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one more reminder about those .txt files
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Sep '09

12 Sep '09

one more reminder that the iphone app "eucalyptus" creates beautiful books by using the .txt files from p.g. all you yahoos who continue to say that it can't be done have been proven wrong by a person who went and did it. -bowerbird p.s. the programmer has even done a pretty good job of detecting the places where lines should not be rewrapped, like in tables, address blocks, signature blocks, and so on.

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Re: TXT and all that.
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Sep '09

12 Sep '09

oh geez, how could marcello make it any more clear that he doesn't know jack shit about distributed proofreaders? *** jon said: > In Word, format the whole caboodle fairly nicely, illustrations > and all. Use all the nice features, including programmability, for > editing etc. BB doesn't like the result of course, and i can see why hey, wait, don't put words into my mouth, jon. lots of times i would like a .doc file very much. it'd be much more useful than an .html file or a butchered .txt version, that's for sure... > Nice chapter headings, page numbering etc. Also tables of contents, > whatever is free or nearly. It helps with the editing anyway, so why not? indeed. but then, of course, if you used one of my editing tools instead, you'd find that you get all of those things "free" with it, as well... > So I do a conversion to "filtered" HTML. Hard work that. > Takes dozens of keystrokes. Well, more than a dozen anyway. the conversion from .zml to .html takes just one button-click. > Ahaaah! Gotcha! PG doesn't like Word HTM either! the .html from the .zml conversion is just fine, according to p.g. > HTMLKit convert a Word file so easily to clean HTML that > I don't bother to keep backups except of the DOC. sounds good. except, of course, that your .html files differ in their makeup from other post-processor's .html files, so -- down the line -- it will be absolutely impossible for someone to understand the various ripples underlying all of your different .html variants, which means they won't be able to _maintain_ those .html files. so instead, the person(s) maintaining the library will turn to the .txt versions, and do the little bit of work necessary so that those .txt versions can serve as the master from which .html is created. which is what you should have done in the first place... this all means you've all basically created something temporary, instead of something that is able to be maintained a long time... > I realise that BB and a few others have better ways of doing it, > but every time I get tempted to sniff down those alleys, I go > and lie down for six seconds till the feeling passes. i do have a better way. but if you want to keep doing it in your clumsy way, it's ok. that's the way most people do most things, and the world didn't fall apart because of it. (the world fell apart because of greedy bankers.) just so long as you realize that your work on the .html files will be thrown out down the line, and you are ok with that, everything's fine. thanks for your generosity in volunteering your time and energy to the cause of digitizing books. -bowerbird

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TXT and all that.
by Jon Richfield 12 Sep '09

12 Sep '09

Folks, I actually am up to the back teeth with the about it and abouting. A lot of intelligent people (sincerely meant, no sarcasm) saying mainly intelligent things about material problems and objectives and yet... SO I was going to shut up. ME!!! I'll try to make up for it by being short and to beside the point. As a long-time hands-on, low-level, DP support and development man, I understand the importance of TXT files. Really I do. Anyway, as a reader with a PC, I can represent the TXT files fairly comfortably, even for reading big books, where Dick and Jane meet in Whore and Piece. As a user of PCs that are mere years old, I understand the importance of more convenient formats. Trust me, I do. As either I shall not argue the point. If you seek the reason why, circumspice! Now, I am no major contributor to PG, but I have contributed some quick-and-dirty digitisations, using modest facilities. I use M$oft under protest, because nowadays as a user (read: bottom-feeder!) I don't have the time to learn decent stuff and instead I put up with all the triviality and inelegance. Upshot: * Scan the book (Actually, nowadays my scanner lies idle. Mainly I use my digital camera: faster, often better, far more flexible, more portable; (I can use it in libraries etc) and less harmful to the books too. That is nice!) * After having for some years used the perfectly useful crippleware version that came in the cereal box with my scanner I bought a decent omniscan on a $100 on-line special. That too is nice. *Feed the output into Word. (I actually have certain reservations about this, but note that Word has certain useful aspects: It deals fairly nicely with TXT AND with HTM. And it is programmable. I don't have to work with Courier or FTM Arial all the time.Useful font, but neither restful, nor comfortable for speed reading.) In fact, though I have not yet done anything with it, I am fairly sure that I have enough facilities at hand to produce PDF as well if I choose. But here the same prejudice that makes me appreciate TXT kicks in: If I lose my software or get stuck with moderately damaged files, I can easily edit HTM to make it readable, but I'll be blowed if I bother to learn more opaque formats. To be sure, the PG TXT format is, whatever its merits, not nice, but if that is what they want... *In Word, format the whole caboodle fairly nicely, illustrations and all. Use all the nice features, including programmability, for editing etc. BB doesn't like the result of course, and i can see why, but I have only one life, and not much more of that, so...Nice chapter headings, page numbering etc. Also tables of contents, whatever is free or nearly. It helps with the editing anyway, so why not? *What? PG doesn't like DOC? Tsk Tsk! So I do a conversion to "filtered" HTML. Hard work that. Takes dozens of keystrokes. Well, more than a dozen anyway. *Ahaaah! Gotcha! PG doesn't like Word HTM either! How do you like that my buck??? Big deal! Someone steered me in the direction of HTMLKit! Now THERE is a useful product. May the commercial users make the company stinking rich! They deserve it big time. HTMLKit convert a Word file so easily to clean HTML that I don't bother to keep backups except of the DOC. There I have a working HTML with figures, tables, the full catastrophe. *But what about TXT? Here is where word comes in useful. again. I steadfastly resist any hyphenation except where words are too long for the line, or where a word is hyphenated. This, apart from other virtues, make it trivial to break lines with the help of a macro or two. (Actually, I have used other convenient TXT processors to break lines, but that is a matter of ad hoc convenience). *Then there are the GUTCHKs and so on, bless their writers' hearts. Actually I use them before the HTML production to trap errors that slip through other processors. By the time I have done with the HTML, I usually have finished with the TXT as well. Pictures? No problem. If anyone wants them they can get them from the HTM version. *Seems a long way round? Maybe. But I already had most of the tools for other purposes, and knew how to use them. Apart from the necessary basic effort all it takes is largely automated document production and conversion. Two steps for two files when you come down to it. *I realise that BB and a few others have better ways of doing it, but every time I get tempted to sniff down those alleys, I go and lie down for six seconds till the feeling passes. I'll re-evaluate new options as soon as everyone else agrees on all of them. By that time books and computers both will be passe. Cheers, Jon

