- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

now keith wants me to "slow down"
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 15 Nov '11

15 Nov '11

keith said: > Slow down a bit BB, oh dear sweet lord... > You are misunderstanding something here. > I leave out the html part because > that is a different matter which > you can have out with don! yeah, well, gee, keith, that's very unfortunate. because "the html part" was the on-topic part, the relevant part, the part we were talking about. so don was the one who was "misunderstanding". because -- as he admitted in his last message -- he had shifted the topic to his use of wordpress as a _storage_mechanism_ for existing html/css. just to remind people... i criticized lee's tool because it kicked in only _after_ the text had been marked up in .html, as if the markup process happened magically, when -- as i said -- markup is "the hard part". lee responded that word-processors can do a conversion to .html. (which i had granted already, but noted their markup is terrible.) then jim replied "you could use open office". open office, the software which proves that an open-source effort can create a program as bloated and complex as microsoft makes. yeah, great suggestion, jim. bzzzt. next!... and then don stepped in to suggest wordpress. and yes, wordpress will turn text into .html... but the output is a mess. so i called him on it. and then he responded that he wasn't actually using wordpress to mark up the text into .html. in other words, he admitted he was off-topic... (not directly, of course. but it was clear enough that i didn't even feel the need to rephrase it -- until now.) > It is the database part you do not understand. i understood "the database part" fine, both in the part of its mechanics, and the part it was off-topic. and, as i said, as long as don is only talking about his _own_ use of wordpress, for his _own_ project, as a content-management-system, i'm fine with it. > The user need not know anything of the database > to extract, use, and save files, in what ever format! that's true, keith, but only on a very superficial basis. what if i want to "use" one of the files by submitting it to an exterior spell-check app? or grammar-check? what if i want to merge all of them into a single file? what if i want to do a specific search-and-replace on any files that contain graphics, but a different one on any files that do not contain graphics, except for the ones which contain front-matter, plus i need to do a separate search-and-replace on the reference section? > You see the database is first and firmly just > a filing system for the files! Just like the OS is! except those systems aren't "just like" each other by any stretch of the imagination, since the file system is understood implicitly by every average user because it is utilized every day in the course of normal practice, whereas only a tiny percentage of them know databases, and only a few of _those_ people can manipulate mysql. and it shouldn't even be necessary for me to explain that, because if you can't see a gulf that wide, you must be blind, or have your eyes closed, or have your head stuck somewhere. > So, if don wants to use a database (system) as a file(filing) > system what is wrong with that. i answered that question up above. for his own stuff, don can use any system he likes. why would i care, in the slightest? but if don wants to suggest a database approach for a system that has thousands of users who are digitizing thousands of books, all with one database, then i'm going to suggest that he rethink that model. which was a _different_ thread we had going here once. (but your comment here, keith, if off-topic to both.) > But, the people administering the site > know it is there and glad they have it. ok, and here is the crux. you guys are all happy to invent a site with "administrators". my aim is to create a workflow that average people grok, and can manipulate, if necessary, _without_ administrators. because, as d.p. has shown so clearly to those who can see, once you have a need for "administrators", the system gets trapped by the power-hungry and becomes nonresponsive... > Basically, Don will have a front end to his database, > that will give you all you need and it will be just as easy > (probably easier) than using your script based system. that's what the "administrator" types always _promise_. "i'll make things easy for you, give you all you need..." but once you turn over your soul to them, it's too late. > On the other side I would have to learn > how to use your scripts and how to find them, > how to reprogram them to work > for a particular book or text! my word, keith, you seem to know _a_lot_ about something you know nothing about. > To quote Steve Jobs: "It just works!" it's easy to quote steve jobs. any blooming idiot can do it! it's a heckuva lot harder to make something that just works. *** so, um, no, keith, i'm not going to "slow down". sorry, dude. however, i will kindly suggest that you speed up. to keep up. -bowerbird

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don wants me to "slow down"
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 15 Nov '11

