- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: [gutvol-d] branko
by Joshua Hutchinson 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

> ----- Original Message ----- > From: Bowerbird(a)aol.com > > branko, i'm gonna tell you one more time > not to edit my posts over on the teleread blog. > > if you continue, i'll have to come over to the > d.p. forums and have a word with you there. > Why would things happening on an unrelated website concern conversations on DP? That's like arguing with your wife and then yelling at your kids because you're upset. Josh

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branko
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 10 Apr '06

10 Apr '06

branko, i'm gonna tell you one more time not to edit my posts over on the teleread blog. if you continue, i'll have to come over to the d.p. forums and have a word with you there. -bowerbird

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using color to highlight suspicious segments
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 09 Apr '06

09 Apr '06

hey, today is my "d.p. birthday"! :+) it's been 3 years now. and 32 pages, meaning i am averaging just under 11 pages per year... woohoo! ;+) *** roger frank, over on the d.p. forums, said: > My example is this: in a recent book with a character "Ann" > there was one instance of "Ana" that I missed. The first thing > I did was to write code that goes through every word in the book, > checks them against a dictionary, finds the singletons or doubletons, > and then does an edit-distance check on those words against > every word used in the book. In this case, that code finds "Ana" once > and "Ann" many times. It's almost certainly an error that > needs to be flagged. But how? you might be overthinking (and overprogramming) this... a simple ascii-based sort of the unique words in the book (with occurrence counts) can quickly and easily be generated, and a perusal skim of that will reveal instances like this one... use an ascii sort, so that capitalized forms will sort separately: > Ana -- 1 ********** (asterisk entities with few occurrences) > And -- 6 > Ann -- 22 > Apple -- 2 ********** > Ben -- 86 you'll also find that pulling out all _names_ is a good idea; "anything capitalized mid-sentence" is a working definition. not only will that help you sort out the names very quickly, but it will identify those pesky mid-sentence capitalizations that can happen when an "i" was incorrectly upper-cased... > Since I go through the whole book anyway > a paragraph at a time before sending it to PPV, > I'm thinking why can't I have that error and indeed > any suspicious situation flagged in the file I review? > And what better way is there than to use color? > So as I go through the book a page at a time > I might use one color for questionable one-off errors > (like "Ana" for "Ann"), another color for apparent quote mark > mismatches, another for spelling suspects, and so forth. > So this idea is half-baked at best, but I'm going to explore it. it's not a half-baked idea. it works quite wonderfully for me... the one thing i'd suggest is that you build this into a program that lets you make the corrections right away, inside of itself, rather than doing the display via .html and then having to go to a separate program to do the required editing... extra points if your program can analyze the list created above and wisk you to the very place where the single "ann" is located, complete with the scan placed next to it for a quick evaluation... > If I'm crazy, tell me now. > If it might be worthwhile, I'd like to know. Thanks. you're not crazy. in fact, you're smarter than the average bear. -bowerbird

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Time's Man of the Millennium
by Michael Hart 09 Apr '06

09 Apr '06

I'm looking for a copy or two of this particular Time magazine to keep in our Project Gutenberg archives, if anyone should be willing to part with a copy or finds one out there. Thanks!!! Michael

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[Fwd: You're on PC World's "101 Fabulous Freebies" list!]
by Marcello Perathoner 06 Apr '06

06 Apr '06

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: You're on PC World's "101 Fabulous Freebies" list! Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2006 14:06:40 -0700 From: Keri Campbell <Keri_Campbell(a)pcworld.com> To: webmaster(a)gutenberg.org Congratulations! It is my pleasure to inform you know that your product or service has been selected to appear on PC World's ?101 Fabulous Freebies? list. The article is featured in PC World?s May 2006 issue, which goes on sale at newsstands April 11. Downloads or services named to the ?101 Fabulous Freebies? list were chosen by PC Worldeditors based on features, design, and performance. Each product must be a fully-functioning version consumers can obtain at no cost. Your product/service on PC World's 101 Fabulous Freebies list: Project Gutenberg The article is now available online at: http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,124883,tk,pcw_pr,findid,52632,… Attached below are some items that will help you promote this designation: The ?PC World 101 Fabulous Freebies? logo (.eps & .jpg files) for your use in advertising, packaging, sales kits, or on your own Web site. When using the logo, you must add the exact product name or service that won below the logo. See sample below. If using the logo online, we ask that you link it to the corresponding article on PCWorld.com using the URL above. << PC World 101 Fabulous Freebies logo: May 2006 >> Exact product or service name "PC World 101 Fabulous Freebies? announcement press release template Reprints information If you're not the right person to receive this information, please forward to the appropriate marketing and/or public relations contact. Sincerely, Keri Campbell PC World keri_campbell(a)pcworld.com -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster(a)gutenberg.org