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Re: why the plain-text format is the most useful format for eliciting beauty (and more)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Sep '09

12 Sep '09

jim said: > What I don’t understand is why PG continues to be > wedded to plain-text as an *input* encoding format > demanded of people submitting texts to PG. well, if you _honestly_ "don't understand" the reason, jim, then i must say that you certainly aren't trying very hard... the plain-text format is the most valuable to people because it is the most pliable when it comes to reworking the content. > Plain-text is too constrained to do the job well. first you want to constrain the format to an archaic definition... then you want to complain about it because it's too constrained. that's disingenuous. > HTML is too ambiguous, and too ill-matched to books to do well. no, that's not the problem -- .html can do a fine job on books, for the most part, but the problem is that's it's a pain to create. > We need something else, something that CAN be correctly > and automagically converted “correctly” to one or another formats > including plain-text, and Unicode, and HTML, and mobi, etc. that "something else" is z.m.l. > And something that allows the simple every day tasks > of the encoder, including italics and m-dash and poetry, > titles and chapters and subchapters, publisher info, dates, etc > to be handled correctly and easily. again, you're talking about z.m.l. but, you know, you can invent your own equivalent, if you like... > PS: Bit curious which blind reader handles > _the underscore “convention”_ correctly – > I’ve not seen _that_ one! i'll let tony answer that question. -bowerbird

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Re: In search of a more-vanilla vanilla TXT
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Sep '09

12 Sep '09

greg said: > Or what is the most primitive device in use today the web-browser. a web-browser won't wrap the lines on a .txt file, so if the hard-returns were removed from p.g. .txt files, the lines would run off the screen of a web-browser. try it if you don't believe me. *** it's absolutely true that project gutenberg should have given users a tool that would remove the hard returns, and it should've done that years ago, but it's also true that the .txt files _should_ have hard-returns in them. now, i'd suggest that those hard-returns should mimic the ones found in the print-books against which the text was proofed, but that won't help the books already done. -bowerbird

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Re: In search of a more-vanilla vanilla TXT
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

i said: > it's absolutely true that project gutenberg should have > given users a tool that would remove the hard returns, > and it should've done that years ago michael said: > We did do that years ago, and years before that. oh really? and just exactly where is that tool? -bowerbird

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Re: why the plain-text format is the most useful format for eliciting beauty (and more)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

jim said: > I don’t see how one “elicits beauty” from something that isn’t there. > Plain text doesn’t have enough power to encode even > simple mainstream texts, which frequently include > the use of italic, for example. italics are indicated by surrounding _underscores_... > Yes, one can fake it, but then its not plain text anymore. you have an archaic and incorrect notion of "plain text"... > If we had an unambiguous encoding which captures authors intent, > then it would be easy to go the other direction and “throw away” > author’s intent when it doesn’t fit into plain jane text mode. why would you want to "throw away" the author's intent? -bowerbird

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Re: In search of a more-vanilla vanilla TXT
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

i said: > a web-browser won't wrap the lines on a .txt file, so > if the hard-returns were removed from p.g. .txt files, > the lines would run off the screen of a web-browser. i'm sorry. i was wrong. safari (at least) does wrap the lines. i'm not sure where i got that idea... at any rate, my apologies for the misinformation. -bowerbird

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In search of a more-vanilla vanilla TXT
by Greg M. Johnson 11 Sep '09

