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New mobile devices page (pls. proofread)
by Greg Newby 04 Dec '09

04 Dec '09

The number of requests to help@ for kindle and similar device support has grown quite a lot, and so I finally spent some time writing a how-to for this topic. Your feedback is requested: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:MobileReader_Devices_How-To I included a link to James Adcock's magic catalog, but am not sure whether this is updated regularly/automatically. I would also be happy to link to good external content. The main thing I don't want to do it provide all the details for all devices, since that will be hard to verify and maintain. While this page is in the protected content area, there is already a page set up for user-contributed content, where I would love to see some more detailed advice on specific devices, conversion programs, etc.: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:The_Project_Gutenberg_Wiki TIA. Greg

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Re: Some Things I Like the Best and the Least About eBooks
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 03 Dec '09

03 Dec '09

michael said: > Or bowerbird, who at least argues both sides. . . . actually, michael, when it comes to _formats_, i've been arguing on _your_ side, exclusively, for many years now. indeed, my main point in regard to _formats_ is that you should actually follow the rules for your format, all of your rules, all of the time, in all of your books, so i guess i could argue that i support your format more than you do. certainly more than your whitewashers do... > when even the plainest of plain text eBooks > is created, 99% of the work of re-creating it > into another format is already done, all YOU > have to do is change 1% and you can have it > any other way you want it. On top of this, > there are many format conversion programs > out there that will do most of this for you. well, if you followed all the rules of your format, format conversion programs could do all the work. even now, with the whitewashers' inconsistencies, apps like eucalyptus can (on-the-fly) convert your .txt files to beautiful e-books even on inferior kit. there are people here who question you, michael. i am not one of them. no, i argue _against_ them. -bowerbird

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Re: New mobile devices page (pls. proofread)
by bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Dec '09

02 Dec '09

michael said: > _I_ do, and I do it as part of my demonstrations all the time cool. so you're covered, right? so you won't mind if i help jim, right? because jim wants to do it a different way, and i'm waiting for his feedback on what i suggested, to see if that does the trick for him. because david and greg set out to help jim -- but then they got sidetracked in another direction. now i hope they follow that up, because i'm sure that will help some other people do it _their_ way. but in the meantime, jim was pointing out that his request had been sidetracked, so i was trying to see if i could help him out... i don't really care if there are half-a-million kindles, or 12 million, or 8 dozen. the only important number to me is the number _one_, as in jim came in here as _one_ person, asking for something, and -- if i understand him right -- it should be pretty easy for him to create what he wants, so i'm gonna show him how he can do that. because if he knows how, he might put some elbow grease to it... and yeah, i think it's wonderful that people _can_ read e-books on our cell-phones, and i'm glad that you've advocated that all along... on the other hand, people _are_ reading e-books on their kindles, i know it, for sure, because that's about all you can do on a kindle, and if people are gonna waste their money on a single-functionality e-book-reader-machine, then i _hope_ they can read e-books on it, so i think it is a good use of my energy to try and help jim out here, because then he could spread that functionality to the kindle world, whatever size it happens to be. i'm glad we had this little discussion, michael, because i always believe that i agree with you, even when you seem to think that you disagree with me, which is quite entertaining... -bowerbird p.s. ok, i see that _greg_ wasn't actually sidetracked at all...

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Re: New mobile devices page (pls. proofread)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Dec '09

02 Dec '09

michael said: > If our page can work on a cellphone, > should be workable on an ereader. um, not really. they don't work the same way. jim, i'd think you can get what you need easily. try this: > http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23456/pg23456.epub and then try these: > http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23457/pg23457.epub > http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23458/pg23458.epub > http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23459/pg23459.epub > http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23460/pg23460.epub those are direct links to the .epub versions. for mobi, try these: > http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23456/pg23456.mobi > http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23457/pg23457.mobi > http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23458/pg23458.mobi > http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23459/pg23459.mobi > http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/23460/pg23460.mobi *** of course, something like this -- where each individual line was linked to the appropriate volume -- would be much more useful: > 23456 -- More Dollies by Richard Hunter (children's poetry) > 23457 -- The Keepsake by Anonymous (children's poetry) > 23458 -- Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Vol 13 > 23459 -- Fishy-Winkle by Jean C. Archer > 23460 -- Abroad by Various (children's poetry) but let's start at the beginning and see how the above works... if i understand you correctly, this is the type of thing you want. -bowerbird

