- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

bastien's fantasy island
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

bastien asked me to use my imagination. so i did. if you're not interested in my imagination, then kindly skip reading this post. thanks. there is some good stuff in here, though, about how the text-format didn't _start_ as "my passion", but _earned_ the honor... that's right. when i first came to p.g., i thought the plain-text thing _sucked_. thought i'd have to re-work every file! and then i found gold in the river-bed... -bowerbird =================================== bastien said: > Bowerbird, imagine one minute you are > the Robinson Crusoe of a new mailing list > 100% dedicated to your passion: > ebooks in structured plain text format(s). hey, if i'm gonna use my imagination for something dedicated to my _passion_, it's not gonna be some crummy listserve! i'll tell you _that_ right off the bat! ;+) > How would you make people join the mailing list? i don't think you can "make" people join a listserve. > How would you "moderate" it? i wouldn't. i would let kindness prevail. i would let honesty speak truth to power. i would entice lurkers out of the corners. i would reward intelligence with attention. i would raise the bar up by raising the bar. comfort the afflicted; afflict the comfortable. i read once that there are 3 rules for a good listserve. 1. don't offend. 2. don't be offended. 3. rule #2 is more important than rule #1. > What kind of encouragement would you send to people? i would award trophies for participation. (this is my way of saying "that's a stupid question.") true creativity doesn't require "encouragement". it has a drive to express itself -- no matter what. the trick is to couple creativity with _discipline_, so that the end-product will have _high_quality_. > What kind of effective project > would you make people work on? you cannot "make" volunteers work on a project. and even if you could, _i_ wouldn't. why would i? let each decide for themselves. a thousand flowers. the masses will always be more creative -- by far -- than any one individual could ever "make" them be. > What kind of tone would you use in your emails > so that people feel like they want to follow you? why would i want people to follow me? (that's my way of saying "i don't want people to follow me.") i don't want people to follow me. i would prefer that they follow their own path. but i realize that they will do what they want anyway -- which usually means they will follow _someone_, because most people appear to be sheep, and thus are incapable of developing their own path, which makes me feel sorry for them, but i don't have any kind of ideas about how i could improve their lot -- so i usually just don't _think_ about where _they_ go, just as long as they don't follow me around, because it bugs me when people follow me around too closely. if they can do it without me noticing, fine. otherwise, i will make sure i shake them at the first opportunity. because it _bugs_ me to have someone follow me... and i pretty much have the same rule _about_ bugs. my rule is that you can be a bug in my house and it's totally cool. just so long as i cannot _see_ you. but once i _see_ you, i am _obligated_ to kill you... i always announce this, out loud, to any bug i see: "ok, sorry, bug, but you know the rule, that i must kill you if i see you, thus now that i have seen you, i have to kill you." and then i get a kleenex and kill the bug, and flush bug-and-kleenex down the toilet. this is how i serve full notice to all of the other bugs. that is the rule. i have no choice. no exceptions. but if you're a bug in my house and i do not see you, you're totally cool. you have nothing to worry about. > Again, you are Robinson and you are alone. > Robinson had the Bible with him -- > you "only" have the Gutenberg project. my thoughts on project gutenberg are convoluted. i loved michael hart. he might have been a rascal, but deep down, he was my type of iconoclast guy. and he made e-books work, which -- to my mind -- is the same thing as "inventing" them, so _there_... not only that, but he built the premiere e-library! (in its day, anyway.) further, it was a cooperative, community e-library, which is _exactly_ what i think a library should be. when the top-down people were telling us that it would be "too expensive" to digitize all books, michael answered with a bottom-up reply that we'll do the books ourselves, _one_at_a_time..._ and _that_ was a revolutionary act, a pure one... plus -- as if all of that weren't enough already -- michael grokked the most important thing about digital content, namely that it costs _nothing_ to reproduce it and _nothing_ to distribute it either. tell me who said "unlimited distribution" first... and loudest. no, i'll tell you -- it was _michael_. now, for a long time, michael was just a talker, like all of us back then. talking was all we did, since talking was pretty much all we could do... so for a long time, as a fellow talker myself, i dismissed michael as just yet another talker. even when he started typing in actual books, i dismissed it, because he had, what?, 100?... talking about a "library" with just 100 books is pretty hyperbolic, don't you think, mr. hart? i have more books than that in my living room. you _talk_ about digitizing more. but we all do! all of that changed, though, on a day in 1997. i can still remember it -- and quite vividly too. i was in a drugstore aisle, reading magazines -- since i was too poor to buy or subscribe -- and i picked up a "wired", which had an article on michael. it was the article i posted recently, where the writer talked about how michael was sprinkling sugar on his pizza, to "get energy" for an upcoming all-nighter to type in a book. i ask, how can you not love that image? :+) as proof, i can also tell you that there was an article in that issue about some school in isreal where they were buying some computers, and a few of the teachers were voicing complaints that the funds would be better spent on books. the link for me was that, with michael's library, each computer could become an access-point to -- quite literally -- _thousands_ of books... so to anyone who could make that connection, the question of "how best to spend the money" would be one that was dead-simple to answer. it was striking, to me, to see one magazine with such a stark contrast contained within, shortsightedness in the teachers versus the brilliant vision of michael's heady project... and i said to myself, in that drugstore aisle, "yeah, ya know, this hart character might be 'merely-a-talker', just like me, but at least he has gained the ear of _wired_magazine_." which -- back then -- was a very big deal... and i decided, then and there, that i would be a michael supporter, even as i continued to beat the drum about e-books myself as well. when i first met him on a listserve, i heaped sloppy-wet love-kisses all over michael hart, because i knew we were cyberlibrary brothers. but it was that day, in that drugstore, with that "wired", that i become a fan of michael. and even though he picked on me quite a bit -- which always perplexed me to no end -- i continued to love him, and do to this day... one of my best days on this list was when someone said i was brown-nosing michael. as if michael was the type of person who wanted to have his ass kissed, and as if i am the type of person who will kiss ass. but it let me know that my love was clear. to _everyone_ here. that made me happy. still, that's michael, and i long ago separated michael hart the man from project gutenberg. because as time went by, it become clear that michael was mostly a figurehead. by design! he wanted it that way! the only thing that he absolutely insisted on was plain-text format. and even that wasn't exclusive. yes, it had to be there. but it didn't have to be the only way. anyway, it was soon clear that the whitewashers were the real power. they determined what was "acceptable" and what wasn't. they set the rules. and they weren't open to input. not in the least. they'd heard it from so many directions already they'd put the "do not disturb" sign on the door. so i might as well be doing dialog with the wall. plus then marcello took over as the web-master. and has effectively set much policy by virtue of the decisions he has made there. (unilaterally?) all of that made me not care much about p.g. i could love michael, but be apathetic to p.g. besides, those weren't the only reasons, either. i have a real problem with the fact that p.g. is a library containing predominately old books. yes, i love the _concept_ of "the public domain". but we're talkin' 'bout books born before 1923. yes, that includes some "classics", yes it does. lots and lots of classics, to be sure. but still, "classics" are things that bore kids in school. i mean, seriously... the world has changed a lot since 1923. a lot. heck, 1923 was _before_ "the great depression". i'm a musician, and even as a kid, i _loved_ a lot of classical music. i loved to play mozart. i loved beethoven. and my most favorite of all was bach. i _loved_ playing bach. over and over. i wore out a batch of bach sheet-music. really. and that was _before_ i memorized the works... (after that, there was no way you could stop me.) i didn't know any kids who loved classical music as much as i did... and most certainly not bach! but guess what? i also loved the beatles. a lot. and the turtles... the rolling stones... and dc5... later i came to love r&b, and folk, and even c&w. prince and springsteen, johnny cash and punk... motown, all by itself, could fill up my juke-box. so if you told me i had to give all that up, that i could only get pre-1923 music from now on, i'd probably rather kill myself than keep living. heck, flappers had only begun to appear then! the world changed a lot in the 20th century. (how is that for a massive understatement?) it has even changed quite a bit in the 21st... but little of the post-1922 change is reflected in the "library" of project gutenberg. so little. (there _are_ those nut-grower manuals, but...) it's more like a _museum_ than a _library_... a museum from an ancient time, one that has very little to do with the one we live in now... so even if i love some of those classic books, a library which is _missing_ so much content that is _so_ very important to our reality now is simply not gonna be too compelling to me. there's a hole in our public knowledge-base. a big hole... from 1923 right up until today... and the content cartel ain't gonna let us fill it. they've got it hooked up to their cash-register, so if we wanna play it, we're gonna have to pay. so i'm just saying "to hell with their content". i don't wanna read their 20th-century books, i don't wanna watch their movies or tv shows, i don't care about their sports or reality shows. choke on your content, you greedy bastards, because i'm not paying you another _nickel_. i'm cutting you middlemen out of the equation. the only content i'm interested in from now on is the stuff that artists willingly