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news.com.com article on eBooks, Sony...
by Greg Newby 06 Apr '06

06 Apr '06

It was a welcome change from the norm that this reporter wanted to talk with someone from Project Gutenberg (me, as it worked out): http://news.com.com/E-books%2C+has+your+time+come/2100-1025_3-6057814.html E-books, has your time come? By Elinor Mills Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: April 5, 2006, 4:00 AM PDT Recent announcements regarding electronic books have breathed fresh life into a seemingly moribund market. But some experts say e-books need to do more than move ink onto digital displays to go mainstream. Sony announced on Monday that its Sony Reader will be sold at Borders bookstores for between $300 and $400 and texts will be available for download from the Sony Connect online store this summer. And on Tuesday, Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury began offering titles for download off the Internet, presumably for reading on PCs. "Although it's not a big area now, it will be in the future," Bloomsbury Chairman Nigel Newton told Reuters. "We want to stake out our territory." The news raises a question: Is there suddenly a market for what so far has been a novelty act? E-books, which can be downloaded to a special reading device or a traditional PC, got a major push in 2000 when Microsoft partnered with Barnes & Noble on an e-book store for Microsoft Reader software. Three years later, Barnes & Noble discontinued its e-book efforts, citing slow sales. "Expectations were way out of line with the evolution of these new forms of reading," said Steve Potash, chief executive of Overdrive, a digital media clearinghouse that hosts about 150,000 digital books, music and video titles. "A few years ago we didn't have quite the selection" that's available now. However, major publishers, schools and universities, and public libraries have come around and are jumping on the bandwagon, he said. But the relative sparsity of selections still vexes, as do other criticisms. Five years ago, in addition to the lack of titles, some customers complained about restrictions in e-book readers on printing, copying, exporting to other types of devices and sharing with other companies' e-book readers. Price, too, has been a factor. "We don't see a lot of resistance to electronic books per se," said Gregory Newby, director of Project Gutenberg, the first electronic library, which offers 20,000 titles for free. "What we see are limiting factors in specialized readers and difficulty in finding good stuff to read." Plus, "publishers are charging the same amount for an electronic book as for a paper book." There are other challenges too. With e-book readers, people may be able to store numerous texts in one small device and do things to make reading easier, such as changing type size, something that's impossible with print. But people also like to share books with others, resell them and hand them down to their children, he said. "When you buy a book, you have it forever," Newby said. "With these electronic books, you often are prevented from doing those things that you can do with regular books. What happens when my device breaks?...Books aren't just words on a page. They are things you can trade, share and store for later." To be compelling enough to trigger any kind of mass migration away from paper books, e-books will need to have compelling characteristics regular books don't, such as interactivity and mixed-media capabilities, Newby and others said. Authors could write books that let people read alternate endings or that contain moving pictures and characters that speak aloud, he said. "This would be a pretty exciting change from plain old paper. People like interactive stuff online. Why wouldn't we see that in a book?" David Bass, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Ebrary, which supplies e-books to academic institutions and public and corporate libraries, had a similar vision. In the future, e-book readers "will be experience-oriented, not device-oriented. It has to be more than a book," he said. "That's why e-books in 1999 and 2000 were really a failure in the consumer market, because all you were getting was printed text." E-book readers also face stiff competition from devices like iPods, personal digital assistants and even smart phones--gadgets that let users do more than just read text, said Jean Bedord, a senior analyst at research and consulting firm Shore Communications. "Reading books electronically will take off, but I think a higher proportion will be read on a handheld device" that offers multiple functions, she said. This is particularly so in light of book-scanning projects from Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com and others, which promise to make it easy to search for and within books, she said. Right now, there are niches where electronic books have seen greater growth than the general consumer market, such as academic sales, experts said. And public libraries across the country have been big adopters, offering free downloads to anyone with a library card. Ebrary saw the number of its institutional customers grow from 400 to 900 last year, and the number of its users double to about 6 million, according to Bass. "Consumers really like taking a paperback or hardcover on the plane with them or to the beach," he said. "Whereas students and professors are in front of the computer all day long." Students on about 100 campuses in the U.S. have the option of using digital textbooks on laptops, which cost 25 percent to 35 percent less than paper textbooks, said Overdrive's Potash, who is also president of the International Digital Publishing Forum. "One-third of dental students in the country have notebook computers with their entire curriculum on them," he added. But even Potash says that for everyone else, the user experience of digital books has to change to really see the market take off. "We are again trying to keep expectations in check," said Potash. "We are still a few years away (from) taking an electronic book into the bathtub or into the sand."

