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

improving the blah blah blah
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 Sep '12

23 Sep '12

jon said: > would be grateful if those on this list > would shoot it down in flames so that I can > abandon it and avoid doing a whole heap of work. the list apparently prefers that you will go ahead and do a whole heap of work. which it will then shoot down in flames. go back and read the archives of this list in january and february of (yes) this year to get a feel for this topic's uselessness: > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2012-January.txt.gz > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2012-February.txt.gz meanwhile, for pride and prejudice, try: > http://zenmagiclove.com/prapr you will find various work i did on that book -- in the swirl of that exchange back then -- which might help guide you, if you continue... but my best advice is this: "it's a trap! turn back!" -bowerbird

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Improving the PG library
by Robert Gibbins 23 Sep '12

23 Sep '12

Re: 'Pride and Prejudice', you could try one of the Oxford texts, starting with the R. W. Chapman edition of 1923 which tried to go back to Jane Austen's original, in so far as that could be determined. I don't have it, but I believe the Oxford English Novels edition, is/was the latest version of this. The new Oxford World's Classics paperback edition, which I bought recently, also says it contains the same text. Bob Gibbins

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Readable epubs
by Robert Gibbins 20 Sep '12

20 Sep '12

This thread was kicked off by Stevan White saying that he had taken some PG-generated epubs apart and re-formatted them, and that he though they were improved by doing this. Having been through this process myself about 18 months ago, and got nowhere with persuading PG to do anything about its epubs (my original proposal was simply that PG should add hand-corrected epubs to its current repository, which may now seem naïve, but was well-intentioned), I contemplated the feasibility of starting a web site myself, persuading others to join me, etc., etc. (and also having an offer to host my books on his site from BB), but eventually concluded that since my basic interest is in books, not running a web site, the simplest thing to do was to add them to the MobileRead library at (http://www.mobileread.com/) Now my personal belief (though I can't prove it) is that: 1. What Jim Adcock calls the dirt simple books constitute the vast majority of downloads from PG. 2. Much, if not most, of the great literature of the English language that interests me is already in the PG repository (although sadly often in a somewhat unsatisfactory state) and furthermore is contained within the above-mentioned dirt simple subset. 2. Most of these books could be satisfactorily encoded by limiting HTML markup to the styles contained in a relatively small css stylesheet, and by obeying a small number of rather uncontroversial HTML coding standards (things like what heading levels to use for volumes, chapters, sections within chapters, etc.). (They are, after all, dirt simple.) 3. If these books were thus encoded, then it would be a relatively simple matter to generate epubs from the HTML (and maybe even simpler to do it the other way round). Probably also you could generate plaintext from the HTML, so that you could (for these books) have a single master version in HTML. Over the last eighteen months as I've reformatted various PG-generated epubs in order to read them, I have slowly refined a set of styles which seem to work across at least a certain number of the dirt simple books. I don't kid myself that what I am currently doing is the best or most flexible possible answer. I didn't know HTML particularly well when I started, and I have already had one major re-think earlier this year when I went through at least two design iterations for the style sheet before eventually recognising that I was re-inventing the 'Decorator' design pattern from the book 'Design Patterns' by Gamma, Helm, Johnson & Vlissides. I've also had some very useful help from several contributors to this forum. (Anyone who is interested can see a fairly up-to-date version of the stylesheet I am using contained in http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1371707#post1371707 which is an Anthony Trollope novel "The Belton Estate".) I'd like to know if Stevan's books can teach me anything, so I would like to request that Stevan puts his books somewhere (maybe MobileRead, maybe he has a better place) and appends their URLs to this forum so that those of us who are interested in this problem have the opportunity to learn something. Bob Gibbins

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Cumulative download statistics
by jon.a＠hursts.eclipse.co.uk 19 Sep '12

19 Sep '12

In answer to my own (lazy) question, plus a couple of unasked ones: * The 1000 most downloaded titles account for 41% of total downloads. * The 10000 most downloaded titles account for 80% of total downloads. * 50% of total downloads are accounted for by the first 1800 most downloaded titles. Graph here if you are interested: http://www.hursts.eclipse.co.uk/pg-cumulative-downloads.pdf

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Quick question (hopefully)
by jon.a＠hursts.eclipse.co.uk 18 Sep '12

18 Sep '12

Hi all, I was just wondering what percentage of PG downloads are accounted for by the top 1000 downloads. Is there anyone on this list able to generate this statistic? Many thanks Jon

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procedures for blah, blah for blah and blah
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 16 Sep '12

16 Sep '12

if you ignore the non-book entries, and combine the split-up e-texts, you'll find there are ~30,000 books in the project gutenberg library now. with a light-markup master-source making auxiliary formats on-demand, storage needs would be less than now, as would be the costs of maintenance. and user-satisfaction would skyrocket. this is only a hard job for y'all because _you_are_doing_it_wrong._ end of post. -bowerbird

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Metadata for original publication date?
by Steve White 14 Sep '12

14 Sep '12

Hi, I've not found the right way to include the date of the original publication in e-book metadata, particularly in EPUB books. The Dublin Core has lots of other dates, but they're thinking in terms of updates to modern documents, not a re-published historical document. Of course, to a user, the original publication date of the historical documents of Project Gutenberg is likely to be of greater importance than the most recent publication date. Any ideas?

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Fwd: Fw: [DP-announce] DP: Site Outage - 11-Sep-2012
by Greg Newby 13 Sep '12

13 Sep '12

FYI. I've also heard that updates were posted here, during the main DP site outage: http://blog.pgdp.net ----- Forwarded Message ----- >From: "dphelp(a)pgdp.net" <dphelp(a)pgdp.net> >To: dp-announce(a)pgdp.net >Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2012 4:06 AM >Subject: [DP-announce] DP: Site Outage - 11-Sep-2012 > >The morning of Sept. 11, DP had an incident with a client IP that had an >unusually large number of web server connections open. That incident was >resolved without issue. > >As part of our response, the database server was stopped (a common >preventative measure if there is a chance of data being siphoned off) and >later restarted. However, during the normal startup checks, the db >determined that repairs were needed on the past_tallies table, one of the >largest on the system. This check could not be interrupted. > >It was determined that the fastest recovery time would be achieved by >shutting down almost all server processes (including web access and mail >services) and allowing the db to have the maximum resources available to >perform its work. > >The process of repairing the past_tallies table was a long one, but it and >all other mysql checks completed successfully. The post-recovery checklist >was completed just before 11 p.m. server time (PDT) on Sept. 12 and we >have returned to normal operations. > >All should now be well. If not, please report issues in the "Site Outage - >11-Sep-2012" thread: http://www.pgdp.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=51975 > >Thank you for your patience while this issue was being resolved. > > >Distributed Proofreaders >www.pgdp.net > >_______________________________________________ >DP-announce mailing list >DP-announce(a)pgdp.net >http://www.pgdp.net/mailman/listinfo/dp-announce > > > ----- End forwarded message -----

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Can't connect to DP-US (Sept 12/2012)
by Al Haines 12 Sep '12

12 Sep '12

Connection to DP-US appears to be down. Anyone out there with more information about this? Al

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Raft of New Kindles Announced
by James Adcock 07 Sep '12

07 Sep '12

http://www.amazon.com/kindle

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