- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

DP anniversary?
by Michael Dyck 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

In today's PG Weekly newsletter, and in a posting to the Book People mailing list, Michael Hart says: "This is the 4th Anniversary of The Distributed Proofreaders!!!" However, if you go to the DP site <http://www.pgdp.net/c/>, you'll see that it says that DP was founded in 2000. Moreover, Charles Franks posted to the gutvol-d list on April 20, 2000, saying (in part) "I have completed the working beta of a distributed proofreaders website." and giving a link. I'm not sure if that was the first public announcement of DP, but in any case, DP is about 5 years old. Michael Hart appears to be referring to the 4th anniversary of March 13th, 2001, which is when the PG Weekly newsletter says DP completed its first book (PG #3320). However, that book ("Mohammed Ali and His House" by Louise Muhlbach) was actually posted April 2nd, 2001, so it's unclear where the March 13 date comes from. Moreover, a month or so *before* then, the PG newsletter for February 2001[a] says "The Online Distributed Proofreading Team has completed 8 books since mid October 2000!". This suggests that DP completed its first book in mid-Oct 2000, which then might have appeared in the list at the bottom of the mid-October "PG needs you" email[b], but I don't see any DP books there. Instead, I believe the first DP book to be posted by PG was #3059 (Homer's "The Iliad", trans. Andrew Lang) which was posted by December 6, 2000[c]. [a] http://www.gutenberg.org/newsletter/archive/PGMonthly_2001_02_07.txt [b] http://www.gutenberg.org/newsletter/archive/Other_2000_10_18_Project_Gutenb… [c] http://www.gutenberg.org/newsletter/archive/PGMonthly_2000_12_06.txt -Michael Dyck

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so jon
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 03 Mar '05

03 Mar '05

so jon, are you going to take up my challenge? if not, tell me, and i'll do that o.c.r. myself. we're gonna see what accuracy-level we can get on your nice hi-res scans of "my antonia"... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Enlightened Self Interest
by Joshua Hutchinson 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeroen Hellingman (Mailing List Account)" <jeroen.mailinglist(a)bohol.ph> > > Joshua Hutchinson wrote: > > > > > 1 - Converting those texts that come through me from DP into PGTEI master > > format. I then use the online PGTEI -> HTML conversion routine to convert > > them to HTML for posting to PG. Most of them are not converted to TEXT > > simply because someone else at DP did the text version before I got to them. > > In other words, I've been mostly concentrating on the PGTEI format itself > > and the HTML output that results from it. > > > I've been producing all my ebooks as TEI (since 1997), but since Gutenberg > can't deal with it, I've hardly ever been able to post them. Please don't > convert any text I've submitted before asking me. All my HTML comes from a > single stylesheet. > Oh, I don't grab works at random! ;) I've been helping people that don't want to learn HTML, mostly. They send me a finished text version (with the page breaks still intact) and I convert that to TEI. The longest part of the conversion is fixing up image links. Pretty much everything else is handled through RegEx. Right now, the vast majority of the TEI documents come through the conversion process to HTML with near perfection. I just put an inline style section in place of the linked css file and convert the "TeX" style single quotes back into straight single quotes ('). Josh

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Enlightened Self Interest
by Ron Aitchison 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Understand the issue of editing. My proposal would be to supply an editable file in OpenOffice or MS doc format (BTW if you are not using the Open Source OpenOffice suite I recommend you check it out - the features are great, at least as feature rich as MS word, plus - one button PDF creation, output as doc, text or native XML format and a great price = $0! http://www.openoffice.org ). I propose to take nothing away you will have edit control over the file. This also opens up another question over what base document formats you have standardized for editability and portability e.g. OASIS etc.. Maybe that is a topic another list. Finally I note you have PDF formats available for some other books. Andrew Sly wrote: >One possible problem is that PDF files are not easily editable. > >All of our older texts are being gradually worked through, >corrected, supplied with a new PG header (which puts all the >legal "small print" at the end of the file instead of the >beginning) and REPosted into the currant directory structure. >When this process is done it will make some of the back-end >organization much easier to deal with. > >However, if during this process, we come across a non-editable file >(PDF, Lit, whatever), we cannot update it, and it's generally moved >into an "old" directory, where it is still availible if someone >goes looking for it, but otherwise is not shown in the catalog. > >Andrew > >> Having discovered Jane Austen regrettably late in life I have >> down-loaded a couple of novels and since I find the raw text format >> unpleasant to read I have reformatted for my own use. >> It seems to me since I have the ability to produce PDFs and OpenOffice >> formats and even - heaven forfend - MS doc format should they be wanted, >> it would be churlish not to make such an offer. >> If you can point me at a standard for PDF, page width, font size etc, >> etc., and let me know what formats you do want I would be happy to >> undertake the small additional work for the two novels I have currently >> downloaded. >> I cannot supply DocBook at this time but hope to have that available >> shortly. >> Regards >> >> > > -- Ron Aitchison

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Re: quick question re: lack of date and copyright
by Doug Adams 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

>From: David Starner <prosfilaes(a)gmail.com> >If you can match it up with an edition in a library catalog >(Library of Congress or the British Library) are good for >this, it'll probably be clearable. Bonus points if it says it >was printed in the US, since then you only have to >establish printing pre-1989, not pre-1923 (in most cases.) Thanks David! I've found my version in the Library of Congress. The listing says it was published in: Chicago, Belford, Clarke [187-?] So even the LOC doesn't have a date for the book. Now a technical question. How do I submit this to get clearance without the date. Do I need to do it by email to someone. (I've previously used the internet form.)