15 Nov '11

don said: > Slow down let me come back to that... > read the *second* sentence. i did read it. i wasn't impressed. > It's pure html in the mysql database. precisely. that's my objection. and i stated it, as such, quite clearly, when i said: > so on top of the obfuscation of the text by the .html, > it's now buried inside of a mysql database, meaning > that anyone who wants to understand the system well > needs to acquire an additional hairy set of experience. in other words, you take clean text and gunk it up with .html, and then you also bury that gunked-up text in a database. and you want us to think that is a good system? that's like taking an art-book with nice pictures and drawing mustaches and beards on all the pretty women (that would be the .html coding), then putting the book into a bag (the database), and then expecting us to "appreciate" the artistry. um, no thanks. just leave the thing unmolested. > And if it's "impure", then blame me, because > it's precisely what I imported from the DP project > - for better or worse. Same for the CSS. well, one of us is confused, that's for sure... _i_ thought we were talking about a system that could be used by an entity like d.p. to do book-digitization, with a suggestion wordpress would do the .html/.css. in other words, we put in .text, and get out .html/.css. but now _you_ seem to be discussing your own system, where you "imported" the .html (and the .css) from d.p. you seem to have already _started_ with the .html/.css. so one of us is confused about the topic of discussion. i don't really care what you use for your own projects. whatever makes you happy is absolutely fine with me. but if you're going to propose a system for volunteers, i'd say it must take their skill-sets into consideration, and attempt to make things as simple as they can be. and for book-digitization, text-files are all you need, a fact which i have demonstrated time and time again. text-files have the advantage of magical simplicity... the weird thing is that most geeks know this very well, and practice it near-religiously in their own workflows. a very big part of the unix philosophy is "piping" text... but all of a sudden, in dealing with _books_, which are (and always have been) predominately text (with some pictures thrown in), all of a sudden we need _markup_. what's up with that? especially since, in their own _manuals_, geeks such as the python community use -- ta-da! -- light-markup... i guess angle-bracket-tags are only for the suckers who are too stupid to realize that they don't really need 'em... *** don said: > Slow down um, again, no thanks, don. i have a much better suggestion -- flip your script. let's instead have _you_ "speed up" a bit -- a lot! -- along with the rest of this listserve, if it's possible... you've become accustomed to the glacial pace of distributed proofreaders and project gutenberg and this listserve, where the topics of conversation haven't changed all that much in a decade when -- all around us -- e-books have finally "caught on". 8 years ago, this list was hung up on .xml, acting as if that was "the important thing" for discussion... history proved that was one big stinking dead-end. and now you're back on .html as "the big thing", but that's a dead-end too. do you really believe that in 2025, people will still be fussing with angle-brackets? get off the merry-go-round and shoot for the moon. do you want to know the most exciting development in e-books in recent months? it's amazon's "x-ray". > Amazon invented X-Ray, a new feature that > lets customers explore the "bones of the book." > With a single tap, readers can see all the passages > across a book that mention ideas, fictional characters, > historical figures, places or topics that interest them, > as well as more detailed descriptions from Wikipedia > and Shelfari, Amazon's community-powered encyclopedia > for book lovers. Amazon built X-Ray using its > expertise in language processing and machine learning, > access to significant storage and computing resources > with Amazon S3 and EC2, and a deep library of > book and character information. The vision is > to have every important phrase in every book. if amazon pulls off "x-ray", it could be phenomenal. this is the kind of thing that p.g. could've "invented", since it once had the biggest public-domain corpus. but you guys here were caught up in _file-formats_, among the most tedious and irrelevant e-book trivia. so while you've focused on markup, other entities are doing stuff that's far more interesting and important. it's as if you were at the grand canyon, but instead of paying any attention to the marvelous natural features, you're all still at the tram arguing about what kind of upholstery will be best to use for the seats in the tram. and when i roll my eyes, you think i'm picking a fight. you're missing out on the real action, and you don't have the slightest clue that that's what's happening. so no, don, i _ain't_ gonna "slow down", because i'm _tired_ of going nowhere and nowhere and nowhere. and i firmly believe that you, don, should also decide not to let your good imagination be held back by the foot-draggers over at d.p. you're smarter than them. so demonstrate it, don, by letting your creativity soar. and believe me, a suggestion to "use wordpress" does _not_ accomplish that objective; it doesn't come close. -bowerbird

