- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

book of james -- 017
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Jan '12

21 Jan '12

james- so, i've been stretching you outside your comfort-zone... and i apologize for that, but hey, it's good for you, right? :+) but since it's friday, let's make today's thing easy for you. you know those scans i've been using?, from archive.org, the yellowed ones, really bad, the 380*600-pixel images? how 'bout you clean them up, with scan-tailor, get rid of their yellow background, and resize 'em too, about 150%, providing that that doesn't mess up their readability much. you could pull them out of the .pdf, too, but it seems that -- from the write-up you gave in your "enlightenment" -- you enjoy both familiarity and expertise with scan-tailor... -bowerbird p.s. but if you really don't wanna do it, that's fine, i will... i love working with that app; it's small, but packs a punch.

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book of james -- 018
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Jan '12

20 Jan '12

ok, so james, you can see how much confusion there is, here on this list, when it comes to generating e-books... get a good laugh out of it, then put it out of your mind, because we won't have _one_bit_ of that bewilderment... you're going to make one text-file, and my converters will create for you a .mobi, an .epub, and even a .pdf, not to mention a nice variety of different .html flavors, with offline versions synergistic with your online ones. and they will all _look_ really nice, and _work_ well too. and all you have to do is _click_one_button._ of course, this is a solution that p.g. could have as well, but too many guys here are too stupid and too stubborn to let themselves see that. thus, they wander, confused. -bowerbird

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epub3 suffers crib-death
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Jan '12

20 Jan '12

epub3, not even yet out of the crib, was embraced, extended, and extinguished yesterday by apple. the infant was rushed to a hospital, where its internals are being analyzed by doctors, who profess little hope that the baby can live a "standard" life again. as one doctor put it, "there's too much stuff inside of her that is just completely broken." "even if the kid does survive," said another, who asked not to be identified because he would like to keep working in the industry, "she will be crippled for the rest of her life, just like her older brother, epub2, has been". epub2 has been retarded for his whole life, plus there is widespread speculation that he is being abused by his legal guardian, adobe, possibly causing his erratic public behavior. epub1, the first child in the epub (originally given a different name), also suffered from a sudden-infant-death-syndrome incident, but microsoft was responsible for that crib-death. in a pattern that has repeated itself since then, microsoft was widely condemned for the action, but authorities chose not to prosecute, noting "the company met its fiduciary responsibilities". so, as did adobe, apple is expected to go free. the i.d.p.f. family tried to put on a cheery face, saying that "epub4 is already a bun in the oven!" in lieu of sympathy flowers, the family suggests sending a donation to your favorite big6 house. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] the idea of using it
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Jan '12

20 Jan '12

andrew said: > Did I say the idea of using light-markup in general, > or did I say RST? well, first of all, even what you _did_ say was incorrect... it wasn't anyone at d.p. that instigated restructured-text. it was marcello, either acting entirely on his lonesome, or maybe after having "convinced" the p.g. powers-that-be, it was never made very clear. i think he did it on his own. whatever the case, it wasn't widely announced at the time, probably because it was such a departure from the norm. people'd been agitating for a new format for many years -- everybody had a personal favorite they'd advocate -- but all requests were quickly shut down with a firm "no!". so i think there was fear there'd be a big backlash when this "new and unknown" format was suddenly supported. but p.g. knew if it didn't do something -- and quickly -- amazon would go elsewhere -- like manybooks.com -- and grab the p.g. texts without p.g. getting any "credit". so restructured-text was quietly added as "acceptable". but it didn't have one damn thing to do with d.p. or even with p.g. as a large community. it was a back-room decision. enacted without public input. at the instigation of marcello. who was using the idea i had quietly planted earlier, as a trap. to catch him. and to install light-markup. because that's the solution i knew that p.g. needed... and -- additionally -- because i knew marcello would screw it up... he's a technocrat... that's what they do... so i gave you the right idea. with the wrong leader. which is exactly what you _deserve_, if you're gonna have class-one asshole technocrats as your leaders. > Please read more carefully. i read quite carefully. even between the lines. even the characters! especially the sly ones... for the record, as wolves go, you were relatively tame; i can't remember that you ever went the viscous route. your digs were the passive-aggressive kind, like this... at any rate, even if what you said would've been "true" -- and it wasn't, but even if it was -- i will not let you hide the big truth by some sly implication of a tiny one. not before. and not now. and not in the future, either. so, do we understand each other? -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] the idea of using it
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Jan '12

