- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

re: [gutvol-d] Wired on HOPE: Hart/Newby presentation
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Aug '06

06 Aug '06

well, first of all, congratulations, greg, on co-organizing what sounds like a neat conference, on interesting topics, with an admirable attendance of 2,000! > email webmaster(a)promo.net to make your views heard. > He has not listened so far... the person in charge > there is Pietro diMicelli, who was our Webmaster > from about 1995 - 2002. if he hasn't "listened so far", what makes you think more e-mails will convince him to such this action? i'm speculating the parting had some acrimony in it, and his unwillingness to make you happy is a result. why not just make sure that reporters like this one give the link that you want them to in the first place? -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] Categorizing PG content
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 06 Aug '06

06 Aug '06

karen said: > Suggestion: have a competition to design > an open-source cataloging system for e-books, > where there are no physical constraints on "shelving." > Publicize it in library schools. Major ego-boo for the > teacher/graduate student whose scheme is accepted, > free design for PG. um, i don't know that i'm seeing much quality thinking coming out of the library schools, i am chagrined to say. besides, it's not so much the "design" that is so difficult, but rather the _implementation_, and the grunt work of assigning e-texts within the system. so it'd be far better to have the competition at the _programming_ level... and again, much of the design work has already been done, when this thread had an earlier incantation on this listserve. if no one is willing to check the archives, what's the point?... finally, i'm not sure that y'all understand the major need here. and i'm quite certain that library-school students will miss it. answer this question: why should we categorize the e-texts? i'm serious. formulate an answer. i'll wait... got one? ok, great... if your response runs along the lines of "so end-users can find the book they want, and download it", you're on the wrong path. that's the function catalogs used to serve, in the dead-tree world. after all, since a person had made a trip to a library to get a book, and would have to be making another trip to bring it back, it made a lot of sense for that person to find a book that they would enjoy. in that scenario, the catalog helped avoid the cost of a wrong choice. the physical nature of bound pages creates a situation of obligation. but in our new era of high-bandwidth and terrabyte hard-drives, it's silly for a person to spend even mere seconds trying to decide _whether_or_not_ to download a book. it's _far_ more convenient to download vast portions of the library, since they can have their computer do it automatically while they are partying, or sleeping... even the dial-up people can request the d.v.d., for free, and have the entire p.g. library sitting on their hard-disk in a week or so... not only is it not wise to make people spend any time "choosing", it's at odds with the important concept of _unlimited_distribution_. and that's why the library-school people don't understand this. because unlike them, we _want_ people to take a whole bunch! it's not just that there's "no shortage of shelf-space" with e-books, it's that we have an endless source of production. so take 'em all! we are all still trapped, to a large degree, by our history of scarcity, so it's difficult for us to realize how deeply it pervades our thinking. (especially since we all live in the real world too, where scarcity still is a hard fact of life.) but this is one place where we can shed that... these implications of unlimited-production-and-distribution turn our thinking on its head. instead of helping users choose what to _pick_ in the library, we have to help 'em choose what to _discard_. in many ways, this is a much easier task. human genome project files? ya, you probably won't want 'em. e-texts in a language that you cannot read? you can skip those. text-to-speech files? videos? magazines? maybe yes, maybe no. they start with 20,000 "possibles", weeding 'em out to their taste, thanks to our handy-dandy program, which then auto-downloads the ones that are left, in the background, with zero input needed. at that point, the cost of selecting a book is double-clicking it and starting to read it. and if it doesn't appeal to you, just stop reading and go on to the next one. you don't have much need for a catalog. oh sure, it might still be kind of handy to have be guided to e-texts, so some means of categorizing an e-text as being "similar to" others would be nice. but that's how we need to _approach_ this project, from the get-go, and not from our implicit notions about "a catalog", because those are outdated and irrelevant to the task now at hand. you're barking up the wrong tree if you don't rearrange that thinking. but anyway, as i said, a system of categorization would be handy, and i'll have some work to show in that regard in a separate post. i believe it's important to start out with the philosophical point... -bowerbird

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Wired on HOPE: Hart/Newby presentation
by Greg Newby 06 Aug '06

06 Aug '06

Michael and I presented at the HOPE conference a couple of weeks ago. (Michael was the keynote speaker, I was the lackey.) There's a nice article about the conference, including an actual picture of Michael and I together (one of very few that exists!). http://wired.com/news/technology/0,71450-0.html -- Greg

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The Terrible Twins, by Edgar Jepson - missing pages
by Al Haines (shaw) 06 Aug '06

06 Aug '06

My copy of the above book was published and copyrighted by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1913. I discovered while scanning it that it was missing two leaves - the ones for pages 3 and 4, and pages 53 and 54. Can someone who may have this book provide me with images of the missing pages? Thanks, Al

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re: [gutvol-d] Different Typefaces
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Aug '06

05 Aug '06

andrew said: > Yes, Project Gutenberg volunteers have dealt with a wide > variety of material outside of just plain prose, including it would be nice if that experience was captured and communicated in a "best practices" type of document covering various situations... the massive inconsistencies in the e-texts came about largely because no one had guidance like that, and just had to go off on their own... i could be wrong about this -- i'd love to be wrong about this -- but i don't remember much in the f.a.q. that covered questions like this... -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] Different Typefaces
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 04 Aug '06

