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Re: one million units moved in 28 days
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 04 May '10

04 May '10

michael said: > They are obviously not pushing eBook hard enough, > as that means only 1.5 eBooks per iPad. well, but steve jobs just might point out that that's how many p-books an average person in the united states buys in an average year... :+) -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 04 May '10

04 May '10

no word from the mad scientist, so let's proceed anyway... *** to remind you where we were, i had freed the text from the p.g. linebreaks, set the typesize at a nice 12-point, and run it out with a 4.5-inch measure, obtained from a pagesize of 5.5*8.5-inches, with 1-inch side-margins. the text-editor version weighed in at about 567 pages, and i provided both ragged-right and justified versions. *** the next thing was to run the text using my converter. i used most linebreaks obtained from the above specs... (i made a few changes, in a process i can discuss later.) these lines had an average length of about 66 characters. for my taste, that's still too long, but it's what bringhurst recommends, and that _is_ the length our specs created. another font woulda created lines with fewer characters, because times new roman is known for being quite tight -- it was designed with that aim -- but let's not quibble, other than to note that lines in the p-book were shorter. *** once linebreaks are set, you can output them to various _pagesizes_ simply by jacking up your text-size and/or making the margins bigger; as an example of that, i ran it out at 8.5*11, with 17-point type and 1-inch margins. > http://z-m-l.com/misc/14465-8.5*11.pdf or here's the 5.5*8.5, at 12-point type, half-inch margins: > http://z-m-l.com/misc/14465-5.5*8.5.pdf note that i could also do a version for the iphone screen, with perhaps 8-point type and very small margins, and _all_ of these versions would have the same linebreaks... there's this myth/misunderstanding about _reflow_ that you _must_ reflow to accommodate different screensizes. that's not entirely true; it's _never_ been entirely true. for instance, consider the popular "pocket dictionary" which brags that it has the exact same pagination as a regular-sized dictionary. then, in addition, take a look at an oversized dictionary, and you are likely to find that it too has the exact same pagination. how is this done? well, it's quite simple, actually. the font-size is reduced. and, actually, it's quite _natural_ to reduce the font-size with smaller pagesize. (and to increase it with bigger.) because we hold a pocket dictionary closer to our face, and the oversize dictionary farther than a regular one... so our eyes automatically adjust to the varying fontsize. nor does this harm readability. most studies show that it's character-count that matters in terms of readability, not the actual length of a line per se. which means that our notions about "reflow" are quite confused, because those notions create _shorter_ lines when the fontsize is increased, since we're holding the window-size constant. *** at any rate, you have a couple more .pdfs to peruse... i'll do some more fiddling with this book, just for my own edification, but at this point i could consider it "finished". so if anyone has any feedback, please feel free to spill it... -bowerbird

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Re: one million units moved in 28 days
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 03 May '10

03 May '10

300,000 was after their first weekend, but that also included pre-orders; i'm sure they had lots of those. so in the 24 days since, they've sold some 700,000, which would work out to roughly 30,000 per day... i don't really know how to judge these things, but considering the number of apple stores, plus the fact that best buy is also selling it, it sounds right. the 3g models are going to cause a big bump too... so it wouldn't surprise me if they get to 2 million in another month or two. after that, it might level off. of course, they'll probably sell another 2 million in the 4th quarter, assuming people buy holiday gifts. (given our economy, it's not a sure thing anymore.) -bowerbird

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Announcement: New Project Gutenberg DVD released
by Aaron Cannon 02 May '10

02 May '10

The Project Gutenberg April 2010 (Dual Layer) DVD has been released. This new DVD contains over 29,500 eBooks. For more information, visit the Project Gutenberg web site. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_CD_and_DVD_Project Thanks to all those who participated in its production. Aaron

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Cooperative proofreading
by Lee Passey 30 Apr '10

30 Apr '10

Just an update on my cooperative proofreading site (http://www.ebookcooperative.com/) 1. The Java servlets are now connected to CVS, so any changes you make will be persisted to the file system. 2. Registration is now required to proof read pages (just your identity is currently required). This identity is used to add comments to CVS so we can see who changed things. 3. The proofreading system tracks progress, so if you go half-way through a project, exit, and return at some time later and choose the same project you will be taken to the last page you were viewing. 4. Some new projects were added. The project table is generated from a database of projects; no editing of web pages is required. The Kupu-based UI is still a little rough; that will probably be the last thing I tackle. I have not yet written the proofing guidelines. The next step will be to create a servlet that will allow downloading an entire e-book by combining all the pages from the repository into a single file. As always, feedback is welcomed.

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Re: spill baby spill
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Apr '10

30 Apr '10

dakretz said: > s/republicans/politicians/ all of the politicians are rotten, it's true. but the republicans are more rotten. way more rotten. besides, look at the subject-header... -bowerbird p.s. this means if any of you consider yourself to be a republican, you'd better take a good look at yourself. not that democrats couldn't stand a look in the mirror. your whole system is now corrupt, and _you_ made it...

