- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

gerbils expose chilling factoid
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

keith said: > just submit pandoc, and will > we will see what Lee has to say. oh, so now you want to try and send _me_ on that wild-goose chase! no way, mister. :+) but really, keith, what did you mean by that puzzling "no human intervention" comment? do you have some gerbils who'll run the test? :+) *** that $100 "challenge" can't be taken seriously. for anyone who wants to know why, seriously, i am all too happy to explain the subterfuge... lee _thought_ that he could demonstrate that light-markup languages are not fully specified. thus, by requiring different ones to produce what is essentially the same underlying code, he thought he could expose the holes in each. what he didn't know is that the schemes _are_ fully specified, and thus can indeed create code which accomplishes even a fairly complex book, in a fairly standard manner, such that that code would indeed qualify as "essentially" equivalent. in fact, the degree of full-specification obtained is complete enough that these markup systems can even be translated in a one-to-one fashion. and not only can they "be translated" that way, the conversion can be done _programmatically_, and pandoc is the existence-proof for _that_... so lee was significantly underinformed, and his "challenge" merely exposed that chilling factoid. but lee is a clever and devious person, who knows how to cover his ass, so he found a way to do that, in the off-chance that he unknowingly was wrong. his challenge specified that _he_ would prepare the various light-markup files, meaning he could _sabotage_ the full-specification of the schemes. lee made it _appear_ as if he was betting that you couldn't make a basket shooting from mid-court. (or what he believed would be a mid-court shot, even though, with pandoc, it was a mere lay-up.) but, with a little shift at the end, he changed it, such that he was betting that _he_ would miss a shot from mid-court. would you take _that_ bet? would you take a bet that he could miss a lay-up? ok, fine, lee wanted to make sure that he wouldn't have to give away his $100. who could blame him? but to think this proves anything is just ridiculous. nonetheless, a simple contradictory point remains. namely, none of the benefits of any light-markup system _ever_required_ that such a system could be converted flawlessly into _other_ light-markup. the object of light-markup is to convert to .x/html, .epub, .mobi, .pdf, or some other _output_format_, and _not_ to convert to some other _input_format._ i mean, it's _nice_ that pandoc can convert between markdown and restructured-text and asciidoc, and many other formats, but it's certainly not necessary. markdown does what it's _meant_ to do, regardless. and so does restructured-text. and so does asciidoc. lee is trying to shift your attention to a trivial thing. he wants you to focus on a meaningless "conversion" between light-markup formats, instead of the _more_ important matter that light-markup converts to .html. because lee wants you to do your authoring in .html, not light-markup. but light-markup is much simpler, so i'm not really sure why he wants to waste your time. and let's be absolutely clear about something vital... this choice of a "master format" does _not_ entail any need to give anything up. you don't have to "choose" between using light-markup and .html. because light-markup can be converted to .html... with the simple click of a button -- boom! -- html! not to mention .mobi. and .pdf. _automatically_... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] book of james -- 001
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

carlo said: > You seem to be unaware that > you can get the text for a single page > from the Internet Archive djvu files, through > the djvutxt command and the -page option. holy crap... i did not know that... i figured that there _had_to_ be a way to do it, since the .djvu knows the text on a page, but i didn't know how. how/where exactly does one issue this command? -bowerbird p.s. james, if you could still zip up your files, that would let me splice in your corrections...

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Re: [gutvol-d] book of james -- 001
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

don said: > If you read the whole page > it discusses pulling djvu text sigh. i read the whole page. you can pull the djvu text for the entire book, but -- once again -- i want it for _each_page_. -bowerbird

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a review of some digitization tools -- 022
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

david garcia (dpname="donovan") said: > I'm surprised that no one has yet > mentioned pandoc as a useful piece of kit. i'm surprised you weren't already in my kill-filter, donovan. but you are now... :+) *** anyway... last week: > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-December/008456.html last month: > http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2011-November/002390.html > http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2011-November/002392.html 6 months ago: > http://www.thebookdesigner.com/2011/06/my-monospaced-life/ 1 year ago: > http://lists.pglaf.org/pipermail/gutvol-p/2010-July/000074.html 3 years ago: > http://radar.oreilly.com/2008/09/why-you-should-care-about-xml.html 5 years ago: > http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/2007-January/000488.html i didn't bother to mention pandoc to you idiots because you were so convinced that light-markup wouldn't work, and willing to bet (and lose) all your credibility against it. *** also, since we're on the subject of pandoc once again, someone who wanted to win that $100 prize from lee could convert my .html output for "books and culture" into markdown and restructured-text, using pandoc... he has no credibility left. might as well take his cash too. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] book of james -- 001
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 21 Dec '11

