- gutvol-d - lists.pglaf.org

Re: time after time
by Morasch＠aol.com 19 Feb '11

19 Feb '11

hey bowerbird, i will collaborate with you. what did you have in mind?

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time after time
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Feb '11

19 Feb '11

time after time, i have offered to collaborate with people on this listserve to do a project... nobody, including michael hart, is interested. over the years, a lotta people here called me names, called my work "vaporware", said it was "impossible" to do what i suggested, and insulted me some more. throughout, i have continued to do my research. i've learned a lot in the process, and i've wanted to pass this knowledge along. but nobody cares. i've offered bits and pieces of my work repeatedly, and nobody even looked at it, as far as i could tell. and yet those same people came back at me with bogus "vaporware" charges, over and over again... it's as if they think that if they refuse to look at it, it doesn't exist. that's how freaking stupid they are. meanwhile, people at d.p. struggle to make e-books, because they don't have the best tools they could have. i work hard. i've done a lot. i've created some stuff that it would be _good_ for you people to know about. but i'm tired of trying to bang sense into your heads. i have asked you to take some extremely small steps, just give daily feedback on a project that evolves daily, and you're not even willing to do _that_, even though with my guidance you could have something awesome in a matter of weeks, since i know the territory so well. i'm not gonna work my ass off to _hand_ you something, when you can't even be bothered to write a simple post saying "i would like a program that did x, and y, and z." i'll go off and show the rest of the world what i know, because they are actively looking for a _simple_way_ to make electronic-books. i offered it to _you_ first, so you could have offered it to the world as your baby, battle-tested and all, but you weren't interested in it. and while i am showing it to the world, i will be here, too, every day, telling you how you could have had this thing, but you were too proud and stupid to know you wanted it. even though you are still struggling every day, trying to invent the things that i already have working perfectly well. so call me all the names you want, you twisted individuals, because i am tougher than you will ever be, count on it... -bowerbird

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Re: cryptic star-trek reference again
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 19 Feb '11

19 Feb '11

michael said: > I think that if BB had given it > any amout of thought when originally stated, > I would have been more than clear enough. no, i tried to figure it out, and couldn't. sorry. > Now that the events have passed, > it makes no difference. . . . the "events" are still in play. just like they have been, for the last 7 years, composed by over 2555 days... and it _does_ make a difference... > If anyone is truly curious, and sends me back > the original message, I will help them figure it out. . . . i am truly curious. the archives are here: > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-February/thread.html but i went and fetched the references for you. > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-February/007363.html > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-February/007395.html > http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2011-February/007400.html *** so here's your post, quoting mine, where you first used it... > ok, so i've been on this listserve over 7 years. > that's over 2555 days. > > during that time, i have advised you what to do. > you didn't listen. i offered to help you. in return, > you attacked me, denigrated me, slandered me... > > every day, i gave you a new chance at redemption. > you blew it... over 2555 chances at redemption... > > i have written several drafts of yet another post > telling you how you missed the boat on what i > have been offering you, and i will consolidate > all those versions, and post it sometime soon... > > but i'm here, today, and tomorrow, and the day > after that, and the day after that, offering you > _still_another_ explicit chance at redemption... > > i will upload a web-app today. this app will be > a collaborative project of this listserve, aiming to > instantiate the advice i've offered you for years. > > every day, based on feedback given on this list, > i will improve the program. you must give some > kind of feedback -- reviews, requests, whatever -- > on the app _every_day_, or the project collapses. > > each day, we just have to make a little baby step, > some kind of improvement moving us forward... > it doesn't have to be a giant step, just a baby step. > but if we fail to make a step one day, it's all over... > > we're going to start small, and take small steps. > but if we work together, _every_day,_ it won't be > long at all before we have something worthwhile. > > together, we can create something of value. > > or not. > > the decision is up to you. > > this is your last chance at redemption. > > don't blow it. > > -bowerbird "You just go on quoting those regulations, Lt. Saavik." "Hours could seem like days, days could seem like weeks." "Second star to the right, and straight on 'til morning." *** and here's your post, again quoting mine, where you used the phrase the second time... > rickywong said: > > What do you guys think? > > so, did anyone respond to you backchannel > about your project? or was it total silence? > > > > How many people are on this list anyway? > > from 300-350, depending on duplicates. > > that number has been remarkably consistent > for many years, rising slowly across that time, > but with an extremely small amount of "churn". > > as you can see, though, it's extremely passive. > > once again, everyone here has failed to meet > my challenge for them to do a collaboration... > > nothing new about that in terms of this list. > > what _is_ new is that the outside world has > finally risen to the point where it thinks that > _it_ can meet my challenge, as evidenced here: > > http://www.pressbooks.com > > this is a new venture from hugh mcguire, who > many here will surely recognize as the founder > of librivox, an audiobook public-domain project. > > i have talked with hugh. i am not convinced that > he can best me, but i'm quite happy to see him try. > > so once again, everyone here at project gutenberg > continues on autopilot, while the rest of the world > passes them by. oh well, it was nice while it lasted. > > -bowerbird And indeed it was so that: "Hours could seem like days, and day would seem like weeks." *** so, what's the explanation? -bowerbird

