- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

go to hellman
by bowerbird 29 May '20

29 May '20

it sure is entertaining to me that,here in the hellish spring of 2020,the project gutenberg listserve isdiscussing how to make a .pdf tosend to a kindle from a p.g. text. because i was writing softwarefor a number of years to do that,and promulgating it right here,on this very p.g. listserve, andnobody seemed to be interested,except to shoot me out of the sky. maybe you remember those days.starting about 2000, went on a while. so yes, i subsequently went away. didn't seem to be any reason to stay. google had stolen the e-book thunder. and michael hart died. plus i was saddened that everyonerunning the show here seemed towant to run his baby into the ground.(congratulations!, y'all succeeded!the profile of project gutenberghasn't been lower since 1989!) and i got tired of fighting the idiots.(as if that battle has ever stopped;the chief idiot is in the white house.) *** so, let me now speak with the pair ofnon-idiots in this conversation here-- james simmons and eric hellman. james, you'd just started to appeararound the time i was leaving, buti remember you from a few threads.congratulations for sticking with it.i could explain the reasons why p.g.went with r.s.t., but they don't matter.the light-markup wars are over now,with markdown the declared winner.but books themselves are a lost cause,so the formats mean next to nothing. eric, remember your column from 2009?the one you wrote about me, where youcalled me "impolite" and a "troll"? yeah.those were the good old days, you bet. here's the link for y'all, have fun with it: https://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2009/09/public-identity-and-bowerbird-pr… did you ever figure out my "real name"?or did you finally realize i was correct,and nobody would even care about it?reality is a really slippery beast, ain't it?took some russian bots to teach all of us. anyway, i just visited that column again.first with my iphone, then with my macusing safari (private mode, and regular),and then with chrome, and then firefox.so if you wanna do more sleuthing, go! with the advanced tracking available now,you should be able to write my biography. or, you know, you could just call me up-- same number i have had since 2007,that's 310-980-9202 -- but hey, sendan e-mail heads-up with your number,because i'm not answering all calls now;spammers make that painful any more. and especially if you're in santa monica;as i told you the last time you were here,i'll buy the beer and we can laugh at shit. that offer goes out to anyone. except the idiots. you know who you are. love and kisses, kids. oh, and stay safe, there's a really bad buggoing around these days, have you heard? -bowerbird

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Using ebookmaker to create PDFs for print on demand publishing
by nicestep＠gmail.com 24 May '20

24 May '20

My first impression of the PDF's created by ebookmaker was that with a little work they might be suitable for print on demand publishing like I have done several times with Create Space. I have spent a few hours installing ebookmaker on my own computer and experimenting with Tex and the attached files represent the kind of thing that ebookmaker might be modified to produce. They are not perfect, but I think they are good enough to criticize. Some observations: 1. The Tex file was created by running my original RST file against both ebookmaker and rst2xetex.py. The two files that were produced were combined to produce the Tex file attached. Rst2xetex.py does not understand the custom RST elements PG uses so I had to make a version of the RST file without them to get rst2xetex to run properly. 2. The output of rst2xetex was actually closer to what I wanted than what ebookmaker produced. Ebookmaker does a table of contents that is just links with no page numbers, and the headings are not regular headings and subheadings that Tex uses. Rst2xetex gave me regular headings and subheadings that could create the TOC I wanted. I had to run xelatex against the Tex file twice to create the PDF with a TOC. 3. I think that a Tex file is a more useful output for ebookmaker than a finished PDF. Create Space wants you to have ISBN and ISBN-13 numbers on the Verso, so having a Tex file to edit is easier than trying to edit a PDF. Also, PG has a lot of short stories that could be combined to create anthologies and that would be easier with Tex files. 4. Looking at the code for ebookmaker it looks like some of it might have been adapted from code written for docutils. Some of the code is clear enough, and some is not. James Simmons

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Question on PDF conversion in PG epub maker
by nicestep＠gmail.com 24 May '20

24 May '20

I have made some printed books based on Project Gutenberg texts. One example: https://www.amazon.com/Mahabharata-Book-I-Beginning/dp/1492299227/ What I ended up doing was importing the HTML version into Libre Office, saving it in the native format, adding styles, moving footnotes from the back of the texts to the bottoms of pages, etc. It was a lot of tedious work but the results were excellent. I would like to make books like this from my own PG donations, which were done as RST files. I noticed that the PDF generated from my RST was surprisingly good. For one thing, the footnote were already at the bottoms of pages. There were things I didn't like about the PDF, but with a little work whatever generated it might make something suitable for publishing through Create Space, These are the kinds of changes I would make: 1. The page size should be 6" by 9", a standard trade paperback size. 2. The fonts should be larger, maybe 12 pt. I'd like to choose the fonts used, and add custom fonts for title pages, etc. 3. Margins should be suitable for Create Space (or whatever Amazon is calling it now). I program computers for a living, so I could make these changes for myself with a few hints on what software is used to convert the RST to PDF format. I have found a utility that does that: https://rst2pdf.org However, this does not give the result I want. It puts the footnotes at the end of the book, and there are other issues with it. The manual explains how to deal with some of them, but not the footnotes. So I am looking for some explanation of how the PG epub maker does this. Thanks. James Simmons

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Question about book pages
by Tim Hare 30 Apr '20

30 Apr '20

On a book information page, there are options for DropBox, Google Drive, and OneDrive - but no option to e-mail it? If I could choose to e-mail it (even if it only allowed the email I signed in with), I could forward (or send) it to the e-mail address of my Kindle. Tim Hare Tallahassee, FL