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quick question re: lack of date and copyright clearance
by Doug Adams 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

How do i get a work cleared for copyright if it doesn't have a date on the cover page? I am working on a book that I know for a fact is from the nineteenth century. The publisher, however, neglected to include the date.

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Re: Enlightened Self Interest
by Juhana Sadeharju 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Hello. The master format should be the digitized images of the original book pages. No font, nor footnote, nor math, nor any problems in readability, nor in representing the original text. I find the digitized images more pleasant than any ascii, html, word or TeX text. I don't know the reason but perhaps the art of typesetting and printing was better then than it is now! Any other format can be generated from the digitized images. If some conversion between html and TeX (say) does not go well, one can always check against the original typesetting from the images. So, keep archiving the digitized images!! 200 dpi with 32 grey levels starts looking ok but 300 dpi with 256 levels should be enough even for math texts. Forget 1-bit digitizations completely!!! Best regards, Juhana -- http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-graphics-dev for developers of open source graphics software

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Repost: Public Knowledge Orphaned Works Project
by Brandon Galbraith 02 Mar '05

02 Mar '05

Sorry for the repost, just noticed the mailing list scrubbed my forward; Are you an artist, author, musician, or filmmaker? Maybe you're a scholar or librarian? If so, have you ever wanted to use a copyrighted work but been unable to locate the owner to clear the rights? It's a problem that happens all too often, and not only does it affect your work, but it also "orphans" the original owner's work. It's an unfortunate side effect of current copyright law that diminishes everyone's ability to create, innovate, and educate. Fortunately, we have good news: The U.S. Copyright Office wants to make it easier to locate copyright holders, and it's asking for the public's help. Before the Copyright Office can *address* the problem, it needs to gather evidence that there *is* a problem. This is where you come in: tell your story to the Copyright Office. Public Knowledge along with a number of other like-minded organizations have created Ophanworks.org: an easy way for you to submit your story to the Copyright Office. Now is your chance to tell the Office what personal difficulties you've had when trying to clear rights. To get started, go to: http://www.orphanworks.org Never tried to clear rights? Maybe you know someone who has. Forward them this message or visit: http://www.orphanworks.org to send them an email. You can always learn more about the problem of "orphan works" and the U.S. Copyright Office's notice, by visiting Public Knowledge's website: http:/www.publicknowledge.org/issues/ow ====================== Public Knowledge collaborated with the EFF to set up orphanworks.org as a resource for everyone to facilitate public participation in copyright policy. If you'd like to support this and future efforts, please make a contribution: http://publicknowledge.org/donate ====================== Thanks for participating! Your friends at Public Knowledge February 28, 2005 ____________________________

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[Fwd: [Public Knowledge] Trouble Locating Copyright Owners? Tell the Copyright Office Your Story]
by Brandon Galbraith 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

I thought this would be of interest to list members =) -brandon

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Re: [gutvol-d] Interesting message on TeBC from NetWorker (about fixing errors, Frankenstein, etc.)
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 01 Mar '05