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cryptic star-trek reference again
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 18 Feb '11

18 Feb '11

again michael gives the same cryptic star-trek reference. care to explain it, michael? the internet informs me that, in this scene in the movie, spock speaks in code (so "days" actually means "hours") to mislead an enemy who is listening in on the dialog... i'm not speaking in code, nor am i misleading anyone, so i cannot say that i understand the meaning here... oh, and by the way, just in case it wasn't absolutely clear, my invitation to collaborate extends to michael as well, of course, so all he has to do to spur me into action is to say that he wants to collaborate, and then follow through. i'd love to develop a web-app or offline tool to his specs... indeed, i have wondered all along why michael has not responded more positively to the suggestions i've made. my recommendations could have cemented his vision, by trumpeting plain-text format as "the master version". indeed, if he had gotten on-board early, he could have propagated the model to internet archive, google, apple, amazon, and all of the other players in this little game... as it is, project gutenberg (in the persona of marcello) ended up going with a light-markup solution anyway, but it's a clumsy one that entails creating a separate file. even if marcello can make it work, michael will end up with no credit for the development, only a decreased rate of presence in his role as the p.g. founder and visionary. -bowerbird

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Re: the outside world rises to the challenge
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

andrew said: > a website with lots of fashion photographs. sorry, my fault... > http://www.pressbooks.com and it's just a splash-screen for the time being. -bowerbird

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the outside world rises to the challenge
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 17 Feb '11

17 Feb '11

rickywong said: > What do you guys think? so, did anyone respond to you backchannel about your project? or was it total silence? > How many people are on this list anyway? from 300-350, depending on duplicates. that number has been remarkably consistent for many years, rising slowly across that time, but with an extremely small amount of "churn". as you can see, though, it's extremely passive. once again, everyone here has failed to meet my challenge for them to do a collaboration... nothing new about that in terms of this list. what _is_ new is that the outside world has finally risen to the point where it thinks that _it_ can meet my challenge, as evidenced here: > http://www.pressbook.com this is a new venture from hugh mcguire, who many here will surely recognize as the founder of librivox, an audiobook public-domain project. i have talked with hugh. i am not convinced that he can best me, but i'm quite happy to see him try. so once again, everyone here at project gutenberg continues on autopilot, while the rest of the world passes them by. oh well, it was nice while it lasted. -bowerbird

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Re: Calibre: Open Source Software for Managing eBook Collections
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

keith said: > So it is up to the programs how the display something. > Some standard for displaying books!! i don't think anyone wants to talk about the .epub format. but, just to give you some idea of the confusion out there, many viewer-programs refuse to honor the margins that are set in the file. that would be all right if they let the user dictate the margins. but most of them just set their own... the same goes with a lot of the other important variables. of course, there are also things like curly vs. straight quotes, which _none_ of the viewer-programs offer as an option... so neither the e-book creators nor the users end up happy. this is the legacy that jon noring and the i.d.p.f. left us with. -bowerbird

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Re: Calibre: Open Source Software for Managing eBook Collections
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

