- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [gutvol-d] Producing epub ready HTML
by Lee Passey 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

On Tue, January 31, 2012 2:52 pm, Greg Newby wrote: > On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 12:53:06PM -0700, Lee Passey wrote: >> On Tue, January 31, 2012 12:48 pm, Robert Gibbins wrote: >> >> [snip] >> >> > And before that happens, some PG group (contributors to this forum, Wwers, whatever) needs to get together and write a 'How To' describing at the >> nuts >> > and bolts level how to do the clean up. This should include a recommended set of styles (and the css that implements them) lots of advice about what not to do for people that don't already know, also including access to templates, css style sheets, etc. >> >> I, for one, would like to see the style sheets you have created. Mr. Newby, can you provide us with some sort of repository where we can share this kind of stuff? > > I already did, and you're using it: > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/ Well, this isn't very persistent, but if it's the best you can do... Robert, if you can zip up your style sheets and attache them to a message, I'll try to post them on my web site so they are available for discussion. I'll post my own reformulation of the PG CSS there as well.

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Re: [gutvol-d] it's monday, after noon, let's get the crowdsourcing started
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

al said: > My suggestion, start with etext03 (etexts 3601-4800). that's a consideration. let's see what greg says... and what the other teams in the tournament say. looks like so far it's: > 1. bowerbird. > 2. marcello. > 3. lee with dkretz second in line right behind him. > 4. jim "j-mad" adcock. > 5. john "limpid" redmond. > 6. keith. > 7. karl eichwalder. > 8. hunter "don't forget guiguts" monroe. > 9. carlo "garweyne" traverso, and his students. no offense intended if i left anyone out, just let us know. and if you're listed, but don't want to play, please say so. 3601-4800 would be 1200 books... if we want to cut that number down -- at least for the opening round -- i suggest 4321-4567 -- about 250... that's enough to weed non-contenders. it strikes me that, with e-text numbers this low, this'll be a clean-up job rather than an exercise in how to generate better derivative file-formats, which is what i think greg was aiming at, but i'm ready to go with the consensus of the tournament. al, you'll need to point us to _canonical_versions_ of these books -- preferably at internet archive, or someplace where you can furnish us with scans -- so we're all working toward the same end-product. -bowerbird p.s. oh, and all you other teams, please take all of your preparation plans elsewhere; we don't need to hear 'em. the proof will be in the pudding -- where it _always_ is... unless, that is, you want to amuse us with your fumbling.

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PG governing body
by Karen Lofstrom 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 11:32 AM, Greg Newby <gbnewby(a)pglaf.org> wrote: > It should be obvious that I'm constantly seeking the long-term view of Project Gutenberg. That is why I'm thinking of solutions that involve keeping all derived files or changes we create/publish/distribute, forever. But that doesn't mean I'm against providing some files that will only have a few days, months or years of useful life before they are superseded. I'm starting a new discussion here. I hope that I can present this topic in such a way as to avoid an immediate descent into acrimony and personal attacks. I have the impression that when Michael Hart was alive, he *owned* PG. It was his baby, he had kept it going for years, he owned the name, etc. There was a board of directors, but it was not elected by PG volunteers. Greg Newby was MH's deputy, and over the years, took on much of the workload. Greg has served selflessly, silently, devotedly. (Correct me if I'm wrong in my impressions, please.) However, I note with some disquiet that Greg seems to have stepped into MH's shoes, as the man who runs PG and gets to make all the decisions. See the quote above. I am not comfortable with this as anything more than an interim measure, until MH's estate is settled and the copyrighted name problem is sorted out. I hope that PG can make a transition from a monarchy to an elected board, just as DP did. I am not sure what form this board should take, and how elections might be run. Who counts as a volunteer with voting rights? That was easier with DP, which is more organized. It might also be a good idea to have ex-officio members from other digital preservation organizations, such as Internet Archive and Hathi Trust. Perhaps a certain number of seats could be set aside for such organizations, and the choice of organizations NOT be set into stone. Old groups may falter and new ones form. I do hope that Greg will see this not as a personal attack against HIM, but a move towards an organization, and a library, that is not dependent on any one person's efforts. I do not see this as deposing Greg, who will continue to be essential. I just would like to see him as the CEO, not the king. With some trepidation ... -- Karen Lofstrom

