- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: Typesetting (unwrap.pl)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

jim, you really need to learn the art of asking what you are doing wrong, instead of just making a report that "the tool doesn't work". you say the text shows up unwrapped; that indicates the script is working... if the linebreaks "reappear", then you are doing something wrong... _you_... what i imagine is happening is this: you're doing a "select-all" before you copy text from the browser-window. that copies the text from the _field_ as well as the unwrapped text below. so when you paste the text elsewhere, the text you see (because it's on top) is the wrapped text from in the field. you need to copy the _unwrapped_ text out of the browser window that appears, and _only_ that unwrapped text. get it? -bowerbird

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Tidy -c and tables
by Lee Passey 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

OK guys, we have a problem. When one uses the "--clean" option, tidy removes any "<center>" elements and replaces them with "<div class='c1'>", and adds "div.c1 {text-align: center}" to the internal style sheet. This seems reasonable, because according to the HTML spec, "The CENTER element is exactly equivalent to specifying the DIV element with the align attribute set to 'center'." In a bit of a chained dependency, it turns out the "align" attribute is /also/ deprecated in favor of the CSS "text-align" style. So Tidy's behavior is completely consistent with the HTML spec, and in theory should cause no presentational differences before and after a page is Tidy'ed. In theory, there is no difference between theory and reality; in reality, there is. Consider the following snippet: <center> <table> <tr> <td> line one<br /> a longer line two<br /> a very much longer line three </td> </tr> </table> <center> Using my four test browsers, Firefox 3,5, IE 8, Opera 9 and Safari 4, in each case the above table was center in the browser, but the text inside the table data element remained left justified. When I changed the "<center>" element to "<div style='text-align: center'>" the text inside the table data element became centered as well. This is the behavior I would expect; the whole notion of "Cascading" in CSS indicates that style continue down the tree until changed. But it does illustrate the fact that there is a distinction between centering an /element/ (in this case the table), and centering the text /inside/ an element. So while, in theory, the "<center>" element should be equivalent to "<div style='text-align:center'>", in practice it seems that not only are they not equivalent in /some/ browsers, they are not equivalent in /any/ browser. I believe one of our design goals was that Tidy would make no change to otherwise valid HTML that would cause it to render differently using browser defaults after Tidying. Thus, empty paragraphs, which are forbidden, are converted to /two/ "br />" elements, to match the default paragraph presentation in browsers. Leaving aside the fact that the use of tables to control layout is simply morally reprehensible, the fact is that there a many, many pages 'in the wild' that do so. And Tidy's current behavior will cause those pages' presentations to change after running Tidy. I think that in this case we have not met our design goal. Now I can fix the code so that this doesn't happen in the future, if only I knew what the right fix /is/. I could simply remove "center" from the list of elements that get 'cleaned', and print a warning that the resulting contains elements that are deprecated (this warning probably ought to be there whenever deprecated elements remain in the output). Or I could focus more directly on this specific issue and whenever a "<table>" is a descendant of a "<center>" element I could add "style='text-align:left'" to the "<table>" element (assuming a "text-align" style is not already attached to that element) /before/ cleaning (both styles should then be moved to the internal style sheet). Or perhaps there is yet another solution that I haven't thought of? I don't think that simply telling the end user "your HTML doesn't follow the rules; we could fix it but we won't" is an option; after all, that's what Tidy is for right? So, what should I do? ps. I don't like the behavior that the "--drop-font-tags" option also drops "<center>" elements; page layout is not in the same classification as font appearance, and I can envision situations where I would want to drop "<font>" elements but retain "<center>" elements. But that is an argument for another day.

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Re: APRIL 21, 2013 BOWERBIRD/HART WAGER
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

michael said: > iPad have to BE iPads, Kindles have to BE Kindles, Sonys=Sonys, > and nooks have to be nooks. . .not virtual. . .not clones. > April 21, 2013 you say there will be more iPads than the rest. > Period! yes sir! or i'll buy you an all-you-can-eat dinner every night for a week! _plus_ you can say you once won one bet against me! :+) -bowerbird p.s. do i win automatically if ipad surges ahead _before_then_? or is it only what the sales figures happen to be on _that_date_? p.s. heck, i'll make it all-you-can-eat every night for _two_ weeks!