jim said: > http://www.idpf.org/ is the source of > the descriptions of what EPUB is and > what the file format can and cannot do, > if anyone actually cares to try to actually > figure it all out. It would be a gift to > the PG community if anyone can come up with > even a simple tool that reliably takes > even one HTML file and correctly and > reliably following all the IDPF rules > convert that HTML into an EPUB that > even begins to work on most EPUB machines. jim is confused. don't let jim confuse you. the .epub file-format is a _specification_.... in other words, it's a blueprint, not a building. the i.d.p.f. -- an organization of corporate publishing houses -- designed this file-format as much to _retard_ e-books as to promote them. that is to say that it is a bad blueprint... because of this underlying agenda of sabotage, they have never provided the world at large with _reference_implementations_, which are programs that _prove_ that the file-format works correctly... for an e-book file-format, you should provide reference implementations for a viewer-app and an authoring tool, if you want a format to succeed. i.d.p.f. never provided either for their file-format. this means that every entity that wants to "support" the .epub file-format has to start apps from scratch. and at ambiguous points, they must make their own decisions about which fork in the road they will take. because of the difficulty and the ambiguity of .epub, the viewer-apps have been hung up with problems... and each app has gotten hung up at a different place, and taken different paths to get there, with the result being that all of these viewer-apps are inconsistent... they are inconsistent with the spec, and with each other. indeed, sometimes the same viewer-app is inconsistent across its own _versions_, so a workaround that solved a problem in version 1.1 _causes_ a problem in v1.2... it's a nightmare. and that nightmare was _caused_ by i.d.p.f. and the .epub file-format. _intentionally_. in fact, one of the biggest embarrassments is adobe, who is a _member_ of the i.d.p.f., and their _major_ tech organization. their viewer-program is so lame that it cannot handle chunks bigger than 300k, so a person creating an e-book has to chop up the text into bite-sized pieces so the adobe app can gum it... so it's a pipe-dream to think that you can implement a single .epub file that works reliably on all machines. and that is _because_ of .epub, not in spite of it... > It is NOT as simple as hacking an existing EPUB > and inserting your unmangled HTML into the zip file > -- as anyone who has tried this approach on > non-trivial HTML files has found. it's curious that when jim is arguing in support of .html, it's because .html is a common, well-understood format, and it serves as the basis for both .epub and .mobi files... but then jim turns around and tells keith that .html is this monster of complexity, and so is the creation of .epubs... and jim seems not to even realize he contradicts himself. at any rate, let us attack this bug-bear one more time, ok? because jim, let me tell you, as i did before, that you are walking into the same trap sprung on my detractors before. when they were attacking z.m.l., one line of argument was that z.m.l. couldn't handle complex books. this attack was presented repeatedly, day after day, month after month, for _years_, until they became totally and completely convinced it was the absolute truth. for a long time, i played possum, and declined to mount a counter. then, when the time came, i asked a question -- "can you show me some such books?" they had no answer. so it was _my_ turn to pound, and i did, asking them repeatedly for examples they could not provide. needless to say, jim, but the jig is up now, even if i _did_ feel like stringing you along for a long time, which i don't. i played them as fools, getting them to bet their credibility, which they did, and subsequently lost. but you have none to begin with, so there's no fun in playing poker with you. so i will cut directly to the chase. if there is _any_ truth to your argument about "non-trivial" books that i cannot handle with my tool-set, point to them. if we assume there are 20,000 non-duplicate e-books in the p.g. library, and the "non-trivial" ones constitute 30%, then there will be 6,000 non-trivial books. so if you find just 30% of _those_, you could point to some 1,800 books. so let's start very small, ok, jim, and point me to just _18_. i'm waiting, jim. you've kept me waiting a lot, lately, jim... > Is there already such a tool on the internet? > Not that I've found -- and god knows I've gone looking. as i told all of you earlier, if you really need a program to help you create .epub files, backchannel me and i will point you to one that typically does a pretty darn good job. oh, and there's always calibre as well. it does a good job too, in spite of what jim says about it. he always blames his tools. because that's what poor carpenters do... -bowerbird

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Re: awfully quiet -- 2555 chances at redemption
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 14 Feb '11

14 Feb '11

rickywong said: > But I hope the vision is clear. it is. but there are lots of annotation sites these days, chief among them being bookglutton.com... what i don't see yet is how all of them differ, what their strengths and weaknesses might be, how they might collaborate with each other, and how the finally situation will resolve itself... -bowerbird

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Re: awfully quiet -- 2555 chances at redemption
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 13 Feb '11

13 Feb '11

jim said: > Here’s a look at what a PG to HTML and PDF > “automatic conversion” pretty printer program > would look like if one were ever actually written – > oh wait, look, one ALREADY WAS WRITTEN > almost ten years ago! right... which makes it all the more amazing that people here kept telling me that it was "impossible". (and lately, jim, you've been the one claiming that!) but eventually, yes, we did discuss gutenmark here, as part of the proof that finally made them shut up. you could look in the archives if you wanted to, jim. you're walking into the same trap they walked into... the upshot, in case anyone new is getting excited, is that the developer of gutenmark _abandoned_ it, because -- as he related on his website -- e-texts from project gutenberg were simply too inconsistent to generate dependable output on a regular basis... gutenmark still works quite fine if you are willing to clean places where the conversion didn't do too well. but it's not the kind of tool naive users can count on. that's why i was making all my efforts to get p.g. to commit to the path of making its e-texts consistent. (and to fill the other holes that needed to be filled, for figure-placement and rewrapping, for instance.) but the people with their fingers on the power-buttons weren't willing to give up their positions of authority by making it possible for end-users to do what they want. they preferred to be the martyrs who work very very hard. and now, of course, they are hoist with their own petard. *** but yeah, jim, nice attempt to change the subject again. *** still no one who wants to collaborate, eh? no big surprise. -bowerbird

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