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who's on first
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

greg said: > typos or fixes or additional master formats > can be contributed you want people to fix typos without reference to a scan? please tell me that you didn't just suggest that seriously... and how can a master format be made with any certainty without full reference to a canonical version of the book? > The main features here mostly exist, > but not as flexibly as I'd like to see. where do any of these "main features" of customization exist -- not just "mostly" -- but in any form whatsoever? > These, and others, have also been discussed deeply. don't be ridiculous, greg. these issues have "been discussed" repeatedly, but they have never been discussed "deeply" at all. they have never come to anything actionable, usually because people here drag these threads all over the back-40 acres, and then drag in dead field-mice from the neighboring homestead and plop them smack-dab into the middle of every discussion. surely most of this crap would earn a "c" grade in your courses, and even _that_ assessment is probably being far too generous. the discussions weren't even "shallow"... perhaps "superficial". (but even that implies they were on-topic. but no, usually not.) > These can be better than automatically-generated versions oh please. haven't you learned anything from the "snowflakes"? hand-crafted versions are simply impossible to keep up-to-date. impossible. totally and completely. and now you want to _invite_ users to submit as many snowflakes as we possibly can? insanity. are you really in charge of this project? if so, i fear for its future... -bowerbird

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you yap dogs need to stop yapping, and listen for a minute
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

robert said: > A year later I look again at this forum > and you are still arguing about it, but > nothing seems to have been achieved! yep. pretty amazing, isn't it? the answer is so simple. yet nobody acts. they just yap and yap, like little yap dogs. so stop yapping and listen up, yap dogs... you've gotta show the d.p. postprocessors how to achieve the results that they desire _and_ still get workable derivative formats. the latter is fairly easy, and the former isn't all _too_ difficult, although you will need to assure them first that it actually is possible. their virginity was stolen by a violent rapist; now they are afraid to take a chance on love. i would go there and do it myself, except that they banished me from there a long time ago. but in terms of .html that will "work", there are several people who can tell you how to do that. i can do it. jim can do it. robert here can do it. you could probably even figure it out yourself... if you'd only stop yapping, and do work instead. -bowerbird

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it's monday, after noon, let's get the crowdsourcing started
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

greg- i'm ready with my crowdsourcing thing. are you gonna provide the pagescans? or do we have to dig 'em up ourselves? too bad all the p.g. e-texts are rewrapped... that's gonna make re-proofing very difficult. any book(s) in particular you want to start with? -bowerbird

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Crowdsourcing (Re: Producing epub ready HTML)
by Greg Newby 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

