- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

respite
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 26 Jun '09

26 Jun '09

i backed off of this listserve for a little while to see if anyone else would step up to the plate and do some work to try and make it a lively place. but no... just a lot of tumbleweeds blowing through. so i'll be coming back soon and doing my fair share... -bowerbird ************** Stay connected and tighten your budget with a great mobile device for under $20. Take a Peek! (http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100122638x1222405996x1201457362/aol?redir=htt…)

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Well, it has kindled a lot of discussion, hm?
by Jon Richfield 21 Jun '09

21 Jun '09

First, thanks to all who responded in one way or another. You know who you are (some of the time, I hope!) It seems that Kindle does do most of what I want in ways that I could find usable. My money and I are a bit busy at the moment, so I shall not order one this moment, but my interest is growing, Amazon and rivals are hyperventilating increasingly as I dither over my choice. How long? How long??? You know, I am a bit puzzled about one thing (among many others of course). For most part epaper seems to be the least power hungry choice (not that I am a tree hugger; I am of course, anyway, but in this connection less power means longer battery life etc.) but there is another option that, though it is not power-independent, should get by on very little. I know it exists, but much as epaper did for a couple of decades, it seems to be languishing, or at least limited to special purposes. What I am thinking of is some kinds of heads-up displays that can be worn like glasses, seeing the "screen" through some sort of lens system. I should think them to be perfect for reading etc, and afaik they are mainly LCD based, and accordingly power-conservative. They should be usable hands-off whether walking, driving, lying down, or in the dark. Potentially a 640X 480 or even 800X600 should be cheap. With a modest memory and processor modules they should be nearly everything the Kindles are, or more so. Or am I too optimistic? What am I missing? BB, how about detumescing my optimism? Walter and Michael made good points about screen sizes and changing standards, but the reason for my interest is that it is all very well to be satisfied with tiny screens, but it does bad things to one's capacity for effortless, comfortable, non-injurious, reading for hours and hours. Alex made a good pitch, but I think that between simple cell-phone costs and few-inch screens, as Jim pointed out, Kindle currently sounds like the best bet, though his HTC sounds nice for those who need it. BB made some good points as usual, but some rather unconvincing ones also as usual. Eg: " but don't focus on _books_ per se, because the number of book-readers in the population is very small. (and it's getting even smaller every day.) book-readers won't drive this revolution.". See, BB, I do indeed focus on book reading, not because I am selling, but because I read. And reading I may buy. Only if I change my market do I change my focus. I don't much care about the other things the gadgets can do because I don't do them much. That is why my cell phone is only marginally younger than my microscope. It does what I want of a phone, which is damned little. If it offered reading for me as well without a fancy lens attachment, it would be fatiguing, which is where the charm of epaper or the heads-up display would lie. Does anyone know why such heads ups are not common yet? Note that they need not be dedicated machines, any more than PCs are. You say: " i always said this idea was ridiculous, because a reader has to have a screen and a chip and an operating system, and those are the most expensive parts of any computer, so if you're going to pay for those for a dedicated reader, you might as well get a full-fledged computer instead..." But you see BB, we do not all have your thews and sinews and built-in power sockets. We cannot sit and read in the train or in bed or on a hilltop and read a comfortably sized screen or image weighing a couple of kilos for hours on end. So far epaper has it all its own way. I take your point about its price ans a specialised device, but why should it be specialised? It looks to me like a perfectly usable screen for many purposes. Maybe more than LCD...? Who knows, I might yet still make up my mind before i can afford a kindle... Cheers all, Jon

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Guidelines for putting "PG" on own compilations
by Greg M. Johnson 17 Jun '09

17 Jun '09

Hello. I am making my own DVD project. I downloaded one of the custom-complied DVD's off of the Alaska server. I added another 50 titles and deleted a couple hundred. The main customization is that I've put together my own INDEX. I've grouped the works into about twenty genres of my own choosing and made it stylistically a bit more like your SciFi CD than the typical Alaska-server custom DVD. I want to give it away for free to everyone I meet and encourage them to do the same. But how do I identify it? The question of tact and/or legality is how should I identify the collection. Of course I would not modify any of the individual HTML files provided by PG for each book. I'm imagining if I were not to give PG enough credit for the compilation, I'll break one rule. It seems fair to give PG some kind of credit in my index for having created the book files themselves. But isn't there a Tom Robbins novel where someone gets into trouble by indexing? I'm imagining if I were not to take enough responsibility for the compilation, I could get folks mad at PG. For example, I chose to put a book on Mormonism into a category of "RELIGION-- OTHER" instead of "RELIGION-- CHRISTIAN." Somehow with my search terms I ended up with a book on Eugenics, which I find quite evil, but I'm wondering if I would ever be able to find and delete every possible controversial title from my selection. I was also considering putting the HTML code for your Paypal link on the index, is that good or bad? And to sum it up, ultimately, if I make my own compilation DVD, would PG want it for distribution? -- Greg M. Johnson http://pterandon.blogspot.com