21 Dec '11

don said: > Even simpler, you can do um, no, that shows the image. (buried inside the viewer-app.) i want the _text_ for the page. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] book of james -- 001
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Dec '11

20 Dec '11

james said: > Bowerbird, > If you check the link I gave you > you'll see what I'm up against. i see it... it's not an easy book, but it's not a hard one, either, not if you accept that some parts are impossible. :+) i've already set up its online skeleton: > http://z-m-l.com/go/bhaga/bhagap123p.html i can make it so you can work on it online. or offline, if you prefer, makes no difference. online would let other people work with you, if you'd be interested in having that happen... (if you want to work on it online, by yourself, just don't tell anyone where you've located it.) what i will need from you, as soon as possible, is a version of your text-file with the pagebreaks marked, so i can splice the text into the skeleton. a simple line of equal-signs will do the job fine... this is the last line of page 97... ========================= and this is the first line of page 98... again, as soon as possible, so i can do it right away, so things will be ready for you shortly after christmas. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] book of james -- 001
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Dec '11

20 Dec '11

james said: > I do have the book as 1 text page per file. ok. (i think.) > I got it this way by downloading the page images, > making TIFFs out of them, then running tesseract oh dear. that was a waste of time. > I can give you the separate text files > in a Zip archive if you wish. are these the files after you made your corrections? if so, then yes, those are exactly the files that i need. zip 'em up, and put it in your dropbox. > My work method is to use guiguts to > remove page numbers and reformat paragraphs first. oh dear. more wasted time. oh well. (also, removing pagenumbers is the _last_ thing to do. they help let you be aware where you are in the book.) > The link you gave gives me a 404 error. yes, here's the correct one: > http://z-m-l.com/go/bhaga/bhagap123.html sorry about that... > I'm not sure what you mean by online. i mean you do your corrections on the web... which means that other people can help you. (at least if you give them the web-address.) but if you prefer to work offline, you can do that. > I thought you would > provide a command line utility i'm a mac person, james. we believe in a friendly interface. only a sadist seeks to saddle you with command-line crap... > that would convert ZML to the various formats. but first you have to get your text _into_ .zml format. > Were you thinking of something like DP uses? "something like" that is a fairly accurate description. my system isn't nearly as convoluted or bureaucratic. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] book of james -- 001
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Dec '11

20 Dec '11

i said: > http://z-m-l.com/go/bhaga/bhagap123p.html oops! i got an extra "p" in there. try this instead: > http://z-m-l.com/go/bhaga/bhagap123.html -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] book of james -- 001
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Dec '11

20 Dec '11

james said: > It will take me a LONG time to finish this text. no it won't... :+) > I'm using archive.org's text file and > I use Jedit and guiguts to get it in shape, > one page at a time. well, with those tools, it might take a long time. but if you instead use a system i'll build for you, you could whip the book out before you know it. but i won't get to it until after christmas... -bowerbird

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a review of some digitization tools -- 024
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Dec '11

