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!@! #17135 Twas The Night Before Christmas
by Michael S. Hart 17 Apr '10

17 Apr '10

***** This file should be named 17135-h.htm or 17135-h.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.org/1/7/1/3/17135/ Produced by Janet Blenkinship, Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Where the first characters of stanza were "illuminated" they were eliminated and never replaced in the htm. version.

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Re: !@! #17135 Twas The Night Before Christmas
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Apr '10

17 Apr '10

dakretz said: > How accurate is this assessment? it's half-assed accurate. mostly because it's looking at the p.g. corpus from the standpoint of its two major file-types. but we'll want to look at it from the perspective of the users who will access it, and how... (the answer to that is mobile, mobile, and mobil.) moreover, some of your points, even as given, are wrong... > 1. original plain-text. significant but declining strongly. no. significant and _increasing._ (a rising tide lifts all boats.) > 2. original .html files. significant but declining slightly. no. significant and _increasing._ (same tide, different boat.) > 3. plain-text derivatives. declining. dead wrong. this is the segment that is increasing fastest. most of the places that make derivatives use the plain-text. > 4. .html derivates. significant and increasingly so. well, not quite "dead-wrong", but still wrong nonetheless. the .html files have far too little consistency to be used in a systematic creation of derivatives, not without glitches... some places use the .html file, but then "fall back" to the plain-text version if they see problems with the derivative. but most can't spend that much energy on quality-control, so they've resigned themselves to using the plain-text files. which is not that big of a sacrifice, to be perfectly honest... indeed, the system giving the most consistently best results is the iphone viewer-app "eucalyptus", which utilizes _only_ the plain-text files; his converter is giving very good output. and, to help get people's heads on, and completely straight, it's good to do the reminder that many of the .html files are the result of a straight-out conversion of the plain-text file. and these files, because they're machine-generated, _are_ consistent enough to be used in a systematic conversion... it's the "hand-crafted" ones that cause all of the problems, which is something that i first pointed out many years ago. when problems with the auto-generated .html files do occur, it's usually due to an underlying glitch in the plain-text file. so auto-conversion of plain-text is the best way to proceed. and i've maintained for 7 years now that such a conversion is not just _possible_, but our best course of action to follow... for several years after i started, i left my argument unproven, just to see who would jump at the bait and try to dispute it... after destroying all that opposition, i have since proven that it is indeed possible to use a plain-text file as your "master". why y'all continue to ignore this proof, i simply do not know. but i'll keep making the case, until all of you can see it clearly. -bowerbird

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Re: !@!!@!!@!Re: Re: so what is so important about pagination?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Apr '10

