- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: Nay Sayers
by John Redmond 18 Dec '10

18 Dec '10

Greg said: "As Marcello mentioned in another post, RST is the markup, and it seems to be good for lots of content (not a panacea). " For what it's worth, I can happily live with that. More importantly, PG has a context for moving forward. I'm not at all sure that I can be useful in the move, but I'm here if needed. Go well, PG!

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Re: Nay Sayers
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Dec '10

17 Dec '10

greg said: > RST is the markup, and > it seems to be good for lots of content > (not a panacea). so project gutenberg has finally adopted a light-markup system... r.s.t. is not the best choice, but at least you're in the right ballpark. so we can officially call this date "bowerbird was correct all along". took you guys long enough to realize; it's been, what, 7 years now. anyway, you knew it was coming: _i_told_you_so._ -bowerbird

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Re: Nay Sayers
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Dec '10

17 Dec '10

walter said: > I always saw you as a proponent of TEI as > a master format to generate all other formats from > (an idea I still think is probably a good idea), > what has changed? marcello changed his mind for one big and obvious reason -- he needed some _real_ results, and t.e.i. wasn't working. t.e.i. is far too difficult and far too costly, so it can only be used in the situations where you have lots of captive labor, examples being prisons, or corporations, or government... but if you have to stand up to the requirements of having a cost-efficient workflow, especially one with _volunteers_, you will need something that minimizes the costs involved. this has always been true. people like marcello and walter ignored it for a long time. but you can't ignore it forever. -bowerbird

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Re: Nay Sayers
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Dec '10

17 Dec '10

keith- what's your point? i mean, i can tell you're being dismissive. but i'm quite sure you don't know what you're looking at. so why don't you spell things out, so i can sort you out? -bowerbird

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Re: Nay Sayers
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Dec '10

17 Dec '10

keith said: > The question is if PG should develop > a simple markup based on for example XHMTL > to accommodate the growing interest > in more appealing texts and formats. > > The bigger question is who is willing to > spear-head the project and > help retool the PG tool chain and > make the move as easy as possible. > > At least there does seem to be an interest. hey! i know _exactly_ what you could do! you could set up a separate listserve, one to which i was specifically uninvited -- banned in advance! -- so that y'all could work in an uninterrupted fashion to pull off this task. yeah! _that_ would work! go for it! -bowerbird

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a juicy little discussion
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Dec '10

17 Dec '10

i'm informed there is a juicy little discussion going on in my spam folder, with people like david starner and marcello going at each other. have fun, kids; i no longer have any time for you. like i said, anyone who wants to accomplish stuff is gonna have to go through marcello, and i don't envy anyone the sheer pleasure of _that_ journey... indeed, the mere thought of the beautiful synergy of marcello working in concert with people from d.p. to create p.g. e-books to go on sale at amazon has had me giggling to myself ever since the idea arose. i'm sure that you're gonna become a _juggernaut_... i can honestly say that y'all truly deserve each other. -bowerbird

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Re: Nay Sayers
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Dec '10

17 Dec '10

john redmond said: > The markup _was_ light, because the style of > document did not require anything more. right. that's why it was not a good example text. 1.1 megabytes of mostly just plain paragraphs... that doesn't do anybody much good, not really... this is why a good developer makes a test-suite. i've had mine up for well over 5 years already... > http://www.z-m-l.com/go/test-suite.zml 36k, and it includes almost everything one can expect to encounter in the p.g. library e-books. > Heavy markup? What if we have > a more technical document > that demands lists and tables? what if we do? lists and tables are not hard... neither are footnotes/endnotes, providing that you've prepared the master-text-file correctly. (and even if you haven't, it's not _that_ hard.) > The markup _has_ to be heavier. no, it doesn't. > Surely we can agree on that! no, we can't. that's the crux of disagreement! a light-markup perspective keeps the markup nice and simple, and makes the _programming_ that interprets that markup more sophisticated. this is the major failing of the file-format lovers, including the "true believers" in x.m.l. and t.e.i. they want to put all the complexity in the format. and then they just expect that the programmers will make sense of their obtuse complications... but i come at things from the opposite direction, where the programmer provides the solution and devises a file-format that facilitates that solution. -bowerbird

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Re: Nay Sayers
by John Redmond 17 Dec '10