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in other news
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Apr '06

05 Apr '06

in other news... apple has given their blessing to running windows on mac hardware. doing so is in beta now, and it will be built into the next iteration of o.s.x. of course, no one is gonna buy a mac to run windows on it, because if that's what you want, you can buy a much cheaper box... but for those of us who prefer to use the mac o.s., it'll be quite nice to have the _ability_ to boot into win xp on those rare occasions when we might have a need to do so. -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] pdf production
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Apr '06

05 Apr '06

dave said: > I have Page Plus 11 which *says* that it produces pdf. > Is it any good? i have no idea, sorry. but any number of word-processing and d.t.p. programs can produce excellent .pdf in the hands of knowledgeable users... i'm trying to do something a little different, though, which is to give an average person the ability to churn out a good .pdf after doing only a minimal amount of editing on a p.g. e-text (to bring it into the z.m.l. realm), and then bringing it into my z.m.l.-viewer-program, where they can customize the font, fontsize, colors, leading, etc. to their own preferences... if i do my job right, it should be easy as pie for a person to output .pdf's that approach or surpass the quality of those found as exemplar e-books over on the planet-pdf website: > http://www.planetpdf.com/free_pdf_ebooks.asp?CurrentPage=1 appended is their catalog, edited from their site... -bowerbird Free PDF e-Books Archive Great Expectations Charles Dickens My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip. Aesop's Fables Aesop A cock was once strutting up and down the farmyard among the hens when suddenly he espied something shinning amid the straw. "Ho! ho!" quoth he, "that's for me," and soon rooted it out from beneath the straw. What did it turn out to be but a Pearl that by some chance had been lost in the yard? "You may be a treasure," quoth Master Cock, "to men that prize you, but for me I would rather have a single barley-corn than a peck of pearls." Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Everything was in confusion in the Oblonskys' house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, "and what is the use of a book," thought Alice "without pictures or conversation?" Around the World in 80 Days Jules Verne Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron -- at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without growing old. Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge. Three Ghost Stories Charles Dickens When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked down the Line. Emma Jane Austen Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her. Andersen's Fairy Tales Hans Christian Andersen Many years ago, there was an Emperor, who was so excessively fond of new clothes, that he spent all his money in dress. He did not trouble himself in the least about his soldiers; nor did he care to go either to the theatre or the chase, except for the opportunities then afforded him for displaying his new clothes. He had a different suit for each hour of the day; and as of any other king or emperor, one is accustomed to say, "he is sitting in council," it was always said of him, "The Emperor is sitting in his wardrobe." A Tale of Two Cities Charles Dickens It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson SQUIRE TRELAWNEY, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17 and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof. Ulysses James Joyce Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing-gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned: -- Introibo ad altare Dei. Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely: -- Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit! A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon "Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to."?? Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour. The Lost World Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth, -- a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self. If anything could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the thought of such a father-in-law. I am convinced that he really believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of his company, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism, a subject upon which he was by way of being an authority. Women in Love D.H. Lawrence Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen sat one morning in the window-bay of their father's house in Beldover, working and talking. Ursula was stitching a piece of brightly-coloured embroidery, and Gudrun was drawing upon a board which she held on her knee. They were mostly silent, talking as their thoughts strayed through their minds. Dracula Bram Stoker 3 May. Bistritz. -- Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. Erewhon Samuel Butler If the reader will excuse me, I will say nothing of my antecedents, nor of the circumstances which led me to leave my native country; the narrative would be tedious to him and painful to myself. Suffice it, that when I left home it was with the intention of going to some new colony, and either finding, or even perhaps purchasing, waste crown land suitable for cattle or sheep farming, by which means I thought that I could better my fortunes more rapidly than in England. For the Term of His Natural Life Marcus Clarke In the breathless stillness of a tropical afternoon, when the air was hot and heavy, and the sky brazen and cloudless, the shadow of the Malabar lay solitary on the surface of the glittering sea. Frankenstein Mary Shelley You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with such evil forebodings. I arrived here yesterday, and my first task is to assure my dear sister of my welfare and increasing confidence in the success of my undertaking. Grimm's Fairy Tales The Brothers Grimm A certain king had a beautiful garden, and in the garden stood a tree which bore golden apples. These apples were always counted, and about the time when they began to grow ripe it was found that every night one of them was gone. The king became very angry at this, and ordered the gardener to keep watch all night under the tree. The gardener set his eldest son to watch; but about twelve o'clock he fell asleep, and in the morning another of the apples was missing. Then the second son was ordered to watch; and at midnight he too fell asleep, and in the morning another apple was gone. Then the third son offered to keep watch; but the gardener at first would not let him. Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide. Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte There was no possibility of taking a walk that day. We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Reed, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further outdoor exercise was now out of the question. Kidnapped Robert Louis Stevenson I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house. The sun began to shine upon the summit of the hills as I went down the road; and by the time I had come as far as the manse, the blackbirds were whistling in the garden lilacs, and the mist that hung around the valley in the time of the dawn was beginning to arise and die away. Little Women Louisa May Alcott "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. "It's so dreadful to be poor!" sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress. "I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all," added little Amy, with an injured sniff. Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert We were in class when the headmaster came in, followed by a "new fellow", not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work. Middlemarch George Eliot Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. Her hand and wrist were so finely formed that she could wear sleeves not less bare of style than those in which the Blessed Virgin appeared to Italian painters; and her profile as well as her stature and bearing seemed to gain the more dignity from her plain garments, which by the side of provincial fashion gave her the impressiveness of a fine quotation from the Bible, -- or from one of our elder poets, -- in a paragraph of today's newspaper. Moby Dick Herman Melville Call me Ishmael. Some years ago -- never mind how long precisely -- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off -- then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me. Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard Joseph Conrad IN THE time of Spanish rule, and for many years afterwards, the town of Sulaco -- the luxuriant beauty of the orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity -- had never been commercially anything more important than a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides and indigo. The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the conquerors that, needing a brisk gale to move at all, would lie becalmed, where your modern ship built on clipper lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had been barred out of Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its vast gulf. Notes from the Underground Fyodor Dostoevsky I am a sick man. ... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well -- let it get worse! Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child's bed. Oliver Twist Charles Dickens Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter. Paradise Lost John Milton Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the World, and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, Sing, Heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed In the beginning how the heavens and earth Rose out of Chaos: or, if Sion hill Pollyanna Eleanor H. Porter Miss Polly Harrington entered her kitchen a little hurriedly this June morning. Miss Polly did not usually make hurried movements; she specially prided herself on her repose of manner. But today she was hurrying -- actually hurrying. Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters. Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe I WAS born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called -- nay we call ourselves and write our name -- Crusoe; and so my companions always called me. Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen The family of Dashwood had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence "THE BOTTOMS" succeeded to "Hell Row". Hell Row was a block of thatched, bulging cottages that stood by the brookside on Greenhill Lane. There lived the colliers who worked in the little gin-pits two fields away. The brook ran under the alder trees, scarcely soiled by these small mines, whose coal was drawn to the surface by donkeys that plodded wearily in a circle round a gin. And all over the countryside were these same pits, some of which had been worked in the time of Charles II, the few colliers and the donkeys burrowing down like ants into the earth, making queer mounds and little black places among the cornfields and the meadows. And the cottages of these coalminers, in blocks and pairs here and there, together with odd farms and homes of the stockingers, straying over the parish, formed the village of Bestwood. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer Mark Twain The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never looked THROUGH them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style", not service -- she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear: The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky ALEXEY Fyodorovitch Karamazov was the third son of Fyodor Pavlovitch Karamazov, a landowner well known in our district in his own day, and still remembered among us owing to his gloomy and tragic death, which happened thirteen years ago, and which I shall describe in its proper place. For the present I will only say that this "landowner" -- for so we used to call him, although he hardly spent a day of his life on his own estate -- was a strange type, yet one pretty frequently to be met with, a type abject and vicious and at the same time senseless. The Hound of the Baskervilles Arthur Conan Doyle Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a "Penang lawyer". Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. "To James Mortimer, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.", was engraved upon it, with the date "1884". It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry -- dignified, solid, and reassuring. The Idiot Fyodor Dostoyevsky Towards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o'clock one morning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching the latter city at full speed. The morning was so damp and misty that it was only with great difficulty that the day succeeded in breaking; and it was impossible to distinguish anything more than a few yards away from the carriage windows. The Iliad Homer Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men, and great Achilles, first fell out with one another. The Island of Doctor Moreau H. G. Wells I DO not propose to add anything to what has already been written concerning the loss of the "Lady Vain". As everyone knows, she collided with a derelict when ten days out from Callao. The longboat, with seven of the crew, was picked up eighteen days after by H. M. gunboat "Myrtle", and the story of their terrible privations has become quite as well known as the far more horrible "Medusa" case. But I have to add to the published story of the "Lady Vain" another, possibly as horrible and far stranger. It has hitherto been supposed that the four men who were in the dingey perished, but this is incorrect. I have the best of