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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '11

31 Jan '11

jim said: > now you are using some kind of oversized, > and over-light bizarro font i believe it's simply calling the default serif font, which is whatever you specified in your browser. but if i'm wrong about that, do please let me know. > you are embedding page margins within HTML, > which “everyone” knows is a no-no. i copied that out of your style sheet for #29452... > Contents now includes Title and Contents itself, > both of which is certainly wrong. it did before, because that's how i do things. but i'll take it out, to give it to you your way. > Title poorly formatted. See the real book no more evasion. you tell me how you want it. > Choice of asterisks as a fancy rule looks a bit strange. tell me what you want instead. > Too small and too light for the intended use. i have no idea what this means. > Missing vertical whitespace before poetry (when translated to MOBI) i haven't done the .mobi conversion yet... > Gratuitous horizontal rule before “the end” whatever. i'll delete it to make you happy. > “The End” capitalized wrong, i don't use capitals, and i put that in. so i'll delete it. > Gratuitous “v?” i explained that. but i forgot about your reading comprehension impairment. never mind. i'll delete it, so you're happy. > Now missing cover entirely (when translated to MOBI) i do the mobi conversion, not you. -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '11

31 Jan '11

ok, it's sunday afternoon, jim. where are my .pdfs? *** i visited feedbooks.com, to see what it offers users in terms of customizing the .pdf which is created... they let you control the pagesize, which is useful, in millimeters!, which -- for americans -- is not... (they tried to make us convert, hadrien; didn't work; and i doubt an effort by feedbooks will change that.) users are also given options to control the fontsize, the font (a choice of 6, all traditionals you'd guess), and all four margins. you can also select a template for a4, for a 6" reader, and a 5" reader... (strangely, here they acknowledge inches as a measurement unit.) *** manybooks.net offers users a similar set of choices... pagesize (again, only in millimeters), with presets for: a4, letter, sony, iliad, cybook, iphone, nokia, bebook, and jetbook. they let you specify a body font separately from the heading font, but only give a person 4 choices. they let you specify the pointsize, but also linespacing... albeit it's only in 1.00, 1.25, 1.50, and 1.75 values, but feedbooks didn't give users any control over the leading. finally, manybooks also lets you control all four margins. *** to my mind, both of these sites offer a very good start, but they don't go nearly far enough offering options... i think there should be many more choices of fonts... (these days, with google-fonts and type-kit and all that, even a web-based service can offer a good font choice). i also think they should give users full control of leading. in addition, however, i would offer a host of other options. in fact, with my tool, i _do_ offer end-users more options... i let them use any font on their machine, and any leading. i let them control the color of the text. (down the line, i might let them customize the font and color of specific structural components, like headers, block-quotes, etc.) i let them control the metadata embedded in the .pdf... i let them control the run-heads and the page-footers... i give them the option of ragged right versus justified... also, because they have the text itself, they can control straight-quotes versus curly, em-dash versus double, and block-paragraphs versus indented. however, i will be adding capabilities to my program which let the user _change_ all these on the fly, without modifying the text. *** of course, we'll want a few other things your .pdf too, such as a working table-of-contents. but you can work on those finer points once you get all the basics down... (and yes, i already offer a working table-of-contents.) *** so, if you want to keep up, jim, you'll need to set up a web-system or an offline app that can offer all that. (and, as some end-users might not have a computer that'll run an offline app, a web-app would be good.) because you wanna give an end-user the e-book that they want, or -- failing that -- the ability to _create_ the e-book that they want. at least i assume you do. *** so, anyway, jim, where are my .pdfs? it would also be good if you could take a look at the latest version of the .html file for "the jungle", and say what still needs fixing, or verify it's a-ok... remember, i'm not gonna let you slide away quietly. -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Jan '11

30 Jan '11

go get your own threads! stop hijacking this one! especially you, karen lofstrum and david starner! you'd think those two characters would _realize_ i started this thread -- because the all-lowercase subject header is a very good, telling hint, eh?, and who else initiates threads that generate traffic? -- so you'd also think that since they killfile my posts they'd know they missed a huge part of the thread, and thus figure out that they're probably off-topic. but no, no sir, no such evidence of that in sight... go away, you scavengers. scram! -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Jan '11