share for free... i'll pay them, voluntarily, what i think it's worth, but i'm not interested if i have to pay in advance. if you're trying to sell me a pig in a poke, then don't bother. keep your pig _and_ your poke... to that end, i'm interested in helping any artists who wanna kickstart this "gift-exchange" mode, who want to remove the commercial imperative from our day-to-day existence as human beings. that's why i'll be releasing my authoring-tools... so today's authors can easily make their e-books. my tools are free -- pay me only if you want -- so those new authors can make their e-books at no cost, so they can in turn offer them cost-free to readers -- pay the authors only if you want... so i don't care too much about project gutenberg. not any more, no. not now that michael is gone. distributed proofreaders drank its own kool-aid, so it'll soon be on its last legs and spinning away. the whitewashers will soon burn themselves out, completely, and disarray will surely follow after... marcello will try to take over, and screw it all up, either because he didn't get control, or he _did_. and even if a white knight rides in to the rescue, google and amazon have now seized the future, and neither of them is gonna give up their grip... so there's no future here. this is a great project, with a wonderful legacy as the original pioneer... but there's no future here. just old men like me. *** and even old men like me are deserting the ship. like i said, i'm more interested in "born-digital" books these days, specifically being a mid-wife. because the "gift-exchange" model is _more_ than merely a different way of doing business. it's part of what will save the whole human race, providing there is still time to accomplish that... we've gotta get over our violence problem, and our selfishness problem, and our greed problem. we've gotta learn how to live with each other, and trust each other again, and believe in ourselves... we need leaders who can move us to a new place. the only people who can do that are the artists. artists who can live off the kindness of strangers. i want to help those artists come into existence... i want to put tools at their disposal... *** oh, yeah, one more thing that i should add here. this might take a little while, but it'll be worth it. the plain-text thing? that didn't _start_out_ as "my passion". frankly, i couldn't care less about _formats_ of any type. as a programmer, i can create any "format" to fill my needs at the time, and i routinely _do_ do that, and exactly that... i take data in, in whatever form it exists, and convert it into something that i can work with. so the "format" is quite meaningless to me... as long as my app can deal with it, i'm cool... indeed, when i first started doing e-book apps, in the 1980s, when we were still calling them "programs" and not "apps", my input files were _terminal_sessions_. you'd log onto a network, like compuserve, and "capture the session" into a text file. so i'd input the saved text-sessions, formatting 'em so they'd paginate on the screen. later, when listserves became a common thing, i would take the "digest" of a listserve as input. the top of the digest has a list of the messages -- a line for each, giving its subject-header -- and i would turn those lines into hot-links that would jump a user to the appropriate message. i also split each message to its own screen, so each could be individually deleted or annotated. i did desktop publishing with ventura publisher, which saved its text in regular text-files which it would import. learning that system intimately taught me how you can optimize such a method. i handled poetry chapbooks, and magazines, and dc-10 manuals, all kinds and types of documents. (my first o.c.r. experience was the dc-10 content, a combination of o.c.r. and vydec conversions.) i've pulled content out of spreadsheets, mysql, dbase databases, sas and spss (statistics files), and for one project even off 10-inch "floppies". heck, the first time i saw angle-brackets was in wordstar, for crying out loud. and wordperfect had to be different, so it used square-brackets. then, with sgml (again, those dc-10 manuals) and .html, we got the angle-brackets again... one of my early triumphs, for which i was paid very well, was a simple program for "tagging" the structural elements in those dc-10 manuals. for instance, one common element is "notes". each note has the word "note" as the header, and the body of the note follows, indented on both sides. so my routine searched for a line that consisted simply of the word "note", and tagged that as "note-header", and then also tagged the following paragraph as "note-body". tens of thousands of notes, tagged immediately, across dozens of manuals, for dozens of airlines. for people who had been tagging each note _manually_, by clicking into its header and then clicking the "header" button, and then clicking into the body and clicking "body", my simple 30-line program saved tons of time. all of this is just to say that i'm fluent in formats. i can sling them with the best of 'em. and i also know that a format gives very little functionality. (it can, however, cause you no shortage of grief.) indeed, when i first looked at project gutenberg, i saw its plain-text format as its largest drawback. i was used to "text files" in the mac world, which invisibly support bold, italics, and other "styling". but plain-ascii files supported _none_ of that... and markup of those styles was _erratic_ then... it was present in _some_ books, but not _most_. so