- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [gutvol-d] what was all that noise about?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 Mar '12

09 Mar '12

john said: > The real point of BB's question, I think, was that > no understanding or consensus has emerged > about PG's policies, preferences and requirements. well, no, john, that wasn't really my point. i would just like this listserve to be an interesting place. thus, in terms of my own set of "priorities" for this list, i'd like to dialog, and laugh, and learn, and be inspired. i usually get that much from my weekly poetry open mike -- which is composed primarily by twenty-somethings -- so i don't think it's too much to ask from the people here. yet i am routinely disappointed by remarkably dim dialog, most of which is tired old rhetoric that's been defeated by better argumentation time and time again, largely because it was badly-thought-out in the first place, and not updated. nobody can stay on-topic, or seemingly even think straight. frankly, this place is populated by a bunch of scatterbrains! who -- ironically -- all seem to think they are very smart... michael hart -- bless him on his birthday -- deserved better. *** as for the "policies, preferences, and requirements" of p.g., i think the record on that has been pretty firmly established. it's a jumbled mess. and it's never gonna get any better. because the people in charge largely think it's just dandy. you heard al give his advice -- just keep churning 'em out! the status quo is fine! continue being a cog in the machine! oh sure, there are a few underpinnings of dissatisfaction... as greg noted, people complain about the derivative formats. but nobody in charge has the faintest clue about what to do. you saw how david widger formally included his protest note in the "new improved" versions he is creating, remarking that he doesn't really think they're so "improved" at all, thank you, as he points people to earlier versions now in the "old" folder. and in addition to not having a clue, greg is mightily confused. how about that big "p.g. could post your derivatives!" fiasco? what an embarrassment. not to mention the simple fact that mobileread has had such a library already for a very long time. and people at d.p. think a "committee" can solve their problems. finally, meanwhile, everything has to go through marcello, and he's bound and determined to cut the baby in half if he has to, so he's willing to stonewall until all of you do whatever he says. and nobody is willing to follow a good idea anyway, even if they _could_ recognize one, and they've all shown that they cannot... so, seriously, john, if you're sitting around waiting for guidance, you're wasting your time. you're not gonna get any of that here. so all i can say is, i'm glad i have that weekly poetry open mike... -bowerbird p.s. prove me wrong, folks. have one intelligent dialog. one! you can't do it... you simply cannot do it... you are incapable...

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Re: [gutvol-d] what was all that noise about?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 08 Mar '12

08 Mar '12

1. ignore the lessons of history. 2. be doomed to repeat it. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Thanks and a request for code
by Lee Passey 08 Mar '12

08 Mar '12

On Mon, March 5, 2012 7:56 am, Robert Gibbins wrote: > Might I ask you to send me the code please? See: lee.readingroo.ms/html2txt.zip >From the date/time stamp I see that this file is > 10.5 years old. No doubt much of it will be a little out of date. See also: http://epubeditor.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/epubeditor/xhtmldocument/com/p… for an example of how to emit a document by processing a node recursively.

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what was all that noise about?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 07 Mar '12

07 Mar '12

we just had the two _heaviest_ months _ever_ in the amount of text posted to this listserve. yet i can't recall that i learned a single thing. of course, i do have a lot of people kill-filed. (and every one of them _earned_ that honor!) i might've missed something for that reason? so if _you_ learned anything, please reiterate. you can summarize, or just point me to posts. otherwise, i'll have to assume that there was absolutely no signal inside of all that noise... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Thanks and a request for code
by Lee Passey 07 Mar '12

07 Mar '12

On Mon, March 5, 2012 7:56 am, Robert Gibbins wrote: > Might I ask you to send me the code please? It's hidden away on another machine; I'll try to dig it out in the next day or two...but you may not want it, as explained below. > PS The rough idea I had was to write a Java version as you suggest in your > append, though I had thought of using JDOM rather than DOM. I haven't spent > any time thinking about JDOM vs DOM yet, but if you have I'd be interested > in your view. IIRC, JDOM is an open-source DOM implementation. From what I've heard, it is very well regarded -- but it is not standard. I have chosen to use org.w3c.dom because 1. it is the standard and 2. it is included in the standard Sun/Oracle distribution, so I can be assured that it will be available without having to reference an external jar. I'm not sure that my code will be of much value at this point; it relies on Tidy to build a non-standard DOM. Tidy is getting a bit long in the tooth, and there are better ways to build a DOM these days (for C/C++ I tend to use Expat + DOMCAPI). The processing logic is extremely simple. You do an inorder traversal of the DOM tree, and for each node you do pre-child processing, then process each child, then do post-child processing. For example, suppose you hit a node, and your rule is that a new paragraph starts on a new line. Before processing the 's you want to emit a new line character (two if you're not already at the start of a line). Then you process all the children of the , applying whatever rules are appropriate. Lastly, before processing any nodes following the you emit another newline. Now suppose you want to indicate /italics/ with _underscores_. When you encounter an element you emit a '_' character, process the children nodes, then emit another '_'. A text node has no children, so you just emit the contents of the text node. If I understood the rules of ReStructured Text, or s.m.l., I'm sure I could use this general algorithm to generate either of them from HTML. You could probably follow this same general approach using stream-oriented processing, I just found it easier and quicker to use a DOM.