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now keith wants me to "slow down"
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 Nov '11

14 Nov '11

and again, i'm no longer reading jim adcock's posts, so if he makes any points you'd like me to address, you will need to rephrase them in your own words... also, if you think anyone else in my kill-filter, like marcello or lee passey or josh whatshisname or david starner or the bad alex, makes a post which i should consider for my $2 "positive contribution", you should rephrase that, and attribute accordingly. thank you. have a nice day. :+) -bowerbird

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looking at the most meaningful indicator
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 Nov '11

14 Nov '11

i have been studying e-books for 3 decades now, which is long enough to know that my instincts were always correct. the reason that's important is because i am confident that i know which variables constitute the major tipping-points. and the fulcrum which might be the most crucial one of all revolves around when the large print-run grows untenable. the logic here is that a good part of the "economy of scale" which large publishers enjoy is due to that large print run. when each copy of a book that you printed costs you a dime -- a quarter at most -- you can afford to spread 'em around. and if it doesn't sell, you can just have the retailer strip off the cover and "throw the book away". why spend any money transporting a 15-cent product back to stack in a warehouse? in that vein, this is interesting: > http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20111113/SUB/311139977 i'll quote quite a bit, so you get the full impact: > Net sales of those artfully designed, easy-to-hold, > pleasant-smelling trade paperbacks slid 18%, to $773 million, > in the year through August, compared with the year-earlier > period, according to the Association of American Publishers. > Meanwhile, sales of e-books, the second-place format, > soared 144%, to $649 million. ok, so let me give you the deep background on this... according to the figures of the corporate publishers themselves -- their own figures, mind you! -- e-books have nearly gained parity with trade paperbooks, on a _monetary_ basis (which is the only one that really counts to a profit-minded corporation). that is for january-to-august. with trade paperbacks "sliding", and e-books "soaring", it's probably the case that e-books now -- on this november day -- sell _better_ than trade paperbacks. again, this is according to figures from the dinosaurs themselves. this is even more remarkable when you consider that these guys have been dragging their feet for a decade on electronic-books. imagine what woulda happened if they had been really _trying_! the article continues: > Just as telling are reports from inside publishing houses, > where more and more often, executives are thinking twice > about which hardcover books to reprint in a trade paperback. > “It used to be standard operating procedure to do > a trade paperback,” said literary agent and former editor > Paul Bresnick. “No longer.” this isn't surprising. if a corporation can't make money at it, they won't keep doing it. making money is their raison d'etre. what _is_ surprising -- or maybe not -- is that if a corporation cannot make money at _something_, it will go out of business. and that is the bigger issue lurking here... it goes on: > Demand is quickly evaporating. According to one executive, > the e-book surge has driven No. 1 bookstore chain > Barnes & Noble to alter its rule-of-thumb formula > for preordering trade paperbacks from publishers. > It used to ask for half as many copies as its stores > sold in hardcover. Today, the number is down to 30%. ouch. that's gotta hurt. and it _will_ leave a bruise. a bad one. > At a certain point, the preorders become > too small for publication to make sense. and here we have the coup de grace. can the publishers continue to live on 30% from barnes&noble, instead of the old 50%? maybe yes, maybe no, i don't really know... but the 30% will turn into 25%, then 20%, and at _some_ point soon, it will collapse. 1 year? 3? 5? what difference will it make? when you can no longer make enough sales to justify a large print-run, all of a sudden your 20-cent cost-of-goods measure turns into a $2 cost-of-goods figure, which means the $1 profit you were sticking in your pocket turns into an 80-cent loss. and you go kaput. i've been saying it for over 15 years already, and now the timing of the event is upon us... once the large print-run becomes untenable, the corporate dinosaur publishers go extinct... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] too clever, by half
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 13 Nov '11