01 Mar '05

jon said: > But the bigger issue is not constrained to errors (differences) > with respect to the source text used, as you continue to focus on. i think it was you who made "errors" the issue, revolving around the concept of "trustworthiness". if, once that house of cards falls down, you want to turn the issue to one of "which source-text to use", well then i think that michael's "i'm open to all of 'em" stance covers _that_ quite nicely, thank you very much. if you don't like the version of my antonia that's in the library now, add your own! the same goes for all the versions of "frankenstein". casting aspersions on the edition that _is_ there isn't constructive. provide all the meta-data you want on the version that you furnish; heck, you can even put a pointer in to your project at librarycity.org; these days i see a lot of e-texts referencing an .rtf version in france. > the PG version of Frankenstein, > which now exposes PG to legal liability. i don't agree. but if the lawyers to whom "bantam classics" is paying good money decide to send a cease-and-desist, let 'em. going by results obtained by the "gone with the wind" lawyers, the project gutenberg people will probably fold very quickly; without any money, you can't play poker against deep pockets. but hey, i would like to hear the laughter that would resound when bantam's lawyers argued that the way they can _prove_ that this e-text copied their book is because of the _errors_ (map-makers can pull that trick. but book-publishers? ha!) who knows, jon, maybe the project gutenberg lawyers will call _you_ to the stand, to throw your arms in the air and rant about how those terrible mistakes are ruining the fragile public domain, and therefore bantam doesn't _deserve_ the protection of the law. wouldn't that be ironic? :+) > The lack of proper processes, procedures and guidelines well, i don't agree with that either, jon. you might not agree with the procedures, but that doesn't mean there is a "lack" of them. maybe you don't agree with their choice of source-text for frankenstein. but it _was_ good enough for bantam. > is leading to serious questions about the integrity > and trustworthiness of the whole PG library not in my mind. and not in the minds of most people, i don't think. not any more so than with any paper-book i might find in a store. like the "frankenstein" version that was being _sold_ by bantam. > 1) redoing most of the non-DP works using DP, let's find out how many d.p. people want me to go over _their_ work with a fine-tooth comb. go ahead, speak up, i'd _love_ the challenge. > Well, at least you seem to indicate from > your interest in very low error rate OCR > that every etext PG includes in its archive > should be a textually faithful reproduction > of some known source. not necessarily. if someone wants to play editor and combine editions, i don't have any problem with that. in some sense, that's what the public domain is about. i don't see it in black/white terms as something frozen. if you _are_ going to represent something as faithful, i think it should _be_ faithful. but even then, that is _to_the_best_of_your_ability_. as long as you do that, and give your end-users a means of "checking your work", including a solid mechanism for improving it to perfection, then i think you've done your job. so yes, i agree with you, that scans should absolutely be furnished to the end-users, for works that purport to replicate that edition, certainly... however, i understand why they haven't been, up to this point, and so do you -- disk-space just hasn't been affordable enough, even now, if it were not for the largess of ibiblio and brewster, we couldn't even be entertaining the thought of posting the scans. > I doubt this error rate (let's say for even half of the public domain > printings out there) is accomplishable without sentient-level AI. i'm trying to get back off this listserve. i don't like contributing to the discourse in a place where my voice has been muffled before. so let me set up a place where you and i can fight... i mean, discuss... but this doubt of yours is rather easy to dispel, and quickly. you did a pretty good job of scanning that copy of "my antonia". and it looks like you processed (e.g., straightened) the scans well. so now we need to put them through o.c.r., using abbyy finereader; please have that done as follows: save results out to an .rtf file, one for each page; retaining line-breaks and paragraph indentation. do this for 20-50 pages, and zip the output up and e-mail it to me. i will reply to you with feedback on if the o.c.r. was done correctly. then i'll run it through programs that will soon be made available, at no cost, and we'll see what kind of an error-rate we end up with. or, if you prefer, follow this same procedure with some other book. then, if you still want to discuss this matter, we'll do it elsewhere. > But if proofreading is to be done anyway by the public, > as is *now done* by DP, what difference is there between > an OCR error of one every 10 pages, and one every page? when i talk about "the public", i mean _end-users_ who are reading the book for the purpose of reading the book, and _not_ specifically to be "proofreading" it per se. for that type of reader, one error on every page is too many, but one error on every tenth page is not. especially since -- if we give them an easy means of checking for errors and reporting them, and then reward readers for finding them -- errors won't persist for very long, and the e-text will instead progress very quickly on its merry way to a state of perfection. in a practical sense, this means that before you turn an e-text loose for download in an all-in-one file, you make it available _page-by-page_ on the web. anyone who might want to read it has to do so in that form. right alongside the text for each page is the image, so the person can easily check any possible errors. you let 'em know you are asking for their help to find mistakes. if they find one, they fill out a form right on the page, and their input is recorded -- wiki-style -- immediately. later readers can either confirm the error, or question it, or make comments. first person to find each error gets a credit in the final e-text. you also give people a viewer-program that allows them to download the appropriate page-image if they suspect an error -- displaying it right there in the viewer-app next to the text -- and which simplifies the process of reporting it if they find one. (by, for instance, filling out an e-mail they can send with a click.) > The key is that for the aspect of building *trust* in > the final product, it is a very good idea to involve > the volunteer proofreaders to go over the texts, > even if *you don't have to*. what i just described does a good job of doing that. this is the system of "continuous proofreading" i outlined on this listserve a very long time ago. you recently mistakenly credited it to james linden. my offer to develop this system was largely snubbed. for _that_, the project gutenberg "people in charge" rightly deserve to be criticized. for the tiny stuff that you have been complaining about, they do not... > Having (and proving to anyone who asks) at least > two independent people who proofed every page, > adds to its trustworthiness. not nearly as well as putting text and image side-by-side, and allowing any number of "volunteer proofreaders" to examine 'em. you might be surprised by the number of errors that "slip by" the proofreaders through two rounds of eyeballing over at d.p. (indeed, many even slip by the "third round" of post-processing and whitewashing, and sit there big and ugly in the final e-text.) even if a dozen people look at a page, an error might _still_ be there. but with eternal transparency, there is always hope it will be fixed. anyway, jon, i hope you take up the friendly challenge i issued here. and if any d.p. people want to call me on the challenge i made to them, you just let me know. in the meantime, i'll let you get in the last word on this thread, jon, because i _really_ need to be going. use it wisely... ;+) -bowerbird

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