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Re: time after time
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 20 Feb '11

20 Feb '11

new version up at same location: > http://76.74.254.239/~bowerbird/a.fcgi/ proper italics now. font changed from comic sans. em-dashes utilized. curly-doublequotes utilized. found search-terms colorized. some cosmetic changes. most of that stuff was requested by jana. some of you might not know her, because she hasn't posted much here, but she is a hard-working volunteer over at d.p. who helps lots of mac users with their problems. -bowerbird

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Re: time after time
by Travis Siegel 20 Feb '11

20 Feb '11

> >> >>> On Feb 19, 2011, at 5:16 PM, Bowerbird(a)aol.com wrote: >>> >>>> travis said: >>>>> Only your page does not conform >>>>> to the html guidelines for accessibility >>>> >>>> good point, travis. i'm more worried about the >>>> functionality now, but catch me on that later, ok? >>>> >>>> but if you think it could, or should, do something more, >>>> i invite you to contribute some suggestions to that effect. >>>> >>>> Which is exactly what this is. My experience is that if >>>> accessibility isn't designed from the start, often times it's >>>> overlooked entirely, or deemed too expensive/time consuming to >>>> engineer into the product later. I'm not saying labeling buttons >>>> couldn't be done later, but I am saying that if you ignore possible >>>> accessibility issues now, you'll wind up with a product that is (at >>>> best) a pain to use for those who need accessible applications, and >>>> (at worst) a completely useless >>> piece of software, because their screen reader won't work with it, >>> or >>> they can't resize text, or something else that is dead simple to >>> incorporate at the start, but nearly impossible to reverse engineer >>> into the product when it's complete. Just pointing out possible >>> pitfalls at the getgo so you aren't swamped with requests later to >>> "fix" things later that you didn't consider in the beginning. >>> >>>> actually, it's more like a demonstration that z.m.l. format >>>> can be used as a "master" that can churn out other formats, >>>> which is an issue that p.g. and d.p. have been struggling with. >>> >>> Which (I thought) was exactly what xml was supposed to be used for. >>> >>> (not complaining about the use of zml, only pointing out that other >>> options already exist. >> > > >

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Re: time after time
by Travis Siegel 20 Feb '11

20 Feb '11

>>> >>> On Feb 19, 2011, at 5:58 PM, Bowerbird(a)aol.com wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> How about real em-dashes instead of double-hyphens? >>>> >>>> h=replaceall(h,"--",chr(209)) >>>> >>>> >>>>> How about curly quotes? >>>> >>>> h=replaceall(h," "+chr(34)," "+chr(210)) >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+chr(34),chr(10)+chr(210)) >>>> >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(34)+" ",chr(211)+" ") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(34)+chr(10),chr(210)+chr(10)) >>>> >>>> Is there really a need to do all that? Not complaining, only >>>> wondering myself. Screen readers don't generally take well to >>>> upper >>>> ascii characters. Sure, they'll (generally) tell what the >>>> characters are, but often times, it changes the pronounciation of >>>> the word, because it tries to incorporate the symbol into the word >>>> it's surrounding. Honestly, double hyphens are fine with me :) >>>> (and, for some reason, the rss specifications forbid such >>>> characters), though I'm not sure why that is, perhaps for widest >>>> compatibility with all rss readers, including those that can >>>> display >>>> text only. >>> >>> >>>> >>>>> It doesn't help me much that I've found some text >>>>> when I still have to read through the whole chapter >>>>> to actually find the passage I'm looking for. >>>> >>>> i would say you seem to have forgotten the fact that >>>> you can just use the search function in your browser. >>>> >>>> the app finds a page which contains the search-term, >>>> and the browser tells you where on the page it exists. >>>> it is a bit clumsy, but not as bad as you made it sound. >>>> >>>> >>> Yeah, but it's not difficult to spit out a modified page containing >>> the link to the searched for text if it comes to that, (which, you >>> did >>> say on the next line, so ...) >>> >>>> p.p.s. here is the current text-to-html conversion routine... >>>> >>>> h=session.gc(x) >>>> h=replacelineendings(h,chr(10)) >>>> h=trim(h) >>>> h="<h2>"+h >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+" ") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+chr(10),chr(10)+""+chr(10)) >>>> h=replace(h,chr(10)+""+chr(10),"</h2>"+chr(10)+" ") >>>> h=replaceall(h," "," ") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" >>>> ",chr(10)+"________________") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"_______________") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"______________") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"_____________") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"____________") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"___________") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"__________") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"_________") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"________") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"_______") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"______") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"_____") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"____") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"___") >>>> h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"__") >>>> h=topmatter.text+h+chr(10)+chr(10)+"</body></html>" >>>> _______________________________________________ >>> >>> Which a simple nl2br would solve nicely if this were php. :) >>> Again, not finding fault, simply pointing out another method. >>> I've never tackled something of this complexity, but perhaps a >>> second >>> app written in php would be a good way to compare and contrast >>> different ways of doing things. >>> Of course, it could wind up being an exercise in futility, but heck, >>> I'm always willing to help, and php is what I know, so ... >> > > >

