January 2012 - gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

you yap dogs need to stop yapping, and listen for a minute
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

robert said: > A year later I look again at this forum > and you are still arguing about it, but > nothing seems to have been achieved! yep. pretty amazing, isn't it? the answer is so simple. yet nobody acts. they just yap and yap, like little yap dogs. so stop yapping and listen up, yap dogs... you've gotta show the d.p. postprocessors how to achieve the results that they desire _and_ still get workable derivative formats. the latter is fairly easy, and the former isn't all _too_ difficult, although you will need to assure them first that it actually is possible. their virginity was stolen by a violent rapist; now they are afraid to take a chance on love. i would go there and do it myself, except that they banished me from there a long time ago. but in terms of .html that will "work", there are several people who can tell you how to do that. i can do it. jim can do it. robert here can do it. you could probably even figure it out yourself... if you'd only stop yapping, and do work instead. -bowerbird

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it's monday, after noon, let's get the crowdsourcing started
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

greg- i'm ready with my crowdsourcing thing. are you gonna provide the pagescans? or do we have to dig 'em up ourselves? too bad all the p.g. e-texts are rewrapped... that's gonna make re-proofing very difficult. any book(s) in particular you want to start with? -bowerbird

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Crowdsourcing (Re: Producing epub ready HTML)
by Greg Newby 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

Whew. I counted 100 messages in 2 days. Thanks for the lively discussion. I changed the subject for the theme that Joshua and others mentioned (below). The idea I am very interested in fostering is capable online tools to let essentially anyone make edits, add formats, or prepare derivative files, from any PG eBook. Then, to easily add those changes back into (an area of) the PG collection. My view is that we could very easily have an additional major category of file, for a given work. Currently, we have two major categories: first are files that go through WWers to get online, and second are those that are automatically generated from the first type. (While this is a gross simplification, in fact at www.gutenberg.org it's really easy to tell which is which -- they are in a different set of subdirectories, with a different file naming scheme.) A third (new) type would be those files that are, in some way, modified, derived, or produced by other people and their tools. Not necessarily WWers or the original producers/submitters. In a word, crowdsourcing. Or community editing. Or version control. Or whatever you want to call it: the point would be that ANYONE with desire and some basic capability could make changes to existing files, or provide derivative files. I can think of several major details, and many minor ones. Concerns about copyright, spamming, whether anonymous edits are permitted, a review/revision/recision cycle, character sets, forking, searching, etc., etc. I would love to see multiple "master" files, created lovingly by hand in any or all of RST, LaTeX, or yfm (Your Favorite Markup) -- then allow users to select which master to use to generate their, say, EPUB. And, which tools to use for the conversion. Of course, people who wanted to lovingly craft an EPUB would be able to upload that, too. A capable crowdsourcing tool - preferably one that already exists, is well-maintained, is free, and will require relatively few modifications - is the starting point I'd most like to see. Whether we start with one book or 100 or 38000 doesn't matter to me, though it matters a whole lot that the solution is scalable to the full collection. As for the questions about whether this would be allowed, or would pollute the essence of whatever, or piss off whomever: no, PG does't work that way, and never did. The answer is, and has been, "yes, go for it. It's all good, and on-mission." I am sensitive to not removing or undoing others' work, but my view is that current files of the first type, above, would remain, and be easy to find, and that for the main collection at www.gutenberg.org, the WWer process (perhaps as modified, thanks to the new tools that have been under discussion) would still apply. Last year, I tried to deploy TRAC for group editing and version control of PG eBooks. It couldn't handle the directory count, and never finished, though I'm ready to try again. Or, a different tool. As many subscribers have heard before, I have some hefty servers that can be used for experimentation and proof of concept. That's not the hard part. If people are aware of good tools we could base this on, please speak up. I can elaborate on why I prefer to start with an existing tool, but in a nutshell it is because (as many have pointed out), the fundamentals of crowdsourcing and file revisions are already covered by a bunch of excellent tools. Let's not reinvent the parts that others are doing well since, after all, there are plenty of challenges that are unique to Project Gutenberg or to eBooks in general. -- Greg On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 01:01:08AM +0100, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > On 01/24/2012 11:08 PM, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > > >So, if someone were to start "refactoring" old PG texts into TEI or RST and > >working with a WWer to repost them ... is this a workable idea? > > More than a technical challenge it would be a political one. I can > convert a novel the size of Pride and Prejudice into RST in about an > hour. More if there is formatting or images to recover. But I'd > prefer to avoid the riot that will ensue if we start to reformat DP > texts. > > We could start redoing the top 100 list excluding everything that is > too hard and everything made by DP. > > > >Maybe we start this process on a semi-private mirror of the PG corpus and only > >when it reaches a critical mass of some sort it gets moved over. But an official > >notice that this project has some backing is necessary or we'll just keep seeing > >everything running around in ten different directions and nothing ever getting done. > > A semi-official branch would be a good occasion to ditch the old > WWer workflow in favor of a source repository (git or mercurial) > that holds all the masters. > > Should we reserve a range of ebook nos. or shadow the existing ones? > > > -- > Marcello Perathoner > webmaster(a)gutenberg.org > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d

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re; it's monday, after noon, let's get the crowdsourcing started
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

al said: > Any done by still-current producers > (David Price, David Widger, etc) > shouldn't be touched. except i'm quite sure that's not a rule for this tournament. as for the 587 files in etext03, it's my understanding that implicit credit for moving these files to the new structure will be given to the whitewashers. that's correct, is it not? surely that is not the aim of this tournament either, is it? or have we taken "whitewashing" back to its original sense? are you planning to soon charge us to do this work for you? -bowerbird

