- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

re: !@!Re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 03 Feb '06

03 Feb '06

ian said: > We'll just have to take your word > for how good these "routines" are then. well, until i release the app, yep. or you can not believe it, don't matter much to me. you're obviously new around these parts, as these points have been made before, so i'll 'splain you something simple here. i'm not asking you to "take my word". i'm telling you that you can prove this for yourself, to yourself, by yourself... write the routines. you'll see they work. keep track of the time you spend doing it. after it ends up as a few years of your life, you'll think it's worth a piece of change too. how big the piece of change depends upon how much you think a few years of your life is worth. so, how much _is_ your life worth? > You're kidding right ? Your code might be > fantastic but you're deluding yourself if you think > anyone will pay you six figures for a text processing app. it's a marketplace. sellers charge what they want. buyers decide what price they will pay. if the two find a mutual ground, the sale will be made, and if they do not, then no sale will be made that day. ok? for the record, though, amazon.com bought mobipocket for about 3.5 million dollars, u.s., according to estimates. by my count, that is 7 figures. > Although with an all-volunteer project > its hard to define and enforce the format. i think you'd agree my format is an easy one, and could be "enforced" with little difficulty. it's actually very close to the format that is even now being "enforced", in most regards. judge for yourself, though, by reviewing the test-suite that i made, which is available here: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/test-suite/test-suite.zml > I assume the pdf there is generated > from the zml ? via what mechanism? > a single conversion step > or via somthing like latex ? inside of the z.m.l. viewer-program, in which you have already set your preferences according to your desires (on things like font, textsize, leading, and many others), just print to a .pdf driver, and the .pdf will be created... > Any reason to not go with one of the > existing plain-text markup languages > that already exist and have > existing conversion tools ? > reST, asciidoc and others. none of them were targeted directly enough for books. z.m.l. was derived from actual hands-on experience with the conventions present in the project gutenberg e-library. this gave me a sharp focus at exactly the right perspective; i was able to implement every thing i needed, and no others. however... given my experience now, i think i could advise any of those other methodologies on how they might do what z.m.l. does. > Is there a format description for z.m.l ? well, yes, but i see it's not online. so i'll put a copy up. if you're in a hurry, you can join the viewer beta-test -- send an e-mail to zml_talk(a)yahoogroups.com -- and download the most recent viewer, which will have a copy of "the 11 rules of z.m.l." contained within it... you could also check the archives of this listserve, as i've sent it here on a couple different occasions. but if you can wait a couple days, i'll put it up online. > Do you have existing tools/parsers for z.m.l with > freely available code? Or is that another 6 figures ? :) roll your own. the rules are very simple. > and how is this different from what gutenmark does ? > Apart from hopefully fewer errors in the html or latex output ? gutenmark gave up because of the inconsistencies i point out. thus, it's an excellent example of what _could_ have been, if only a simple concession to attain a minimal amount of consistency had been made, and acted upon. you can judge the quality of my .html versions by looking at the "alice" example that i cited earlier... (i won't pretend my .html converter is finished yet, but i also won't pretend to care all that much about getting it done, since a web-browser is a bad viewer. but it's important to support the internet in general, and equally important to support the p.d.a. option.) > Surely this is competely orthogonal to the choice of markup language. the point is that you don't need heavy markup to get a kick-ass high-performance e-book experience, so it is a mistake to pay the price of doing heavy markup. > uh - just because you use whitespace > instead of <h> to indicate headings > doesn't mean its not markup. well, it means that it's _zen_ markup. because you can't see it. it's invisible. and as such, it doesn't muck up the reading experience, so it's easy to edit. clean, simple, graceful, all the good stuff. compared to this elegance, markup is cruft. > oh and the fact that you've named it > Zen *markup* language :) oh, so i see you _did_ get the joke. that's good, i was a bit worried there. :+) -bowerbird p.s. "z.m.l. -- it's two steps better than x.m.l."

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re: !@!Re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 02 Feb '06