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Re: a longstanding question has finally been answered
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

michael said: > You are really willing to bet that on April 21, 2013 there > will be more iPads than Kindles plus Sonys plus nooks. . . . well, every ipad and iphone and ipodtouch can run the kindle software, as can a slew of phones, even today, so all of those machines can act as "virtual kindles"... but in terms of dedicated kindle machines, you betcha. > Say it in print for the folks, and > I'll start practicing turducken recipes. . . . well, if you're even willing to take such a stupendous bet, it means you're gonna rewrite the terms of engagement, but i'll go for it anyway, to see how you're gonna do that. :+) *** while i've got the crystal ball out, might as well use it... amazon will drop the price of a kindle to nearly nothing. indeed, they'll have a "subscription" offer that will actually make the kindle _free_ if you agree to buy so many books. they will also offer an "all-you-can-eat" option that will attempt to do for books what "netflix" has done for films. similarly, they'll offer the kindle to school-districts with a _guarantee_ that their overall textbook-costs will drop, and increasingly-cash-starved schools will jump at that. all of these initiatives -- and more! -- will ensure that lots and lots and lots and lots of kindle units are moved. but it _still_ won't compare with the ipad juggernaut... (not even in quantity, and especially not in profitability.) why not? because amazon can't do software like apple. so they will always be three-and-a-half-steps behind... -bowerbird

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Re: EBook formats on iPad via wifi
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

jim said: > so its not clear to me what *you* are complaining! i think he's complaining because he thought he was taking part in an actual dialog, so when he realized he'd been suckered into a bitch session, he chafed... -bowerbird

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Re: EBook formats on iPad via wifi
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

well, jim, i'm sorry you wasted some of your time following up on michael's suggestions. but i think if you would have phrased your complaints a bit better in the first place, you could've avoided the misunderstanding. i'm not just talking about your disingenuous means of (mis)defining terms like "e-book", either (although that is a serious error too), but a bad case of failure to qualify yourself. to my point, if you would have said this... > i have found it impossible to download > the books i want from the sites i want > in the formats i want such that i can > read them in the viewer-apps i want... ...you wouldn't have engendered opposition. indeed, you might have gotten a whole lot of sympathy. (or, realistically, a little bit.) and perhaps even received a few pointers... but that's not what you said, not at the outset. what you said initially sounded more like: > the ipad is so locked down that you > can only get the e-books steve jobs > allows you to get, and that sucks... that's a paraphrase, of course, but i think that that's what it sounded like to people. but of course we know that that's not true, not on the face of it. there's a browser on the ipad, so anything that's out on the web is something the ipad can readily display... put it this way. if i were to offer to pay you $100 for every e-book you read on the ipad, how many "e-books" could you find to "read"? yeah, that's what i thought; no shortage then. yes, there is a walled-in, locked-up section of the ipad, but we all know about that, and what good does it do to bitch about it here? it contributes nothing productive to a thread. to sum up, hyperbole doesn't work well if you don't know how to work it well... -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting (unwrap.pl)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

michael said: > Let's have the code sure thing, boss. > and install it where everyone can find/use it. great idea... > Help Newby set it up later. i don't think he will need any help, but yeah, sure. and, of course, i invite people to improve the script. -bowerbird =========================================== #!/usr/local/bin/perl -w use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser); ########### read the user input read(STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'}); # Split the name-value pairs @pairs = split(/&/, $buffer); foreach $pair (@pairs) { ($name, $value) = split(/=/, $pair); # Un-Webify plus signs and %-encoding $value =~ tr/+/ /; $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9][a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg; $value =~ s///g; if ($allow_html != 0) { $value =~ s/<([^>]|\n)*>//g; } $FORM{$name} = $value; $value =~ s/\cM//g; if ($name eq "theinput") {$thebook=$value}; } if ($thebook eq "") { $thebook='paste the text you want to unwrap in this field, and click "unwrap"...' }; print "content-type: text/html\n\n"; print '<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">'; print "\n"; print "\n"; print '<head><title>unwrap p.g. paragraphs'; print '</title>'; print "\n"; print '<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">'; print '<body><pre>'; print '<form method="post"'; ######################################################### ### note that this line has to be changed to point to the appropriate place ### print 'action="http://z-m-l.com/go/unwrap.pl">'; ######################################################### print '<input align="left" type="submit" value="-- unwrap --"> '; print "\n"; print '<input type="hidden" name="unwrap" value="reporting...">'; print "\n"; print '<p align="left">'; print '<textarea name="theinput" rows=30 cols=80>'; print $thebook; print '</textarea>'; print '</p>'; print '<input type="hidden" name="hiddenname" value="hiddenvalue">'; ### the numbers here refer to a list of steps ### i posted in a message to gutvol-d ### #1 #skip #2 $thebook =~ s/\r\n/\n/g ; #3 $thebook =~ s/\r/\n/g ; #4 #skip #5 #skip #6 $thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ; $thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ; $thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ; $thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ; $thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ; $thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ; $thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ; $thebook =~ s/ \n/\n/g ; #7 $thebook =~ s/\n/ \n/g ; #8 $thebook =~ s/ \n \n/\n\n/g ; #9 $thebook =~ s/\n \n/\n\n/g ; $thebook =~ s/\n \n/\n\n/g ; $thebook =~ s/\n \n/\n\n/g ; $thebook =~ s/\n \n/\n\n/g ; #10 # wait! not yet! #11 $thebook =~ s/ \n /\n /g ; # maybe clone this for an asterisk in column 1, and # clone this for a number in column 1 which is # followed by a period-space in columns 2-3. $thebook =~ s/ \n>/\n>/g ; $thebook =~ s/ \n</\n</g ; $thebook =~ s/ \n\t/\n\t/g ; $thebook =~ s| \n/tab|\n/tab|g ; #12 $thebook =~ s/ \n/ /g ; print $thebook; print "</form></pre></body></html>";