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Re: New mobile devices page (pls. proofread)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Dec '09

02 Dec '09

jim said: > OK, then I don't know what this is other than a time-wasting joke calm down, jim, it was just al haines jumping into the middle of a discussion when he hadn't read the whole thread, so he had no idea what he was talking about. he does that a lot, but it's no big deal; it's irritating, but it's no big deal. just understand it, and move on. -bowerbird

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Re: New mobile devices page (pls. proofread)
by Greg Newby 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 04:56:34PM -0500, David A. Desrosiers wrote: > On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 4:16 PM, Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> wrote: > > Does this seem like it should be easy? Or, do we need to customize > > for 1000 different devices (literally...according to our pals at > > wattpad.com) > > The correct way is to just apply a stylesheet for mobile devices to > your existing HTML page, and be done with it. You don't even have to > edit the HTML to apply it to all of the sub-html pages you serve from > that vhost if you wish. The main site appears to be running Apache/2, > so that's doable. This sounds easy to mock up. But I plead ignorance as to how a style sheet would do this. I infer you're not talking about user-agent switches (which we do sometimes use in a .htacess file, as well as various URL redirection). > I'd even be willing to expose my Gutenberg mirror as the "mobile site" > and make the necessary adjustments if you wanted to do that. That would be another easy way to test, thanks. > Supporting per-device useragents is a dead-end right from the start; > you'll always be playing a losing game of catch-up the whole way. Definitely. I know some places are doing it that way, but presumably they have content that demands more customization than our relatively simple eBooks. Or maybe they're just gluttons for punishment. > Let me know and we can begin testing out some ideas. It's pretty easy for me to drop in some alternate code at www.gutenberg.org for a variation. I'm definitely interested in how far a good CSS gets us. -- Greg

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phase-change memory
by Michael S. Hart 01 Dec '09

01 Dec '09

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:37:36 -0800 From: Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> To: Michael S. Hart <hart(a)pobox.com>, Michael S. Hart <hart(a)pglaf.org> Subject: phase-change memory I have it on good authority that this will be replacing many instances of flash memory. Samsung is already manufacturing it for cell phones. http://www.eetimessupplynetwork.com/220100470?cid=RSSfeed_eetsn_eetsnRSS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-change_memory /// From Michael Samsung's first announcement of a 512-Mbit phase-change RAM prototype came in September 2006, and only now is the rumor coming out that they are actually in production. This is a great test of comments made earlier this week for the periods between such announcements and actual fact, but you can't actually go out and buy this stuff right now, and if you did, you'd probably be disappointed, as it is only a 512 M. . .BIT. . .not 512 MByte so these won't compete with the flash RAM you've been buying off the shelve for years-- available nearly up to the 512 GIGAbyte level today. In addition, the advantage of the new PRAM chips is mainly, perhaps solely, about a 20% reduction in battery drain. So, if you are comforatable using your computer for 2.5 hrs now, you should be comfortable using it for 3 hrs on PRAM. The question of calendaring such progress remains, as these chips have to work their way through the entire production, testing, integration and finally work their way through the various countries' distribution pipelines to consumers of a Samsung cellphone and then perhaps other brands or purposes such as competing with current flash RAM in the gigabytes. Even if this all happens to the point where the average one of us can walk into a store and buy a USB version of some a year from now, that would be over four years from vaporware to an actual wide scale product, probably closer to five.