02 Feb '06

michael said: > I guess you have a different way of interpreting what bowerbird says. i think you're getting some of the references mixed up. but it would be too complicated to explain. > I keep encouraging him to encourage others, rather than to discourage encouragement is in the eye of the beholder... > and that this is more likely to get him what he says he wants. once again, this is not a matter of "what i want". to continue to operate under that erroneous assumption is to be misguided... when i want a consistent e-library, i will rework your e-texts. it's no big deal. in my spare time, i can probably do it in a year. no big deal. if you gave me a dozen volunteers, it'd be a month. (yes, i say that jokingly, since i know you don't "give" volunteers; they don't take your orders; _they_ decide what they want to do.) > Personally, I worry that he might prefer to proven right by history, > rather than by carrying his own plans to fruition when i am proven right by history, others will carry my plans to fruition. or, as is more likely, when others stumble upon the same truths that i have stumbled upon, and such truths prove to be the generative force for the "plans" of those people in the future, _then_ _they_ will make _their_ plans come to fruition... and i'll be as much of a footnote in those plans as ian feldman, if either of us is included at all... you can't stop an idea whose time has come. it's too grandiose to think these are "my" ideas. there is a truth out there -- that a document's structure can be indicated via plain-text means and "markup" that is "invisible" -- and anyone who taps into this truth is equally empowered. i have told people here about this truth, hoping that they would grasp it, but they have made it totally clear that they do not _wish_ to grasp it. fine. no problem. it would have made your life easier, but you _can_ live your life without it... nevertheless, other people _will_ discover it. other people already _have_ discovered it, and they are in the process of "making it work", so i'm not worried about the future, not in any way. (well, i'm worried about the very real chance that human beings will bring about our own extinction, but if/when that happens, our markup systems will be one of the last things we'll need to worry about.) > at least with the army of volunteers we have at hand. i don't think you have _any_ volunteers for the job of making the library more consistent. and if there is no call for them, from the "top" of this bureaucracy, you never will have any, either. but if i am wrong, i can certainly provide any such volunteers with tools. but remember, the favor they'd do is for you, not me. > I do hope that he fines someone > to pay for his work to the tune he hopes interesting slip there -- "fines someone"... :+) > and that he, or someone in a similar position, will > eventually create something along the order of his dreams. did i mention i'm in the process of putting up lots of examples? > I just think it would/could/should be now not later, and did i mention i'm putting up lots of examples _now_? > and via volunteers rather than via some billionaire who > gives him an enterprise grant, venture capital, etc. i'm fine with volunteers. i'm fine with a billionaire's money. i'm fine sitting alone in my girlfriend's spare room with her g4. i have no complaints. i enjoy life. and smile when i write posts. :+) > We've seen the billionaire approach to eBooks, and, frankly, > it will be hard to imagine that such approaches could not > have had any worse effect on the eBook world, even had that > been their intention. i quite agree. and if i do take a billionaire's money, it will be because i know i am able to do the job right. (or it _could_ just be because i _want_ to take a billionaire's money. but even then, i'll make sure i do no harm to the future of e-books.) > That said, I/we can still hope the change that in the future. . . . if changing me is part of your plan, i'd say it might be easier to change your plan instead... ;+) -bowerbird

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re: !@!Re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

a description of the zen markup language format can be found at: > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/test-suite/zml11rules.txt i didn't examine this old file closely to see if i would update any of it, but i'm sure that the vast majority of what it includes is still current... the aim is to make the format simple enough that a fourth-grader can understand it and use it productively, so i'm interested in the feedback that any fourth-graders out there might have... :+) -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] Language free version of guiguts?
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

i said: > it's fair to say yep, that's me, and not some rogue impostor, just mailed from my girlfriend's account, so you know. -bowerbird

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re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

michael said: > I read the PG eBooks with all sorts of plain text viewers > and have no problems with inconsistencies, much less in > the various browsers that have a wider range of options. the inconsistencies are ones that a person "wouldn't notice", but which trip up any automated processing by a program... an obvious example would be that most section-headings (e.g., chapter headings) are preceded by four blank lines, but the occasional one might have three, or five, instead... nobody would claim that, in terms of a human reader, this inconsistency is meaningful -- it's not -- but when it comes to a program analyzing the file, it might make a difference... if there's only one level of header, then 3 or 4 or 5 blank lines might be equally good at signaling that there is a new section. but if a book has three different levels of headers, as some do, then you could use 5 blank lines to indicate the major sections, 4 to indicate regular sections, and 3 to indicate the subsections. if the number of blank lines isn't consistent, the program has to become much more sophisticated (and thus prone to failure) to try and determine the _actual_ level of each header. another example involves lines which should not be rewrapped, such as the lines in a table, or the lines in a letter's address-block. if these are consistently prefaced with one or more leading spaces, then a rewrap routine is easy to _write_ and easy to _comprehend_, and a programmer can spend time on more productive pursuits that add value and functionality, not ones that just resolve inconsistencies. lots of programmers have _started_ programs for the p.g. library. the vast majority of them have given up before long, in frustration. the inconsistencies in the formatting are the main source of difficulty. someday someone will set up a shadow version of the p.g. library where all the inconsistencies are resolved, and you will see then how much value is added by the ingenuity of programmers who are able to take consistent formatting of the e-texts for granted... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Language free version of guiguts?
by Joshua Hutchinson 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

> ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Dave Fawthrop" <hyphen(a)hyphenologist.co.uk> > > With my other hat on I write "intelligent" language software, Low 90% > correct is very bad, above 99% correct is acceptable. For a voluntary > organisation I would be accept 50% correct. > Run a spellcheck on that same document. If you get even the low 90% that you deem very bad, I'd be amazed. GutCheck is working on something with even MORE ambiguous rules... grammar. 50% correct wouldn't be just acceptable, it would be outright, amazingly, fantasically, beyond expectations ... GOOD. Josh

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re: [gutvol-d] Ebook reading devices
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

ian said: > Fair enough - then the iRex device > might be a better bet. And less proprietry. might be. except i heard it will be $300-$500. with no deep pockets to subsidize and back it. way too much for a dumb terminal in this age... next? -bowerbird