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this most certainly is a contest
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

al said: > It's standard repost practice, and common courtesy, > to maintain the credit to the original producer. these are _not_ "reposts". they are independent entities. and since i am redoing these books because i believe that they were not done entirely correctly the first time around, a feeling which probably holds true for the other teams too, these efforts might well be interpreted as a _condemnation_ of the original file, in which case i'm not certain that people would agree it's "common courtesy" to "maintain" the "credit". it might appear to be more like pointing the finger of blame... > silly word, since this isn't or shouldn't be a contest this most certainly _is_ a contest. the discussion has revolved around the "best" way to do things, arising from beliefs that the current output "isn't good enough", so the evaluative dimension is _permeating_ this entire issue, al. > John Doe will NOT lose his credit, > and will NOT lose first credit. you can do whatever you like with your files. i'll do the same with mine. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Crowdsourcing (Re: Producing epub ready HTML)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Jan '12

30 Jan '12

don said: > I think we should maybe > spend more time coming at it > from the user's direction and > refining some requirements > before we make technology choices. that's a great suggestion, don. except maybe for the fact that there _are_ no users, and there is little evidence to believe that there ever _will_ be any users... again, roger built a nice machine, but couldn't get volunteers for it... and he's a dale-carniege person. while none of you other guys have enough charisma to fill a thimble. > And in that direction I think > automating the build process to > be more dependency-sensitive > might pay off more in the short run. > Maybe it's there and I don't know it, > but I haven't heard much of that > flavor to the discussion so far. i've already accomplished the objective. but nobody seems to want to hear that... -bowerbird

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the faster the merry-go-round spins
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 28 Jan '12

28 Jan '12

as the merry-go-round spins faster and faster, it takes less time to return to a specific point... now we're talking (again) about doublequotes? it was less than one month ago, december 28th, when i reminded don that i had explained them to him many years back, and i retold the story... check the archives, it was pontification #1495... oh heck, here's the link, to make it easy for you: > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-December/008690.html -bowerbird p.s. no matter whether you curl quotes or not, you're gonna make _some_ end-users unhappy if they can't reverse your decision to their liking. so, which of the file-formats you like allow that?

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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

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that fork in the road
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Jan '12

27 Jan '12

it's entertaining how all of you have no shortage of opinions when it comes to any vague half-assed idea that gets floated. but i ask for concrete criticism on actual files you can look at, and nobody makes a peep. once again, so it's explicit to all that you have nothing to say: here's the test-suite: > http://zenmagiclove.com/test-suite-2012.txt here's the script that converts the test-suite into .html: > http://zenmagiclove.com/cgi-bin/t2.py here's the .mobi version of the test-suite: > http://zenmagiclove.com/suite/suite.mobi here's the .epub version of the test-suite: > http://zenmagiclove.com/suite/suite-epub.epub here's the folder holding all of the conversion files: > http://zenmagiclove.com/suite/ here's a .zip file containing all of the conversion files: > http://zenmagiclove.com/suite/suite-all.zip *** what i have created is a transformation flow that gives an equivalence which spans across the entire workflow, so i can provide -- and even point you specifically to -- a particular chunk of text within a book as it exists: 1. in an abstract structural representation of the book; 2. as text, existing with a plain-ascii light-markup file; 3. as x/html (in a mix of flavors, from html3.2 to html5); 4. on the web in many forms (by page, chapter, book, etc.); 5. in a .mobi; 6. in an .epub; 7. in a .pdf; 8. in a web-app; 9. in an i.o.s. ipad/iphone app; 10. where all these formats can sync with online forums; 11. which forums could be for proofing, discussion, etc., 12. such that forums in #11 could circle back to point #2. maybe you don't understand this is a remarkable achievement. maybe you're not paying attention. if you _are_ paying attention, feel free to give me any feedback. otherwise, i'll assume you can't see any room for improvement... thank you. that is all. have a nice day. :+) -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Crowdsourcing (the magic bullet)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Jan '12

27 Jan '12

i said: > i'll serve my pudding on my own site... and the first thing i will tell people about each e-text is _exactly_how_my_version_differs_from_the_p.g._version_. even without looking at one, one thing i can say for sure is that these diff reports are going to make p.g look bad. some improvements are one thing -- "legalese deleted" -- but more embarrassing is that your corpus is teeming with obvious o.c.r. errors that are detectable with minimal effort. (if you want a catchy name, i call this the "go clown" effect.) a lengthy list errors, in book after book, one after another, is -- frankly -- going to be extremely appalling to people... you're in over your head, greg. i was 5,000 volumes into redoing the p.g. library years ago, and i quit, because i realized that this would be the result... i didn't want to make p.g. suffer those terrible ramifications. but that was out of respect and admiration for michael hart, which is no longer a consideration. re-think, greg. carefully. or maybe you're thinking you need to confront those errors. but it won't end up to be any help, because your procedure for remounting a corrected book is far too clumsy to enact to repair a couple of errors that occur in hundreds of books, and a few more across a thousand other books, and so on. if it wasn't, you woulda fixed those errors already yourself. it's nice to fantasize that the crowd will solve your problems. but it ain't gonna happen... not the way you'd _like_ it to... and it's kind of troubling to see you do this wishful thinking, because it's not too apparent that you realize that's what it is. i know you want a magic bullet, greg... we all do... you can still count me in. but i'm telling you it's a bad idea. -bowerbird

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