17 Apr '10

michael said: > I had to have read the whole thing > to get to the part I quoted. . .duh! you can quote something without reading it. but i should have said i wish you would have _understood_ what i was saying, because then you would have understood that your response didn't address the point that i was making. > When you ask people to pay attention, it helps to PAY ATTENTION. i am paying attention, michael. even though i've heard what you're saying lots and lots and lots of times before. and it makes sense when you are addressing the people who are making _other_ points. but they left long ago... > It addresses EXACTLY the point you made that I quoted. . . . no, it doesn't. > Then SAY that!!! Right up front in plain language!!! i _have_ said it, every time i've talked about this issue... including once when marcello brought up this same point you brought up (think about that, michael), about editions. (it was back in september of 2007, if you're curious.) marcello pointed out that the various different editions of "pride and prejudice" had different pagination, and he asked which of the editions should be used to do the pagination... here's the reply i made to marcello's point: > http://z-m-l.com/go/pap/pride%20and%20prejudice(4).txt if you don't care to read all of it, here are the guts of that reply: > the answer to the question as to which set of linebreaks and > pagebreaks to use is this: the ones in the edition you digitize. > > plain old common sense. if you didn't already know the answer, > perhaps you might want to exercise your brain a little bit more... > > if you're digitizing the 1844, use its linebreaks and pagebreaks. > if you're digitizing the 1853, use its linebreaks and pagebreaks. > if you're digitizing the 1870, use its linebreaks and pagebreaks. > if you're digitizing the 1892, use its linebreaks and pagebreaks. and here is a web-page showing the first page of those 4 editions: > http://z-m-l.com/go/pap/pride_and_prejudice(4).html and yes, in case you're wondering, if a p-book was important enough to go through different editions, we should digitize _every_ edition... i'm not going to tell you which of those 4 editions you _should_ use, which one is the "right" one. whichever one you want to use is "right". and you should be able to determine if any specific e-book _does_ or _does_ not match the edition you want to use, or some other edition. *** by the way, there's another web-page of interest in this directory: > http://z-m-l.com/go/pap/jose(4).html this fascinating page shows some work done by jose menendez. jose adopted my suggestion that the e-book be able to mimic the p-book, and he created a series of .pdf books that did just that... shown on this web-page are some screenshots of his .pdf-books, compared to the page-scans from those pages. he did a great job. of course, since a .pdf-book is unable to reflow its text, jose's work doesn't fit the more-important criterion of reflowability, but it does show that the ability to mimic the original can be extremely valuable. > However, that still relegates us to being a Xerox machine, no? no. because a xerox machine can't do reflow. or fix typos. or pull in spacey contractions. or change the font, or size. look, i understand the appeal of digital text _extremely_ well. i've made all of the arguments myself, so there's no need for you to repeat 'em back at me, you're just wasting your breath. but there's a problem looming here, a problem that the future will have to face, and solve, and i'm telling you what you need to do, so that you can _help_ the future _solve_ that problem, such that your e-texts will continue to be used, and not tossed. i'm on _your_ side, michael... i've got your back, good buddy... so you need to get that through your skull and start listening... > I'm never going to get into any of these semantic arguments!!!!!!! > Mimic means to copy as closely as possible. . . . Synonym: copy. it's not a semantic argument, michael. it's protective coloration. if your copy isn't capable of _assuming_the_look_and_feel_ of the thing that it _purports_ to be copying, nobody will trust it. you seem to be forgetting that you are claiming to _be_ a copy. perhaps you are an "improved" copy, but you are _still_ a copy. certainly if you came out and said "we rewrote parts of the middle, because the original was too boring", you