i felt i'd need to re-work the entire library... plus it was another era in terms of bandwidth, so i thought i'd also need to _compress_ files, and i worked out a very good system for that, one that was much better than _zipping_ them. and of course i was tying all this stuff into the _viewer-program_ which i wrote for the books. so the _format_ which i was originally planning was far more elaborate than a simple text-file. i thought i'd have to re-work each file, and then package it up in my format. i knew that my format would be more valuable to users, that they would benefit from the costs i paid; the bad part was that i'd have to do the work. but like i said, the whitewashers simply refused to make the simple changes that were required to make it work (e.g., listing picture filenames). so all those plans fell by the wayside. while that was all falling apart, however, i did enough research that i _began_to_understand_ that the text-file, by itself, would be sufficient. i didn't need to inject some other information. everything i needed was already there within... i needed to pare away some stuff (legalese?), and tighten some loose ends, but everything else was pretty much lurking around inside... and that's when i gave a low whistle to myself, in amazement at the wisdom of michael hart, since his insistence on that plain-text format is what led me to do so much research on it... if i hadn't been looking, i wouldn't have found. i panned michael's river -- only one around! -- and discovered gold. i was completely floored. i mean, i knew there was valuable stuff inside. but i didn't realize it held the complete answer. so anyway, i came here, and tried to tell people the whole answer was sitting under their nose... and the rest is history. recorded in the archives. and yeah, jim is right... if i would only just lay all of the evidence at everyone's feet, then they _might_ believe me. (emphasis on the _might_.) but it's too much fun to have them continue to bet their credibility on what i have in my pocket. i _know_ what i have in my pocket, so for me, there's absolutely no risk in taking their bets... because as long as they're willing to throw more money in the pot, i don't need to show my hand. > How long do you feel sorry > for the stupid human nature? the human race is _not_ stupid. not by a long shot... quite the contrary; we are exceedingly clever animals. but something bad happens when we institutionalize. take government. (please!) some of our brightest people work in the government. smart people, with good intentions, and full resources. but somehow, the plans that they put into motion are almost always flawed, and quite often significantly so. how does this happen? how can we put lots and lots of smart people in a room, and out comes a dumb plan? how is that even possible? why are we smart, individually, yet dumb, collectively? how does horse designed by committee become camel? i wish i knew the answer to that. i wish we all knew it. the other main problem, of course, is that there is a complex of factors that, together, is very dangerous. when a person is greedy, powerful, and ruthless too, what you have is an individual who is very dangerous. when you have a _group_ of greedy, powerful, ruthless individuals, you have a world that's in a world of hurt... because those people will _seize_ power, and _keep_ it, and have no compunctions about their use of violence. and no, i'm _not_ talking about the tin-horse dictators, the amateurs like the shah of iran, hussein, or kadafi... if you have to actually _use_ violence, in the public eye, like those amateurs did, the slaves will rise against you. i'm talking about the _professionals_, the people who _backed_ those amateurs, the ones with so much power that they can wield it without many of us even noticing. heck, if you're really good at it, like those koch boys, you can spread around a little bit of your big fortune such that the slaves rise up against your adversaries. (or at least you create the impression that they are.) i read a blog once that said marx talked about this... but far as i know, he didn't even know the koch boys. so, you know, you can't trust everything on the blogs. but yeah, the main problem goes back to _violence_. the men who were willing to use it got their way, and they built institutions which formalized their power. (they also threw in a dash of religion to boot, which -- per the same blog -- marx _also_ talked about... was there anything this marx guy _didn't_ discuss?) (that reminds me, did ya see "survivor" last week? wasn't that a blast to see "coach" praying that they would "find the idol", when it's right in his pocket? talk about ensuring your prayer will be answered!) anyway... the violence guys formalized institutions -- the whole schmear, governments, economy -- and then convinced themselves they all _deserved_ to get special treatment, and so they set up a world that would _deliver_ that special treatment to them. pretty nifty trick, eh? nice work, if you can get it... they keep getting richer, and we keep getting poorer. because, like, you know, it's right there in the bible... and they couldn't put it in the bible if it wasn't true... > What problem do you tackle first, > so that people join you in tackling it? the first thing i do is find my girl friday, "tackle" her, and we start making babies... _that_ is "my passion". gotta populate the island! :+) -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Talking about TXT
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