30 Jan '11

jim said: > style should be primarily up to the publishing house my view on fonts is that the end-user picks the font. you are the end-user for our little experiment here, so pick your font. i will not be bothered otherwise... > Leave it out and use some extra vertical whitespace i will not just "leave out" the asterisks, because they signal a scene-break in the original book, which is a very important piece of information that should be retained for anyone who wants to copy out this text. but i can turn them white, so they become invisible, similar to what i did with the rules you wanted deleted. > It means that when I read this on my Kindle > or in my web browser it is so small and > leaves so little visual impact compared to > the surrounding text that it looks like a mistake. whatever. i will make them invisible, in keeping with your suggestion to use some extra vertical whitespace. the new version is up, albeit with old-style asterisks... tell me if there's anything else, before i change it again. -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Jan '11

30 Jan '11

bob said: > spent a little time looking at them on my Sony Reader: if nobody else is gonna respond to this, i will... *** first, though, i'll say that bob, if project gutenberg won't host your custom .epubs, i would be very happy to do so. you can just zip them all together and e-mail them to me. i'm sure i will learn something from them, since i am now starting to piece together my .epub conversion routines... in this regard, i would also love to have your feedback, bob (and others, if you have any), on the .epub i have generated for this "jungle" competition with jim. (where are you, jim?) > http://z-m-l.com/go/jjngl/jjngl.epub more on that development as it... develops... *** ok, back to bob's review: > They all have a working html contents page (TOC) ok, that's good. > also I think the idea of putting a back link to the TOC > on every chapter head is excellent and I shall copy it > with my hand-crafted epubs. great. you'll love it. and if you want to take the idea two steps further, do this: at each chapter-heading, also include links that go to the _previous_chapter_ and the _next_chapter_. so instead of a "bicycle-spokes" structure, you have a "chain" structure. this allows the human to "step through" the chapters, either forward or backward, and it is a very useful functionality... and of course, there's also a link to go to the contents page. you can see an example of this structure here: > http://z-m-l.com/go/alice/alice01.html the left-angle brackets above each header link to the previous chapter, the right-angle ones to the next, and the "c" between them jumps to the table of contents... you will also see there that i used the same structure for the illustrations. above each illustration, there is a left-angle bracket that links to the previous illustration, a right-angle bracket that links to the next illustration, and an "i" that links to a hotlinked list of illustrations... this allows the user to "thumb through" the illustrations, which is a very nice and nifty capability, don't you agree? i don't always use this structure -- for instance, i haven't used it in this jungle-jim competition -- but whenever i leave it out, i end up wishing that i _would_ have used to... > Using the XML TOC (the .ncx file) works > but it takes 3-5 seconds to open, which > makes this unacceptable as a navigational tool. believe me, if you use the in-document linking strategy i just suggested, your use of the .ncx navigation will be rare enough that the slow load-time won't be a bother... > This is true for all ten epubs, but it isn't true of > other XML TOCs, either for older PG epubs or > for my hand-crafted versions. there must be some difference between those files... if you can track it down, the info might be useful... (i say "might" because who knows if marcello would actually pay any attention, of if he'd just dismiss it.) > The layout seems to me to be, like the curate's egg, > 'good in parts'. Actually that's a bit negative, perhaps > 'mostly good but with some irritating flaws' might be fairer. ok, tell us about the flaws... > Chapter headings generally are > in too big a font size, > (or too bold, or with too large margins, > or more than one of the aforegoing). that should be easy enough for marcello to change... when i know the size of the viewport/page/window, i copyfit the headings. that is, i adjust their size so that the biggest one will nonetheless display nicely. can't do that if you don't know the pagesize, of course, but it's still a good strategy to keep in mind regardless. > I am working on a font-size range of 90%-135% > of the browser default in my hand-crafted versions. > I find anything smaller is too wearing to read, and > anything bigger just gets broken across more than > one line (and looks all wrong). i have found that headers can be bigger _or_ bolder, and only occasionally need to be _both_. then again, i often show 'em in a different color, which helps too. (and, of course, they should have nice air around 'em, something i have _not_ done correctly in these "jungle" conversions i've done. i need to adjust the stylesheet.) > Also I would split chapter headings (CHAPTER I) > say from the chapter title > (COMING INTO THE WILDERNESS) i call the combination of those two "the heading". i call the _number_ part "the chapter number" and i call the _title_ part "the chapter title". terminology. and yes, they absolutely _must_ be split. otherwise, you've got a conglomeration that is _way_ too long. combining the number and the title is ludicrous... > and do the title in a smaller font. not really. if possible, i do the title in a larger font. (subject, of course, to the copyfitting i mentioned.) the way you suggest it is what was done traditionally. but i just think that's wrong. the chapter number doesn't _need_ to be any bigger. as a number, it stands out just fine no matter its size. and i don't believe repetitive and redundant elements -- like the word "chapter" -- really deserve a big size. the title, which is the unique, _could_ be done bigger, but if they are wordy (as they often are, and remember that you need to judge this by using the wordiest one), then you're often stuck with the same size as body-text. which is not necessarily a bad thing, since -- as i said up above -- the white-space around