would expect that people would throw you away. but what if someone points out a few errors in your work, and says "see, you can't trust this work, it hasn't been faithfully transcribed," then what is your defense? you can say that "it was just a few errors", but what if they then point out a few more, and a few more after that? at what point can you no longer expect the end-user to believe you? > As I have said before, if you would listen, > I am not AGAINST keeping a copy with such pagination > for such purposes well, good, and bully for you, and all that, but the fact of the matter is that project gutenberg is not, at this point in time, actually doing that. > but I draw the lines, pun intended, at keeping every character > in the same page position when there is no need for pages, > in all available PG editions. and, as i have said before, if you would listen, i'm not suggesting, in any way, shape, or form, that pagination and linebreaks need to be kept "in all available p.g. editions". that'd be stupid, absolutely and totally and ridiculously _stupid_, and i don't usually feel a need to rule out stuff that is absolutely, totally, ridiculously stupid... > I want our eBooks to be optimally readable: > Minimal end of line hyphenation. > No page headers or footers. > Just plain reading. i'm 100% in favor of that. and i have demonstrated before, and will be happy to demonstrate once again, any time that you like, how p.g, could save its texts in a format that allows verification of the type that i am talking about, _and_ allows the end-user to have the text exactly like you specify. > Once again, I have no stance AGAINST people who want pagination, > I just don't want for force any such arbitrary formats on anyone > and neither should you or anyone else. > STOP TRYING TO FORCE YOUR OPINIONS ON OTHERS, > MAKE THEM OPTIONS! see, that's precisely why i said you're not listening to me, because there's no way in the world i would try to "force" this on end-users. i've never, ever, said _anything_ even _remotely_ like that, in all the years i've been on this listserve, or the decades i have done e-books, so i don't know who you're having this conversation with, michael, but it's obviously not me. > I CAN tell you that most of the paper editions' page numbers > will fade along with the hyphenation. no, they won't. because our cultural heritage is full of references to page-numbers, and it'll be several orders of magnitude cheaper and more efficient to keep track of those page-numbers than to attempt to re-do all those references using hyperlinks or whatever. > Last time I looked there were still pretty ubiquitous programs to > lay out all such differences. > > IFF you have such deep interests, you can simply put up two editions > side by side when you look at them. . .I do. . . . > > If not, then you aren't really that interested. . .it's all smoke. this is very amusing. i do this kind of work, michael. regularly. and i can tell you that it's not nearly as simple as you make it sound. > "_RIGHT_" copy??? > Now you've contradicted yourself back into the ivory tower. . . . > "_RIGHT_" copy, indeeeeed. . . . you just can't _wait_ to jump to the wrong conclusion, can you? by "right" copy, i mean the one that the person _wants_ to see. > This will ONLY do you any good if you manage to find > that edition, out of all the other paper editions in the world. again, "that edition" is whatever edition the person wants to use. i have a paper copy of "catcher in the rye" on my bookshelf now. let's say, 10 years on, i can find a dozen digital versions online. let's also say that some analysis shows differences between them. i haven't compared all, not in full, but i know there's some diffs. i don't want a dozen different versions. i want the one that matches the paper copy that has been sitting on my bookshelf for 4 decades. how do i determine which one -- _if_any_ -- is the same version as the one that is sitting on my shelf? that's the difficult question. > Sorry, but I anticipated ALL of these questions when I first started, > and have answered, and will continue to answer, at length. no, you didn't answer the question. so i just asked it to you again. > Why can't you just propose your ideas as OPTIONS, > not CARVED IN STONE? stop making the thread ridiculous. no one can carve anything in stone any more. -bowerbird