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experimentation at distributed proofreaders
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Mar '12

05 Mar '12

there's a bunch of experimentation being done over at d.p. these days, both by some underlings and also by newbies... the underlings know what they're getting into, or _should_, so there's no need to warn them about the potential futility. (one of the promising ones in this class is named "foofaid".) but newbies should definitely be told they need to get a solid assurance the work will be used before they commit too much. for instance, here's an interface designed by newbie jon hurst: > http://ec2-46-137-53-169.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com/proof/proofreading… it's still simple, but it looks as good as many of the interfaces of this type that we've seen in the past. so it's time (past time) for d.p. to start being _honest_ with programming volunteers... and if the "powers that be" don't have the integrity to be honest, the people who've been burned in the past -- i'm looking at you, d.b. kretz -- are compelled to step up and issue a fair warning... -bowerbird

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print-on-demand as a gift to say "thank you"
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Mar '12

05 Mar '12

james said: > In addition to telling you > everything you ever wanted to know about e-books well, james, that's probably not true... :+) > including how to create them and that's probably not true either... ;+) > this is a really attractive book with many illustrations but that part is true, at least about the illustrations... and you've priced the book at a mere $7.50, so you can't be making much at that price -- if anything! -- so i sprang for the $11.09 (that's 2-week shipping), so i could have my own hard-copy. i like to compare a physical book with its digitized copies, so i can see what (if anything) was lost in the digitization process and what (if anything) was gained. it is illuminating... given this low cost, even for a book filled with pictures, i'd think the time might have arrived where p.g. could print-on-demand a book from each e-text and send it to the producer, as a hard-copy gift to say "thank you!" this would be especially poetic for those producers who purchased the book so they could scan it destructively... -bowerbird

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rst2all?
by James Simmons 05 Mar '12

05 Mar '12

I'm thinking about using RST for my next PG submission. The thing is, I want to process the RST file for myself before submitting it, to be certain that I did everything OK. I see the following article: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:RST_tools_for_the_WWers which seems to point me in the right direction except it does not tell me where to get the rst2all utility. Googling rst2all gives me nothing. So how do I get this utility? James Simmons

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Remastered PG epubs - crediting/branding
by Robert Gibbins 04 Mar '12

04 Mar '12

Over the last year or two, I have remastered (as I call it) about 50 PG books in ePub format. In most cases I haven't changed the actual text of the books , other than to correct the odd transcription error if I can find a paper or scanned edition of the book to refer to. So as far as I am concerned these are really PG books in a slightly different format from the ones in the PG repository. About a year ago I added a few of these books to the MobileRead website, and am thinking of gradually adding the others, once I have proof-read them for quality. However I observe that many of the books on the Mobile Read website, although clearly derived originally from Gutenberg sources, do not have any Gutenberg branding, credits, copyright, license, etc. I should like at minimum to preserve the audit trail/ provenance of where the books came from (and also credit the people who did at least much of the work). My preference would be to keep all the Gutenberg branding, merely adding an extra provenance line crediting myself with remastering the epub (and in a few cases detailing other changes I have made) However strictly speaking these are no longer quite the PG originals, so my question is can I do this, or does the PG license prohibit it? Putting the question a different way, how much of the Gutenberg wrappings do I have to delete to be 'legal'? Note: All of these books are stated in their front matter to be out of copyright in the USA, and I believe this is also the case in the UK, where I live, and in Canada where MobileRead is located. There is also no question of wanting to charge for the books. Bob Gibbins

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For those seeking markup challenges...
by Greg Newby 04 Mar '12

04 Mar '12

The Integration of Functions of a Single Variable by G. H. Hardy http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/38993 Lotta math. Beautifully done. Dunno if there's an effective path to EPUB or even HTML. -- Greg

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