04 Aug '06

onorio said: > The editors have, at certain points, put the > actual text of the notes in a different typeface. > Any thoughts on how one can > indicate this in a plain ASCII format? if you think of the different typeface as a "bracketing" mechanism, solutions will present themselves, such as surrounding notes in _actual_ brackets (straight or curly). you can also prepend the notes with a label, like the word "note: " (notice the semi-colon). some ascii-based viewer-apps -- like mine -- will then treat that paragraph in a special way (e.g., by colorizing it), since that's how _plays_ get formatted correctly. if the notes are short enough, you can even mark them as italic, or bold. or indentation, as andrew suggested, works. similarly, you can wrap those paragraphs to a much shorter line-length. basically, anything that makes the notes _distinctive_ will work... -bowerbird

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Different Typefaces
by Onorio Catenacci 04 Aug '06

04 Aug '06

Hi all, The book I'm working on scanning in is a posthumous collection of the works of a scientist. The editors have, at certain points, put the actual text of the notes in a different typeface. Any thoughts on how one can indicate this in a plain ASCII format? -- Onorio Catenacci We're all just doves, Trying to find our way home.

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re: [gutvol-d] foreign dishes
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

don said: > Why did you send this to me? i sent it to the gutvol-d listserve, which you must be subscribed to. are you aware you, too, sent your question to the hundreds of people on that listserve? -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] foreign dishes
by kostuch＠earthlink.net 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

Why did you send this to me? Peace, Don -----Original Message----- >From: Bowerbird(a)aol.com >Sent: Aug 1, 2006 3:19 PM >To: gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org, Bowerbird(a)aol.com >Subject: [gutvol-d] foreign dishes > >e-text #10011 is a delightful little recipe-book, >dating from 1908, with "365 foreign dishes" in it, >one "for every day in the year". in keeping with this, >entries are ordered from january 1 to december 31. > >the e-text was very well-done (a little cooking pun). > >close analysis in the process of z.m.l. transformation >revealed just one tiny glitch -- an extra empty-line -- >which was located rather easily, as can be seen here: >> http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011glitch.jpg > >you can compare the original p.g. file with the z.m.l. version, >side-by-side, by opening up these url's in separate windows: >> http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011.txt >> http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011.zml > >to sum up, the changes involved reworking all the headers a little bit, >and introducing a "contents" menu for the dishes under each month... > >then i generated a .pdf of it: >> http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011.pdf > >as you will notice, this .pdf presents each of the dishes on its own page. >this gives a very clean look, and will eventually provide great navigation. >(my work-flow does not yet provide auto-hotlinking in the .pdf version.) > >indeed, in cases like this, the .pdf makes a _better_ e-book than .html, >and you can judge it for yourself by viewing the p.g. html-book, here: >> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10011/10011-h/10011-h.htm > >of course, you'd want to generate another .pdf if you were printing it, >so as to use fewer pages. but this format is great for on-screen use; >the ability to page from one recipe to the next, with each presented in >a consistent position, is far less trying than scrolling through them... > >this is a common scenario, actually, with another example of it being >the reading of a listserve digest. when each message comes up at the >top of the screen, automatically, and you can skip it with a keypress to >go to the next, it's much easier to navigate than when you must scroll >and scan the text to try and locate the beginning of the next message. > >i will share frequent observations as i go about the task of converting >the p.g. library over to .zml, so i thought i'd start with this simple one. >comments of any type are welcomed, from _just_about_ anyone... ;+) > >-bowerbird > >p.s. if you try the norwegian fish pudding (march 24), let us know!

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foreign dishes
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Aug '06

01 Aug '06

e-text #10011 is a delightful little recipe-book, dating from 1908, with "365 foreign dishes" in it, one "for every day in the year". in keeping with this, entries are ordered from january 1 to december 31. the e-text was very well-done (a little cooking pun). close analysis in the process of z.m.l. transformation revealed just one tiny glitch -- an extra empty-line -- which was located rather easily, as can be seen here: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011glitch.jpg you can compare the original p.g. file with the z.m.l. version, side-by-side, by opening up these url's in separate windows: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011.txt > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011.zml to sum up, the changes involved reworking all the headers a little bit, and introducing a "contents" menu for the dishes under each month... then i generated a .pdf of it: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011.pdf as you will notice, this .pdf presents each of the dishes on its own page. this gives a very clean look, and will eventually provide great navigation. (my work-flow does not yet provide auto-hotlinking in the .pdf version.) indeed, in cases like this, the .pdf makes a _better_ e-book than .html, and you can judge it for yourself by viewing the p.g. html-book, here: > http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10011/10011-h/10011-h.htm of course, you'd want to generate another .pdf if you were printing it, so as to use fewer pages. but this format is great for on-screen use; the ability to page from one recipe to the next, with each presented in a consistent position, is far less trying than scrolling through them... this is a common scenario, actually, with another example of it being the reading of a listserve digest. when each message comes up at the top of the screen, automatically, and you can skip it with a keypress to go to the next, it's much easier to navigate than when you must scroll and scan the text to try and locate the beginning of the next message. i will share frequent observations as i go about the task of converting the p.g. library over to .zml, so i thought i'd start with this simple one. comments of any type are welcomed, from _just_about_ anyone... ;+) -bowerbird p.s. if you try the norwegian fish pudding (march 24), let us know!

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