Two points to mention before you read my actual reply: 1) My apologies for the delay in responding. A configuration issue has caused all my email to bounce from pglaf.org's mail server for the past couple weeks, and only yesterday was I able to get it rectified. I will be posting many delayed replies for the next few days. 2) While the original email that I'm replying to here was written by Marcello, my replies are not directed at him personally, but rather, at everyone in the community. ---------------------------- Of the many assumptions being made on the list these days, here are three of the most erroneous -- and they all came in a single paragraph.
We don't need more discussion about whether TEI is the right language, I think we are all agreed on that.
Not everyone agrees with the use of TEI. I'm not even going to begin my arguments again -- there would no point. Some of us, such as myself, foresee issues, based on our own experiences, with using TEI (or varient) for PG work. I'm resigned to the fact that it may be the only way to get XML into PG at all, so I'll just deal with the issues on my own time at that point. Simply put, TEI is one of the most verbose markup vocabularies available, and using it for PG is going to turn off a LOT of people to XML. A simpler, more concise vocabulary would be less intimidating!
pgxml.org is dead
PGXML is not dead at all. Just like other XML stuff in PG, it's been on hiatus, mostly for two reasons: 1) lack of agreement in the community, and 2) lack of personal time to work on it. I will be meeting with the other co-founder of pgxml.org (Ben Crowder) in November, after which time, we hope to present a definitive plan for pgxml.org to the community.
and ZML is good for laughs.
You can laugh at ZML all you want, but from the examples and personal discussion with Bowerbird, I have learned that ZML is not at all what most people think it is. From the examples that I have seen, ZML is basically PG vanilla text format, but cleaned up and normalized. ---------------------------- The entire rest of this email is a rant, so please feel free to skip it. You have been given the choice! ---------------------------- Maybe if you learned to listen to other people, you'd not make such erroneous assumptions. Maybe, just maybe, other people do have a clue, and you aren't the only one that knows something. Yes, I have blocked Bowerbird from joining the PGXML list, but he is the _only_ person that I've blocked. The only reason for this is because of other people's reactions to him, not because of Bowerbird himself. While he can be irritating and annoying, Bowerbird does have a clue about some of the issues we have to deal with in PG work, particuarly in converting to other formats, etc. If you don't like his attitude, ignore his posts. You can at least try to extract the useful information that he does give from the flame wars they often come in. This way, you might actually LEARN something. More mud is slung on this list than on ANY other list that I'm subscribed to, but I have to admit, I'm only subscribed to about 200 active lists, so I may be missing the mud-slinging ones. If you don't like the way something is being done in PG, don't throw a hissy-fit. Get off your arse and do something about it, or sit down and shut up, and let other people do what they think should be done. I've made no secret of my personal opinions of PG: 1) the website is a disgrace 2) the archive is poorly organized 3) the catalog system is a hack job done by unqualified people 4) the PG text format is extremely disgusting 5) PG makes volunteers work uphill to get anything done 6) the lack of quality in our content offsets any gain from it Just because I have the opinions doesn't automatically mean I A) know what I'm talking about, or B) have an alternative solution. Some of the biggest technological innovations cames not from people who had a better idea, but from people who knew the current idea wasn't that good, and were open minded when the better idea came along. As a whole, I find that PG is not a very open-minded community. As a community, we reguarly discourage people from volunteers, mostly because we don't support them well. At times, not only do we not support them, but we actively, and publically, bash their skulls. We lie to the general public about PG on a regular basis. When posting ebooks, we ignore the wishes of the volunteers who made the texts. We don't even provide well-suited tools for the volunteers to use to improve PG, because, oh my god, maybe the tool isn't 100% open-source! Maybe the tool has been offered to PG on a perpetual right to use for PG status, but oh, lordy, that's just not good enough. We reguarly tell some of our hardest working volunteers that they are full of crap (more or less). True, it's usually a paragraph long description of what they are doing "wrong", but it's basically telling them their work is unwanted. Do you realize that out of over 300 librarians I've talked to personally, the first thing that came to mind for "ebooks" was the University of Virginia's eText Library? PG simply is not a mover or a shaker in the ebook world, regardless of the hocus pocus you might hear to the contrary. ---------------------------- And, to all these things I've said, I'm a victim of some, but a perpetrator of others. I'm just as guilty as you are. I have no soapbox, only a conscience and a desire to change things. ---------------------------- So, dangit all to heck, we don't have to be like this. PG _could_ be great. PG SHOULD be great. -- James