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html/css expert advice sought
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Apr '10

17 Apr '10

here's an example of the code i'm using for multiple columns: > http://z-m-l.com/go/2-column-good-xml.html > http://z-m-l.com/go/3-column-good-xml.html if anyone has advice on how to improve that code, i'm all ears... -bowerbird

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Re: Typesetting
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 16 Apr '10

16 Apr '10

michael said: > I'm in my early 20s. ok. age is a state of mind. > I like what I do. > I do not like eyestrain you get eyestrain from your screens? really? sincerely, you need to get better equipment. there's no good reason for eyestrain any more. > and I like the variety that print media provides. ok. i find the web has 30 times more variety, including most stuff you can find in print, but everybody has their own sense of taste. > An old term to be sure, but I like it. i like it too. it's charming. and cute. :+) > The only real option would be to > convert each text manually into LaTeX > or some lightweight format like asciidoc > (my personal favorite). if you read the archives, you'll see that i have been the major cheerleader here for light-markup since way back in 2003. > Largely, I am looking to see > if anyone else has a solution i have a solution. it's sitting on my hard-drive. you might be the person who springs it free... > before I break out an interpreter/compiler > and get cracking on my own. i encourage you to get cracking on your own... i'd love to have someone to compare notes with. i would offer you all kinds of advice in your work, probably (to be frank) whether you want it or not. > Nitpicking aside, you raise a valid point. we're just having fun... don't take it too seriously. but that wasn't nitpicking. i was running through the checklist that you will eventually have to make, if you want to offer your program to anybody else. (which you might or might not wanna do, i dunno.) > What do I want? yes please, do tell... > * Automatic or mostly automatic. makes sense. fully automatic just isn't possible, not across the full p.g. library, but "mostly automatic" is within range... > * Font family selection. I don't personally > care about picking an exact font i ask about times new roman and helvetica in particular because some aspects of my solution can only use those. but if we take another approach, you can use any font... > * Paragraph lines should run to the end of the printed page ok, but are lines as they're wrapped in a typical p.g. e-text too short, or too long? in other words, what's the measure? (that's the typographic term for the length of your lines, i.e., the pagesize minus your margins.) this will depend on the fontsize, which i forgot to ask about. > * On screen, I like block paragraphs, but in print indented ones. ok. > Optimally, this would be user-settable. optimally, _everything_ is user-settable. > * Page size I would want to set, but > 2 pages printed on an 8.5x11 sheet in practice. that's right. > * I care little about hyphenation vs wrapping, but > I would want the text conformed to the print media, > not verbatim of the original edition. that's a bit ironic, since the original edition _was_ text that was made to conform to the print media. so there is a certain bit of contradiction in there... but i'll let it pass. > This is, after all, one of the advantages of an etext > --the ability to reflow the content as desired. well, yes, of course. but once you've printed it out, you've lost that ability-to-reflow. so does it matter? (never mind, it's just another philosophical question.) > * Page numbers, of course. of course, of course. > * Curly quotes do not matter one way or another to me. ok. > * em-dashes would be preferable. ok. > * Footnotes and endnotes should be included, of course. yes, of course they should be included. i was asking if you had a preference for one over the other, because it can get very hairy to do footnotes in a rewrapped e-text. it's easier to do endnotes. but if you _want_ footnotes... -bowerbird

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Re: Project Gutenberg DVD Release Candidate now available for testing
by Aaron Cannon 15 Apr '10

15 Apr '10

Hi all. Thanks to all those who downloaded and sent me feedback. I figured out what was causing the broken links. Turns out that when I was creating an ISO file, all the "-"s in filenames were being changed to "_"s, so as to meet the ISO9660 standard, which doesn't permit filenames to contain "-". So, 3533-h.zip was being changed to 3533_h.zip. So, I am having to change the HTML to deal with this. I should have Release Candidate 2 ready for upload tomorrow. I'll keep everyone posted. Thanks. Aaron On 4/13/10, Aaron Cannon <cannona(a)fireantproductions.com> wrote: > It looks like the HTML was changed some how from my local copy. For > instance, my local copy has no content directory. All of the numbered > directories are in the root, though come to think of it, it probably > would have been better to create a content directory. Nevertheless, I > believe that it must have been altered to serve the books from a > content directory when it was placed on the web server. So, to answer > your concern, the link works on the real ISO. > > Also, I don't think I want to mess with the books we've already got on > there. It won't really make much difference in size, and I don't want > to add books at this point, so I guess I just don't see any compelling > reason to mess with it. Thanks for the suggestions though! > > Thanks a lot for looking. I really appreciate the feedback! > > If you find anything else, please let me know. Also, Maybe Greg can > comment on the 404 error. > > Thanks. > > Aaron > > > > On 4/13/10, Gardner Buchanan <gbuchana(a)teksavvy.com> wrote: >> Hi Aaron, >> >> Similarly, I have found that this link does not work: >> >> http://pglaf.org/PGDVD201004-RC1/content/3/5/3/3533/3533-h.zip >> >> followed from here: >> http://pglaf.org/PGDVD201004-RC1/content/etext/3533.html >> >> If you have to muck with things, I also noticed that the following >> section includes the separate volume 1 and 2 of _the Attache_ as >> well as the omnibus. Likely only the two volumes of the omnibus >> are really needed. >> >> Canada -- Social life and customs -- Fiction >> >> * Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (English) By Leacock, Stephen, >> 1869-1944 >> * The Attaché; or, Sam Slick in England — Complete (English) By >> Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 1796-1865 >> * The Attaché; or, Sam Slick in England — Volume 01 (English) By >> Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 1796-1865 >> * The Attaché; or, Sam Slick in England — Volume 02 (English) By >> Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 1796-1865 >> >> >> On 13-Apr-2010 03:32, Greg Newby wrote: >>> >>> Has a link checker been run on this? I quickly found a missing >>> file via file:///PGDVD_2010_04_RC1/etext/3002.html >>> and wonder whether some filetypes or other content might not >>> have made it. >> >> ============================================================ >> Gardner Buchanan <gbuchana(a)teksavvy.com> >> Ottawa, ON FreeBSD: Where you want to go. Today. >> >