a heading should be more than enough to make it stand out sufficiently. > while I'm about it I don't think Latin chapter numbers > are practical on the limited screen size of an e-reader i assume you really meant to say _roman_ numbers... and yes, i'd agree. i think they were an affectation, and i often change them to arabic numbers. (and if i don't, i usually end up _wishing_ i would have, at some point.) arabic numbers are a lot easier to read, and their display is more consistent. the d.p. people and the whitewashers seem to love to line up those roman numerals in a t.o.c., and yes, it's quite easy to program a routine to do it, but it always strikes me visually as a waste of time and energy. > The front matter isn't always broken into pages correctly > (I think, as I don't have the originals). i believe you. > This may seem like niggling you don't have to apologize for having an esthetic sense... > This may seem like niggling, but in a book you often > have only page boundaries to delimit important stuff > like the title, author, publication date, dedication, etc. > from less important things like publishing history, > printing history, other titles by the same author, > or other titles in the same series, adverts for Mars bars > (you can find these in wartime Penguin paperbacks > explaining why the price has gone up from 2d to 3d!), etc. i feel your pain. > I think the interesting question here is > whether the layout problems are > artifacts of the html/epub generator(s), > in which case they can presumably be fixed > if other people agree with me, or whether they > come from eccentricities of the encoding > in rst format by the transcriber. well, i'd think it's as simple as throwing a pagebreak, or putting in a ruled line, but maybe i misunderstand? > I haven't yet found any block quotes in any of the books. so far, i think roger frank is the only person who has actually submitted a book in r.s.t. format. (and yes, he really is that productive, and was even before r.s.t. he's a fairly good example of what you can accomplish, digitizing books, if you have some good robust tools. it's bad, and sad, d.p. doesn't pay more attention to him.) anyway, roger does mostly very simple books, ones that are just straight paragraphs, for the most part, which is also one of the reasons why he's so prolific at the game. so it's not surprising he hasn't done things like that yet. > These typically feature smaller fonts alert! i caution someone who talks about "smaller fonts" when it comes to e-books. that practice must be avoided. whatever typographic function smaller fonts play in print must be totally reconsidered when it comes to e-books... the reason is simple: end-users select a font-size which is as _small_ as possible without being _uncomfortable_. so the rest of the argument falls into place automatically. if we make any text _smaller_, it becomes _uncomfortable_. ergo, that is not something that we can do. end of dialog. by the way, the same argument applies to _the_leading_, so that's also not a mechanism we can use in these cases; the good news is that _indentation_ still serves just fine. moreover, this is a variable where we can allow the _user_ to signal a _preference_ for how these structures display. > It would be reassuring to see that rst can deal with those. r.s.t. is quite capable of doing that. you can be reassured. > Having looked at the html in the epub file > I find it somewhat harder to read than that > in older epubs or html files. Mainly, I think, > because it's the product of a generator not a human. does it make you feel smart to examine the .html? ;+) because, seriously, i'm not sure why you want to do that. who cares what the underlying code looks like? not me. do you also dig into the postscript code inside of a .pdf? does it bother you that _that_ isn't very human-readable? i know it's hard for you to believe, right now, because you think .html is ubiquitous and that it will always be so, but it will _not_. it will go the way of the dodo bird, and -- hopefully -- that will happen faster than even i think. unfortunately, r.s.t. is not a very convincing substitute. if you look at any r.s.t. file, you will see _lots_ of the stuff that you'll easily recognize as being "markup"... all that stuff will go bye-bye eventually, because our machines will be smart enough to figure out what's a header, and what's a footnote, and what's a numbered list, and what's an item in that list, and what's an epigraph, and so on and so forth. of course, we'll need to give the machine some subtle hints, to steer it in the right direction, especially on things that might be ambiguous, but that kind of gentle nudging is what z.m.l. is. compared to that, .html markup is a bludgeon. take a look at some of the "raw" .zml files here: > http://www.z-m-l.com/go/vl3.pl now tell me why we need anything more than that. i mean, seriously, i use simple code to _convert_ that plain-text human-readable z.m.l. file into .html that a browser displays. so why couldn't _the_browser_ use that same simple code to do the same thing, so that i feed the browser z.m.l. and it converts my z.m.l. into the .html it "wants", and then displays it. the browser is _already_ megabytes of bloat, and my code is about 100k, so it could _easily_ be incorporated, and that'd make the lives of us humans _so_ much simpler. somebody with the power to make this change _will_ eventually come to grok the compelling strength of this argument, and dictate change... but in the meantime, if you still want to struggle through reading .html markup, be my guest, but i -- for one -- have more important stuff to do. > Has anybody worried about the lifespan or > broad acceptance of rst in the wider world? you don't need to worry about that... seriously, but... > I can only find references to it as a Python > documentation tool. How likely is it that rst tools > will be available and supported in a few decades, > or that there will be stable and detailed > definitions of rst by industry standards bodies > for implementations to conform to? ...it is somewhat amusing that you would ask this, because this is only an argument project gutenberg (i.e., _marcello_) uses _against_ tech he doesn't like. if _he_ uses something, its wider acceptance in the world at large doesn't make any difference at all... -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Jan '11