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Re: time after time
by Travis Siegel 20 Feb '11

20 Feb '11

> >> >>> On Feb 19, 2011, at 5:16 PM, Bowerbird(a)aol.com wrote: >>> >>>> travis said: >>>>> Only your page does not conform >>>>> to the html guidelines for accessibility >>>> >>>> good point, travis. i'm more worried about the >>>> functionality now, but catch me on that later, ok? >>>> >>>> but if you think it could, or should, do something more, >>>> i invite you to contribute some suggestions to that effect. >>>> >>>> Which is exactly what this is. My experience is that if >>>> accessibility isn't designed from the start, often times it's >>>> overlooked entirely, or deemed too expensive/time consuming to >>>> engineer into the product later. I'm not saying labeling buttons >>>> couldn't be done later, but I am saying that if you ignore possible >>>> accessibility issues now, you'll wind up with a product that is (at >>>> best) a pain to use for those who need accessible applications, and >>>> (at worst) a completely useless >>> piece of software, because their screen reader won't work with it, >>> or >>> they can't resize text, or something else that is dead simple to >>> incorporate at the start, but nearly impossible to reverse engineer >>> into the product when it's complete. Just pointing out possible >>> pitfalls at the getgo so you aren't swamped with requests later to >>> "fix" things later that you didn't consider in the beginning. >>> >>>> actually, it's more like a demonstration that z.m.l. format >>>> can be used as a "master" that can churn out other formats, >>>> which is an issue that p.g. and d.p. have been struggling with. >>> >>> Which (I thought) was exactly what xml was supposed to be used for. >>> >>> (not complaining about the use of zml, only pointing out that other >>> options already exist. >> > > >

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

19 Feb '11

jana said: > How about italics in the rendered text > instead of the ugly underscores? well, yes, i did say the .html conversion was still crude... i've appended the complete conversion routine currently. to do the italics would take this: h=replaceall(h," _"," ") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+"_",chr(10)+"") h=replaceall(h,"_ "," ") h=replaceall(h,"_"+chr(10),""+chr(10)) however, this only works because i know that i've used whitespace in a certain way around the italics markers, and it might not be robust with respect to other usages. also, this might conflict with other parts of the converter, so we need to do close examination to see if that happens. in the end, these reg-ex type changes are _not_ the best way to do the conversion. it takes a serious line-by-line analysis. but in order to get something up quickly, i'm doing this now. > How about using _any other_ font for the body text? > Please? Why not leave it at the user's default rather than > force something as ugly as Comic Sans? personally, i love comic sans. :+) plus it's entertaining to see other people squirm at it. but here's the line from the stylesheet. > font-family: "Comic Sans MS","Lucida Sans Unicode", > "Lucida Grande","Verdana",sans-serif; tell me how you want me to change it, and i will. and eventually, we'll let the user decide the font, using any font on their machine. > How about real em-dashes instead of double-hyphens? h=replaceall(h,"--",chr(209)) > How about curly quotes? h=replaceall(h," "+chr(34)," "+chr(210)) h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+chr(34),chr(10)+chr(210)) h=replaceall(h,chr(34)+" ",chr(211)+" ") h=replaceall(h,chr(34)+chr(10),chr(210)+chr(10)) > How about links from the table of contents to the chapters? that's a little bit more complex. but doable. still, let's save that for sometime next week... > It doesn't help me much that I've found some text > when I still have to read through the whole chapter > to actually find the passage I'm looking for. i would say you seem to have forgotten the fact that you can just use the search function in your browser. the app finds a page which contains the search-term, and the browser tells you where on the page it exists. it is a bit clumsy, but not as bad as you made it sound. > How about jumping to the right spot > in the chapter after the search? that would be very difficult. we'd have to put an anchor in the text. ok, i guess that's not really difficult at all... sometime next week for that. > Or highlighting the text somehow? that's very doable. we'll do that first. also next week. > Why does it only sometimes save my changes? I had to > edit the dedication twice to have it pick up my changes. i dunno. did you hit "save" both times? did you get the message confirming that the file had actually been saved? as i said, sometimes the response-time can be sluggish... perhaps you simply didn't wait long enough the first time? > Jana thanks for your input. collaboration isn't hard at all, is it? -bowerbird p.s. might wanna save multiple points for multiple days; no harm going slow, but we don't want to get burned out. p.p.s. here is the current text-to-html conversion routine... h=session.gc(x) h=replacelineendings(h,chr(10)) h=trim(h) h="<h2>"+h h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+" ") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+chr(10),chr(10)+""+chr(10)) h=replace(h,chr(10)+""+chr(10),"</h2>"+chr(10)+" ") h=replaceall(h," "," ") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"________________") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"_______________") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"______________") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"_____________") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"____________") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"___________") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"__________") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"_________") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"________") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"_______") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"______") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"_____") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"____") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"___") h=replaceall(h,chr(10)+" ",chr(10)+"__") h=topmatter.text+h+chr(10)+chr(10)+"</body></html>"