evidence for this assertion: I was one of the four men. The Jungle Book Rudyard Kipling It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world." The Last of the Mohicans James Fenimore Cooper It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Washington Irving In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood Howard Pyle IN MERRY ENGLAND in the time of old, when good King Henry the Second ruled the land, there lived within the green glades of Sherwood Forest, near Nottingham Town, a famous outlaw whose name was Robin Hood. No archer ever lived that could speed a gray goose shaft with such skill and cunning as his, nor were there ever such yeomen as the sevenscore merry men that roamed with him through the greenwood shades. Right merrily they dwelled within the depths of Sherwood Forest, suffering neither care nor want, but passing the time in merry games of archery or bouts of cudgel play, living upon the King's venison, washed down with draughts of ale of October brewing. The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes. The Odyssey Homer Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy. Many cities did he visit, and many were the nations with whose manners and customs he was acquainted; moreover he suffered much by sea while trying to save his own life and bring his men safely home; but do what he might he could not save his men, for they perished through their own sheer folly in eating the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion; so the god prevented them from ever reaching home. Tell me, too, about all these things, oh daughter of Jove, from whatsoever source you may know them. The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not -- some people of course never do -- the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The Prince Nicolo Machiavelli All states, all powers, that have held and hold rule over men have been and are either republics or principalities. Principalities are either hereditary, in which the family has been long established; or they are new. The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting. As the landscape changed from brown to green, the army awakened, and began to tremble with eagerness at the noise of rumors. It cast its eyes upon the roads, which were growing from long troughs of liquid mud to proper thoroughfares. A river, amber-tinted in the shadow of its banks, purled at the army's feet; and at night, when the stream had become of a sorrowful blackness, one could see across it the red, eyelike gleam of hostile campfires set in the low brows of distant hills. The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne A throng of bearded men, in sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson MR. UTTERSON the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary, and yet somehow lovable. At friendly meetings, and when the wine was to his taste, something eminently human beaconed from his eye; something indeed which never found its way into his talk, but which spoke not only in these silent symbols of the after-dinner face, but more often and loudly in the acts of his life. He was austere with himself; drank gin when he was alone, to mortify a taste for vintages; and though he enjoyed the theatre, had not crossed the doors of one for twenty years. But he had an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove. The Thirty-Nine Steps John Buchan I returned from the City about three o'clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life. I had been three months in the Old Country, and was fed up with it. If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have been feeling like that I should have laughed at him; but there was the fact. The weather made me liverish, the talk of the ordinary Englishman made me sick, I couldn't get enough exercise, and the amusements of London seemed as flat as soda -- water that has been standing in the sun. The Time Machine H. G. Wells The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled, and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious after-dinner atmosphere when thought roams gracefully free of the trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way -- marking the points with a lean forefinger -- as we sat and lazily admired his earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his fecundity. The War of the Worlds H. G. Wells No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this globe about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler When I was a small boy at the beginning of the century I remember an old man who wore knee-breeches and worsted stockings, and who used to hobble about the street of our village with the help of a stick. He must have been getting on for eighty in the year 1807, earlier than which date I suppose I can hardly remember him, for I was born in 1802. A few white locks hung about his ears, his shoulders were bent and his knees feeble, but he was still hale, and was much respected in our little world of Paleham. His name was Pontifex. The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Edgar Allan Poe BY late accounts from Rotterdam, that city seems to be in a high state of philosophical excitement. Indeed, phenomena have there occurred of a nature so completely unexpected -- so entirely novel -- so utterly at variance with preconceived opinions -- as to leave no doubt on my mind that long ere this all Europe is in an uproar, all physics in a ferment, all reason and astronomy together by the ears. Utopia Thomas More He that knows one of their towns knows them all -- they are so like one another, except where the situation makes some difference. I shall therefore describe one of them, and none is so proper as Amaurot; for as none is more eminent (all the rest yielding in precedence to this, because it is the seat of their supreme council), so there was none of them better known to me, I having lived five years all together in it. War and Peace Leo Tolstoy "Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist -- I really believe he is Antichrist -- I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave', as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you -- sit down and tell me all the news." Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte 1801. -- I have just returned from a visit to my landlord -- the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name. Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Nietzsche 1. The Will to Truth, which is to tempt us to many a hazardous enterprise, the famous Truthfulness of which all philosophers have hitherto spoken with respect, what questions has this Will to Truth not laid before us! What strange, perplexing, questionable questions! It is already a long story; yet it seems as if it were hardly commenced. Is it any wonder if we at last grow distrustful, lose patience, and turn impatiently away? That this Sphinx teaches us at last to ask questions ourselves?