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Re: Kindle DX + Google Books
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Jun '09

12 Jun '09

jim, thanks for the report... -bowerbird ************** Download the AOL Classifieds Toolbar for local deals at your fingertips. (http://toolbar.aol.com/aolclassifieds/download.html?ncid=emlcntusdown000000…)

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one thick book
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Jun '09

12 Jun '09

"you mean they actually printed the whole thing out?" > http://www.manystuff.org/?p=3597 -bowerbird ************** Download the AOL Classifieds Toolbar for local deals at your fingertips. (http://toolbar.aol.com/aolclassifieds/download.html?ncid=emlcntusdown000000…)

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Fwd: New ePub creation tool
by Greg Newby 11 Jun '09

11 Jun '09

Does anyone have experience to share with ePub conversion tools? TIA....Greg ----- Forwarded message from support(a)AtlantisWordProcessor.com ----- From: support(a)AtlantisWordProcessor.com To: help(a)pglaf.org Subject: New ePub creation tool Dear Sir, I thought that your site visitors might be interested to know that ePub books can be composed in Atlantis Word Processor: http://www.atlantiswordprocessor.com/en/help/index.php?page=html/ebook.htm You might wish to mention Atlantis Word Processor among the EPUB conversion tools on the following page of your site: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Help_on_Bibliographic_Record_Page#E… Thanks for your time. Best regards, Taras Push The Atlantis Word Processor Team http://www.AtlantisWordProcessor.com ----- End forwarded message -----

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filenames of graphics in the plain-text versions
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 04 Jun '09

04 Jun '09

since the topic has come up on the "posted" list, i'd like to reiterate my request that the names of graphics be included in the plain-text versions... that way, the various viewer-programs that use the plain-text version of the files will be able to incorporate the graphics into their renderings... -bowerbird ************** We found the real ‘Hotel California’ and the ‘Seinfeld’ diner. What will you find? Explore WhereItsAt.com. (http://www.whereitsat.com/#/music/all-spots/355/47.796964/-66.374711/2/Youv… cntnew00000007)

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Re: macworld review of eucalyptus
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 May '09

27 May '09

i said: > ok, who can tell me why this review is important? nobody wants to bite, eh? that's ok, i understand... it's this phrase: > What sets the app apart from most of its competition > is how it takes the cold, forbidding, and ugly type so > typical of public-domain e-books and makes it gorgeous. there you go, folks. eucalyptus takes your "cold, forbidding, and ugly type" and turns it into something that is "gorgeous". what the reviewer doesn't say, because he probably doesn't recognize the significance of it, is that eucalyptus does this transformational process without the aid of any _markup_... that's because the programmer has realized the zen of the "non-markup" inside project gutenberg's plain-text format. of course, you guys all understand this very well, because i have patiently explained it to you over and over for years. -bowerbird ************** We found the real ‘Hotel California’ and the ‘Seinfeld’ diner. What will you find? Explore WhereItsAt.com. (http://www.whereitsat.com/?ncid=emlwenew00000004)

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macworld review of eucalyptus
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 27 May '09

27 May '09

ok, who can tell me why this review is important? > http://www.macworld.com/article/140796/2009/05/eucalyptus.html?lsrc=rss_main -bowerbird ************** We found the real ‘Hotel California’ and the ‘Seinfeld’ diner. What will you find? Explore WhereItsAt.com. (http://www.whereitsat.com/?ncid=emlwenew00000004)

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Re: 15,000, and yet another offer to help
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 26 May '09

26 May '09

jim said: > what is going wrong with it or with its installation guiguts installation requires a mac user to drop into "terminal" -- the linux command mode -- where a number of dependencies need to be taken care of. this is not something that your "typical" mac user does too often, if at all, so they aren't experienced with it. and because some of the dependencies have dependencies as well, it can get thorny. and since debugging linux thorniness can be thoroughly convoluted, it's very easy for everyone -- helper and helpee -- to get frustrated... to get an idea about all of this, just visit the wiki pages on installation: > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install/Windows > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install/Mac > http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/PPTools/Guiguts/Install/Linux the problem is largely circumvented for windows users, since a binary is offered to them that shortcircuits a lot of the work. (although they still have to install perl, and several "helpers", e.g., aspell, aspell dictionaries, a graphics viewer, and jeebies.) as a result, d.p. consistently finds itself short on "post-processors" -- the stage where guiguts is used -- and not just because of the trouble with guiguts (which is, once you get it going, not too bad), but rather because the whole workflow is such a patchwork of crap, and the post-processor is the person who has to clean up all of that. -bowerbird ************** We found the real ‘Hotel California’ and the ‘Seinfeld’ diner. What will you find? Explore WhereItsAt.com. (http://www.whereitsat.com/?ncid=emlwenew00000004)

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