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

19 Feb '11

travis said: > Only your page does not conform > to the html guidelines for accessibility good point, travis. i'm more worried about the functionality now, but catch me on that later, ok? > You'll need to place text labels > on the rest of the buttons if you want this > to be a truly universal replacement for the plain > text that all project gutenberg files already contain. well, we haven't really decided exactly what role this app will play -- because that's part of the whole process here -- but it won't be as a "replacement" for p.g. plain-text files. initially, i'd say the goal is to take an input-file and then churn out the .html version, and an .epub, and a .mobi... so this app is just an intermediary, a temporary-use tool, which is why i think it's ok to put off accessibility issues... but if you think it could, or should, do something more, i invite you to contribute some suggestions to that effect. > a replacement for the current method of doing things actually, it's more like a demonstration that z.m.l. format can be used as a "master" that can churn out other formats, which is an issue that p.g. and d.p. have been struggling with. -bowerbird

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

19 Feb '11

i put the first draft of our collaborative project up: > http://76.74.254.239/~bowerbird/a.fcgi i'm using the beta-version of an upcoming compiler, so this should work on safari, it might work on chrome and firefox, and it might not work on internet explorer. and it definitely won't work on opera; sorry about that. when you first enter the site/app, it should look like this: > http://76.74.254.239/~bowerbird/a-screenshot.png if you don't see the field on the right half of the screen, try resizing your window to see if that makes it appear... the performance is somewhat sluggish at times. sorry. what we have here is the book "the jungle" by sinclair... the z.m.l. version is loaded into the left side, a text-field. the right side displays a crude .html rendering of the text. the book is displayed one section (i.e., chapter) at a time... the popup menu contains a list of the sections in the book, and you can jump to a section by selecting it in the popup. or you can step through the sections via the arrow buttons. as the text for each section is displayed, a rough version of the .html for that text is created on the fly, and displayed... the "save" button lets you save a copy of the book's text. type a 5-letter name (all-lowercase) in the box next to the "save" button first, to specify the name to use for the file... the text is editable. so go ahead and feel free to change it, for one or more chapters. hit "save" after making changes to _any_ chapter (each and every chapter), or else your edits will be lost. when you return to a chapter you have edited, you will see that the changes you made are being displayed. in most circumstances, the field to the right of "save" button is the _search-field. enter a search-term into the field and press [return] and you'll be taken to the next section which contains that search-term. (if the search-routine hits the last section without finding the search-term, it will wrap around to the first section and start searching from there.) again, sometimes the results can be sluggish, so be patient. feedback? -bowerbird

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

19 Feb '11

> first things first. we'll get to that tomorrow. oh, ok, yeah, now i see how this process will work. > thanks for your feedback, but let's try to > make it just a bit more substantive, ok? i'll do my best! :+)

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

19 Feb '11

> so, it comes preloaded with "the jungle"? for right now, yes, it does. > how would i load another book? first things first. we'll get to that tomorrow. thanks for your feedback, but let's try to make it just a bit more substantive, ok? but do keep the questions and suggestions coming... -bowerbird

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

19 Feb '11

> i put the first draft of our collaborative project up. ok, that's a start. so, it comes preloaded with "the jungle"? how would i load another book?

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