13 Nov '11

when you tell people things they don't want to hear, for their own good, you need to _expect_ that they will react badly. it simply comes with the territory. and if you persist, their reaction will likely persist. the best you can hope for, in some situations, is that everyone comes to learn something from the process. it is with some sadness, then, that i must now admit something i have actually known for quite some time. i rarely learn much of anything at all from jim adcock, and he seemingly never learns a thing from me either. for a while it was ok, because i turned it pedagogical, but nobody else is learning anything any more either, because jim never brings anything new to the table... so although i always take such action with reluctance, it's time for me to concede that the proper course now is for me to put jim in my kill-filter. sorry about that. such action is a last resort. but at times it's necessary. what it means for everyone else is that i will no longer respond to any points that jim makes, because i simply won't see them. so if jim makes some point that _you_ would like to see me respond to, you'll have to rephrase the point in your own words and point it at me directly. it won't work to simply copy-and-paste jim's message, because his "points" are usually so dull that they must be sharpened first, and they are usually so fuzzy that they could be sharpened in any one of a dozen ways, and my already-too-long posts become unbearable... besides, it's tedious to take one vague sentence and polish it into a dozen possible interpretations only to see _each_ of those interpretations defeated by logic. most of us are too busy for such a pointless exercise. so boil it down to a good question, and i assure you i _will_ have an answer. jim's never stumped me yet. except on the question of "what is this guy thinking?" i can never figure that out. so it's time to stop trying. -bowerbird

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too clever by half
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 13 Nov '11

13 Nov '11

jim said: > You might do better by putting > a colored transparent text overlay > over a colored text base, such that > one can spot the color change where > the (additive please not subtractive) > colors "don't mix." > > For example a green base text layer > with an additive red transparent text > OCR overlay layer give you a yellow letter > where the colors mix -- "hit", > but green or red where there is a "miss". big kudos to jim for his improvement upon the well-known standard suggestion of this tactic... it's very clever. the problem is that it's _too_ clever, by half... you guys are treating this task as if it is some visual-discrimination type of chore, which is the mistake someone would make if they had rarely -- or perhaps _never_ -- done the job... but for anyone who has actually _tracked_ the type of errors that are common in o.c.r. today, a visual approach to this task is the last resort. once again, the _most_ common type of error is spacey punctuation. you don't need some fancy "color overlay" to find spacey punctuation, folks! indeed, you don't even need to _look_ for it at all! you can merely instruct your text-editor to find it. when d.p. started, a decade ago, maybe then you needed to verify every line, word-for-word -- but today that's a ridiculous waste of time and energy. unless/until y'all get that through your thick skulls, you are chasing your tails around the wrong bush... and your efforts will never begin to scale as needed. -bowerbird p.s. the smartest digitizers, like nicholas hodson, have known for _years_ that text-to-speech is the _best_ strategy for finding well-disguised errors... your computers and ipads can _speak_! use that!

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al haines makes a positive contribution
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Nov '11

12 Nov '11

al said: > Keep track of "awards" for the year, then > donate any resulting money to PG. hmm... any impulse toward charity is a good one... and i won't chalk that up to self-interest, even though you're a principle in p.g., al, because i'm pretty sure you're a volunteer, and you've donated a big slice of your life to the cause, and i give full credit for that... but the money i'm awarding already _will_ benefit p.g., by making its listserve better. and besides, i have also liked the fact that michael hart built p.g. not to need money. (it's so hard to speak of him in past-tense.) so there's a reluctance to give p.g. money... the other thing is that p.g. isn't really my favorite charity. i very much like 826-l.a., an organization nurturing young writers. still, i like the general idea. the overwhelming objection, however, is that i already put the cash in the pockets of the people who will post the messages. the money has been promised to _them_. so i can't now take it out of their pockets and give it to project gutenberg "instead". that would be like the "white man" who broke all his promises to the "indians"... i just can't do that. but like i said, i still like the idea. so here's what i'll do... i'll give people a _choice_ between: 1. receiving their money as promised, or 2. opting instead to donate it to charity... if they decide to donate their prize-money, i'll _increase_ it by 50% (so $2 becomes $3) and then split it between p.g. and 826-l.a, so p.g. will get $1.50, and likewise 826-l.a. transparent accounting will be done here: > http://z-m-l.com/misc/gutvold_positivity.html and yes, i'll give al his $2 prize for that post. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] don suggests wordpress again
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Nov '11