Whew. I counted 100 messages in 2 days. Thanks for the lively discussion. I changed the subject for the theme that Joshua and others mentioned (below). The idea I am very interested in fostering is capable online tools to let essentially anyone make edits, add formats, or prepare derivative files, from any PG eBook. Then, to easily add those changes back into (an area of) the PG collection. My view is that we could very easily have an additional major category of file, for a given work. Currently, we have two major categories: first are files that go through WWers to get online, and second are those that are automatically generated from the first type. (While this is a gross simplification, in fact at www.gutenberg.org it's really easy to tell which is which -- they are in a different set of subdirectories, with a different file naming scheme.) A third (new) type would be those files that are, in some way, modified, derived, or produced by other people and their tools. Not necessarily WWers or the original producers/submitters. In a word, crowdsourcing. Or community editing. Or version control. Or whatever you want to call it: the point would be that ANYONE with desire and some basic capability could make changes to existing files, or provide derivative files. I can think of several major details, and many minor ones. Concerns about copyright, spamming, whether anonymous edits are permitted, a review/revision/recision cycle, character sets, forking, searching, etc., etc. I would love to see multiple "master" files, created lovingly by hand in any or all of RST, LaTeX, or yfm (Your Favorite Markup) -- then allow users to select which master to use to generate their, say, EPUB. And, which tools to use for the conversion. Of course, people who wanted to lovingly craft an EPUB would be able to upload that, too. A capable crowdsourcing tool - preferably one that already exists, is well-maintained, is free, and will require relatively few modifications - is the starting point I'd most like to see. Whether we start with one book or 100 or 38000 doesn't matter to me, though it matters a whole lot that the solution is scalable to the full collection. As for the questions about whether this would be allowed, or would pollute the essence of whatever, or piss off whomever: no, PG does't work that way, and never did. The answer is, and has been, "yes, go for it. It's all good, and on-mission." I am sensitive to not removing or undoing others' work, but my view is that current files of the first type, above, would remain, and be easy to find, and that for the main collection at www.gutenberg.org, the WWer process (perhaps as modified, thanks to the new tools that have been under discussion) would still apply. Last year, I tried to deploy TRAC for group editing and version control of PG eBooks. It couldn't handle the directory count, and never finished, though I'm ready to try again. Or, a different tool. As many subscribers have heard before, I have some hefty servers that can be used for experimentation and proof of concept. That's not the hard part. If people are aware of good tools we could base this on, please speak up. I can elaborate on why I prefer to start with an existing tool, but in a nutshell it is because (as many have pointed out), the fundamentals of crowdsourcing and file revisions are already covered by a bunch of excellent tools. Let's not reinvent the parts that others are doing well since, after all, there are plenty of challenges that are unique to Project Gutenberg or to eBooks in general. -- Greg On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 01:01:08AM +0100, Marcello Perathoner wrote: > On 01/24/2012 11:08 PM, Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > > >So, if someone were to start "refactoring" old PG texts into TEI or RST and > >working with a WWer to repost them ... is this a workable idea? > > More than a technical challenge it would be a political one. I can > convert a novel the size of Pride and Prejudice into RST in about an > hour. More if there is formatting or images to recover. But I'd > prefer to avoid the riot that will ensue if we start to reformat DP > texts. > > We could start redoing the top 100 list excluding everything that is > too hard and everything made by DP. > > > >Maybe we start this process on a semi-private mirror of the PG corpus and only > >when it reaches a critical mass of some sort it gets moved over. But an official > >notice that this project has some backing is necessary or we'll just keep seeing > >everything running around in ten different directions and nothing ever getting done. > > A semi-official branch would be a good occasion to ditch the old > WWer workflow in favor of a source repository (git or mercurial) > that holds all the masters. > > Should we reserve a range of ebook nos. or shadow the existing ones? > > > -- > Marcello Perathoner > webmaster(a)gutenberg.org > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d(a)lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d

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re; it's monday, after noon, let's get the crowdsourcing started
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

al said: > Any done by still-current producers > (David Price, David Widger, etc) > shouldn't be touched. except i'm quite sure that's not a rule for this tournament. as for the 587 files in etext03, it's my understanding that implicit credit for moving these files to the new structure will be given to the whitewashers. that's correct, is it not? surely that is not the aim of this tournament either, is it? or have we taken "whitewashing" back to its original sense? are you planning to soon charge us to do this work for you? -bowerbird

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this most certainly is a contest
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '12

31 Jan '12

al said: > It's standard repost practice, and common courtesy, > to maintain the credit to the original producer. these are _not_ "reposts". they are independent entities. and since i am redoing these books because i believe that they were not done entirely correctly the first time around, a feeling which probably holds true for the other teams too, these efforts might well be interpreted as a _condemnation_ of the original file, in which case i'm not certain that people would agree it's "common courtesy" to "maintain" the "credit". it might appear to be more like pointing the finger of blame... > silly word, since this isn't or shouldn't be a contest this most certainly _is_ a contest. the discussion has revolved around the "best" way to do things, arising from beliefs that the current output "isn't good enough", so the evaluative dimension is _permeating_ this entire issue, al. > John Doe will NOT lose his credit, > and will NOT lose first credit. you can do whatever you like with your files. i'll do the same with mine. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Crowdsourcing (Re: Producing epub ready HTML)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Jan '12

30 Jan '12

don said: > I think we should maybe > spend more time coming at it > from the user's direction and > refining some requirements > before we make technology choices. that's a great suggestion, don. except maybe for the fact that there _are_ no users, and there is little evidence to believe that there ever _will_ be any users... again, roger built a nice machine, but couldn't get volunteers for it... and he's a dale-carniege person. while none of you other guys have enough charisma to fill a thimble. > And in that direction I think > automating the build process to > be more dependency-sensitive > might pay off more in the short run. > Maybe it's there and I don't know it, > but I haven't heard much of that > flavor to the discussion so far. i've already accomplished the objective. but nobody seems to want to hear that... -bowerbird

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