20 Jan '12

andrew said: > Just because you were not aware of RST being used on PG > does not meean that it has been "hidden" from you. > The idea of using it came from some volunteers from pgdp. really? "the idea of using" light-markup as a master-format "came from some volunteers from pgdp"... really? well, let me congratulate those far-sighted pioneers. and you, andrew sly, you are one sly devil, aren't you? trying to rewrite history, right here, right in front of me. well, yeah... nice try, mr. sly, but no dice. the archives clearly prove that it was _one_person_ who introduced the idea of light-markup as master-format... a full 8 years ago. _and_ that a boatload of rocks were thrown at me for it. for years -- literal _years_ -- people threw mud at me... look at the archives if you don't believe me, people. if you don't _remember_ it, or if you were not here. because i remember it well, and quite vividly. i do. and i think you will too. unless you're repressing it. because lots and lots and lots of shit got pitched at me. mud and rocks, and insults and taunts, and i took it all. i took it, from a vicious pack of wolves out on an attack, and i withstood it, and i prevailed, and that's a fact, jack. and the person who threw the most rocks of all, even if he had such a bad aim that not a single one ever hit me, was marcello. the asshole. he was toothless, as a wolf, but he tried his hardest to be as viscous as he could be. perhaps you've seen the hate-site he put up about me? anyway... for years he insisted that my idea was stupid, that light-markup could never work on anything except the most simplistic documents, nothing that was "hard". so i let him bellow his ignorance for a good many years. until i felt he had wagered _all_ of his credibility on it... and then i set the trap. i simply mentioned in a post that the python community had been using a light-markup -- restructured-text --- for its documentation ever since the language went big... it was pretty hard for marcello, who was using python, to deny the reality that geeks were using light-markup. for documentation that was far from being "simplistic". so that shut him up, pretty much. but wait, there's more, because that wasn't the trap... so, once the kindle came out, marcello quickly realized that this was gonna be a big deal for project gutenberg -- when you look at the traffic stats, it's very obvious -- but he had to have a solution that would actually _work_, as opposed to the t.e.i. bullshit he had been advocating. bingo. he stepped in my trap, and picked up restructured-text. game, set, match, championship and trophy ceremony. did marcello ever admit he'd been defeated? course not. he's a class-one asshole who'll never admit he is wrong. did anyone here on this list ever admit they were wrong? course not. way too many assholes here to admit that... indeed, every once in a while, the wolf-pack still tries to mount an attack. but they're impotent -- merely flaccid. does that change that fact that i was right? not one bit. does that change the fact that i pioneered the idea here? no it doesn't. so, as much as you'd like to rewrite history, there ain't nobody here who's gonna buy your recycled lies. so if you ever want the proof, just go look at the archives. -bowerbird p.s. the delicious irony is that, for project gutenberg needs, restructured-text is still twice as complicated as it could be, and, given marcello's "charisma", thus fated to be albatross. fly, albatross, fly! i don't know why this albatross won't fly... p.p.s. for irony dessert, not that andrew can't spell "mean". he can _be_ mean, but can't spell it. what does that mean?

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Re: [gutvol-d] book of james -- 016
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Jan '12