i said: > maximize the number of viable machines! by the way, some web-browsers (notably, firefox) do not wrap the lines when they display a .txt file. whether they should, or not, is another question... but the reality is that some do not. (others _do_.) so if p.g. deleted their mid-paragraph linebreaks, those .txt files would become unwieldy in firefox... -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] Talking about TXT
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

andrew said: > I wonder what reasoning was used to > settle on the txt-less-than-80 format... i'd say the reasoning was perfectly obvious: maximize the number of viable machines! _can't_wrap_ + _can_wrap_ > _can_wrap_ by the way, here's an online unwrapper: > http://z-m-l.com/go/unwrap.pl this version has the requirement that a space in the first column of any line means the linebreak preceding that line was significant, and is not to be deleted. oh, and by the way, if you wanna wrap, counting characters is an archaic way... better to assign a "standard" font -- e.g., like times roman or helvetica -- and then chop lines by stringwidth... and you don't need to write a routine to do that... run out a .pdf, then save the text with the "export" command... -bowerbird

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Talking about TXT
by Greg M. Johnson 30 Oct '11

30 Oct '11

Here's an attempt to get at an objective truth behind the format wars, in order to make it easier for folks to make informed if their own subjective decisions. Library science peeps and/or computer anthropologists might already know something I don't, which would make me give up an axe I keep grinding. Suppose you were to take all of the reading devices that STILL exist today and are likely to ever exist in the future. This would include Kindle's, really old computer terminals in behind-the-times university CS departments, reasonable speculations about 200 years from now, AND, AND the software that everyone in the world has on their computer right NOW. Now take all the formats that ever existed, and give them a big veto for every time someone i) truly cannot see it, and ii) has an inconvenient time on the screen reading the thing (from eye nuisance to ability to enlarge for those with poor vision). Microsoft Word 1995 format (if there were such a thing) is probably out. WordPerfect for 3.1 Windows format is probably out. And so on. Maybe you can see where I'm going with this. I truly believe that "text has gotta stay"-- someone said this years ago and it is the right decision, because some TXT formats will win the elimination contest I just described above. But I am wondering who wins the elimination round between: i) PG's current format for "TXT" with 80 chars ii) a format that is still all ASCII but removes all the end-of-column CR's, and only has double returns at the end of paragraphs. IMO, this ii) wins 100% hands down for "convenient time on the screen for reading the thing", based on software that everyone has right now. Yeah, some peeps might be able to write a program that takes out these CR's, but I know one time I tried it in something like MS Word, I messed it up worse. But if someone has to write a program to read, that ruins the criteria of "convenient time right now." IMO, I'm willing to toss out of the lifeboat the University CS historian on his old terminal in favor of the millions of peeps with HTML browsers. I'm not advocating for HTML, but for a TXT version without the 80 char line breaks. Just an idea. -- Greg M. Johnson http://pterandon.blogspot.com

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Re: [gutvol-d] Talking about TXT
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Oct '11

29 Oct '11

i realized i forgot one important point... about a shortcoming in the p.g. e-texts... and the fact that i could forget this one makes me fully realize how utterly and completely i've given up on those files... the p.g. e-texts do not give information on which picture goes in which location. that is, they indicate the _presence_ of a graphic at a location, but they don't tell the filename of the graphic located there. and in fact, some of the books don't even indicate that a picture was even present... i "won" the battle over marking italics, but couldn't win this one on graphic filenames. the whitewashers -- including newby -- insisted that the text-files be neutered in regard to this important information. since that position makes no sense at all, it was obvious it was an act of sabotage. they also refused to do anything to mark _significant_ mid-paragraph linebreaks, which would have eased the removal job that greg johnson was just discussing... but the picture-filenames was a fatal blow. that's when i gave up on project gutenberg. ineptitude is one thing. sabotage is another. -bowerbird