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Re: it's that time of year again
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Nov '09

30 Nov '09

rothman said: > Same old troll, BB ;-). right. i deal in facts, and you call me names, and somehow it's _me_ who is the "troll" here. ;+) > My big point here oh please. your "big point" is *censored*. <- fact! and i've told people precisely _why_ it's *censored*, and you have no rejoinder. you don't even _try_ to mount a counter, because you don't have one. > My big point here is that schools and libraries > and the rest of us should be preparing-- your message -- whether you know it or not -- is that people should _wait_, because the tech is "right around the corner", but not _here_ yet. so everyone is sitting around waiting, while google raids the library. thanks for the catatonia, david... > the capabilities will be coming sooner or later. your message is that they will be coming _later_. let's contrast that with the message of michael hart, which is that "we can make e-books happen right now." > Glad BB himself has been so 100 percent infallible, > especially about ePub (Sony signed up for ZML lately?). i already have my response written concerning all that... i'm waiting to send it until people get back from holiday. suffice it to say for now that you're a tool of the industry, david, the corporate dinosaur publishing industry, and there is no future for the dinosaurs, zero future at all... sony will never sign up for z.m.l., because they can't slap d.r.m. on it, so they chose the publishers' .epub instead... that's quite some victory, david. just like the "victory" you had a decade ago, when microsoft slapped d.r.m. on the earlier version of .epub. now this time it's adobe, but the story will turn out the very same way, just watch. but oh well, the executives bought themselves some more quarters, even if profitability wasn't as good as they hoped. > As for E Ink, it's just one of several possibilities out there. > My pointer in fact was to Pixel Qi. yeah, see how quickly you disown your own past, david. you promoted e-ink unceasingly, for years and years, in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of your blog entries. and now pixel qi is about to prove that you were _wrong_ about e-ink being "the future" that was "around the corner". so you ditch e-ink as if you never knew it. you chase every technology that sends you a press release, instead of having the real-world discipline that requires working models, or at least something more than vapor... -bowerbird

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Re: Some genuine fodder for Michael's ire [Re: Re: it's that time of year again]
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Nov '09

29 Nov '09

greg said: > It has greatly appreciated. i'm gonna talk about formats in the coming week, but i'm curious as to how .epub advocates evaluate the quality of these automatic conversions to .epub. -bowerbird

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Re: Some genuine fodder for Michael's ire [Re: Re: it's that time of year again]]
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Nov '09

29 Nov '09

david rothman said: > As for disrupting this list, keep in mind that out of the blue, > without my attacking anyone, Bowerbird launched a strike on me > and wants to do this every Thanksgiving. Great for holiday cheer, huh? it wasn't "out of the blue". it was based on a bet from 4 years ago. you tried to escape from an unpleasant accounting of the realities by saying "check back in a year and see what it looks like then..." i set the terms of the bet at 5 years, precisely because i wanted to demonstrate clearly how awful your "predictive power" actually is. not only did you continue to be wrong one year later, but you were also wrong 2 years later, and then wrong again 3 years later, and -- now -- wrong yet again 4 years later. wrong wrong wrong wrong. so yeah, i'll check in next year at this time, to conclude the bet... you seem to think that anyone who dares to check your _accuracy_ is "launching a strike" on you. you want to spew your thoughts out without having any do any checks. you don't want to be challenged. and hey, i don't blame you. if my track-record was as bad as yours, i wouldn't want anyone bringing up pesky issues like "accuracy" either. and if my grasp on the issues was as tenuous as yours, i wouldn't want to engage in any dialog either, because it would be exposed that i couldn't really defend my position with rational arguments. you want to dish out platitudes and be praised for doing just that, instead of doing the difficult work of examining the hard trade-offs. you want to dangle the shiny in front of people, and not have to face the uncomfortable fact that it just makes them dissatisfied with the current reality of the situation on the ground and in the marketplace. you call my posts "rants", but that kind of doubletalk doesn't work, and you're so far outside your comfort zone you don't even realize it. -bowerbird

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