29 Jan '11

jim said: > Your choice of rhetoric is > particularly unfortunate > given recent events. what are you trying to say, jim? because i don't like to _infer_... -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Jan '11

29 Jan '11

jim, i don't need support. i can hunt you down myself, while sitting right here at my desk, typing these posts. the new version you requested will be up in 10 minutes, at the same u.r.l. as the last one. i await your feedback. -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Jan '11

29 Jan '11

jim, do you really believe people here are so stupid that they can't see right through what you're doing? you say something is formatted badly, but you don't say what needs to be done to format it how you'd like. because we could give you what you want, if you just told us what it is. but you don't want us to succeed... so you just keep saying, "no, that's not quite right..." sooner or later, though, most especially if you expect anyone to take your "html should be the master-format" suggestion seriously -- or even _consider_ doing it -- you're going to need to take a stand on the formatting. and hey, even if you're not capable of _creating_ one, you can point people to a book you think is well-done. i'm not talking about some vague "there are some books coming out of d.p. that are fairly well-done" mumbling. give us the p.g. number of a specific title. what you _cannot_ do is to continue to evade the point. because i am hunting you down, jim. -bowerbird

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Jan '11

29 Jan '11

well, i had a little spare time on my hands, after brunch, so i painted the bathroom walls, and cleaned up the shelves in the garage, and moved the peanut-butter to the cupboard, where i _personally_ think it should have been all along, so i'm glad jim brought up the issue and agreed. > http://z-m-l.com/go/jjngl/jjngl.html all your suggestions fixed, jim, to the degree that i understood them, so take a look at this version, and tell me if there's anything you want changed... meanwhile, i'm also waiting on those revised .pdfs that i requested from you. don't let me down, guy. -bowerbird p.s. i took out the mobi pagebreak commands, so marcello will be pleased we're back to validating...

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Re: 14.8 million ipads sold (in 9 months) during 2010
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Jan '11