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Re: [gutvol-d] zml
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Oct '11

29 Oct '11

the good alex said: > Do you actually have a spec or document describing > ZML anywhere? eww, please! those capital letters stab my eyes and make 'em bleed! > Do you have a sample _implementation_ I can try, > rather than just some output? i was planning on sending you the beta version of my text-editor authoring-tool tomorrow, but maybe i can move that up to today. if anyone else wants to do some testing for me, please send a backchannel... in the meantime, alex, you can get started here: > http://www.z-m-l.com the link there will take you here: > http://www.z-m-l.com/go/vl3.pl for any one of those example books, you can view the .zml, or click the button to do its conversion... of particular interest would be the "11 rules of z.m.l." > http://www.z-m-l.com/go/vl11.zml that's a very old version. but not much has changed. after that, you can look at the test-suite: > http://www.z-m-l.com/go/test-suite.zml -bowerbird

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ZML
by Alex Buie 29 Oct '11

29 Oct '11

BB, Do you actually have a spec or document describing ZML anywhere? Do you have a sample _implementation_ I can try, rather than just some output? Alex (Even if you'd rather it be backchannel) -- Alex Buie Network Coordinator / Server Engineer KWD Services, Inc Media and Hosting Solutions +1(703)445-3391 +1(480)253-9640 +1(703)919-8090 abuie(a)kwdservices.com

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Re: [gutvol-d] Talking about TXT
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Oct '11

29 Oct '11

greg johnson said: > ONE USE of HTML (in emails) makes it > harder for multiple people. > ANOTHER USE of HTML (in PG books) greatly > improves the readability for multiple people. nice try, greg. but reading software can be configured so that either format is equally readable. a great recent innovation in readability -- it's actually _named_ "readability" -- is one that turns the .html of web-pages _back_ to a display more like a text-file. it also eliminates a lot of the _crud_ that many web-pages have today -- e.g., ads, recent-tweet slideshows, and all of that, which is a tremendous relief as well -- but the heart of its charm is that it gives a straightforward rendering of the words. listserve software could easily use .html, and e-books could easily use plain-text. conversely, both of them could use both. it's just a small matter of programming... likewise, converters between the two are exceedingly common. if you need a link to some that work well, just let me know. programmers know the truth of formats: they ultimately end up meaning very little. what is important is _not_ how the data is wrapped, but what happens after extraction. only non-programmers are foolish enough to think a format can accomplish anything. if we took all of the energy which has been _wasted_ on formats in the past decade and put it instead into improving our programs, we would be light-years ahead of ourselves. instead, now we have listserve software that often fails for many, in one way or another. on the e-book front, we're now re-living the "browser wars" from world-wide-web history. somehow, the format wonks _never_ learn... the good news is _users_ are now aware of the importance of apps to user-experience. programmers can go directly to end-users, without wading through the format-wonks. *** greg said: > Here's an attempt to get at an > objective truth behind the format wars as per above, only non-programmers will even bother to think formats really matter. and get all strung out trying to make them. > a format that is still all ASCII > but removes all the end-of-column CR's, and > only has double returns at the end of paragraphs. first, if you eliminate the end-of-line characters, there's no need for end-of-paragraph characters to be doubled -- singles work just fine, thanks... but the mid-paragraph linebreaks in p.g. e-texts aren't really a problem that's all _that_ serious... they can be rather-easily removed systematically. if they seem serious to you, it's only because you are using some inferior and very stupid software. > Yeah, some peeps might be able to > write a program that takes out these CR's, > but I know one time I tried it in something > like MS Word, I messed it up worse. ms-word isn't the best programming environment. and if your first attempt ended in failure, then i can _invite_ you to "join the club", but to do that, you'll have to request the paperwork to be a member, and you'll have to fill it out, and send it in, and hear back, and if you're accepted, you'll have to pay dues to join. one failed attempt simply ain't enough to get inside... so if you wanna join the club, you'll need to do more. but there's no need, really, because if you really want to know how to do the job, start the dialog with me... by the time it's over, you'll know everything you need to know about how to do the job, easily and accurately. the important thing to know is that if your viewer-apps cannot do this for you, _automatically_, the problem is in your viewer-apps, not necessarily in the text-format. your viewer-apps should be able to handle any format that has included all of the reasonably important data. > I'm not advocating for HTML, but for > a TXT version without the 80 char line breaks. again, the 80-character line-breaks are easy to fix. so you're barking up the wrong tree. concentrate on the things that are _not_ easy to fix, instead, please... some of the p.g. e-texts do not include information about the _structural_ aspects underlying the text... for instance, they're missing information on italics. or they don't have a clear indication of blockquotes. _those_ are the shortcomings in the p.g. text-format. and -- in reality -- they are the fault of _the_people_ who prepared the e-texts, not endemic in the format. those structural aspects _can_ be coded in plain-text, it was just that the person _failed_ to do that coding. or the workflow failed to tell them that they should! believe it or not, i had to _fight_ to get p.g. to require that italics should get marked in the plain-text files... _greg_newby_ himself said that it was "unnecessary". in 2003! when the library already had 10,000 books! greg is a smart man. hey, he _must_ be, since he is a professor at a university in alaska, a professor with a library-science degree... but what he said that day was stupid... very very stupid... exceedingly stupid... luckily, he was big enough to admit he was wrong... and jim adcock, the jim who is continually railing on about all the deficiencies of the p.g. e-text format? we saw here that -- at least on one book he posted, but probably _every_ book he had done up to then -- jim _deleted_ italics markup from the book's e-text. he included it in the .html version, but then actually _deleted_ it from the text-version. so unbelievable! the text versions will, of course, be utterly useless if you've decided that you'll intentionally neuter them... but a well-prepared text-version, like a .zml file, can be converted into .html, .pdf, .epub, .mobi, or any number of new formats that might come along. and, with a good app, be viewed on an old machine, and not just viewed, but -- again, with a good app -- turned into a dynamite e-book with rad functionality. forget formats. concentrate on improving apps. -bowerbird