20 Dec '11

let's discuss, for a minute, how to prepare a .zml file... for fun, we'll contrast it with how to code an .html file. *** we'll start with something basic -- simple italics. let's say that a word is _italicized_ in the p-book. to do that markup in .zml, you surround the word with _underscores._ you can type 'em in manually, or you might have a tool that has a button that you can click to have the tool insert them automatically. in .html, you'd surround the word with italics tags, so an [i]italicized[/i] word looks something like that. (i changed the angle-brackets to straight-brackets, so an .html viewer-tool will not be confused by it.) again, you can type the brackets-plus-tag manually, or you might have a tool to insert 'em automatically. most .html authoring-tools have an [i] or [em] button. so in this case, for italics, there's not much difference between .zml and .html... one uses underscores and the other uses bracket-commands, but -- essentially -- there's no difference between them. i might think that underscores are easier to type, and easier on the eyes, and thus less obstructive when it comes time to _edit_, but it's hard to argue that there's much difference here. and thus it is with a lot of the mark-up you might do... in .zml, you indicate a blockquote with a leading " > ", whereas in .html you use [blockquote]xyz[/blockquote]. and in .zml, you indicate a list item with a leading " * ". while in .html it's more like this: [ul][li]abcdef[/li][ul]. again, i think the .zml looks a lot less obtrusive, and that is indeed part of the big appeal of "zen" markup, but if zen doesn't matter to you, there's no difference. *** however, there _are_ some cases where it does make a difference when you're tagging in .zml versus .html. for instance, take the case of _headers_... on the face, it might appear to be a similar situation. in .zml, you indicate a header by 4 or more blank lines, follow it with exactly 2 lines, and precede it with a space. so, aside from the blank lines above and below it, which "sets it off" such that the header will gain your attention, a header has a pretty ordinary appearance in your text: > > > > > chapter 7 header > > in .html, you tag a header thus: [h2]chapter 7 header[/h2] so if it was merely a matter of the tagging of the header, this case is exactly like the previous: not much difference. but various other factors come into play involving headers. first, the table-of-contents should _link_ to every header... at a bare minimum, this means your header has to have an "id" that is attached to it, to which the link is directed. so in addition to the _header_ tag, you must make an "id", with another bracket-command, which might look like this: > [div id="chapter_7_header"][/div] so now the header, with its matching "id" spec, looks like: > [div id="chapter_7_header"][/div] > [h2]chapter 7 header[h2] you could leave it just like that. many people do, actually. but .zml does more -- by default -- to aid in navigation. every .zml header links _back_ to the table-of-contents, so a person who is at any header can _jump_ to the t.o.c. to do the same kind of back-link in .html, you'd do this: > [div id="chapter_7_header"][/div] > [a href="#table_of_contents"] > [h2]chapter 7 header[h2] > [/a] that's a little more work, but very few .html tools do this, so you'd have to do it manually. but it's still manageable. but there's more. .zml also generates automatic links to the _previous_ and _next_ chapters, so a person can easily "skim" from one chapter to the next, which comes in handy. in order to do this in .html, you'd have to do this: > [div id="chapter_7_header"][/div] > [a href="#chapter_6_header"]prev[/a] > [a href="#chapter_8_header"]next[/a] > [a href="#table_of_contents"] > [h2]chapter 7 header[h2] > [/a] note that this raises the level of complexity quite a bit. the "id" was based on the header itself, so that was easy to generate, because the two are so close to each other. so it would be rather easy to code a reg-ex for the task. but when each header has to know the id of the header which came before it, and the one which comes after it, we have experienced an increase in the difficulty factor, to the point where the reg-ex is gonna get pretty hairy. you will also need some tagging in there to get the links _positioned_ in the exact way that you'll want them, but i won't bother to put in that clutter too right now, as... ...i wish to point out that, all of a sudden, our header has gotten _buried_ inside a lot of .html-tag clutter... which makes it difficult if you need to do more editing. (a rule of thumb is you always need to do more editing.) so again, let's take a look back at the .zml header... > > > > > chapter 7 header > > very clean. everything is automatic. breath of fresh air. *** we can go through the very same exercise for footnotes. in the body of the text, where you have the footnote,[1] you will need to do the .html coding to create that link. [1] at the footnote itself, which might be in the "footnotes" section, you'll need to form an "id" for the link to jump to. and likewise, it's usually nice to have a _back-link_ too. which means you need to have an "id" in the body-text, and code the back-link in the footnotes section as well. and, seriously, that's more than you wanna do by hand. and thankfully, most of the time, you won't need to... many .html tools make it relatively easy to make a link. you just click where you want the link to be, and then click again where you want that link to jump to. easy... at least, it's easy if you only have a few such links... but if there's 580 footnotes, like a book i did a while back, you _will_ want these steps to be performed automatically. my .zml converter does that for you. *** now, don't get me wrong. there is absolutely _nothing_ in my converter-tool that some programmer could not clone in an .html authoring-tool. nothing at all. zilch. indeed, it wouldn't surprise me if it's already been done. (well, actually, it would. a little bit. but i'd get over it.) for instance, the text-to-html converter inside guiguts, the d.p. postprocessing tool, does good on footnotes... it'd even be possible to build an .html authoring-tool which inserted all of this code automatically and _also_ removed it from the file when you wanted to do editing -- so you wouldn't have all that crud distracting you -- only to re-insert it once again after you were finished... it's even possible this tool could be offered at no cost... it's even possible it could be an open-source creation... you will let us know if you find such a tool, won't you? :+) *** z.m.l. input file: > http://zenmagiclove.com/test-suite-2012.txt python script to create .html output: > http://zenmagiclove.com/cgi-bin/t2.py -bowerbird

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