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

hope springs eternal
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 Mar '12

23 Mar '12

spring has sprung. and again, hope reappears like the green of the grass. so let me repeat the fundamental message once again. you can take a file that is _very_much_like_ a p.g. e-text and code computer programs that will use it to generate an .html version of the e-book (or, really, a wide array of .html versions of the e-book, according to your desires), _and_ an .epub file, _and_ a .mobi file, _and_ a .pdf too, plus some i.o.s., android, and web-app versions as well... this method will work on 98.6% of the books that're in p.g. i have been delivering this message for many years now... at first, almost nobody believed; eventually, everyone will. you were wrong. i was right. i told you so. -bowerbird

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enlightenment attained
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Mar '12

19 Mar '12

i received my print-on-demand of "e-book enlightenment" -- the book by james -- so now i have the paperwork that i am officially enlightened. the book looks great, james... i expected color images, because that's what's in the .pdf, but they're black-and-white in the p-book. still, that's ok. and in other news, jeroen hellingman over at d.p. has now post-processed 500 books for p.g., a big accomplishment, especially considering that some of the projects he tackles are far more complicated to digitize than the average book. as he points out, 500 books is a book a week for 10 years, so that gives you an idea of the degree of dedication there. congratulations, jeroen. -bowerbird

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what is all this noise about?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 Mar '12

09 Mar '12

this listserve is too heterogeneous and disparate -- those are 2 nice words for "scatterbrained" -- to bring any kind of "formal charges" against p.g. you complain about their submission policies? why? in spite of any problems with the written policies, the p.g. library managed to amass 30,000 books. so someone seems to have worked out how to submit a book to p.g., and p.g. seems to have figured out how to accept it and place it online. for the rare people out there who don't know how, it boils down to a negotiation between a producer and a p.g. whitewasher, until the producer molds a type of submission the whitewasher has in mind. even the most experienced producers have to go through this process, including independent ones -- like nicholas hodson, who's done 700 books -- and d.p. stalwarts like rfrank, lucy24, and others, many of whom have now digitized nearly as many. you're just giving al an "easy out" for his response, not to mention good reasons for him to stay away from this listserve altogether in the future, just like the other whitewashers have already "learned" to do, after having become convinced that listening to you "is a big waste of time". can't say that i blame them. you'll need to be far more focused and constructive. -bowerbird p.s. and john, you want to be told how you can help? al has told us, indirectly but very clearly nonetheless, that p.g. does not want any help from us, thank you... unless we're a cog in their "produce a book" machine. because, you know, their status quo is so peachy keen.

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Re: [gutvol-d] What was all that noise about?
by John Redmond 09 Mar '12

09 Mar '12

BB said: "we just had the two _heaviest_ months _ever_ in the amount of text posted to this listserve. yet i can't recall that i learned a single thing." I agree! I keep watching and hoping--and I still have absolutely NO sense of whether or how I might contribute! How about a prioritized to-do list? John Redmond

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Re: [gutvol-d] what was all that noise about?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 Mar '12

09 Mar '12

john said: > The real point of BB's question, I think, was that > no understanding or consensus has emerged > about PG's policies, preferences and requirements. well, no, john, that wasn't really my point. i would just like this listserve to be an interesting place. thus, in terms of my own set of "priorities" for this list, i'd like to dialog, and laugh, and learn, and be inspired. i usually get that much from my weekly poetry open mike -- which is composed primarily by twenty-somethings -- so i don't think it's too much to ask from the people here. yet i am routinely disappointed by remarkably dim dialog, most of which is tired old rhetoric that's been defeated by better argumentation time and time again, largely because it was badly-thought-out in the first place, and not updated. nobody can stay on-topic, or seemingly even think straight. frankly, this place is populated by a bunch of scatterbrains! who -- ironically -- all seem to think they are very smart... michael hart -- bless him on his birthday -- deserved better. *** as for the "policies, preferences, and requirements" of p.g., i think the record on that has been pretty firmly established. it's a jumbled mess. and it's never gonna get any better. because the people in charge largely think it's just dandy. you heard al give his advice -- just keep churning 'em out! the status quo is fine! continue being a cog in the machine! oh sure, there are a few underpinnings of dissatisfaction... as greg noted, people complain about the derivative formats. but nobody in charge has the faintest clue about what to do. you saw how david widger formally included his protest note in the "new improved" versions he is creating, remarking that he doesn't really think they're so "improved" at all, thank you, as he points people to earlier versions now in the "old" folder. and in addition to not having a clue, greg is mightily confused. how about that big "p.g. could post your derivatives!" fiasco? what an embarrassment. not to mention the simple fact that mobileread has had such a library already for a very long time. and people at d.p. think a "committee" can solve their problems. finally, meanwhile, everything has to go through marcello, and he's bound and determined to cut the baby in half if he has to, so he's willing to stonewall until all of you do whatever he says. and nobody is willing to follow a good idea anyway, even if they _could_ recognize one, and they've all shown that they cannot... so, seriously, john, if you're sitting around waiting for guidance, you're wasting your time. you're not gonna get any of that here. so all i can say is, i'm glad i have that weekly poetry open mike... -bowerbird p.s. prove me wrong, folks. have one intelligent dialog. one! you can't do it... you simply cannot do it... you are incapable...

