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

21 Apr '10

michael said: > I'll take that bet. . .another free lunch of cooked fowl. pardon me? are you implying that you have won a bet against me in the past? _when?_ > I'll be that the iPad never even gets HALF > the market for eReaders over the long haul. you can't be serious. the ipad is already up to 500,000 sold. besides, by "multipurpose machine", i certainly include the iphone and the ipodtouch in there, and -- as i said -- apple has sold 80 million... they sold 8.75 million iphones in the first quarter, an _increase_ over the previous (_holiday_) quarter, which is an absolutely astonishing accomplishment. we're seeing a juggernaut, and it's gathering steam, all because they gave people multipurpose machines that can be carried around with the greatest of ease... there are some of us who _knew_ this'd be killer. (and, gee, michael, i thought you were one of us.) -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

the original linebreaks _should_ be preserved. because some people _want_ them. and those original linebreaks _should_ be easy to remove as well. because some people _want_ to remove them. what nobody wants -- not really -- is a set of _new_ linebreaks, which have no legacy import. but even those are bearable, _if_ they can be easily removed. and let us recall, again, that project gutenberg has _not_ made available a web-service which people can utilize to unwrap p.g. e-texts... _i_ have created such a web-service. but project gutenberg has not. which is a minor failing. (i'd be happy to provide my code, if you want it.) and let us recall, again, that project gutenberg does _not_ ensure that every one of its e-texts is structured so that it can be unwrapped properly. this one is a _major_ failing. these are the two things that project gutenberg must do if it wants to proclaim that it has done all that it can to make its linebreaks a non-issue. -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

michael said: > Like many I'm sure (all right, I'm not really sure), > I like ebooks/etexts but do not like to read them > on a computer screen. there are many people like you. most of them are old. which is to say that very few young people feel that way. it does _not_ mean that all "old" people agree with you; many oldsters are very comfortable reading on screens. > This is largely, no doubt, because I work with > a computer all day anyway--a book should be > a place to get away from it all for a little. i'm sorry you hate your job... ;+) and maybe that's part of the problem. perhaps you don't really hate reading off a screen, you just hate doing it at a computer while you're sitting at a desk. in which case an ipad might be a very nice solution... (it _would_ save some trees. or maybe just one tree. but every tree we save is one more tree on the earth.) > The natural thing to do is to > print the text out and read it. > The question then is: > how do we typeset it? boy, you _are_ old, aren't you? :+) "typesetting" is such a quaint term, charming and cute. even "desktop publishing" now seems badly outdated. > One of the last two would, of course, do in a pinch, > but I was wondering whether anyone else here > had any ideas/recipes on how to automatically or > mostly-automatically typeset a PG etext for printing. well, yeah. but what are your expectations? what are your demands? if you were to do the job for an individual e-text, perhaps like the one you mentioned, what changes would you make? let's start with ripping out the legalese and go from there... you talked about unwrapping paragraphs. you'd do that? (were they too long for you, or too short for you, or what?) of course you don't want a monospaced font, but which fonts would you settle for? times new roman? helvetica? or do you need an ability to use any font on your machine? what about paragraphing? block paragraphs, or indentation? do you want full-justification, or is ragged-right acceptable? hyphenation, or not? if you could have the original linebreaks, complete with the original end-of-line-hyphenates, would you? how about chapter-headings? page-top? recto? double-truck? curly-quotes? typographic em-dashes? footnotes or endnotes? runheads? do you want pagenumbers? if so, printed where? what pagesize would you prefer? 8.5*11? or 5.5*8.5 for 2-up? -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting
by Morasch＠aol.com 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

jim said: > PG txt file is NOT AN E-BOOK FILE > because it does not meet at least > one criterion that is universally accepted > as being required of ebook file formats: > namely reflow. jim, jim, jim, jim, jim, jim, jim. it's bad enough that i call you a bloomin' idiot. but it's even worse when you come right back with a reply that _proves_ that's what you are. one of the most widely-used e-book formats in the last 20 years has been the .pdf format -- a format which has not, historically, done reflow. yet you want to rule it out _by_definition_? please. i was _fighting_ against .pdf as an e-book format for many, many years before you even showed up, but even i cannot deny that it _is_ an e-book format. _any_ file-format which can express a book _is_ -- or can be considered as -- an e-book format. you seem to think you define terms of engagement, that any discussion must be conducted according to the way that _you_ define words. that's bullcrap, jim. *** besides, even if we _accepted_ your stupid definition, it still doesn't compute, jim, because an ascii-file like the p.g. e-text format _can_ be reflowed, quite easily. you just take out the mid-paragraph hard line-breaks. _any_ e-book programmer can write code to do that... voila! reflow! -bowerbird