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once more on translation
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Apr '06

05 Apr '06

once more on "mechanical language translation"... first, read: > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/technology/techspecial4/05lego.html page 2 of this article talks about amazon's "mechanical turk", a _fascinating_ service unveiled recently which is an intermediary offering human piecemeal employees who will perform smallish tasks for smallish fees. these tasks -- which are called "hits", short for "human intelligence task" -- are administered via the web and picked up by willing workers; examples are "identifying objects in a photo" or answering "is there a human in this photo?" another example of a "hit" that's used by amazon is to "pick the one photo out of these three photos that best illustrates the storefront of this business". each "hit" that a worker performs receives a payment, which might range from as little as one-half a cent up to $.25 or more, depending on the nature of the "hit"... amazon developed this service for its own purposes, and then realized that they could make a business by offering it to other entities that could use it beneficially. amazon handles all the money transactions, which makes it possible to get such piecemeal work done _very_ cheaply. for information on the mechanical turk, read: > http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/104-0655434-6846340?node=15879911 ok, back to the new york times article now, it says this: > One new start-up, Casting Words, is taking advantage > of the Amazon service, known as Mturk, to offer > automated transcription using human transcribers > for less than half the cost of typical commercial online services. reading further, "casting words" has its "mturk" workers download a digital audio file, then upload a transcript of it, so there's nothing really "revolutionary" about what they do, they're just taking advantage of a rather-cheap labor-force. (my guess is a lot of the people who are accepting "hits" are homebound, perhaps physically-handicapped people are stay-at-home moms looking to pick up some income.) however, there's no real reason that "casting words" couldn't come up with a more innovative methodology, one that would create a trio of computerized translations of a specific passage and then offer them as a "hit" in a "click the best one" fashion... this combination of computerized translation with human review might be a very potent means of obtaining high-quality translation at a relatively cheap price. and yes, someone could also set up a commercialized version of distributed proofreaders to get book-digitization done cheaply... (yes, d.p. does it for "free", but they also get their web-space and bandwidth donated, so their actual costs aren't readily apparent. it's also become increasingly clear they won't be able to keep up with the volume we're getting from the large scanning projects, so at some point, if we want proofed text for all of those scans, we're going to have to face the issue of whether we'll pay for it, or whether we'll decide we don't really want it all _that_ badly.) -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] another dose of reality
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 05 Apr '06