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Re: a longstanding question has finally been answered
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

michael said: > Total market. . .iPad versus Kindle, Sony and nook, leave the rest. > When will there be more iPads??? > A little spine here. . .come on! ipad had 300,000 the first weekend. it took kindle/sony/nook a _year_ to move that many. ipad has 500,000 now, less than one month out... it took kindle/sony/nook _18_months_ to sell that many. are you disputing who the eventual winner will be? or are we just arguing about how long it will take the ipad to go ahead? how long has the kindle been out now? just to make it easy on myself, i'll say that when the ipad has been out _that_long_, on that date its sales will have surpassed sales made by the kindle/sony/nook trio on that date. (and likely by a large margin.) and if you want certainty, bracket a period a-year-before that date and a-year-after... -bowerbird

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Re: a longstanding question has finally been answered
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

michael said: > Every single time! you've never won a bet against me. ever. > Then place your bets, ladies and gentlemen!!! you've already lost. 80 million versus 3 million. > I am fine with the iPad, iPhone and iPod. you've already lost. 80 million versus 3 million. > However, I stand by my offer to accept your terms. you've already lost. 80 million versus 3 million. > What numbers over how many years. . . . the only fair way is "since made available for sale". but who needs to be fair? let the sony/kindle/nook/whatever dedicated machines (even palm and rocketbook!) have their huge head-start in time... because even with it, they've fallen far behind. > By the way, I like my cooked fowl with a little spine. cook it however you like! if you can catch it, that is... :+) > Who was it that predicted this whole cellphone thing?! so why are you backing off it now? a cellphone that's also being used as an e-reader is -- by definition -- a multipurpose machine... > By when you you think iPad will have half the market? oh, now you want to make it just the ipad? ok, no problem. > Just counting eReaders, which is to your advantage. > Even just counting Kindle, Noon and Sony??? you've already lost. 80 million versus 3 million. > I don't mean some fake "market" narrowed down in > some small portion of space-time, I mean the grand total. > Pick a date!!! "since made available for sale"... 1-year-out vs. 1-year-out, 2-years-out vs. 2-years-out, etc. -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting (unwrap.pl)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

sorry, jim, i'm just a kindergartner when it comes to perl, so i'm not sure i can help with any debugging, but i'll try... > Name "main::allow_html" used only once: that was code i just pulled in, but i didn't "allow html", so, practically, you can throw out that loop altogether... (but also see the note below.) > Name "main::FORM" used only once: > possible typo at C:\JIM\Perl\bbunwrap.pl line 18. that construct is just to split the buffer, so you don't really need it. the only variable of any interest is "theinput", so just strip "theinput=" off the buffer and you're good. note that $theinput is then dumped into $thebook. (but also see the note below.) > Use of uninitialized value in read at C: that command reads the buffer that's submitted to the script when it's mounted on a website, so you'll have to rewrite it if you wanna run it offline, which is what it appears you are trying to do here. read this note: what you would do instead (and it nullifies all of the errors that we've discussed so far, is to open the text-file on your machine, put it into $thebook, and proceed to this line: > print "content-type: text/html\n\n"; > Use of uninitialized value $thebook > in string eq at C:\JIM\Perl\bbunwrap.pl line 24. looks like your version of perl wants the variables to be initialized, so just go ahead and do that... -bowerbird

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