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Has there been a recent change to the https://upload.pglaf.org/ app?
by Rick Tonsing 22 Feb '20

22 Feb '20

The time between the upload finishing at https://upload.pglaf.org/ with a confirmation message that the upload was successful and the email confirmation has increased significantly in the past few weeks. The one I just submitted took 8 minutes between the confirmation screen and the same message arriving in my inbox. I had one earlier today which took about 15 minutes. The time used to be typically about 1 minute with a very few as long as two minutes. I would assume that sending the email would have coincided (give or take a delay of a second or two) with the confirmation screen on pglaf since the confirmation states that the file was received and processing was complete. Cheers, Rick

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Public beta of new website at https://dev.gutenberg.org
by Rick Tonsing 22 Jan '20

22 Jan '20

I tried several items in the Quick Search. I was occasionally surprised by the search results as the books initially appeared to be unrelated but the search terms were always listed somewhere in the "Bibliographic Record". The advanced search is slightly puzzling. Subject: As expected, this appears to search the subject fields of the Bibliographic Record. For example, "Standard Oil" appeared in the subject lines of all four books. One of the books (17090) includes the contents in the Title field (see Screenshot_2020-01-17 Project Gutenberg.png). [After mentioning this I've noticed that the same issue exists with many of the books.] Title: Oddly book 17090 was included in the title results despite neither word actually appears in the title. Probably due to the title + contents conflation previously mentioned. And the third book (54399) was unexpected but the words did appear in the title of the book, just not in that order. So it immediately occurred to me to search for "Standard Oil" with the quotes. "No record found. Please retry." I expected to see 60692 in the results. But the Help screen does say avoid punctuation characters so it probably works as designed. I noticed that the tab results always says "Search on Titles" (see Capture.png) even though the selected search did not include a search item in the Title field. It could be difficult to decide which should appear so I suggest use the first field from the top. For example, if an Author search term is included then always have the title say "Search on Authors". Cheers, Rick

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Public beta of new website at https://dev.gutenberg.org
by Rick Tonsing 17 Jan '20

17 Jan '20

Greg, Odd. I'm not seeing the Google ads today. Return and [Google Search] give the same results. No results for sites other than gutenberg.org. Perhaps the Yahoo fix altered something. If someone else can replicate my original findings then perhaps add the following to the Help: Google may include ads for other sites if one presses the return key. And no ads if one clicks the [Google Search] button. I should have mentioned that [DuckDuckGo Search] and Return results are also restricted to the gutenberg.org as expected. The Yahoo search gives similar results with the Return or [Yahoo! Search]. The left side search results are restricted to gutenberg.org. (I saw a single ad at the bottom on the first test but it was not repeatable). The right side results occasionally include a Wikipedia article related to the search but I doubt this is within your control. If the quote is from a single book then all three search engines return the work most related to the search at the top. If the search is, for example, a quote from Shakespeare then there is a medley of books and there are differences in the order displayed. I do not use an adblocker but I do use the EFF's apps "Privacy Badger" and "HTTPS Everywhere" on Firefox. Cheers, Rick On Fri, Jan 17, 2020 at 12:00 PM <gutvol-d-request(a)lists.pglaf.org> wrote: > Send gutvol-d mailing list submissions to > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > gutvol-d-request(a)lists.pglaf.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > gutvol-d-owner(a)lists.pglaf.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of gutvol-d digest..." > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Public beta of new website at https://dev.gutenberg.org > (Greg Newby) > > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> > To: Project Gutenberg Volunteer Discussion <gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org> > Cc: > Bcc: > Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2020 20:00:18 -0800 > Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] Public beta of new website at > https://dev.gutenberg.org > Yahoo is fixed - sorry for the delay. > > I'm not seeing what you are seeing with Google, probably due to my ad > blocker. If you are pretty sure about this behavior (could others > confirm?), what text might I add to the "Help" pop-up? > > Thanks! > - Greg > > On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 01:08:47PM -0800, Rick Tonsing wrote: > > Tried the Full Text Search: > > > > Yahoo is a 404 error that wants fixing. > > > > Google includes ads if one presses the return key. No ads if one clicks > > the [Google Search] button. Probably not in your control but a short > > mention next to Google might be in order. > > > > DuckDuckGo gives the same results with the return key and with the > > [DuckDuckGoSearch] button. > > > > Other than the ads bit, both Google & DuckDuckGogave good text search > > results. > > > > Cheers, > > > > Rick > > > _______________________________________________ > > gutvol-d mailing list > > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > > https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d > > Unsubscribe: https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/options/gutvol-d > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > https://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d >

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Public beta of new website at https://dev.gutenberg.org
by Rick Tonsing 16 Jan '20

16 Jan '20

Tried the Full Text Search: Yahoo is a 404 error that wants fixing. Google includes ads if one presses the return key. No ads if one clicks the [Google Search] button. Probably not in your control but a short mention next to Google might be in order. DuckDuckGo gives the same results with the return key and with the [DuckDuckGoSearch] button. Other than the ads bit, both Google & DuckDuckGogave good text search results. Cheers, Rick

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set digest off
by Rick Tonsing 14 Jan '20

14 Jan '20

set digest off

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Public beta of new website at https://dev.gutenberg.org
by Rick Tonsing 14 Jan '20

14 Jan '20

It would be helpful if the advanced search results were sorted. I did an advanced search for Stevenson, Robert Louis as the author. The list of 118 books looks semi-random. Cheers, Rick

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