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Re: [gutvol-d] what was all that noise about?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 08 Mar '12

08 Mar '12

1. ignore the lessons of history. 2. be doomed to repeat it. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Thanks and a request for code
by Lee Passey 08 Mar '12

08 Mar '12

On Mon, March 5, 2012 7:56 am, Robert Gibbins wrote: > Might I ask you to send me the code please? See: lee.readingroo.ms/html2txt.zip >From the date/time stamp I see that this file is > 10.5 years old. No doubt much of it will be a little out of date. See also: http://epubeditor.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/epubeditor/xhtmldocument/com/p… for an example of how to emit a document by processing a node recursively.

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what was all that noise about?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 07 Mar '12

07 Mar '12

we just had the two _heaviest_ months _ever_ in the amount of text posted to this listserve. yet i can't recall that i learned a single thing. of course, i do have a lot of people kill-filed. (and every one of them _earned_ that honor!) i might've missed something for that reason? so if _you_ learned anything, please reiterate. you can summarize, or just point me to posts. otherwise, i'll have to assume that there was absolutely no signal inside of all that noise... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Thanks and a request for code
by Lee Passey 07 Mar '12

07 Mar '12

On Mon, March 5, 2012 7:56 am, Robert Gibbins wrote: > Might I ask you to send me the code please? It's hidden away on another machine; I'll try to dig it out in the next day or two...but you may not want it, as explained below. > PS The rough idea I had was to write a Java version as you suggest in your > append, though I had thought of using JDOM rather than DOM. I haven't spent > any time thinking about JDOM vs DOM yet, but if you have I'd be interested > in your view. IIRC, JDOM is an open-source DOM implementation. From what I've heard, it is very well regarded -- but it is not standard. I have chosen to use org.w3c.dom because 1. it is the standard and 2. it is included in the standard Sun/Oracle distribution, so I can be assured that it will be available without having to reference an external jar. I'm not sure that my code will be of much value at this point; it relies on Tidy to build a non-standard DOM. Tidy is getting a bit long in the tooth, and there are better ways to build a DOM these days (for C/C++ I tend to use Expat + DOMCAPI). The processing logic is extremely simple. You do an inorder traversal of the DOM tree, and for each node you do pre-child processing, then process each child, then do post-child processing. For example, suppose you hit a node, and your rule is that a new paragraph starts on a new line. Before processing the 's you want to emit a new line character (two if you're not already at the start of a line). Then you process all the children of the , applying whatever rules are appropriate. Lastly, before processing any nodes following the you emit another newline. Now suppose you want to indicate /italics/ with _underscores_. When you encounter an element you emit a '_' character, process the children nodes, then emit another '_'. A text node has no children, so you just emit the contents of the text node. If I understood the rules of ReStructured Text, or s.m.l., I'm sure I could use this general algorithm to generate either of them from HTML. You could probably follow this same general approach using stream-oriented processing, I just found it easier and quicker to use a DOM.

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experimentation at distributed proofreaders
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Mar '12

05 Mar '12

there's a bunch of experimentation being done over at d.p. these days, both by some underlings and also by newbies... the underlings know what they're getting into, or _should_, so there's no need to warn them about the potential futility. (one of the promising ones in this class is named "foofaid".) but newbies should definitely be told they need to get a solid assurance the work will be used before they commit too much. for instance, here's an interface designed by newbie jon hurst: > http://ec2-46-137-53-169.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/proof/proofreading… it's still simple, but it looks as good as many of the interfaces of this type that we've seen in the past. so it's time (past time) for d.p. to start being _honest_ with programming volunteers... and if the "powers that be" don't have the integrity to be honest, the people who've been burned in the past -- i'm looking at you, d.b. kretz -- are compelled to step up and issue a fair warning... -bowerbird

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