don said:
>   The path away from the quagmire
>   needs to reintroduce simplicity, and
>   especially single simple jobs that
>   iteratively improve a piece of text,
>   with immediate gratification.
>   There probably need to be several simultaneous
>   small-to-medium-size units of work that
>   offer closure and positive reinforcement

you said all that before.


>   for the benefit of people who
>   don't have toolchains they know intimately
>   and have been refining for years;
>   and other people who can be
>   persuaded to adopt and learn them.

ok, dude, fine.

but i'm guessing that, once you have
your little system that everyone buys,
your start-up page will look like this:

===============================
>  
>   "book-dig" -- for book digitization...
>  
>   thanks for helping to digitize books!
>  
>   "book-dig" is a system to _finalize_
>   a paper-book that's being digitized.
>  
>   a person who's done the bulk of the
>   preliminary prep and o.c.r. clean-up
>   can then use "book-dig" to let other
>   volunteers help polish off the book...
>  
>   (book-dig also lets you do finalization
>   by yourself if you prefer to do that, or
>   don't want to have to "recruit" people.)
>  
>   this "finalization" process helps to turn
>   corrected o.c.r. into a refined e-book...
>  
>   in some circles, this has been known to
>   be called "post-processing", as if it were
>   just an "afterthought", but professionals
>   know these tasks _are_ "the processing".
>  
>   but that doesn't mean it must be difficult.
>  
>   by breaking it into a series of small tasks,
>   it actually becomes simple (and fun) to do!
>  
>   ***
>  
>   step through these tasks to polish a book.
>  
>   (you probably should do the tasks in order,
>   since the later ones depend on the earlier,
>   at least until you have enough experience
>   to know if/when it's ok to go out of order.)
>  
>   *   task #01. check paragraphing.
>   *   task #02. check doublequotes.
>  
>   *   task #03. check any flags left.
>   *   task #04. check formatting.
>   *   task #05. check illustrations.
>   *   task #06. check the styling.
>   *   task #07. check hyphenates.
>   *   task #08. check singlequotes.
>   *   task #09. check look and feel.
>   *   task #10. check dictionaries.
>  
>   *   task #11. search function.
>   *   task #12. fix flagged items.
>   *   task #13. there is no 13th task.
>  
>   *   task #14. final certification.
>   *   task #15. prelim read-through.
>   *   task #16. final read-through.
>   *   task #17. mount the book.
>   *   task #18. check the mount.
>   *   task #19. open up champagne.
>   *   task #20. start the next book.
>  
===============================

so, you know, if you need to "borrow" this design,
go ahead.  i figure you'll get around to it in 8 years.

-bowerbird