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[OPENZIM][KIWIX] New offline version of the Gutenberg project
by Emmanuel Engelhart 28 Oct '18

28 Oct '18

Hi We finally have generated new offline versions of the famous Gutenberg project library which has almost 60.000 free ebooks. See https://www.gutenberg.org/. This version provides of course more books than ever before, but also fixes many bugs which were impacting the scrapper or the user interface. We have extended the number of UI supported languages and fulltext search is now provided natively with Kiwix - no need to compute an external fulltext index. The offline versions are available like usual in the ZIM format. More details about the ZIM format and the openZIM project at http://www.openzim.org/ You can easily download one ZIM file with all the Gutenberg project books in all languages: * via HTTP: https://download.kiwix.org/zim/gutenberg_mul_all.zim * via BitTorrent: https://download.kiwix.org/zim/gutenberg_mul_all.zim.torrent * Language specific files at https://download.kiwix.org/zim/ * rsync or FTP are also supported. These ZIM files are readable wherever you want and on almost all kinds of devices thanks the multiple Kiwix ports, pick yours at http://www.kiwix.org/ or on your preferred app store. If you are curious and want just to have a look, please visit your library at https://library.kiwix.org/gutenberg_mul_all_2018-10/. For tech people, all the scrapper is open source and maintained. Join us: * https://github.com/openzim/gutenberg * https://pypi.org/project/gutenberg2zim/ * https://hub.docker.com/r/openzim/gutenberg/ We hope you will enjoy it! Regards Emmanuel -- Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more * Web: http://www.kiwix.org * Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline * more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication

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The Panchatantra
by Robin Whittleton 22 May '18

22 May '18

The Panchatantra is (to quote Wikipedia) "an ancient Indian work of political philosophy, in the form of a collection of interrelated animal fables”. There’s nothing on Gutenberg but I did find this good quality transcription on Wikisource: https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Panchatantra_(Purnabhadra%27s_Recensio… (see also archive.org scans: https://archive.org/details/Panchatantra_Arthur_W_Ryder ). While this translation was published in the US in 1925 the wikisource link claims no copyright was renewed on the text. Sure enough, a quick search on the Stanford copyright renewal database doesn’t throw anything up. Is this something Gutenberg would consider adding? If I wanted to verify lapse of copyright is there a more formal process I could undertake? Thanks! -Robin

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Another set of pages that might need tweaking
by Tim Hare 20 May '18

20 May '18

I was looking at search results tonight - and noticed that the "navigation bar" (for lack of an accurate term) jumps around. By "navigation bar" I mean the thing that looks like "Displaying results 551-575 | First <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?sort_order=release_date> | Previous <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?sort_order=release_date&start_inde x=526> | Next <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?sort_order=release_date&start_inde x=576> " When you move from pate to page it jumps up or down depending upon how much content, especially image content, there is on a page. I think it would be better for this particular part of navigation to be placed somewhere above the books, in the same place, to make it easier for people to move forward and backward through the pages. This might also help with mobile or tablet devices but I haven't tried that out (yet). In any event it ought to be a very small tweak Tim Hare Interest Bystander, Non-Inc.

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Ideas about book landing page & metadata presentation
by Tim Hare 01 May '18

01 May '18

Hello, I just joined this list but I'm interested in this current thread. What is the goal of moving to these static HTML pages / directories? Is it to eliminate the processing time necessary to generate these files with the current back-end processing? Seems you will be (possibly) using more disk space - a trade-off which may be worth it, I'm not arguing against it - to save CPU time? I need to understand more - What is currently stored for each book? Is it stored in all of the formats at http://aleph.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/56843/ or are those created at the time someone requests them? In https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56843/ what's the difference between the -0 zip and the -h zip? Tim Hare Tallahassee, FL Interested Bystander, Non-Inc.

