greg said:
This is because we get frequent requests to add such files into the PG collection, and have no good, standard, scalable way to do so. Plus, complaints about shortcomings of existing mobile formats.
you have it backwards. first people realize your mobil formats are crap. so they rework your files, so they won't be crap. then they figure they might as well offer you the reworked files, so other people won't have to eat the crap formats you seem to want to serve them. that's the sequence of events, the way it happens. however... if you _didn't_ serve people crap in the first place, nobody would ever _bother_ to rework your files... so you'd get no complaints. and zero files offered. you'd just have tons of happy users. end of story. nobody re-did david moynihan's black-mask files. because he did a good job on 'em in the first place. and he put them on machines that were _primitive_, so it doesn't behoove you to use that as an excuse. and nobody reworks the files from feedbooks.com. because they're "good enough". doesn't take much. even the relatively crappy files from manybooks.com, available in 289 various formats, don't get reworked. (and again, they targeted a lot of _crude_ machinery.) because all of those places were _responsive_ to the wants and needs of the users. they _served_ people. you gave people .txt, even after they wanted .html, and .prc, and .mobi, and .lit, and all that other shit. they wanted it, but you wouldn't give it to them, so you opened a door for all those other sites to do it. then you started doing .html, but you did it _wrong_, because you allowed producers to make _snowflakes_, even though you got frequent and extreme warnings -- from me -- that you were making a bad mistake... now, you are feeling the consequences of your error. and i'm saying "you know, i told you so, i really did." but you didn't learn, did you greg?, didn't learn at all. you now want to compound your snowflake problem by "solving" it with even _more_ snowflakes. sheesh! *** i also told you what you _should_ have been doing... all along, i told you, and now i will tell you _again_... use a light-markup format like .zml as your master, from which you generate _good_ versions of all the formats your users desire, and everyone gets happy. for at least 5 years now, i have demonstrated that a robust text-to-html conversion is possible, and once the kindle came along, i showed that it was merely a matter of generating the auxiliary files to support that format, and the same with .epub... and it's not like this was some secret process, either. that's how all of those other sites generate their files. indeed, after deciding to drop public-domain e-books, because he was no longer making much money off 'em, david moynihan offered to project gutenberg the scripts he had created to generate all of his derivative formats. and you guys spurned his offer! i was totally astounded! meanwhile... i also coded and showed editors and authoring-tools, both offline and online, and systems for collaborative editing, proofing, formatting, and error-correcting... i've even written tutorial series on such programming, and -- quite recently -- explicitly _shared_the_code_. so a solution has been sitting right in front of you, for years and years, but you decided to choose to willfully not see it, to intentionally refuse to look... and you continue to refuse, right up to this day, super-bowl sunday with the giants vs. the pats... the solution still sits there. and you refuse to see it. and i have told you, and told you, and _told_you_... but you know, greg, i'm getting tired of telling you, since you haven't ever listened before, and there is no reason for me to believe that you will listen now, and -- like i said -- i'm getting tired of telling you... so, you know, just suffer in your super-stupidity... but hey, enjoy the football. it, too, will be super... -bowerbird