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

blah blah blah feasibility blah
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 08 Oct '12

08 Oct '12

carlo said: > I ask you to show us how you would do > "correct" HTML for books that are not yet in PG. i do believe that jim has explained that to us countless times. which part -- exactly -- did you have trouble understanding? > And possibly show how to start > a toolchain alternative to RST+epubmaker, possibly > to install at a new DP site that I am currently testing. i find it curious that you'd ask jim to explain this -- since he hasn't really built such a toolchain -- while you ignored my point that i have a web-app that's up and available for use right now by people. > May at least ask you a list of your recent contributions to PG, > so that we can learn from your examples? what's to learn? create an .html file that contains no stylesheet. that will work just fine in most reader-machines. then add as many styles as you like, until one of 'em breaks the file in a reader-machine; then remove it. why are you guys playing dumb under the guise of "asking for advice"? who do you think you're fooling? -bowerbird

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blah blah blah feasibility blah
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 08 Oct '12

08 Oct '12

carlo said: > Jim, why don't you do instead of preaching? don't be disingenuous. jim has offered, numerous times, to fix troublesome .html. he has _begged_ for the opportunity to do just that. often! so don't try to accuse him of "preaching"... that's unfair... and it's beneath you, carlo. at least i thought it would be. > Offer to prepare HTML for post-processors > that don't like preparing HTML, but can give you files > marked with a reasonable extension of DP markup why saddle jim with this? i've got a web-app that converts z.m.l. into .html, and .epub, and .mobi too, when p.g. accepts 'em... those post-processors can use that. (or jim can, if he wants, if he decides to accept your proposal.) -bowerbird

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blah blah blah blah blah blah seriously?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 08 Oct '12

08 Oct '12

don said: > What happened when you offered to > help the submitters fix their texts, so they > could learn how to avoid the problems in future? seriously? you're asking jim what kind of reaction he's gotten when he has suggested to d.p. they could improve? seriously? how effective have you _yourself_ been at that, don? which is why i can't believe you seriously asked that. you're just jerking his chain. anyway, officially, as i would guess you know, don, but maybe not, d.p. has a committee that's "working on it". at one time, they had 3 committees "working on it", but then they all gave up, so they had to form another one... the report has been coming "real soon now" for months. of course, however, we all know what the reaction will be to the report by the d.p. post-processors. they'll reject it, because they love tinkering with their .html, so that it will "look like the printed book"... this is the main "benefit" to doing the post-processing, and it's how most of 'em were recruited: that they could do the job however they wanted. and they certainly will not give that up for epub/mobi files. if they can't "make it pretty", they'll just stop doing the job. i _warned_ them -- and juliet in particular, because she was the one who was using the line to recruit people -- that this model would backfire big time, but they didn't wanna hear it. as for juliet, this particular point was the biggest reason that i was eventually banned from posting over in the d.p. forums. -bowerbird

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p.g. times ten
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 07 Oct '12

07 Oct '12

don said: > Please explain. please explain what? > https://ianews.wordpress.com/2011/09/17/3-million-texts-for-free/ -bowerbird

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p.g. times ten
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 07 Oct '12