17 Dec '10

BB said: "well, don't get too delighted. because a "true believer" in xml/tei will never see eye-to-eye with me long-term. :+) but yes, i saw some promise in your message last year, where you argued in favor of the use of light-markup... the thing is, you never answered my question about what the need is for a "heavy" format, if it is merely being generated from the "light" version to start with." We can continue to find something to agree about: Yes, your restyling of my HTML _does_ look better than mine, but primarily because you didn't use my off-the-shelf all-purpose ugly-dreadful CSS. Your (centering) treatment of the TOC is a style that I had tried and rejected (just because it didn't appeal), but these are small issues. Now the structure of the document comes from _my light markup_, with the very big qualification that, to generate the endnotes, I had to do a good deal of cutting and patching of the original text. In that respect, this was (or is) not a very typical case. So, where are we? We have used light markup, plus the patching, to structure the document. The markup _was_ light, because the style of document did not require anything more. Heavy markup? What if we have a more technical document that demands lists and tables? The markup _has_ to be heavier. Surely we can agree on that! So consider my "true belief" to be that a markup system, to be useful for a range of documents, _has_ to have some heavy options in the back cupboard. John Redmond

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Re: Nay Sayers
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Dec '10

17 Dec '10

john redmond said: > I am delighted to say that I _agree_ with BB! well, don't get too delighted. because a "true believer" in xml/tei will never see eye-to-eye with me long-term. :+) but yes, i saw some promise in your message last year, where you argued in favor of the use of light-markup... the thing is, you never answered my question about what the need is for a "heavy" format, if it is merely being generated from the "light" version to start with. the light version will be easier to create, easier to store, easier to edit, easier to maintain, and easier to update... and if we just use that, there's no need to even bother with the hassle of even generating the "heavy" format. you want to start with something clean, make it dirty by obscuring it with a lot of heavy markup, and then strip away the markup later to create something clean. isn't it bloody obvious that that's going to be inefficient? *** here's an example... i took your ivanhoe .html, and slapped my c.s.s. on it... i think my version looks a lot more "pretty" than yours: > http://z-m-l.com/misc/ivanhoe-restyle.htm but that's really beside the point. our underlying markup is pretty close... the c.s.s. is just the lipstick on the pig... but why should volunteers go through all the hassles of doing your heavy markup, when they can get results that are just as pretty (or even more pretty) with light markup? and your .pdf isn't even close to being as pretty as mine. and i'll be spitting out .mobi versions and .epub versions that will also be just as pretty as yours, probably more so. and i'll be doing it with files that are easier to create and easier to maintain, store, edit, and update, which means we don't need someone with "special knowledge" to do it. because those people end up being obstacles to progress, because they want to keep on holding on to their power... and don't even let me get started on the _functionality_ of our different versions. a pretty face is nice, and all, but i'm also interested in creating _powerful_ e-books, ones that stretch what we're able to do with the content. that's why i want my text free and clear, without being weighed down by the ponderous constraints of markup. *** so let me just ask you one more question here now... how many other people -- from here -- have looked at your work as closely as i have, as demonstrated by my restyling of your .html? my guess is that no one has... i would _love_ to find out that i was wrong about that. so if anyone has studied it, please do let us know, ok? it's easy to say, "oh yeah, that's great, go ahead and do it", and then pat you on the back and send you out the door... so tell us, john, how many people from here have done that? yet i take the time and show you the respect to _examine_ your work, closely, and yet you say _i_ was "patronizing"? maybe that word means something different in australia... -bowerbird

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Re: Nay Sayers
by John Redmond 16 Dec '10

16 Dec '10

BB said: "unless you perform the conversions using the .txt version... but that means you need to beef up the strength of those... _and_ ensure that they have the consistency that's needed... and thus we end up at what i have been saying all along..." I am delighted to say that I _agree_ with BB! You _must_ have a canonical text version from which all other versions derive. Even better would be a marked-up text version and a stripping script to remove all markup. The option is then there to either remove the markup or use it to generate XML, etc. Easily said, but this would require an enormous house-cleaning effort. Marcello said: "Tcl is *not* our language of choice and integrating your tcl script into our python framework will probably take longer than rewriting the interesting bits from scratch. The only thing that really interest me is your experience with PDF toolkits. Which one are you using? What can you say pro and contra it?" Tcl or Python or...? This is just detail and any porting would be simple, as the whole system pretty much floats on regular expressions. PDF toolkits: The c2xsl script uses one or more CSS-style stylesheets to generate an XSLT stylesheet. This is then used to generate LaTeX text from the XML file. This is then processed with pdflatex. John Redmond

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