05 Apr '06

holden said: > It seems like you're trying to pick a fight nope. just sharing information. got any? > The article you post is irrelevant to current XML-based plans for PG. well, i guess that's a matter of opinion. i think it is relevant, in the sense that it talks about a bunch of much-hyped "solutions" which have not materialized, and now might _never_ come to fruition, including some that are counted on here. > The whole point of the article is that direct delivery of XML to users > with stylesheets has not yet happened. that's one of those "solutions", yes, but just one... > However, from what I've heard about current PG uses of XML, > they tend towards using XML as a master format for storage well yes, and as simon points out, that is a "fallback" position from the one that was originally staked, which was the serving of x.m.l. files. but even this fallback rings hollow here, since the position that x.m.l. is needed for _conversion_to_multiple_formats_ was always a tenuous one, in the sense that many entities out there are already doing mass conversion of p.g. e-texts, even though they aren't in x.m.l. format. further, the x.s.l.t. methodology that has always been the crucial linchpin in the "strategy" of x.m.l. advocates here is one of the ones that simon relegates to the past-tense. i find that interesting. and surely the examples of it that we have seen so far have shown it is badly lacking. add to the equation now that i'm showing, with real example-books, that z.m.l. can convert to multiple formats quite easily, on the user's desktop, via button-clicks, and the question becomes hard to avoid: what's the reason to apply heavy markup? don't get me wrong, i'm sure the hypesters will be able to invent one, they are creative that way, it's just that i think history should warn us to take these with a grain of salt... > On a slight side note, I don't > see the point of your aggressive posts first, my posts are not "aggressive". but if you _choose_ to interpret them that way, then i don't see _your_ point. wouldn't it be better just to skip them? why even bother reading them, holden? (let alone replying to them?) i mean, seriously, i could just as easily interpret _your_ posts as ad hominem, since you've said straight out that i am "trying to pick a fight" with "aggressive posts". but going down that road wouldn't be too productive, so i consciously choose not to; instead i have responded to your post with rebuttals that are on-topic and on-point, without diverting to attack your character. if you want a mud-fight or a flame-war, well i've shown i can do those things too; but why not friendly conversation instead? and don't get me wrong, i don't mean to be disingenuous here, because i fully understand that it's not pleasant to be on the losing side of a "you were wrong" comment. but that's the risk you take when you take a stand and you're wrong. but when someone is wrong, and you say they are wrong, that doesn't mean it's an "aggressive" post. > Everybody here should be (is?) aiming > towards the furthering of PG's goals. well yes, i believe that we all agree on that. the next issue is, "how do we obtain that?" on _that_ question, there is disagreement, which has been longstanding, and ugly too. and as much as some people might like to sweep this disagreement under the carpet, and have people forget what they said since things aren't looking too swell for their side, the disagreement still runs deep, and wide... meanwhile, little progress is being made on "the goals of p.g." that we all agree on... how long does t.e.i./x.m.l./whatever remain on the table as "the official plan" before it's required to show some action and results? how are "the goals of p.g." being served? those are questions i think you all should be asking yourselves. as for me, i'll just keep on plugging away with my little experiments, and maybe someday you'll realize that z.m.l. is best. > If whatever format you choose > happens to preferred in the long run, > that's not a reason for gloating. well, i certainly will not be "gloating", because i don't see much point in that. however, it _is_ important to keep in mind whose predictions were wrong, and right, and whose credibility was badly shredded, for future reference... you know, fool me once, your fault, but fool me twice, my fault, right? so surely you can't mind if we evaluate those matters quite closely, can you? besides, in retrospect, my methodologies will be so _obvious_ that no one will even consider their "invention" to be _special_; that it was "controversial" will be laughable. luckily, i'll be able to point to lots and lots of messages that people posted to _this_ listserve as solid evidence that some people didn't get it. (which is why i spent so much time discussing it! y'all would have been a lot smarter to _fold_ your losing hand much earlier in this poker-game than you did, instead of constantly raising your bets...) > The other people on this list are merely > trying to help PG as much as we all hope you are. and i give them full credit on the variable of "trying". that doesn't mean i'm gonna start paying attention to what they say they see in their crystal ball though, because we've come to learn that it's badly cracked... -bowerbird

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