07 Oct '12

don said: > PG could be keeping itself busy forever digitizing > some order of magnitude more ebooks than it does today > and still not be catching up. true. > The list is to describe the scope of > what all would need to scale up if PG were > to take the true magnitude of the job seriously. ok. but... > Take a ridiculously low number - say a rate of > 10 times more books than are being added now. so when you say "ridiculously low", you mean that, even at that rate, p.g. would still fall behind badly. but even that kind of jump would be very hard to attain -- in my judgment -- if you were to try to leverage the current pg/dp infrastructure, because it is deeply resistant to _any_ change... so you'd need to start anew. and even that would be difficult to accomplish, if you were to ask me... we see that even wikipedia, an unqualified success, is having trouble maintaining its own participation, since people are more interested in updating their facebook page these days than collaborating online. *** but let's say that you _could_ create "p.g. times ten". that means you'd put up about 25,000 books a year. in 4 years, you'd have 100,000. in 8 years, 200,000. people already have reasonable access to 2 million public-domain books. just the scan-sets, true, but that seems to be all that the average person needs... i argued every step of the way that digital text was superior in just about almost every way to scans... but now that we have these millions of scan-sets, we have to ask if the cost of cleaning the text for a relatively small percentage is worth the benefit. given the current output of d.p., which seems to be polarized, with "campfire girls go horse riding" at one end and "dante's divine comedy" the other, i'd say nobody will be happy with your percentage. if a person _does_ want digitized text nowadays, they want it for a _particular_ book, not a library that's so small and idiosyncratic that the odds are fairly slim that it even contains that specific book. back in 1992, and even in 2002, p.g. made sense. in 2012, a world where we are awash in page-scans, i think you would need to re-think the justification... not just a workflow, but the "why are we doing this?" if you would whip up volunteers, i think it'd be great, because i think there is huge value in digitized text... but that's my personal opinion, and it also recognizes that synergy only kicks in if _all_ our text is digitized. and if your project isn't ever gonna make that happen... *** so i'd say you'd need to be upfront and honest with potential volunteers, about the true value of the deal, to weigh the cost-benefit ratio of their contributions. -bowerbird

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top 10 reasons why this current thread will go nowhere -- #8
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Oct '12

06 Oct '12

#8. if your workflow has no supporting tools, you have no workflow. #9. this list has proven it can ignore a solution right in front of it. #10. that's where these threads always go, and nothing has changed. -bowerbird

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call up your sled-dogs
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Oct '12

06 Oct '12

greg said: > This is, more or less, exactly what I said we needed. > There is no resistance to any of this. then why haven't you put it into place? > I even asked for input on figuring out what the > requirements & enforcement would look like. jim has pointed out examples of problematic .html. many times. so have i. simply remove those negatives. if you would rather have positive examples instead, examine my z.m.l. test-suite, and how it is handled. *** i must add, however, that even though you say that "there is no resistance to any of this," it certainly _seems_ like your whitewashers couldn't care less (as evidenced by that "update" to huck finn), and to describe marcello as anything less than "hostile" would be an injustice to truth, not to mention that the fine people over at d.p. will impasse your ass... so i think that puts you in over your head, greg... and yes, i do remember that you are rather tall. still, over your head. though perhaps you could call up your sled-dogs to pull you out to safety... but how good are they at writing code? and docs? -bowerbird

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top 10 reasons why this current thread will go nowhere -- #9
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Oct '12

05 Oct '12

#9. this list has proven it can ignore a solution put right in front of it. #10. that's where these threads always go, and nothing has changed. -bowerbird

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patches to epubmaker
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Oct '12

05 Oct '12

paul flo williams said: > maybe one of us could > actually submit some patches to epubmaker. i'd love to see that, to see what marcello would do. based on my experience, he'll tell you that it's no good, and you're stupid, and you don't understand the issues, and your interpretation of everything is wrong, and then he'll make the change himself and take the credit for it... but hey, you know, if you're ok with that, then go ahead. -bowerbird p.s. i'm still not reading your posts, marcello, so... you know, don't even bother preparing a "response". or, better yet, attack me with yet another low blow, confident that i won't respond because i won't see it.

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Re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blah blah blah
by don kretz 05 Oct '12

05 Oct '12

So what are you suggesting? I can't imagine people out there saying to themselves"This is simple; I think I'll make it complicated." or"This is complicated. I think I'll oversimplify it." What is a constructive suggestion? Sent from my Phone From: James Adcock Sent: 10/5/2012 9:51 AM To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion; Tapio Riikonen Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blah blah blah >Books are complex beasts, and not always easy to typeset or encode. We have a lot of books which are pretty simple, and could fit into a common methodology which should be able to run successfully "everywhere." We have a few books which are very complicated, and are not going to fit into a common methodology, at least not one which we can teach or motivate the average volunteer to use. There is a strong countercurrent however, who want to take simple things and make them complicated, and well as another thread who want to take complicated things and oversimplify them. _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d

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