Al,
 
The problem with family trees is that they can get extremely wide.  By going left-right I can make the tree fit into 70 columns.  I want to have something that will be readable on a Kindle ultimately.  My first inclination was to do the tables as images.  Unfortunately, the text refers to these trees quite extensively, so the plain text version would be difficult to use.  Also, when Amazon grabs a MOBI to distribute for free they tend to get the one with no images.
 
The left-right examples in the email are as bad as any of them get.  I will do top-down whenever possible.
 
On the macron issue, the author clearly wanted to use macrons but his publisher in India could only give him circumflexes.  I am using circumflexes in my text.  The only change I'm making is to make the use of circumflexes more consistent.  The proofreading of the original text was not very good.  This is my third transcription of a book in English published in India and lousy proofreading seems to go with the territory, or it did back when the books were published.
 
If the consensus is that left-right trees are objectionable I'll go with images throughout.  Otherwise I'll stay the course and try to make the plain text version as readable as possible.

James Simmlons
 
 
On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 3:33 PM, Al Haines <ajhaines@shaw.ca> wrote:
I've heard of, but never used, the double-underscore trick.  Whatever
works.  Just be careful it doesn't mess up alignments when you replace
the two with one.

You can copy your finished UTF8 text file to a second one, do whatever
search/replaces are needed to convert the Unicode characters to the DP
format, then save the second file as Latin1, or convert it to Latin1
with Unitame.  In cases like this, DP routinely submits two text files
(UTF8, Latin1), sometimes three (UTF8, Latin1, ASCII).  I've done the
same myself, several times.

Not sure what you mean by top-down.  If you have to rotate the
physical book to read the table/tree, then render the table/tree as it
appears with that rotation, just as you'd rotate an illustration.

Al


-----Original Message-----
From: James Simmons [mailto:nicestep@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 1:05 PM
To: Al Haines
Cc: Gutenberg Volunteers
Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] Recommendations on handling family tree tables
- critique wanted


Al,


The two trailing underscores are actually recommended by one of the PG
guides.  The idea is that when you convert to HTML you replace the two
underscores with </i> and then the remaining single underscores with
<i>.  Of course replacing two underscores with just one in the final
text file is trivial.


This book has a LOT of macrons, plus an occasional accented S.  I'm
going to stick with UTF-8 for this.


If I can combine the <small> tag with <pre> I will.  That might give
better results for the Kindle conversion.


I take it that you don't mind family trees that read from left to
right instead of top down.  That seems to me to be the only way to get
some of these to work.


James Simmons



On Sun, Dec 18, 2011 at 2:25 PM, Al Haines <ajhaines@shaw.ca> wrote:

They look reasonable to me, but you might want to experiment with the
font size.  Maybe a bit smaller?  I use a bit of in-line CSS for this,
e.g. <pre STYLE="font-size: 10pt">, adjusting the point size as
needed.

Table A - wny the double underscores after some items, e.g. "_m.__"?
If nothing else, Gutcheck will probably complain mightily.

Table B - you could reduce the amount of vertical space, e.g. between
Pratosha/Santosha, to a single vertical bar, instead of two bars.


A couple of things I forgot to mention initially:

Your source book has a lot of macronized characters (the short
horizontal bar over them).  You should consider creating two text
files, one UTF8 and one Latin1.  For the latter, this article
(http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/Proofing_Interface_tips_and_tricks)
describes DP's methods of rendering Unicode characters in a Latin1
text file.  (In your HTML file, you can use either the actual Unicode
characters or HTML entities to display the characters.)

Be sure to left-pad your tables/trees with a couple of blank spaces.
This will (hopefully) prevent them from being errantly reformatted.
See
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Volunteers%27_FAQ#V.89._Are_th
ere_any_places_where_I_should_indent_text.3F.


A trick I've used when doing trees or complex tables in a text file is
to have a bunch of lines, 60-70 characters long, that contain only
blank spaces.  This lets me navigate around that area, inserting text
and generally moving around as necessary, without suddenly finding
myself back at the left margin.  Trailing blanks can be easily trimmed
off afterwards.


Al

-----Original Message-----
From: James Simmons [mailto:nicestep@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2011 8:24 AM
To: Al Haines
Cc: Gutenberg Volunteers
Subject: Re: [gutvol-d] Recommendations on handling family tree tables
- critique wanted


Al,

I've started on the pages with family trees and I have some samples
that I'd like to get some feedback on before I do too many more of
them.  There are a LOT of family tree tables in this book.

TABLE A.

(Transcriber's Note: In the original book some tables were turned
sideways.
For reading as an e-book, these tables have been modified to read left
to
right rather than top-down).


SVÂYAMBHUVA MANU
_m.__ SATARÛPA -----+---Priyavrata
                  |
                  +---Uttânpâda
                  |
                  +---_Akûti__
                  |   _m.__ Ruchi       +--- KAPILA
                  |                     |
                  +---_Devahûti__       |
                  |   _m.__ Kardama ----+--- _Kalâ__
                  |                     |    _m.__ Marichi
                  +---_Prasûti__        |
                      _m.__ Daksha      +--- _Anasuyâ__
                                        |    _m.__ Atri
                                        |
                                        +--- _Sraddhâ
                                        |    _m.__ Angirasa
                                        |
                                        +--- _Havirbhu__
                                        |    _m.__ Pulastya
                                        |
                                        +--- _Gati__
                                        |    _m.__ Pulaha
                                        |
                                        +--- _Kriyâ__
                                        |    _m.__ Kratu
                                        |
                                        +--- _Khyâti__
                                        |    _m.__ Bhrigu
                                        |
                                        +--- _Arundhati__
                                        |    _m.__ Vasistha
                                        |
                                        +--- _Sauti__
                                             _m.__ Atharvan

TABLE B.

