Thanks Anne for reminding us all about the original objective of PG -- making texts available for people to read, wherever, and with whatever equipment. OK, you've somewhat overstated the case, and I think by now we'd all agree that "8-bit" characters are important. But it is a shame that most of the geeks -- no offence, I count myself as one -- on this list, immediately skipped your main point to whine about the need for accents and foreign scripts. You guys can't seem to see the wood for the trees. Personally, I've seen the debate about XML (not to mention z.m.l.) somewhere before -- oh, wait up, it was on THIS list, what, about eight months back? And didn't Jon go and set up a pgxml list for that discussion to continue? And didn't that list go strangely quiet shortly thereafter? You can draw your own conclusions from that. Me? I decided that my own project -- building a library of high-quality HTML "web books" was more important than trying to get a room full of experts to agree on even basic things like should we use TEI-lite or invent our own DTD. Basically, Anne is right -- who cares about this stuff? Only the few enthusiasts on this list. Most users of PG don't go around grumbling about the lack of XML or the ability to output as PDF. They're just stoked to be able to find the text online. And on the subject of PDF, I agree with Anne -- it sucks. Why? Well, apart from being too fuzzy to read on screen, it locks the user into a format that's chosen by the engine which created it. Want a different font or type size? Too bad, whoever wrote the XSLT decided that for you. But create an HTML file, properly, and then the user can do what they like with it. Want to print it out in Georgia 24pt? No problem. Your choice. Anyway ... think I'll go and convert a few more books now. Steve Gutenberg9443@aol.com wrote:
...
A basic problem in this entire discussion is that there are a lot of people here who are program-happy, as opposed to computer-happy. I'm computer- happy, but like the vast majority of people who use Gutenberg, I'm really not interested in umpteen different programs. I just want a book I can read. ...
-- Stephen Thomas, Senior Systems Analyst, Adelaide University Library ADELAIDE UNIVERSITY SA 5005 AUSTRALIA Tel: +61 8 8303 5190 Fax: +61 8 8303 4369 Email: stephen.thomas@adelaide.edu.au URL: http://staff.library.adelaide.edu.au/~sthomas/