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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 15 May '10

15 May '10

jim said: > All I can do is shrug my shoulders, and > suggest that others on this forum > go try it for themselves, > and see what happens to them. i will be buying an ipad as soon as the lines go down and i know i can walk in an apple store and walk out with one. i expect that i will be able to load .epubs onto the thing quite easily, simply by going through the itunes store... if i have any problems doing that, i will let people know. but i expect there will be no problems. and if people ask me why _you_ had problems doing it, i'll shrug _my_ shoulders, and mumble something about how you had some objection about doing things that way. -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 15 May '10

15 May '10

jim said: > Do me a favor and see what you can do with it using wifi > and without feeding Apple your credit card number, > nor signing up for one of the "Company Store" accounts: > aka iTunes, iBooks, nor the App Store. if you're gonna refuse to give apple your credit-card number, there's no reason to buy apple machinery... no reason at all... perhaps you'd like apple to use a different business model. fine. i can understand that. but that's apple's call to make. and if you want to bellow about it, i can understand that too. but when you continue to bellow, and continue to bellow more, and won't stop bellowing here, even though _nobody_here_ can do anything about apple's choice of business model, it gets old. it gets really old. to the point people really want you to shut up. even the people who agree with you. _especially_ those people, because you make them look bad because they hold your opinion. i suppose you know the old joke about the guy who goes to the doctor and says "doc, it hurts when i do _this_", and the doctor replies by saying "then don't do that." take a hint, jim. please. *** greg said: > Instead, somewhat incredibly, when you use your iPhone's > Safari to click on an .epub file at www.gutenberg.org, > it tells you it cannot open that file. is there any browser that can _open_ an .epub file? -bowerbird

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the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 05 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 15 May '10

15 May '10

for 32 days, i am showing samples of the problems with the text in e-books from the internet archive... *** one of the most creative cats of the last 500 years is jules verne. i want some of what _he_ was smoking! so let's look at "around the world in 80 days" for our example today of what's wrong with archive.org text. here's the scan of page 55 > http://www.archive.org/stream/tourofworldineig00vernrich#page/55 here's the o.c.r. of the entire book: > http://ia361301.us.archive.org/1/items/tourofworldineig00vernrich/tourofwor… and here's the o.c.r. of page 55: > > TOUR OF THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DA 78. 55 > > out ofj>rder his mechanism, so wonderfully organ- > ized. I Then he played at whistT/ For he found > companions as devoted to it as himself ; a collector > of taxes, who was going to his post at Goa ; a min- > ister, the Eev. Decimus Smith, returning to Bom- > bay ; and a brigadier-general of the English army, > who was rejoining his corps at Benares. These > three passengers had the same passion for whist as > Mr. Fogg, and they played for entire hours, not > less quietly than he. > > [As for Passepartout, seasickness had taken no > holci on him. He occupied a forward cabin, and > eafc conscientiously. It must be said that the voy- > age made under these circumstances was decidedly > not unpleasant to himTj He rather liked his share > of it. [Well fed and well lodged, he was seeing the > country, and besides he asserted to himself that all > this whim would end at Bombay. j [The next day > after leaving Suez it was not without a certain > pleasure that he met on deck the obliging jgerson > whom he had addressed on landing in Egypt./ > > I" I am not mistaken," he said, on approaching > him with his most amiable smile, " you are the very > gentleman that so kindly served as my guide in > Suez?" > > "Indeed," replied the detective, "I recognize > you ! You are the servant of that odd English- > man " > > " Just so, monsieur " > > "Fix." > > u Monsieur Fix," replied Passepartout. " De- there you go. i'll let y'all do the commentary on this one... -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting ("gods and fighting men")
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 15 May '10

15 May '10

jim said: > my understanding was that you were trying to work from > the PG txt files – which do not retain the original hyphenations. right. so those end-of-line hyphenates need to be restored. > Recovering original hyphenations should be in theory possible > too, but not work that I have looked at yet. "in theory"? you just take them from the o.c.r. at archive.org, which is what you used to restore the linebreaks anyway, right? > The linebreak recovery algorithm I worked on was intended > to allow people at DP, for example, if they want to, to resubmit > some of the early PG works and run them through DP again. ok, fair enough. but in that case, your routines should have done what d.p. requires of its proofers, which is to move the second part of the end-of-line hyphenate to the previous line. i _believe_ that in some cases, you moved the first part down... (but i could be wrong on that, so do please let me know if i am.) > Without automatic recovery of linebreaks one has several days > of extremely tedious work reintroducing the original linebreaks. as i said above, i use the o.c.r. text from archive.org to restore them. it's pretty straightforward, and automatic. it didn't take long to code, and it runs very fast. but you're right; doing it manually is painful... > The other alternative for you is to leave healthy right margins > and leave your PDF’s “ragged right” [*very* ragged right!] well, one object is to clone the pages of the printed book itself, so ragged-right isn't really an option. -bowerbird