 RUCHI
 _m.__ ÂKÛTI --- YAJNA --------------+
                 (married his        |--+--- Tosha
                 sister) Dakshinâ. --+  |
                                        |
                                        +--- Pratosha
                                        |
                                        |
                                        +--- Santosha
                                        |
                                        |
                                        +--- Bhadra
                                        |
                                        |
                                        +--- Sâuti
                                        |
                                        |
                                        +--- Idâmpati
                                        |
                                        |
                                        +--- Idhma
                                        |
                                        |
                                        +--- Kavi
                                        |
                                        |
                                        +--- Vibhu
                                        |
                                        |
                                        +--- Svâhra
                                        |
                                        |
                                        +--- Sudiva
                                        |
                                        |
                                        +--- Rochana

  N.B. The sons of Yajna are the Sushita Devas of the 1st.
Manvantarâ.


TABLE C


   Marichi
  _m. Kalâ__
     |
     |
 --+--+-----------------+-----
  |                    |
 Kasyapa             Pûrnimâ
                       |
        +--------------+------------+--------
        |              |            |
     Viraja         Visvaga     _Devakulyâ__
                              (River Ganges in
                            subsequent incarnation).


TABLE D.

                     Atri
                  _m. Anasûyâ__
                       |
   +----------------+--+------------------------+
   |                |                           |
 Datta          Durvasas                      Soma
                (Rudra)                     (Brahmâ)


TABLE E.

                    Angirasa
                   _m. Sraddhâ__
                        |
 ---+----------+-------+-+--------+----------+--------+-----
   |          |       |          |          |        |

_Sinivali__ _Kuhû__  _Râkâ__  _Anumati__  Utathya Vrihaspati



TABLE F.

                      Pulastya
                    _m. Havirbhu__
                          |
 -------------+------------+----------------+
             |                             |
          Agastya                       Visvaras
 _m. (1) Ilavila m. (2) Kesinî__
        |                |
      Kuvera      +------+------+-------------+
                  |             |             |
               Ravana       Kumbhakarna   Vibhisana



TABLE G.

                       Pulaha
                      _m. Gati__
                          |
   -----+---------------+-+---------------+---
        |               |                 |
 Karma Sreshtha      Bariyas          Sahishnu


I hope the samples above are acceptable.  The only other option I can
think of is to treat every diagram as an illustration.  Since this
book is a translation of a Hindu scripture the diagrams are something
we might live without in the plain text version.


The samples above should use the Courier font, and there are no tabs
in my file.


Thanks,


James Simmons


On Fri, Dec 9, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Al Haines <ajhaines@shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> James, to say you've bitten off a mouthful would be an
understatement <g>!  To answer your question...
>
> Highly structured material (trees, tables, etc) (such as that on
page 13 and elsewhere) can exceed 70 characters.  For reproducing
trees in HTML, the simplest method (and the one I've used), is to take
the text version of the tree, copy/paste it into your HTML file, and
wrap it in <pre></pre> tags.
>
> For trees with preceding diagrams (page 13 again) insert something
like "[Illustration: Purusha]" in your text file, and the actual
diagram in your HTML file.
>
> For extremely wide trees/tables, if any (more than 100 characters,
say), split the tree into left and right halves for the text file.  At
the end of the file, include a transcriber's note mentioning which
tables have been treated this way.  For HTML, you can rejoin the
halves, or leave them as in the text file, again using the <pre></pre>
trick.
>
> I notice that some tables (pages 58, 59) are split across pages.
Unless you can figure out how the two portions are joined, it's
probably best to treat them as two separate tables.  If you can figure
how they're joined, it's acceptable to join them, but it looks as
though you might end up with an extremely wide table.  I'd say to keep
things simple, and don't attempt a join.
>
> From what I've seen of the book, you should be able to render all
trees/tables with alpha-numerics.
>
> Good luck!
>
> Al
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org
[mailto:gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of James Simmons
> Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2011 11:56 AM
> To: Gutenberg Volunteers
> Subject: [gutvol-d] Recommendations on handling family tree tables
>
> I am working on transcribing this book:
>
> http://www.archive.org/details/studyofbhagavata00benaiala
>
> This is a translation into English of an important Hindu scripture,
originally in Sanskrit.  Now that I have committed myself to
transcribing it I find that it has many, many family tree tables in
it.  These are not part of the scripture itself, but were added to
clear up who begat who.  (All mythical characters).  Some of these
stretch out so wide that the page is rotated in the original.  Others
could easily be duplicated with ASCII characters in 80 columns or
less.
>
> I've looked at some PG titles with geneologies like this one about
Bach:
>
> http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35041/35041-h/35041-h.html#toc49
>
> In this one the family tree tables are treated as illustrations.
That would certainly be a simple way to deal with them, but again
about half of the diagrams could be done with ASCII text.  It would be
painful, but it could be done.  So do I do half and half, or try and
do all text, or just do illustrations all the way?
>
> Thoughts?
>
> James Simmons
>