good system for that, one that was much better than _zipping_ them. and of course i was tying all this stuff into the _viewer-program_ which i wrote for the books. so the _format_ which i was originally planning was far more elaborate than a simple text-file. i thought i'd have to re-work each file, and then package it up in my format. i knew that my format would be more valuable to users, that they would benefit from the costs i paid; the bad part was that i'd have to do the work. but like i said, the whitewashers simply refused to make the simple changes that were required to make it work (e.g., listing picture filenames). so all those plans fell by the wayside. while that was all falling apart, however, i did enough research that i _began_to_understand_ that the text-file, by itself, would be sufficient. i didn't need to inject some other information. everything i needed was already there within... i needed to pare away some stuff (legalese?), and tighten some loose ends, but everything else was pretty much lurking around inside... and that's when i gave a low whistle to myself, in amazement at the wisdom of michael hart, since his insistence on that plain-text format is what led me to do so much research on it... if i hadn't been looking, i wouldn't have found. i panned michael's river -- only one around! -- and discovered gold. i was completely floored. i mean, i knew there was valuable stuff inside. but i didn't realize it held the complete answer. so anyway, i came here, and tried to tell people the whole answer was sitting under their nose... and the rest is history. recorded in the archives. and yeah, jim is right... if i would only just lay all of the evidence at everyone's feet, then they _might_ believe me. (emphasis on the _might_.) but it's too much fun to have them continue to bet their credibility on what i have in my pocket. i _know_ what i have in my pocket, so for me, there's absolutely no risk in taking their bets... because as long as they're willing to throw more money in the pot, i don't need to show my hand. > How long do you feel sorry > for the stupid human nature? the human race is _not_ stupid. not by a long shot... quite the contrary; we are exceedingly clever animals. but something bad happens when we institutionalize. take government. (please!) some of our brightest people work in the government. smart people, with good intentions, and full resources. but somehow, the plans that they put into motion are almost always flawed, and quite often significantly so. how does this happen? how can we put lots and lots of smart people in a room, and out comes a dumb plan? how is that even possible? why are we smart, individually, yet dumb, collectively? how does horse designed by committee become camel? i wish i knew the answer to that. i wish we all knew it. the other main problem, of course, is that there is a complex of factors that, together, is very dangerous. when a person is greedy, powerful, and ruthless too, what you have is an individual who is very dangerous. when you have a _group_ of greedy, powerful, ruthless individuals, you have a world that's in a world of hurt... because those people will _seize_ power, and _keep_ it, and have no compunctions about their use of violence. and no, i'm _not_ talking about the tin-horse dictators, the amateurs like the shah of iran, hussein, or kadafi... if you have to actually _use_ violence, in the public eye, like those amateurs did, the slaves will rise against you. i'm talking about the _professionals_, the people who _backed_ those amateurs, the ones with so much power that they can wield it without many of us even noticing. heck, if you're really good at it, like those koch boys, you can spread around a little bit of your big fortune such that the slaves rise up against your adversaries. (or at least you create the impression that they are.) i read a blog once that said marx talked about this... but far as i know, he didn't even know the koch boys. so, you know, you can't trust everything on the blogs. but yeah, the main problem goes back to _violence_. the men who were willing to use it got their way, and they built institutions which formalized their power. (they also threw in a dash of religion to boot, which -- per the same blog -- marx _also_ talked about... was there anything this marx guy _didn't_ discuss?) (that reminds me, did ya see "survivor" last week? wasn't that a blast to see "coach" praying that they would "find the idol", when it's right in his pocket? talk about ensuring your prayer will be answered!) anyway... the violence guys formalized institutions -- the whole schmear, governments, economy -- and then convinced themselves they all _deserved_ to get special treatment, and so they set up a world that would _deliver_ that special treatment to them. pretty nifty trick, eh? nice work, if you can get it... they keep getting richer, and we keep getting poorer. because, like, you know, it's right there in the bible... and they couldn't put it in the bible if it wasn't true... > What problem do you tackle first, > so that people join you in tackling it? the first thing i do is find my girl friday, "tackle" her, and we start making babies... _that_ is "my passion". gotta populate the island! :+) -bowerbird

1 0