12 Nov '11

don said: > Time for a refresher on WP, bird. oh, c'mon, don, you're never gonna get your $2 being obfuscatory and avoiding the real points... 1. wordpress content is stored in a mysql database. are you trying to make us believe that is not true? because if anyone doubts it, here is a u.r.l. for you: > http://codex.wordpress.org/Database_Description so on top of the obfuscation of the text by the .html, it's now buried inside of a mysql database, meaning that anyone who wants to understand the system well needs to acquire an additional hairy set of experience. 2. the mysql database used is not a simple one, either. i mean, seriously, people, take a look at that page, and ask yourself if you wanna have to deal with all that crap. and it ain't easy, either. read the cautions on this page: > http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/12/01/search-and-replace-in-wordpress-mys… those are the warnings for doing a search-and-replace! should we have to worry about anything so elementary? a wordpress database has about a dozen tables in it: > http://bloggersmarket.com/wordpress-mysql-database-tables/ ask yourself if you need that kind of hassle... seriously. what about doing mysql "queries"? know how to do them? > http://www.onextrapixel.com/2010/01/30/13-useful-wordpress-sql-queries-you-… something as "simple" as doing a back-up gets complex. please don't let yourself fall for a slick interface, folks... because if you don't grok how to do the things yourself, you'll have to depend on someone else to do it "for you". this is simple text, folks. storable in simple text-files. unless you let other guys gunk up your systems instead. do _not_ let them seize that control over your workflow! 3. the .html and .css used by wordpress is convoluted. do you deny this, don? please tell us if you deny this... because if you do, i'll post some here, for "evaluation", and i'll invite you to explain it to the nice people here... i'm glad you're doing experimentation; that is valuable. but the mere idea of using wordpress is a non-starter... i like you, don. you're one of the good guys. seriously. the way you are treated over at d.p. is truly a disgrace... but you'll need to step up your game to snare your $2... ;+) -bowerbird

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double your money and quadruple your fun
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Nov '11

12 Nov '11

for everyone who makes a positive contribution to the listserve in the next year, i will send $2... _any_ positive contribution counts, _especially_ if it is not made in reaction to one of my posts. (i'll include a $.22 bonus if you clear that bar.) the first award goes to jim, for "color overlay"... -bowerbird

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don suggests wordpress again
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 12 Nov '11

12 Nov '11

don said: > You could try what is arguably > the most widely used html editor/platform for non-techies > - the WordPress.blog engine. > Besides it's default mediocre sorta-wysiwyg UI, > you can get adapters to input markdown, RST, textile, etc. you've been experimenting with that for a while now, don. something tells me that if it really worked, you would have some things that you would be willing to show us by now... > Pure, unadulterated HTML. oh, it's .html, to be sure, but i wouldn't call it "unadulterated" in any way, and describing it with "pure" is simply laughable... evidently you haven't really looked at it, or its .css stylesheets. oh, and just for the record, wordpress doesn't actually _save_ content as .html files, but rather saves it in a mysql database. because saving content as .html files would be _very_messy_... *** but hey, let's say someone wants to give wordpress a whirl... i would suggest that that person check out pressbooks.com. i believe the site, which i have suggested before (but when do my first few suggestions ever get traction on this list?), is now out of beta... if not, it will be, soon, so check back... my guess is that you will find it unsatisfactory, but if not, please come back here and tell us. i like to be surprised. -bowerbird

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