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Re: spill baby spill
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 May '10

14 May '10

none of the "containment" methods are working. and gobs of goo are starting to come up on-shore. and now we learn that the gusher is releasing some _ten_times_ as much oil as we were told previously. with no end in sight, heaven help us... -bowerbird

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the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 04 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 May '10

14 May '10

for 32 days, i am showing samples of the problems with the text in e-books from the internet archive... *** today's sample is "alice's adventures in wonderland", the book that -- more than any other -- captured the imagination of people, from martin gardner on down. in the e-book arena, "alice" has been "the prototype", in that it's the overwhelming choice to use in demos. it's the text which every new system cuts its teeth on. one warning: don't use any archive.org o.c.r. version! here's the page-scan: > http://www.archive.org/stream/alicesadventur00carr#page/20 here's the o.c.r. for the full book: > http://ia311325.us.archive.org/3/items/alicesadventur00carr/alicesadventur0… and here's the o.c.r. for that page (which is page 20, not "n35"): > > 20 THE POOL > > and four times six is thirteen, and four times > seven is â€” oh dear! I shall never get to twenty > at that rate ! However, the Multiplication Table > doesn't signify : let's try Geography. London is > the capital of Paris, and Pciris is the capital of > Eome, and Eome â€” no, that 's all wrong, I'm > certain ! I must have been changed for Mabel ! > I'll try and say ' Hoiv doth the little â€” '" and she > crossed her hands on her lap as if she were > saying lessons, and began to repeat it, but her > voice sounded hoarse and strange, and the words > did not come the same as they used to do : â€” > > " Hoi'j doth the little crocodile > Improve Iris shining tail, > And 2^our the v:aters of the Site > On every golden sccde ! > > " Hoir cheerfully he seems to grin, > Hoio neatly spreads his elavjs, > And welcomes little fishes in > With gently smiling jaws/" gosh, what a litany of errors and glitches on just this one page. first, that funny character after "second is" in the second line is an em-dash. it's a utf8 em-dash. that's right. to "solve" the problem of the em-dashes that their workflow had misplaced, they stick a _utf8_ em-dash into what is otherwise 7-bit ascii... i think that's _stupid_, but i guess it's what they call "progress". but let's go on. numerous examples of "floating" punctuation dot the page, which is not all that unusual for o.c.r., and i note that it _can_ be corrected automatically, except it _hasn't_ been. we also have misrecognitions on "paris" and "rome" (twice)... moreover, the _italics_ were lost, both in the text for emphasis, and on the poem. the _centering_ of the poem was lost as well. and there were more misrecognitions on the italicized text, on "how" (4), "his", "pour", "waters", "nile", "scale", and "claws", plus an exclamation-point that was misrecognized as a slash. all in all, a pretty dismal performance, all on this single page... a classic book like this deserves much better... -bowerbird

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the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 03 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 13 May '10

13 May '10

for 32 days, i am showing samples of the problems with the text in e-books from the internet archive... *** today's example is from "books and culture", the book google offered as its very first public-domain scan-set. here's the pagescan for page 14: > http://www.archive.org/stream/booksandculture00mabirich#page/14 here's the o.c.r. for the book: > http://ia341039.us.archive.org/2/items/booksandculture00mabirich/booksandcu… and here's the o.c.r. for page 14: > > Material and Method. > > the wisest of modern readers has said > that the most important character- > istio of the real critic the man who > penetrates the secret of a work of > art is the ability to admire greatly; > and there is but a short step between > admiration and love. And as if to > emphasise the value of a quality so > rare among critics, the same wise > reader, who was also the greatest > writer of modern times, says also > that fc where keen perception unites > with good will and love, it gets at > the heart of man and the world ; > nay, it may hope to reach the high > est goal of all." To get at the heart > of that knowledge, life, and beauty > which are stored in books is surely > one way of reaching the highest > goal. > > That goal, in Goethe s thought, > was the complete development of > 14 if you look at that text, you'll see a few o.c.r. errors... specifically, "charateristio" instead of "characteristic", and a double-quotemark that's misrecognized as "fc". the bigger problems, however, are what you do not see. comparing the text against its scan, you'll discover that one end-line-hyphenate -- "highest' -- lost its hyphen. also notice that the apostrophe in "goethe's" was lost... both of these problems happened frequently in this book. they're serious flaws, to be sure, but they lend themselves to fixes that can be applied more-or-less automatically... although that fact gives little solace once we consider the offsetting fact that the auto-fixes have not been applied. but there's yet another problem here, even more serious. as you see, em-dashes were lost in the o.c.r. of this page, review of other pages shows this problem is _book-wide_, and a look at other books reveals it's a common problem. although it might not seem like that big of a deal, the loss of em-dashes can make some passages weird and illogical. as a solution, i programmed a tool that will let you easily insert em-dashes into a text. it works fine, but the job is still time-consuming. indeed, i found it much quicker to simply re-do the o.c.r., a route that's clearly unacceptable. the problem got more interesting, however, when i learned -- after considerable sleuthing -- that this is a problem in the _workflow_ of the internet archive, not the o.c.r. per se. the o.c.r. records em-dashes, but somewhere along the line, due to some bad coding, they are being lost from the file... in other words, the employees at archive.org screwed it up. this is human error, from people being paid to know better. this problem is especially galling to me, because i thought -- after i'd gone through some severe agitation to get it -- i had extracted a promise from the archive.org people that they would go back and _fix_ this glitch on all the old files. but as can be seen clearly, they reneged on their promise... i guess they thought that once they banned me from their listserve, they could forget the promises they made to me. but i can't figure out why they don't care about their books. -bowerbird