20 Jan '12

james said: > The URLs ending with .py are not Python programs. well, technically, a python program lives at that address, but what _you+ will see, in your browser-window, will be the output which that python program is sending to you. > The "dummy" file does seem to be > doing the "compose+'+S" correctly ok, that's interesting, on some level... but you'll still need to fix the 777 file. > and I do have to change the browser to UTF-8 to see it. i suspect that, since it's labeled as a .txt file, it's being sent out as ascii, rather than utf8... probably some switch i can toggle at my i.s.p. > If you want me to "think like a programmer" > then at a minimum I'd want to have: i want you to think like a d.i.y. programmer who cannot require things "at a minimum"... :+) > 1). The file containing diacritics > that you used to extract the words. there is no such file. i read in your text-file, and extracted any word containing a diacritic. for the record, there's under a dozen diacritics. > 2). The Python program(s) you used > to extract them and make this list. i wrote that program in basic, not python, so you'll need to settle for english pseudo-code, which is what i just told you, back at point 1). > 3). The Python program you wrote > to make the word substitutions > and put the diacritics back in. that wasn't a python program, not originally, just a macro of global changes in a text-editor. easy enough to do it in basic, though, or python, which is what i did to make "waxon" and "waxoff". off the top, so untested and maybe even wrong: > s=thebookfile > swi=switchfile.split("\n") > for x in range (0,len(swi)): > dan=swi[x].split(" -- ") > dia=dan[0].strip() > non=dan[1].strip() > s=re.sub(non,dia,s) c'mon, james, that's a 7-line routine. you can d.i.y. > I do have your file with misspelled words by page. that list is now outdated. > Many of the words in the diacritical file are familiar enough > to me that I won't need to look them up. but some are not, i take it. won't hurt to check _all_ of 'em against a scan, especially if you just check a few occurrences... that routine might run about 25 lines, james. do you want me to write that one for you too? > My only concern is the "Compose+'+s" characters. all you need to do is enter it correctly in the file you edit. > I just wonder how they got that way to begin with well, we know it happened in my hands. so who knows? it could have happened any number of ways, all of which are now immaterial. don't get hung up on the irrelevant. just take the "777" .html file, edit it appropriately, and then re-mount it somewhere only where i can get to it... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] book of james -- 016
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Jan '12

19 Jan '12

james said: > One thing I spotted was the use of i don't need details. just show me the utf8. :+) > However, I thought you should be aware that > your word extraction program is doing this > and it is wrong. i know it's wrong. that's the whole point. don't explain. show me the right version. > I have a thought on looking up the words. > PDFs and DjVus from archive.org > have text contained in them. > I should be able to put in > a questionable word from the right column > and see what it should be on the left, > then fix it. you're a programmer, right? start thinking like one. i don't know exactly what you mean by "put in a questionable word", but it sounds uncomfortably _manual_. ditto with doing "find" in a .pdf or .djvu. you have a list of the bad words in a file. and you have the actual e-book in a file. with pagenumbers pointing to the scans. so... think like a programmer, and write code that _automates_ the process for you, so you just have to click a button or two and maybe -- in the extreme case -- edit text in a text-field by using your (ick) keyboard. think like a programmer. i _will_ repeat this. if i _have_to_ repeat it. but james, i don't want to have to repeat it... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] the idea of using it
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Jan '12

19 Jan '12

i said: > p.p.s. for irony dessert, not that andrew can't spell "mean". and -- for your after-dinner cognac -- note that bowerbird can't spell "note"... not that it matters... ;+) -bowerbird

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book of james -- 016
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Jan '12