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Anyone recomend a good free wisywig html editor to PG standards
by Dave Fawthrop 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

Just turning my Hartley books into html. The generate html function of guiguts did not do a bad job of generating html, but the poetry needs a lot of tweaking. But it expects me to insert flags by hand :-( I gave up doing that in the bad old nroff days. <shudder> way back in OMG 1986. Anyone recommend a good free windoze html editor to PG standards? I normally use an old copy of M$ Front page for html. -- Dave Fawthrop <dave hyphenologist co uk> "Intelligent Design?" my knees say *not*. "Intelligent Design?" my back says *not*. More like "Incompetent design". Sig (C) Copyright Public Domain

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Re: [gutvol-d] "Lady Chatterly's Lover" public domain in the U.S.?
by Tony Baechler 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

Hello all. Not that this means anything, but I saw an audio version of this on the Internet Archive. Since the IA is based in the US, I would presume that they cleared the copyright but maybe not. It looks like a volunteer human reading. Details on which source edition are vague or nonexistant. You can look if you want. Just search for it at http://www.archive.org/. I'm not sure if it is in the audio collection or the ourmedia collection so I suggest using the general search form. If this is still under copyright, someone should tell them so they can remove it or move it to a European server. It was posted last August so could be gone by now.

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!@!Re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Feb '06

01 Feb '06

mikey said: > Please keep comments on issues > raised in bowerbird's "blah blah blog" > off this list. sorry to disturb your sleep, mikey. but you can go back to bed now... *** bastien said: > Can we see the code? no. > Can we use/test/improve it? i'll release an app sooner or later that you can use. as far as the routines themselves, creating them took a _persistent_ application of common-sense and a lot of elbow-grease. that's all. which means you can generate them yourself, if you really want. i'll also be willing to give you some pointers if you should happen to hit a wall at any point, once you have shown me you are willing to take on the job. or, if you prefer, you can take the shortcut, and buy my source code. the price is in the 6 figures. i can't afford to give away something that valuable. if you can, i suggest you buy it and give it away... but really, what i want you to take away is that you _can_ do this, and it's really not even all that _hard_. for instance, i've talked about using the number of preceding blank lines as an indicator of heading level. assuming that such consistency has been maintained, even a beginning programmer could write the code to ascertain the structure of a book. care to try it? write it in pseudo-code first, and then in a language, any language with which you are comfortable, be it perl or python or ruby or basic or whatever you like. it might be better to take it over to gutvol-p, so we don't put a coding session in all the gutvol-d boxes, but if you show me you're willing to do some work, i'll be more than happy to show you what will pay off. if you're not, then i'll refer you to the fables of aesop, specifically the one about the little red hen... *** michael said: > There's nothing wrong with > what such people are asking, > other than that they are asking > someone else to do it for them, > free of charge. i know that michael is talking about "such people" as a general class, and i'm fairly confident he doesn't lump me in that class. but other people here might. so let me be absolutely clear here for them... i'm not asking anyone to do anything "for" me. and i am more than willing to do the job myself. i said so, directly, on my blog, and i repeat it here. what i am doing is suggesting you make these changes for _yourselves_ and for _your_readers_, simply because consistency in the e-texts leads to greater functionality... my experience is that this greater functionality would benefit you with increased efficiency in the preparation of the e-texts, and benefit your readers in greater total usability of the e-texts. > Those of us who have been on this list, and others, > for very long these days have no trouble remember > any number of people who have had variety upon variety > of requests that Project Gutenberg should be run in > such a fashion as to meet with their demands. again, i make no "demands". just giving you tips. for your own good. > The response is always to invite the creation of some examples, > along a suggested pathway for future efforts, to be accompanied by > your request for others to assist you in making such future efforts. it is also the case that i _am_ putting examples online. i've already pointed to some, and more will come soon. > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/alice01/alice01/alice01.zml > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/alice01/alice01/alice01.html > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/alice01/alice01/alice01.pdf > http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/alice01/alice01/alice01b.pdf other examples will be "my antonia", "books and culture", "free culture", "the universe or nothing", "the secret garden", and a handful of books by cory doctorow, for starters. as z.m.l. requires just a smattering of changes to the markup-free version of an e-text, hundreds of examples will follow before long, and thousands once my processes are refined... if i don't lose interest, i might have most of the library converted in a year. from these plain-text .zml "masters" will emerge automatic .html versions -- from which a plethora of other formats will be able to be generated -- and automatic creation of .pdf versions according to user specifications... other sweetnesses might follow too, like ipod versions and p.s.p. versions. and last but not least, the z.m.l. viewer-app will create a kick-ass powerful high-functionality electronic-book experience using these .zml "masters". enough so that you'll wonder why you ever thought you needed "markup". (there's more -- scansets and banana-cream -- but that's enough for now.) > Describe how these examples are better than previous examples have done, and will continue to do, as appropriate times arrive... -bowerbird

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