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Re: the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 02 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 May '10

12 May '10

if some of those stimulus funds are used to _clean_ the o.c.r., that would be an extremely excellent use of them, to be sure... if they're used to scan more books and create more crap o.c.r., however, that would be sad. to put this in perspective, it takes about _one_hour_ per book to clean up the o.c.r. and turn that digital text into an e-book. just one hour. (people from distributed proofreaders will try and tell you it takes longer than that; that's because they're doing it wrong.) but "just one hour" for a million books takes a million hours. so you need to _budget_ for that. brewster worked himself into a hole when he promised that he could digitize a book for $30 (roughly 10 cents per page): > http://www.opencontentalliance.org/2009/03/22/economics-of-book-digitizatio… you can _scan_ it and handle the other associated overhead, but you need an hour of crafty human labor _after_ scanning in order to make the digital text worthy of human exposure... -bowerbird

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the problem with the e-books from the internet archive -- 02 of 32
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 May '10

12 May '10

for 32 days, i am showing samples of the problems with the text in e-books from the internet archive... *** once again, i love internet archive and its mission. and when someone you love has a booger hanging from their nose, you _tell_ them that's the situation, so they won't go embarrassing themselves publicly. that's what i'm doing here... *** today's example comes from "pride and prejudice", which i'm sure you know is one of the most popular downloads of all time for public-domain e-books... here's the pagescan: > http://www.archive.org/stream/prideprejudicewi00austuoft#page/34 and here's the o.c.r. from that page: > > 34 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE > > *Ur.>' Iv,' replied Darcj", (o whom tliis remark was chiefly > > addrcucu. [;.cic is meanness it " â€¢' - arts whicii ladies sometimes > condescend to rturl,-'. (.-r I.- Wlutrvrt Ivars atfimiy > > (O cunning is i > > Mitj Binglc)- wii no( lo entirely utist;ed with this reply as to > continue the suhjca. > > ' ' â€¢ â€¢ â– â– - i th.cm again only to uy that her sivter was > > ,, . : could niH lca\c l-.cr. Binglc)' urged Mr. Jones's > > being sent for immediately; uh.ilc hit utters, convinced that ik> > country adncc could be of any service, recommended an express > to f ' one of the most eminent physiciaru. Thii the would > > :â€¢ â– ' " â€¢ -'x was not so unwilling to comply with their > > , and It was settled that Mr. lones should l-'c > tent for eaily in the morning, if Miss Bennet u ere not decidedly > bcncr. Bingley was quite uixomfortable; his sisten declared > that the)- were misaable. The)- solaced their uteti " > howc\a, by duets after suppa, while he could find i.. . ^.vt > rcUefto his feelings than by giving his houickccjxrr direaioni that > c\cry possible attention might be paid to the tick lady and > her sisiCT. no comment necessary, as that o.c.r. speaks for itself. -bowerbird

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in other news
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 11 May '10

11 May '10

now in other news, rfrank's "fadedpage" proofing site has taken a big step forward, transitioning to a "match-the-page" mode. what's funny is that he thinks he's in "uncharted territory" now. um, no, roger, i've already mapped that land quite extensively. but hey man, if you wanna learn it all by yourself, be my guest. roger is also doing a good job of listening to his users, who keep asking him to provide the types of functionality that i demonstrated with my proofing site. if he only just keeps responding to their requests, sooner or later his site will be working very similar to mine. convergence can be beautiful. one down-side is that roger went to a database operation... that's sad, because when you box your text into a database, it's not nearly as open and convenient as when it's on the web. which means that other people cannot build utility around it... what makes this doubly sad is that it seems that he went to the database to solve the problems he was having with sync, like replacing the text of one page with that of another page. the thing is, synch problems are typical of new e-book code, particularly when it is being written by a new e-book coder, and it really has _nothing_ to do with the underlying storage, whether that be in a database or in your ordinary file-system. so he didn't really _need_ to switch to a database operation... oh well; as long as it's only one step back for two steps forward, he'll keep making progress. oh, and by the way, even at the very start of "match-the-page", the proofers seem to like it a lot. and that will grow over time. -bowerbird

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