29 Jan '11

oh gee, now jim wants me to paint the walls in the den! ok, jim, i'll do it, just to prove that i can, but you're gonna have to learn how to paint yourself, not just keep asking... *** jim said: > God help us all if PG were to implement BB’s > BB-centric view of the world where all of us > have to support BB, instead of BB writing tools that > actually help support the creation of good books for PG. you're looking at output generated by such tools, fool. > Learn how to use the “Shift” key on your keyboard BB, > it would helpful in emails, and in such places as in > your coding of book titles and author names, which > show up all lower case in your MOBI implementation. those are in the toc.ncx files, if you're watching at home. just change the casing if you like, and regenerate the file. these are test runs; the final version of the converter will use the titles exactly as they exist in the actual document. i had to give jim _something_ to complain about, right? i just wanted to see how low he would stoop for something. ends up he'll stoop as low as he can. that's good to know... > Which starts with a gratuitous horizontal rule, > following a gratuitous “v?” that "v" is a link to the wc3 validator. i put that in there once upon a time to make marcello happy. i'll take it out. (you'll find another one at the bottom of the file, which i will probably leave in, because it _is_ convenient if you do want to use the validator; it saves you a lot of hassle. but yes, the final version of the converter will delete it.) > Title page lacking in formatting you'll need to be more specific. what would you like? > Cover ugly but better than what PG currently provides. "ugly"? does this mean that you won't be hiring me to do the cover for your self-published novel, jim? how sad! > Start marker not implemented. you can start at the beginning. it won't hurt you. > Table of Contents not reasonably formatted, > and contains nonsense page numbers. again, show me how you want it formatted, and i will format it the way you show me. as for the page-numbers, they aren't "nonsense". they match the ones in the .pdf that was generated by this same input-file, which means you can meaningfully communicate locations to a person who happens to be using that .pdf. and if you don't need that capability, then you can just ignore the page-numbers. i've taken them out, because you requested the same thing in the .html version, but you need to rethink your position. > Gratuitous “Hot” before “Contents” in the Table of Contents you said that earlier. there's no need to repeat it here. if you gave feedback on the .html version, then i made the changes in the master-format, and those changes will be implemented in the .mobi when i re-generate the .mobi. you do understand that's how a master-format works, right? > Gratuitous double-rule before the TOC you said that earlier. there's no need to repeat it here. > I would think you would want to avoid the use of rules entirely. > Or fake them using mdashes, for example.) would anyone care to second jim's suggestion? because i'm not sure it's a good one, and i would be inclined to ignore it, unless it enjoys broad support... again, i took out the rules in the master-file, because that's what jim suggested, but i won't make it a general practice... > Gratuitous double-rule before dedication you said that earlier. there's no need to repeat it here. i repeat, i took out all of the rules. i know you _think_ that you're making your list of complaints look more substantial than it really is, by repeating this repeatedly, but it actually just shows the opposite, that you have _nothing_ substantial to say, so you're just blabbering. > which lacks sensible formatting show me how you want it formatted, and i'll do it that way. > and is written in a font which is too small. you said that earlier. there's no need to repeat it here. > Gratuitous double-rule before Chapter headings, > which lack sensible formatting. you said that earlier. there's no need to repeat it here. > Use of double-dash where mdash is intended, > and uses spaces around the double-dash > where PG house rules is no space around mdash. you said that earlier. there's no need to repeat it here. > Gratuitous “@@@” multiple places, left aligned. you said that earlier. there's no need to repeat it here. > Poetry implemented using gratuitously ugly “code” font, > and not properly formatting into lines of poetry. you said that earlier. there's no need to repeat it here. > “The End” formatted, capitalized, and styled poorly. you said that earlier. there's no need to repeat it here. > Front Cover repeated at the end of the book. call that the "back cover" if you want. it's an artifact of the silly requirements necessary to generate a .mobi file. > Gratuitous “v?” repeated at end of the book. you said that earlier. there's no need to repeat it here. > Table of contents repeated at end of the book. same silly mobi requirements. _but_ it's not a bad idea to have a table of contents at the end of a book as well, because that's a very convenient location to navigate to. > Front Cover repeated yet again at the end of the book. silly mobi. > Other than that, this very simple book > (from the point of view of formatting and style) > consists simply of words formatted into paragraphs, > with occasional italics, and > you get that aspect of the book correct, fortunately. well, yes, jim, and -- in that particular respect -- it's much like most of the books you do for p.g. take, for instance, that #29452 which you created... i find you used tags for breaks, headings, paragraphs, and italics... you also used the entity for an em-dash... and that's it! that's all the markup you used! so i guess that's why you recognize an easy book when you see one. so let's see you do all the .pdf variations i asked for on this simple book. then we can move on to harder ones. *** jim said: > I don’t need to give them such a tool because > they were given such a tool free with their computer. maybe they don't have a computer. they read on their phone. > Nonsense BB, I have already showed you > how customers can overcome this problem > you are making, but you choose to ignore my suggestion. no, it is _you_ who is ignoring the fact that your second recommendation contradicted the very essence of your first recommendation. > There now, we are getting to the real rub: > Apple made a device which they claim to be no jim, no way, you're not going to squirm out of this by taking this thread into an unproductive rant about apple. this is about _you_, and your suggestion that p.g. should use _html_ as their master-format. that is the topic now. i'm showing you all the problems with that suggestion, and why it is entirely unworkable, and why you should _never_ come back to this listserve and suggest it again. because that suggestion is a waste of time and energy, and only serves to distract people from better directions. -bowerbird

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