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Ideas about book landing page & metadata presentation
by Greg Newby 03 Apr '18

03 Apr '18

Hello, gutvol-d. This list has been very quiet, and if you discover you no longer want to receive messages you can visit https://lists.pglaf.org to unsubscribe (unsub instructions are also part of the email header). I am wondering whether you have ideas about how to present a more effective landing page for our eBooks. The situation is that I am trying to make the collection more self-contained, and remove some of the back-end processing we use to present information about the books. Take a look at any current eBook landing page, such as https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56843 This is plain HTML (with Javascript and CSS), but it does not come from a static file. Basically, what I'd like to do is recreate a similar page, but as a static file, without relying on a back-end database, and without using Javascript. I.e., plain HTML with CSS. The actual files are in a location like this: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/56843/ My intention is to make a directory (folder) that has those files, plus the generated files (i.e., you can see them here: http://aleph.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/56843/) plus an index.htm or similar that presents the landing page. Oh, and we'll give all the files nice human-friendly usernames. There is already some code for that in epubmaker. MY INQUIRY is for ideas about the index.htm or similar that would be similar to the current landing page, but be (a) static, and (b) use no Javascript or other active content, and (c) allow variations on CSS, to have different "skins" for different viewers. General ideas: - HTML5 - works well with mobile and desktop - works well with text browsers and screen readers - might need to have two pages: one for bibrec info ("about.htm" perhaps?) and the other to access - get CSS style information from e.g., /gutensite/ , so that it is easy for people to apply their own styles. For example, mirrors might not want the dropbox/cloud links) I'm very interested in any mockups that you can think of. The idea will be to generate these static pages when new eBooks are added/updated. That way, when someone visits a page like https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/56843 , they will be seeing the static content under ebooks/56843. Currently, there is no such static content: it is all generated by a set of back-end Web-database applications. Thanks, Greg

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[KIWIX][GUTENBERG] 50.000 public domain books available to everybody, everywhere, offline
by Emmanuel Engelhart 17 May '17

17 May '17

Hi, The Kiwix team is happy to release the whole Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/) library in a ZIM format: http://download.kiwix.org/zim/gutenberg/gutenberg_mul_all_2014-11.zim.torre…. We also provide a few language specific versions here http://download.kiwix.org/zim/gutenberg. This file is dedicated to an offline usage (no connection to Internet) and it readable with Kiwix (http://www.kiwix.org) This allows anybody with a computer or a smartphone to own his own copy of this 50.000 books big library. You can also make it available for read to other people on your network, they only need a web browser. In this ZIM file, you will find all the books available in HTML (directly readable), but also in EPUB (and time to time in PDF). We have created a custom user interface which is really simple to use: in a few clicks you can find your book, read it or download it. What is also unique is that Kiwix proposes a fulltext search engine over all books content. You can see by yourself using this demonstration web site: http://library.kiwix.org/gutenberg_mul_all_2014-11/ Most of the work was done during a week long hackathon in Lyon, France by four Kiwix volunteer developers. This hackathon was funded by the Fondation Orange with the administrative help of Framasoft and Wikimedia CH. The Fondation Orange is the first beneficiary of this work and use it already for its own deployments in Africa. The solution to build this ZIM file is 100% free software and is available here https://github.com/kiwix/gutenberg. This solution allows to release easily new up2date versions. This is not a "one shot" project and we will release periodically new version of this offline version of the Project Gutenberg. We also plan to use this code base to aggregate other online PD/free books libraries. Wikisource is one of the first we would love to add, this might be done pretty easily as soon as an OPDS feed is available. We hope to see this work deployed by other third part organisation which are on place where Internet is not available, expensive or censored. We also need more developer (mostly Python) workforce for the next steps, a hackathon with this purpose will hopefully be organised in 2015 (sponsor needed). Last but not least: users, please report any problem here: https://github.com/kiwix/gutenberg/issues Regards Emmanuel -- Kiwix - Wikipedia Offline & more * Web: http://www.kiwix.org * Twitter: https://twitter.com/KiwixOffline * more: http://www.kiwix.org/wiki/Communication

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some thoughts on michael hart's birthday
by bowerbird 08 Mar '17