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"Peachmonk" books
by Simon Tarlink 29 Oct '11

29 Oct '11

@Al "Peachmonk, a serio-comic detective tale in which no firearms are used and no one is killed" (1917) is by John Eyerman (1867). Aside from a few very serious books about genealogy and paleontology, the only other offering Eyerman published is not a "Peachmonk" book, but closely allied. "Blankenberghe, a serio-comic detective tale in which no firearms are used and no one is killed" (1910). Neither book is in PG-INT. I would consider mounting both of them as projects at DPC, but neither would make much sense in ASCII text version, and Blankenberghe would only work in HTML, as a series of illos of the pages, due to the extensive use of fancy fonts in the original. As to considering them a "catalog" of titles to be produced by the DP community (and possibly linking them to the Eyerman books), the author has used many of the books of fame as elements in telling his story-many will already be in PG-INT. The balance would constitute a considerable backlog for DP production for years to come). There are 543 titles mentioned in Blankenberghe, for example. Interested in tracking them all down-a sort of Eyerman UberProject? Cheers Simple Simon

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Re: [gutvol-d] sometimes i despair
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 29 Oct '11

29 Oct '11

the other alex said: > If you expect politeness, you first > need to be considerate yourself. i haven't expected "politeness" from this list since the very first day that i came here, and the subsequent years have only confirmed it. i interact very politely with everyone who interacts politely with me... _everyone_... heck, i will even interact politely with people who have made me their "enemy" in the past, providing that they interact politely with me... i am also constantly amused by those people who tell me that i "first need to be considerate" myself, since they regularly fail to follow their own advice. i don't call people names. i don't do ad hominem. i make long posts that are elaborately documented. but some other people call _me_ names, and they do ad hominem on _me_, and they _never_ever_ seem to take much time to address my arguments. i don't do ad hominem, because i don't need to... even when i say something is _"stupid"_, i address _the_argument_ (or its absence), not _the_person_, unless pushed to the edge by excessive repetition. nobody here is stupid. i'd guess that you all score "above average" on an i.q. test. but _some_ of you do -- on occasion -- say some very stupid things... > Setting aside the flood of abuse you > regularly hurl at respected members of this list oh please. what, when, where. be specific, because _you_, alex -- right _now_ -- are doing ad hominem. > I asked you many months ago why you -- > as the only person here, to my knowledge -- > insist on contributing to this list > in ugly, bloated HTML emails, > instead of in plain-text, which is > the gold standard of mailing-lists, > especially (!) tech lists. well, first of all, alex, i have informed you that you are in my kill-filter, which means that you shouldn't really expect a reply from me, ever... by the way, very few people make my kill-filter. you must have said some _very_ stupid things... i read this post of yours on the listserve website, more or less by accident, but if i had been reading my e-mail, i never ever would have seen your post. i _did_ see your earlier queston, and i chose not to answer it, because it wouldn't have done any good. yes, my posts to this listserve come here as .html, not because i "insist" on that, but simply because the a.o.l. client provides no way to make a choice as to what it sends out. and yes, that's backwards. but it is what it is. so you will have to live with it... so, do you feel like that answer did you any good? yeah, i didn't think so. so now you will pursue your attack tactics, and point out that i could use some other software, one which _did_ give me a choice in the matter, and you will ask me why i don't do that instead? so here's my answer to that -- _i_don't_want_to_. do you feel like _that_ answer did you any good? yeah, i didn't think that it would, either. so then you will proceed to escalate your attack. you'll say "the fact that you don't want to change indicates that you're doing all this on purpose..." and i'll say "if i could take an action that would make the a.o.l. client work correctly, i _would_. but i cannot. so that's just the way it is, alex." i could also point out that it's not even in _my_ best interests to have my posts fall outside the threads in which they belong... think about it... but that won't make you happy, so you'll repeat the thing that you just said... and so then i will repeat what i just said, so you'll repeat it again. and then i'll get bored with all of that, and say "ya know, that's what happens when technocrats try to force a 'standard' on everyone. i'm sure the people at a.o.l. thought they were moving _forward_ by using .html instead of plain-text, just like the e-book standards people thought they were moving forward by mandating that e-books should use .html format exclusively, and again when they updated that to .xhtml, and now when they are changing it to .html5. hey, they always think they know what's best!" so, you see, alex, part of this .html thing is rubbing your nose in the .html when all you _really_ want is just the good ol' plain-text. do you see the bigger point? the metaphor? at least i _could_ say that, if i _decided_ to. it's not true, but it _does_ have a nice ring. the truth is, i'd happily change it right away _if_ i could. but i can't. so live with it, alex, with the takeaway lesson that we all need to make demands that our systems are flexible. > you break a discussion thread, creating > havon on (for example) my iPad and iPhone, etc. alex, i'm sure you meant "havoc" there. typing on your ipad right now, are you? :+) hey, alex, i feel for you. i truly do. it's really very important for all of us to grok how _interdependent_ we are on each other, and how much we have riding on getting our systems to work correctly, for best usage... that's your lesson, alex: our systems _matter_. > If you don't give a damn about messing up > other people's inboxes on a daily basis, see, there you go again, alex, blaming _me_ for some "decision" that i supposedly made, thinking that it means i "don't give a damn". social psychologists have a name for that -- "the fundamental attributional error". we attribute the behavior of other people to _their_character_, something about _them_. not completely, but we error in that direction. our own behavior, on the other hand, we tend to attribute to environmental factors. again, not completely, but it's the tendency. we know all of the factors impinging on us, and how they have impacted our behavior... we know the reason _why_ we did something, and it rarely has to do with "our character"... (particularly not when that'd be unflattering.) and we rarely know the external factors that were acting on somebody else, and might have been _the_ reason for their behavior. instead we say "that's just the way they are". the reality is that most of us are quite plastic, so situations can make us do almost anything. even including herding jews into gas showers. that's how pliable we can be, as human beings. kinda scary to think about, isn't it? very scary. > you can't be surprised > at the lack of civility you're experiencing, i haven't been "surprised" by the lack of civility since my very first day on this listserve, alex... (marcello, that's your cue... don't be late...) > or the lack of interest in > your innumerable projects. when i want to stir up interest in my projects, i'll release them publicly. that time will come. -bowerbird p.s. and once again, for alex and everyone else who gets irritated by reading my posts: _stop._ just stop! don't read them! i don't care! really! indeed, i'd much rather have you not read them than read them and get yourself all worked up... seriously. none of us needs the drama. nobody. put me in your kill-file if you can't resist my posts. you will be doing a favor to me, you, and everyone.

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