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PDF-files
by Fernando Maia Jr. 15 Apr '10

15 Apr '10

[Sorry, I forgot to change the subject.] Hello, volunteers! I'm new here and I have a doubt. Would it be interesting for PG if it would have more PDF-files? I've searched for this information everywhere and I haven't found an answer yet, so that I decided to ask about it here. Sorry for possible mistakes (English isn't my native language). Thanks in advance, Fernando

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freeliterature.org
by Marc D'Hooghe 15 Apr '10

15 Apr '10

Hi there, I started a couple of weeks ago with a new site in support of PG. http://www.freeliterature.org. Two goals: two spread information about free e-books and literature on the web (extensive link list) - and the possibility to help producing e-text by proofreading. You can download the scans of a book of your choice, and the text to proof is sent on demand. Enjoy. Marc.

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slightly off topic, first post, scanning
by Sparr 15 Apr '10

15 Apr '10

This is my first post to the list. I come here for advice not directly related to PG. I have a number of physical books that have had their spines cut off and I need to scan them so they can be OCR'd and stored digitally. I am encountering two problems. All of the bulk page-feed scanners I have tried have one or both of the following issues: Duplex scanning happens simultaneously, so extreme contrast changes (such as borders) from one side of the page show through (about 5%) to the other side. Remnants of glue left on the edge of a page (from the removed spine) get stuck to the inside of the scanner or feeder, ruining the scans of subsequent pages until the scanner is cleaned. Can anyone recommend a solution to either of these problems that can hopefully be applied automatically or in a batch operation? Reduction of human intervention/effort is my goal.

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[SPAM] re: !@! #17135 Twas The Night Before Christmas
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 15 Apr '10

15 Apr '10

gardner said: > So there's two more random data points in BB's column. thanks, gardner. but there's no need to be "random". the big sites using p.g. e-books are very easy to find, because they are... um... big. the first, and foremost, of course, was "black mask". david moynihan had the scripts down to a science, and even offered them to p.g. at one point in time, an offer that was declined, for some stupid reason that was not _just_ stupid, but asininely ridiculous. (and no, i don't even know what that reason was.) next up is "manybooks". matthew's converters are not nearly as good as david's, but he seems to have many loyal users who pick up their books from him, probably because he's always been very good about supporting the widest possible array of machinery... both of these providers have been using books from p.g. going back for many years, so the fact that they were using the plain-text versions might be due to their history... that is, they might just be in a rut... but the newest big provider on the block nowadays is "feedbooks". and as far as i can tell, hadrien also uses the plain-text version as his "starter" version... makes sense, since he stores the text in a database, so it does no good to have somebody else's markup. the number of files being download from these sites these days -- thanks to the kindle/iphone/ipad trio -- is downright _stunning_. hadrien at feedbooks says he's running at about 75,000 downloads every _day_, with 2.5 million in march. several individual books have over 10k downloads, some 20k, and one 30k... *** dakretz said: > Does anyone know of any epublisher other than PG > that *does* distribute the html we provide? well, in a way. apple grabs the .epubs from here. if i'm not mistaken, marcello uses the .html file, if one exists. but if not, he uses the plain-text... i'm quite sure the .epub files are full of ugliness. and mike cook and his "epubbooks" site might use the .html file as his "starter", you'd have to ask him. he hasn't done books "en masse", though, and thus hasn't had to face the problems from inconsistencies. -bowerbird

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