- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

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

01 Feb '06

it's fair to say that gutcheck is an excellent piece of software. it's also fair to say that it returns far too many false positives. it's also fair to say that we _could_ have hoped that gutcheck's status as "open source" would have lead it to be _improved_ far more often than it has been, given its level of importance. it's also fair to say that it wouldn't be that hard to improve it, if someone _decided_ to, as the problems are not intractable. it's also fair to say if nobody improves it, it won't be improved. all those things are fair to say. -bowerbird

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

01 Feb '06

On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 19:30:55 +0000, Cori <hiddengreen(a)gmail.com> wrote: |On 1/31/06, Dave Fawthrop <hyphen(a)hyphenologist.co.uk> wrote: |> |Indeed :) Catching a dozen real errors is a definite win! |> |> 12 in 500plus is a resounding failure. | |I think there might be a misunderstanding about the purpose of the |Gutcheck ... if a text checking tool was provided that never gave me |any false errors, I'd be convinced that it wasn't catching all it |should be. Spellcheckers, or the barrage of regex checks that DP has |developed, all flag up false positives on my books, but they couldn't |be made much more effective without personalising them to each and |every text -- which would take more time than just clicking through |the false alarms..? The point of all these checks is to (hopefully) |be over-sensitive to problems, rather than under-sensitive (thus |leaving errors.) | |Or have I missed something in turn..? Do you have text checking tools |that only ever signal real errors..? Can they be shared..? 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. -- 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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coold nothav e
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '06

31 Jan '06

mihceal siad: > So, what you are telling me hre, ist hat > while a human can muddle through ok, > it takes a computer to really maess things up. i coold nothav esaidit bettter myyyself. :+) -bowrebrid

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re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '06

31 Jan '06

a concrete example might help... here's the table of contents from "free culture" by lawrence lessig, in zen markup language format, generated automatically from a simple straightforward analysis in about one-half of a second... even though there are 3 levels of headers, they are very clear, indicated by varying indentation (which represents, at the headers themselves, a varying number of preceding blank lines, of course.) text-structures even more complex than the one shown in this outline can be communicated easily by the number of preceding blank lines -- _if_ the rule is followed _consistently_ -- and grokked by routines consisting of just a few lines of dirt-simple code... by the way, just to say something "obvious" that lee probably had not considered before, one of the many ways my routines determine the headers in a digitized text is to look for a "table of contents" section -- usually toward the start of the file, and usually marked with "contents" or "table of contents" as a header -- and then examine that section quite carefully. ends up it does a very good job of telling you what specific phrases "might be" header-lines. and if you're cleaning up the o.c.r. of a p-book, for instance, there are usually _page-numbers_ there too, telling what _page_ each header is on. pretty handy, eh? indeed, in the .pdf of this book, which you can download at http://www.lessig.org, you will see that the page-numbers _are_ there, and chapter 11, chimera, for instance, starts on page 177. like i said, if you know what a header is likely to be, and on what page it is located, it's fairly easy to find. indeed, people have been using the "table of contents" for precisely that reason for several hundred years now. this is just one of the reasons why it ain't that hard to write routines to ascertain the headers in a book. like i said, it sounds very obvious when you hear it. but have you ever heard anyone say it here before? -bowerbird --------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS Free Culture Table of Contents License Publisher Page Library of Congress Cataloging Dedication Preface Introduction 'Piracy' Chapter 1: Creators Chapter 2: "Mere Copyists" Chapter 3: Catalogs Chapter 4: "Pirates" Film Recorded Music Radio Cable TV Chapter 5: "Piracy" Piracy I Piracy II 'Property' Chapter 6: Founders Chapter 7: Recorders Chapter 8: Transformers Chapter 9: Collectors Chapter 10: "Property" Why Hollywood Is Right Beginnings Law: Duration Law: Scope Law and Architecture: Reach Architecture and Law: Force Market: Concentration Together Puzzles Chapter 11: Chimera Chapter 12: Harms Constraining Creators Constraining Innovators Corrupting Citizens Balances Chapter 13: Eldred I Chapter 14: Eldred II Conclusion Afterword Us, Now Rebuilding Freedoms Previously Presumed: Examples Rebuilding Free Culture: One Idea Them, Soon More Formalities Shorter Terms Free Use Vs. Fair Use Liberate the Music -- Again Fire Lots of Lawyers Footnotes Hyperlinks Acknowledgments Index About the Author Jacket Typos Corrected Permissions The Dead-Tree Hardback Version of this Work zero markup language -- z.m.l. -- the future of electronic-books --------------------------------------------- p.s. extra points for everyone who realized that -- since the lines in the table of contents section are not to be rewrapped -- that is the reason that all are prefaced with at least one leading space...