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spill baby spill
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Apr '10

30 Apr '10

the worst slick in human history. so let's all give our thanks to the republicans and the oil corporations who pull their puppet strings. -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Apr '10

27 Apr '10

ok, back to work... *** have you ever tried to copy text out of a .pdf? if you have, you know that it can be frustrating. because a lot of information seems to get lost. perhaps the most noticeable are "empty" lines. if you used a blank line between paragraphs, all of those blank lines are lost, which means that your paragraphs are now all run together. compounding that problem is that the "soft" linebreak at the end of mid-paragraph lines is turned into a "hard" linebreak. it's a disaster... you _can_ choose the "export as plain text" item from one of the menus, and that does retain the empty lines. unfortunately, it also strips styling. the copy-text route retains the styling, or at least _some_ of it. but not all of it. italics are often lost. so is the indentation on block-quotes, poetry, etc. so no matter what you do, getting text from a .pdf is a struggle. that's one reason why .pdf is called "the roach motel of documents", because text can go in, but it cannot come out again. you can demonstrate this to yourself by using the .pdf that michael mcd created... *** i do some things with my .pdf tool to solve this little problem. for instance, it doesn't output a "blank" line when it encounters one. instead, it outputs a double-colon -- "::" -- that is white, thus _invisible._ (or i'll often make it light gray.) but it's still there, and gets copied out when you copy the text, so you can then do a global change of "::" to nil, and voila, you have your blank lines. in z.m.l., italics are represented by _underbars_, so i also have my program output the underbars, again turning them white so they'll be invisible... i haven't worked on this for a while, so i cannot remember what state of success it's in right now, but my goal is to create "round-tripping", so that when you use z.m.l. to create a .pdf, the text you copy out of that .pdf, after a few global changes, can be used to create that exact same .pdf again. go ahead and copy the text out of one of my .pdfs, and you'll get a good idea what i'm talking about... *** the tricks that are built into my tool are ones that you can do "manually" in your own wordprocessor, if you'd like to create a "round-trip" capability too. surround your italicized stuff with white underbars, change your blank lines to a white double-colon, and use white periods to create your indentation. i did that in the next two .pdfs i will talk about, so you can copy the text out of 'em to see this at work. *** i used a text-editor to create two more .pdfs for us in our experiments using "gods and fighting men". i unwrapped the text, freeing it from p.g. linebreaks. then i made the fontsize a more-readable 12-point. i also put back in a more-spacious 14-point leading. all these changes pushed the .pdf to some 567 pages, from the previous 391, so that's an offsetting negative, but the positive aspect is a much more readable .pdf... i created a ragged-right version, and a justified one: > http://z-m-l.com/misc/14465-rewrapped-rag.pdf > http://z-m-l.com/misc/14465-rewrapped-just.pdf these two are exactly the same, except for justification, so you might find it odd that the first is just 1.5 megs, while the second is almost twice as big, at 2.9 megs... the reason for this discrepancy is the ragged-right .pdf stores the location of each line, rendering it right there, while the justified .pdf has to store the location of each _word_, to print it in the right place. it's a big difference. at any rate, maybe the mad scientist will look at these and advise us on what pointsize he'd like to see "final", what leading he wants, and if he prefers justification... -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Apr '10

27 Apr '10

jim... you just utterly and completely fail to grok the listserve imperative to move threads forward. *** jim said: > I believe I did say something that makes sense, then you have a serious intellectual problem too. > its just that you still do not understand that > your problem was not font size but rather line length. this is now the third time i have said it, twice now directly to you, and you still don't seem to "get it". i retained the p.g. linebreaks. that means p.g. decided the line-length, not me. if you don't understand the exact meaning of that, continue pondering it until you _do_ understand it. because you won't be able to keep up with the thread, let alone advance it, until you've understood that fact. i retained the p.g. linebreaks. that's why each line was as exactly as long as it was. because that's how long it was in the p.g. e-text... (except for lines i rewrapped to get rid of orphans.) are the lines in p.g. files too long, in general? _yes._ does that have any bearing on our experimentation? not really. because we're just trying things out here. nothing is cast in stone. and perhaps, for this book, for michael's eyes in particular, the p.g. lines are fine, even though -- for you, or me, or somebody else -- they might be too long. our opinion doesn't matter, because michael is printing out this book for himself. that's a beauty of print-on-demand -- customization. besides, we're going to do _more_ experiments later... > You also do not apparently understand that > it is not generally true that font size > and line length are inversely related. again, you need to put in some more thought... if we talk about a pre-determined line of characters -- like in this case, where we retain p.g. linebreaks -- it is _absolutely_true_ that the space required will be directly related to the fontsize. _it's_absolutely_true_. the character-count of the line will remain unchanged -- by definition, as it was determined by linebreaks -- but the width of the line printed on a page depends on fontsize. the bigger the size, the more space required. and if we also constrain the size of the space in which we are putting that pre-determined line of characters, we have put an upper-limit on the fontsize we can use. in this case, we are using a space that's 4.5-inches wide, so the biggest fontsize i could use that kept all the lines reasonably within the width of the space was 10.5-point. a smaller fontsize wouldn't have filled up all of the page, plus it would've been less readable, so i used 10.5-point. in other words, all of the other factors were constrained, and fontsize was left to vary, and had to make it all fit... for my next .pdf, and i've said _this_ three times now too, twice directly to you, so it really should've sunk in by now, i will unwrap the text (i.e., free it from the p.g. linebreaks) and jack the fontsize to 12-point, so michael can see that. and then we'll do some more experimentation after _that_. > So you retract your previous statements > when you said that I should have been > reporting to you when your tools fail? just exactly how useful do you think an "it doesn't work" report is, anyway? you never gave one worthwhile report. so no, jim, i don't want any reports from you, none at all... are we clear now? or do i have to repeat that a third time? -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 Apr '10

27 Apr '10

jim said: > I was paying attention then why didn't you understand the situation? why did you say something that made no sense? > Again, you ask for feedback > but you are not willing to accept any graciously. ok, jim, let me make things perfectly clear. i do not value _your_ feedback. so when i ask for feedback, i am most specifically _not_ asking for feedback from _you_. definitely not you. are we clear? -bowerbird

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