08 Mar '17

michael s. hart created project gutenberg in 1971, "to break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy". the idea was simple, yet brilliant: to put literature (books and other textual elements) in digital form, so that people could access them with computers. thus was born the first digital library. in 1971. hart typed in a few dozen high-profile documents, like the declaration of independence (e-text #1), the bill of rights (#2), the gettysburg address (#4), the constitution (#5), the king james bible (#10), and alice in wonderland (#11). but the project laid largely fallow for a few decades. hart just couldn't get anyone to see his broad vision. then, in the earlier 1990s, as personal computers had become commonplace and the first networks were beginning to emerge, the world got the idea. hart was ready. so, by 1993, he was working at a feverish pace, which wired magazine captured quite accurately -- if a bit snarkily -- in an article that mentioned rather prominently that hart sprinkled sugar on his pizza to fuel his late-night typing sessions. in 1993, hart's library comprised 100 e-texts. by 1997, it was already up to 1,000 e-texts; and just a year later, it had grown to 1,600. it was that year when wired picked hart as one of its "wired 25", who "have one thing in common: devotion to a singular ambition. they are attempting the impossible, and whether they succeed or fail, they will have a lasting impact on your life (and your kids)." > https://www.wired.com/1998/11/wired25/ in that 1998 article, wired observed that hart was predicting that, "20 or 30 years from now, there's going to be some gizmo that kids carry around in their back pocket that has everything in it -- including our books, if they want them." for once, michael's prediction was nearsighted. it was less than 10 years later that kids started carrying around their kindle and iphone gizmos. hart's goal was always to digitize 10,000 e-texts by the year 2000, and he very nearly made it, reaching his magic mark in december of 2003. a sedate celebration was held in san francisco, and a c.d. containing the e-texts was created. today, project gutenberg has 50,000+ e-texts. it is the world's largest collection of free ebooks. of course, the project gutenberg library itself is mounted on the web, www.gutenberg.org, which has been its true home since the web was created. indeed, project gutenberg was one of the big initial jewels on the internet, thanks to the head-start which hart gave it, and everybody who talked about e-books was quick to praise the gutenberg library. and though many people (including myself) thought the plain-text format was boring, everyone appreciated the simple fact that the e-texts were online and thus could be downloaded by any web-connected person. it was truly a global library, and felt like it. thus, project gutenberg was where many turned to load up their kindles and ipads. as time passed, though, attention shifted from the public-domain project gutenberg to new books, and those still in copyright. and that's understandable, of course; but it means project gutenberg is mentioned rarely in current discussions of e-books. the unfortunate aspect of this inattention is that we have failed to recognize that books benefit greatly by being available. further, that benefit accrues to society! libraries, in particular, have been a huge reason for the progress of the last century. we are richer, thanks to our libraries... libraries are a very good investment! they pay off in benefits far more than they cost us in taxpayer obligations. books are a tremendous investment, and spreading books farther around gives a generous payback to society. but somehow we've forgotten all that, at least when it now comes to e-books. rather than think in terms of libraries -- global libraries! accessible anywhere! -- we think of the e-books on our machines, which we "purchase" from e-book-stores. (it's more like a "lease", but let's focus.) people might have hundreds of books on their ipads or iphones or kindles, which is impressive if you realize you're carrying all those books in your pocket, but it's not the same as a global library, one that consists of 50,000+ e-books. or one that can have 5 million e-books. or 10 million. or 50 million. or all of 'em. just when we obtained the tool that enables us to share books worldwide -- at virtually no cost for distribution -- we seem to have forgotten the benefits that we obtain when we do such sharing. we're staring at the books we bought, which are stagnant in the silo of the machine which we carry in our pocket. and we have forgotten how beautiful the bookshelves are at the library, ones with rows and rows of books, just waiting for us to pull one down, open it up, and drink in its delicious. and we have forgotten that books come alive when we share them, when we point to things in them, and discuss them with each other. books come alive when we can say "go to the library and get this book". books come alive when they're public. and libraries make books public. *** in 1958, ronald mcnair went to the local library for some books. the problem was that ronald mcnair lived in south carolina, and he was a 9-year-old african-american boy. and the library was for "whites only". since it was south carolina, after all. but ronald mcnair walked in anyway, and got the books he wanted to read, and walked to the check-out counter. the woman behind the counter said, "boy, you know you don't belong here." and ronald replied, "well, i would like to check out these books." the woman said, "if you don't leave, i'm going to have to call the police." ronald said "go ahead; i'll wait." police were called, his mom too, but ronald refused to leave until they let him check out the books. yes, he refused to leave the library. until they'd let him check out books. ronald mcnair grew up to become an astronaut. he perished in the challenger disaster. but today, that library is named after him. his legacy is an enduring one. just like the books in a library. for a delightful recounting of the whole tear-jerker story, go here: > http://www.npr.org/2011/01/28/133275198/astronauts-brother-recalls-a-man-wh… *** michael hart passed away in september of 2011. i miss him. i'm writing this because his birthday is today -- the 8th of march -- a day he shares with international women. but i am also writing this because of a blog-article that was posted recently. > https://borisanthony.net/writing/a-momentary-suspension-of-disbelief/ boris anthony is a very smart person. and he's actively involved with e-books. but even smart people, who are actively involved with e-books these days, seem to have forgotten about project gutenberg, the pivotal contributions of michael hart, and the vital role of the library in society. the word "library" comes up three times in the blog-post, but every time it refers to the personal library of an individual. and consider that anthony says this: > we need to begin charting what > by all indications is a vast new world. > By bringing ebooks onto the Open Web, > they fill with the promise of so much > more opportunity and value, for everyone. first, this is not something that "we need to begin charting". michael hart did that long ago. it might well be a "vast new world", but only because we have forgotten the big lessons of project gutenberg in particular and libraries in general. instead, we let greedy corporations usurp books to serve a profit motive. we let them put a toll-booth on books -- a cash-register they could ring up every time someone wanted to read. what this has done is to make books insufficiently accessible so that society can attain the benefits that otherwise would accrue to us from open access. locking up books is counterproductive. everybody wants writers to be paid. the people who collect information and make it accessible to the world need to be supported for doing so. but the toll-booth model doesn't work. it was the wrong choice. letting it continue is a bad mistake. it will cause grievous harm to society. we have to correct this error. we need to create the libraries of the future -- digital libraries. we need to create a world library. we can't afford ignorance any more. we need to spread books freely, by any means necessary. now. -bowerbird ============================= advice on improving this piece is welcomed.