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re: [gutvol-d] blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 31 Jan '06

31 Jan '06

lee said: > I believe that at some point in the future computers will be > capable of resolving all the ambiguities inherent in PG e-texts, > but that day is not yet here, and until then the software is > going to require some human help. well, my computer routines can already resolve _most_ ambiguities, as i pointed out in the blog entry. i've even offered to do this for p.g., providing p.g. makes a commitment to stay consistent in the future... but there seemed to me no recognition for the need for consistency, let alone any desire to make a commitment to attain it... *** michael said: > Can't it just lay there, out of the process, and just let me read? sure, it could. but sometimes -- in the course of reading, and even outside of it -- there are things you want to know, or find out, or have the computer do for you, or figure out for you. take my headings example, for instance. it's nice if the computer can figure out the headings for you, because then it can produce a nice "table of contents" menu, which you can look at to get a quick overview on the e-text, or use to jump directly to the "dance of the quadrille" chapter (even if you hadn't yet known that there was such a chapter)... or, as lee has remarked, if the program knows the headers, it can do nice things like start a chapter on a new screen, and make the header big and bold. these nice touches are... nice. or take my text-wrapping example, as yet another instance. sometimes you want to reflow the text to a narrow window. if the non-rewrap lines have been clearly indicated -- e.g., with the leading space that i suggested -- then the computer can do the rewrap for you quickly and easily, with no errors... (and this goes beyond "a nice touch" into basic functionality.) consistency also goes a _long_ way in making _conversions_. surely you must realize that many of your e-texts are finding their highest popularity as a result of some sort of conversion, whether over at blackmask.com or manytexts.com or wherever. i think it behooves you to groom your texts for such conversions, whether you do those conversions or someone else does them... (heck, the time that has been spent doing .html conversions alone could have been reduced _significantly_ by improving consistency and then depending upon automatic .html generation by computer. and then all of the .html versions would have been consistent too!) unless you have a _commitment_ to removing the inconsistencies, though, you won't understand the depth of the processes required. for instance, staying with the rewrap example, you wouldn't realize that if you're creating a book of poetry, where _none_ of the lines should be rewrapped, you should preface _all_ lines with a space. other examples abound. if footnotes are marked consistently, the computer can be programmed to treat them appropriately. a "table of illustrations" can become a more-useful hotlinked list, or the launching point for a slideshow of all the book's pictures... basically, it means thinking in terms of the _library_, not the _book_. consistency is the foundation that can allow _all_kinds_ of neat new features, limited only by the imaginations of programmers. the reason you haven't seen this exhibited already is because programmers have been flustered by massive inconsistencies. even your own p.g. people can't produce the best possible tools to help them do their jobs because of all the parsing difficulties. *** so yeah, the computer could just lay there. but why not put it to work? -bowerbird

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"Lady Chatterly's Lover" public domain in the U.S.?
by Jon Noring 31 Jan '06

31 Jan '06

Everyone, Even though D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterly's Lover" was published in 1928, some of the publishing details in the following web site indicate the possibility it may be public domain in the U.S.: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/rananim/lawrence/lcl.html Anyone have more knowledge on the U.S. public domain status of this work? Jon

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blah blah blog
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 28 Jan '06

28 Jan '06

as promised, i'm morphing myself to my blah blah blog. don't want to talk about you behind your back, though... > http://journals.aol.com/bowerbird/bowerbirdseyeview -bowerbird

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