19 Jan '12

ok, james, it's nose-to-the-grindstone time... :+) today we attack your diacritics, most of 'em on names... *** james said: > You list of words and names have no accents > or diacritical marks, and so does the HTML. > Even with global search and replace > that's not going to be fun to put back. there must be something you don't understand... but that's ok. that's why i'm here... :+) in a nutshell, changing between versions of the file which _do_ or _do_not_ have the diacritics is merely a matter of converting all of 'em with a single script. or, if we arrange it another way, clicking a button... click it once to replace non-diacritics with diacritics, and click again to change diacritics to non-diacritics. back. and forth. now you see 'em; now you don't. i won't try to make the claim that clicking a button is "fun", but i'd certainly dispute any claim it's "difficult", which is what i believe you were trying to imply above. maybe you thought you'd be doing 'em one-at-a-time? think again. we're doing things the easy way now... *** first, take a good long look at the diacritics you did: > http://zenmagiclove.com/bhaga/diacritics777.html i pulled those out of your edited version of the file... *** next, here's the demo code for changing to diacritics: > http://zenmagiclove.com/bhaga/waxon.py *** and likewise, the demo code for removing diacritics: > http://zenmagiclove.com/bhaga/waxoff.py *** notice that, to develop the script, i had this demo code actually perform its conversion _on_ the file containing the _data_ which it uses, the file containing the words... you can find that dummy file here: > http://zenmagiclove.com/bhaga/waxer.txt (if that file doesn't display properly, you will need to force your web-browser to recognize the file as utf8.) *** of course, eventually, we'll have it use the _real_ file: > http://zenmagiclove.com/bhaga/diacritics777.html but first, james, you're gonna need to clean that file... there are a couple of different ways you could do that, and i don't know which of them will be easiest for you. can you recognize the correct version of each word by just looking at it? or do you need to look at the scans? if you can do it by just looking at the list, that's great. if you need to look at scans, i'll code a routine for you. *** but... either way, before you start, let's look at the file... (an important note's at the end of this, so don't skip it.) there are some 777 words on it, give or take a few, but i'd guess a couple hundred of them are _errors_, for instance, up top, we have two similar ones: > Akuti > Akriti those might be two different names. or one could be a scanno for the other, in which case it must be fixed. there are lots of these cases. further down, we have: > Vyasa > Vyana again, could be two names. or one could be a scanno. pay attention, as some of them look very close: > Surasa > Surama ... > Sinivati > Sinivali ... > Sinhaya > Sinhaka ... > Sayujya > Saynjya ... > Satarupa > Satarapa *** there are 25 cases that particularly need attention. you can locate these cases by searching for "yyy"... for instance, here's the top one: > Avirmukhiyyy > Avirmukhizzz the "yyy" and "zzz" were added by me, as markers... in such cases, you'll see that the non-diacritic versions are exactly the same (or would be, without my markers). however, the diacritic versions _differ_, in some way... i take it that these are _not_ different names, but rather that you did their diacritics differently. perhaps that is because you made a mistake, or maybe the p-book had it different, maybe because they made a mistake, or... but whatever the case, if these names are supposed to be _the_same_person_, then they should be made the same... (unless i misunderstand something about diacritics, which is totally a possibility, as i claim to know zilch about them.) *** one last thing, james, and it's extremely important to note. when you make these corrections, you must do the edits to the _diacritic_ side of the pair, not the non-diacritic side... (the non-diacritic side of the pair is what's in the file now.) however... although the _edit_ must be made to the diacritic _side_, the actual edit _can_ be the correct non-diacritic version. this will work because we'll be running the converter twice. so the first time through, the incorrect non-diacritic will be changed to the correct non-diacritic. then in the second run, the correct(ed) non-diacritic is changed to the correct diacritic. if you have questions about this, feel free to backchannel me... -bowerbird

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that "blue p.d.a." cover will go down in e-book history some day
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Jan '12

19 Jan '12

a generic cover is one thing. many places create a "cover" for e-books which is just text giving the name of the book, and maybe the author as well. kind of like the generic products at the store, labeled as "corn", or "cereal", or "beans", or "soup", or "bean soup". it's not all that pretty, but it works. i mean, really, "alice's adventures in wonderland" _should_ have a psychedelic cover, but "alice in wonderland" works... at least we can tell it apart from "war and peace" or "flatland". so yeah, a generic cover is one thing. *** but project gutenberg e-books? well, they take "generic cover" to a whole new level, baby... because _every_darn_book_ gets the _same_ generic cover! it's as if every product in the store got the _same_ label -- so that _everything_ got labeled as "supermarket product". imagine if peanuts were labeled as "supermarket product", and butter was also labeled as "supermarket product", and _peanut_butter_ was also labeled as "supermarket product". make it pretty hard to tell 'em apart, wouldn't it? but every book in the p.g. library gets the exact same cover. it's as if every book is given a cover that says "book". : +) alice in wonderland? "book" war and peace? "book" flatland? "book" because, you know, they're pretty much interchangeable, right? if you have read one of them, you've read them all. so let's give them all the same cover -- "book"... except... it would be one thing if it was an actual image of a _book._ but no! no sir! that'd be too obvious... too skeuomorphic. so project gutenberg uses a picture of a _p.d.a._ and not just _any_ p.d.a., mind you, but one that looks to be right out of 1993. you'd think it would be hard to tell, from a mere image, but this graphic actually _screams_ "clunky"... you can tell this was an early p.d.a., one of the ones that was big, and _heavy_, and cost an arm and a leg when it was new. it probably had 640k of memory (because who needs more?), and i bet it could run _a_full_3_hours_on_a_single_charge_... i guess project gutenberg wants a generic cover that will say "old school" -- befitting its status as e-book pioneer -- and this graphic does that, baby, it does that _in_spades_... because nothing says "e-book" like a picture of a p.d.a. *** yep, that "blue p.d.a." image will hang in a museum someday. so i hope you appreciate its historic significance _right_now_... -bowerbird

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