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Re: DP output is technically obsolete
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

dakretz said: > Great news! Let's test this thesis. > ... > etext # 200, dated "1995-01-01". > ... > Can anyone from DP tell me how to get the scans? ok, two things... first, it looks like i was wrong when i said that d.p. had stopped maintaining the "ols", so of course my "reason" for their having stopped maintaining it was also incorrect. (or one could say it's _no_longer_ correct, but i do believe it was correct at one time.) at any rate: > http://www.pgdp.org/ols it claims 16,809 "unique books". whether that means 16,809 scansets, i do not know. but the scans for pg#31946 are right there, online... second, the scan-sets from the very earliest books were said to be "inconvenient to get to right now" at one point in time. whether they were located or lost to the wind, i don't know. but that _could've_ included pg#200. the lowest p.g. numbers which are shown as being included in "ols" presently are pg#460 and pg#464, and four without any number. but are you sure that d.p. actually digitized pg#200? -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

according to its website, ibisreader can: 1) fetch an .epub from any website, and 2) download it so it can be read offline... jim claims neither of these things is true. i have no dog in this fight. -bowerbird p.s. as i said, _when_ eucalyptus is ipad-native, i recommend it. the fact that it uses p.g. .txt files, instead of .epub files, is a _feature_, not a _bug_... and anyone who makes a claim that a p.g. .txt file is "not an e-book file" is a full-on bloomin' idiot.

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

21 Apr '10

> "Then why in gawds name would anyone > want to get an iPad as an ebook reader?" people want the ipad for _lots_ of uses... not just as an e-book reader-machine... the fact that they get an e-book machine thrown in, for free, is icing on the cake... (and many of these users don't even read, which means they don't like cake or icing.) which reminds me... remember back in the day, when one of the most cherished merry-go-round topics on every e-book listserve was whether people would want a _dedicated_ e-book machine or a _multipurpose_ one? gosh, how many pleasant afternoons were spent composing posts on that dependable hobby-horse topic? well, folks, the winner has now been decided. amazon offered up a good dedicated machine. and they've moved about 3 million units so far. and they probably coulda moved twice as many if they would have fixed the obvious problems. throw in all the nooks and sonys, and we've got a downright respectable total for _dedicated_... but, on the other hand, however, we have apple. the iphone/ipodtouch has sold 80 million so far. and the ipad moved 300,000 units on pre-order and first-weekend sales alone, if we trust apple. and the 3g model i await isn't even available yet. so now we know... people prefer multi-purpose... the winner has been declared. which is not to say that all you people with a kindle must send it back. if you're happy with it, that's all that matters, really. -bowerbird

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Re: DP output is technically obsolete
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

dakretz said: > Summary of the situation (as it seems to me). > DP is currently taking too long to produce texts > that are are either less (plain-text) > or more (DP-style HTML) > than the supply chain is able to convey to the > end-readers to deliver the experience intended. "less" and "more" are value-laden terms. _and_ incorrect. please re-summarize... > Upload in as complete form as possible > the matching image and text files > so future modification and adaptation is possible. > There's no loss to DP by doing so oh dear boy. (just an expression. don is an old man. heck, he might even be _a_grandfather_ by this time.) but don, how much more personal denigration are you going to have to endure at the hands of d.p. apologists before you realize that you do not grok their mindset? let me 'splain it to you... d.p. has, in their hands, the scans from all the books that have gone through their system. so they _could_ have pushed them to project gutenberg at any time... indeed, charlz originally intended that d.p. itself would mount the scans. he called it the "online library system", and at one point in time, it actually came into existence. (it's probably still there, with some 6,000 scan-sets in it.) why hasn't it been maintained? well, _i_ happen to think that it's pretty obvious. but maybe that's because of what i do with those scans: i use them to point to unequivocal evidence of _errors_ in the "final product" emerging from the d.p. workflow. and that's what other people might do with them, too... does d.p. want us unequivocally pointing out their errors? no. ergo, they are keeping their scans to themselves... the myth of d.p. accuracy is one that keeps d.p. going... the powers-that-be over there do not want to put that myth up against _any_ solid evidence to the contrary... and it's not that hard to understand, either. rfrank was eager to see the results of my check on the "sitka" book, at least when he thought that check would be _positive_. but when it was less than flattering, he clammed right up. it's hard for some people to admit they make mistakes... even if they can do it in a "general" way, when it comes to close-eyed examination of specifics, they're uninterested, and might even go to great lengths to suppress evidence... > and the risk is that over time > they are quite capable of losing track of them. they have the scans firmly in their grasp now, and they wish to retain control, so they simply are not worried about "losing track of them"... -bowerbird

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oh geez
by Morasch＠aol.com 21 Apr '10

21 Apr '10

oh geez, now lee is gonna call me "mr. morasch" again... :+) -bowerbird

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summary of the recent discussion of e-books on the ipad
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Apr '10

20 Apr '10

if you wonder if the recent flurry between jim and michael needs to be read, let me save you the time and trouble... according to michael, who doesn't care about the format of the books just as long as he can get to the content inside, it's pretty easy to read e-books on the ipad, especially when one has an always-on connection to the web, in which case one can access many sites, using many viewer-programs, specifically including the native safari web-browser... according to jim, who wants his e-books in .epub or .mobi, getting e-books on the ipad can be a large pain in the ass... jim also complains about the closed nature of the ipad, and prefers his netbook, albeit hasn't reported on whether or not the added weight of the netbook hampers his use of the unit. much drama and misunderstandings and unaddressed points were also part of the recent exchange of e-mails, but i think i've boiled the important aspects. if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them... -bowerbird p.s. if anyone actually _owns_ an ipad, would you report in?

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