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some gizmo that kids carry around in their back pocket
by bowerbird 24 Feb '17

24 Feb '17

Michael Hart Builds A Digital Athenaeum by Mark Frauenfelder wired magazine -- November 1998 Michael Hart says he really doesn't have time to talk today, or any day before 2000, for that matter: "I'm doing two books right now. I'm really busy." "Doing" doesn't mean "writing," however: Hart is formatting the scanned text of William Osler's The Evolution of Modern Medicine and The Last Days of Pompeii, by Charles Bulwer Lytton, to add to Project Gutenberg's existing library of 1,600 volumes. Every week, Hart's working overtime to meet his quota of 36 books per month and 2,000 by Y2K. The result will be something of a digital Library of Alexandria, with Hart its Demetrius. Since 1971, when he was given extensive time on a Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the University of Illinois's Materials Research Lab, Hart (with volunteer help) has been scanning the pages of copyright-expired books and uploading them for free distribution. Why? So people can burn up toner cartridges printing them? "No. Nobody's going to print these books out," says Hart. "Twenty or 30 years from now, there's going to be some gizmo that kids carry around in their back pocket that has everything in it -- including our books, if they want." Actually, some of these gizmos already exist. So it's really no wonder Hart feels pressed for time.

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error message on PG pages
by traverso＠dp.dm.unipi.it 22 Feb '17

22 Feb '17

I have a computer with an old firefox (20.0) and I cannot connect with it to PG, I receive an error page: ------------------------------------------------- Secure Connection Failed An error occurred during a connection to www.gutenberg.org. Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s). (Error code: ssl_error_no_cypher_overlap) The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified. Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem. Alternatively, use the command found in the help menu to report this broken site. ------------------------------------------------- Not a problem for me (I use another browser) but might be a problem for other users. I don't have the same problem on other https sites. Carlo

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Is ibiblio still doing maint?
by Jared Buck 29 Aug '16

29 Aug '16

I'm trying to access the ftp.ibiblio.org ftp server and nothing is showing on the server. no directories at all and rsync isn't working, either. I know on the main PG page it says ibiblio is doing maint work from the 23rd to the 26th but it's the 29th now and nothing seems to be working. Jsred ᐧ

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