11 Sep '09

Jay Toser wrote: > 1) ... I LOVE TEXT ... Me too. My problem is that the HTML n.n (n's being really small numbers) format I think is more universally viewable TODAY than the 80-character-line TXT on more devices (my ipod touch and 12" wide laptop screen each giving different readability problems: wacky wraparound and too fine a print in Notepad, respectively). > 2) My only recommendation in this debate is this: There is no longer a need for a > hard line break at every 80 character line. However, I believe there is still a need for a > hard line break between paragraphs. Completely agreed. That was the gist of my original proposal. Another question is whether today's most primitive TXT-reading softwares now come with wraparound-- and by this I mean "terminal editors" like emacs and vi. Or what is the most primitive device in use today-- is it a 1980 Win 3.1 'puter, perhaps the itouch (in some regards)? Another idea is whether we could tolerate another format. If we've already got half a dozen, why not have another that is "non-80 plain text" (defined above by Jay). -- Greg M. Johnson http://pterandon.blogspot.com

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TXT format and hard line breaks
by Christa & Jay Toser 10 Sep '09

10 Sep '09

I do not often post to this list. But the question is relevant. Unfortunately, I must state my preference for raw text files. And, to a great extent, I agree with Bowerbird. At least, those parts I can read. You need to know that I live in America. Born here. But I currently "surf" the "internet" with a PowerPC 6100/66. I use Mozilla ver. 3.0. Macintosh operating system 7.5.1. Dial-up is mostly 56K. Try downloading video with that set-up. In fact, try reading this user list with that set-up. I get SOME messages when I read directly. I get OTHER messages when I choose to read "raw source." And, when I go to my workplace, and read on their PC computers, I read more DIFFERENT messages. [Their internet connection is lots better. They download about 1/2 terabyte a day.] And yet, of the three different places that I can read this list, I NEVER get ALL the messages. Each and every one is different. Oh yes, there is overlap, but I'm not really sure if I have really gotten all the messages. Honestly! So, I think the original question was a two parter: 1) Why text only? 2) Why the hard line breaks? I must first apologize if I offend anyone by answering question 1). Text was considered universal to the English speaking world -- way back when Project Gutenberg started. This was at a time when Unicode would not exist for about two decades. I LOVE TEXT. As I just said above, I will not/can not/am not allowed to/ read all of your messages. Even if I go through three different setups, and two different servers, I am still not certain that I have read everything you have sent. I feel that I am being censored by the internet. It is truly my opinion that, if e-mail were just sent in TEXT, then I would know more of this world. Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words. No, I would rather read a thousand words than see a picture. Especially in this modern day, when everyone and their mother have a better way of showing data. Every country on the entire planet (that's what? 300+ countries?) they all have a new and better way to format text. Every different language must somehow show their data somehow JUST ABSOLUTELY CORRECT. Their standard is right. This standard is right. That standard is right. No, everything is wrong. Let's re-invent the wheel from scratch. No, it doesn't "look right." It has to be "correct." It is wrong if the text lines "break" at the "wrong" place. Errrm, got carried away there. In my opinion, I think the raw text of each book in Project Gutenberg, is the ultimate in how a book should be delivered. Again, I apologize if I have offended anyone on this list for writing my obvious opinion. 2) Why the hard line breaks? Partially, this was covered by (I think) Bowerbird. There was a time when there were no fonts. Specifically, there were no "variable-width" fonts. Way before the Macintosh existed, there was only one way to read text. And it was only one width per each character, and there were only 80 characters per line. Max. Period. And when Project Gutenberg was started, he set the standard at whatever existed at the time. Break it at never more than 80 characters -- and break it between words. No hyphenation. Now, this problem of hard line breaks is a legitimate problem. Now, several decades after Macintosh (and later, PC's); it is my considered opinion that there is no need for a hard line break. Even way-back-when, in the early days -- there was question of whether a hard line break was just a <LF> (line feed) or <CR><LF> (carriage return, followed by line feed). Yep, there were format problems back before 1980. Now-a-days, with all the wonderful formatting which is available; in so many different fonts; in so many different platforms; with so many different programs; that can read so many different styles; well then -- what do we choose is right? **sigh** Above, I have described my computer system. I will tell you, that my computer system is more advanced than perhaps 2/3rds of the world. Most do not have the bandwidth for a .pdf. Or actually any kind of formatted book. Maybe, they have an hour per week at an internet cafe. At 10-12K speed. They don't care if the line breaks are wrong. They care if they can read the books. And pretty much throughout that world, they can only read the books, ONLY if simple 8-bit ASCII text exists. No one on Project Gutenberg, NO ONE, can guarantee a more universal format, nor a faster format to download, than text only. (Except perhaps 7-bit ASCII, [capital letters only]; or OCTAL; but that diverges.] My only recommendation in this debate is this: There is no longer a need for a hard line break at every 80 character line. However, I believe there is still a need for a hard line break between paragraphs. I believe the text versions of the books can be scanned for single <CR> or <CR><LF> groups, and be removed. Double <CR><CR> or <CR><LF><CR><LF> should be maintained. And yes, I feel strongly this can be done to the ORIGINAL .txt files. It is my opinion that the technology of the world has truly advanced beyond the need for a hard line break at the end of every line. Paragraph breaks, yes. Line breaks, no. As to how this would translate into .pdf or Kindle? Gagg me with a spoon. I'm not there. Hope this helps, Jay Toser

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