marcello said:
1. 14 Feb 2003: You announce you will code an open source ebook reader.
yes. that was a big joke. :+) i was pulling jon noring's leg. read posts on that listserve. everyone knew i am anti-xml. everyone knew i am anti-oeb. anyone who's stupid enough to think _i_ would be _serious_ in announcing an effort to write an oeb viewer is _really_ stupid. nonetheless, i _would_ have gone ahead with the project if anyone would have responded. as long as _some_ programmers were willing to puzzle through the difficulty of figuring out o.e.b., i'd happily advise them on the u.i. but no one showed up, so it died. that's not unusual. there are many open-source projects on sourceforge that have died with one contributor. heck, there are more than a couple _directly_ for project gutenberg -- creating viewer-programs -- that have died early on the vine... my guess is that jon noring still has less than 3 programmers involved -- jon, care to comment on that? -- in his open-source openreader thing, and david rothman has been flogging openreader _incessantly_ on his blog, even relaying a specific request for mac programmers to join in and help. nonetheless, i would _still_ go ahead with _my_ open-source o.e.b. project, if any programmers were to turn up. do you know any? let's go to work! the more viewers we have, the better. on second thought, have 'em join jon's effort. the fewer open-source projects that _fail_, the better off we will be, in the long run... see, i've prodded jon noring for _years_ to get a viewer-program for his beloved o.e.b. it's _silly_ to propose a "standard format" and then not have any tools that support it! (you need a viewer _and_ an authoring-tool!) i don't know if this joke was the thing that actually got jon to get to work on the task, but if it was, then i am sure glad i did it. (he's a hard worker. if he directed his energy in a productive way, he might do a good job.) actually, it was probably the full-on review i wrote in response to jon's o.e.b. puff piece on ebookweb.com that was the real motivation, if there was anything specific that _i_ did. but whatever got him to pay some attention to the point i'd been making for many years, it was "a good thing", as jon would put it.
2. 19 Oct 2004: You have nothing to show.
_that_ project has "nothing to show". my own viewer-program, which has _never_ been open-source, and probably never will be, not until the open-source community can match it, is ready for beta-testing. have i given the address that people can use to join that beta-test listserve? yes, i do believe i have.
3. You retroactively declare the announcement to be a joke.
it was a joke from the time the post was a gleam in my eye. :+) anyone who knows me knows that i do not do press releases. the mere _thought_ is funny. i puke on the shoes of the press.
4. You think that did save your face.
Think again.
i'm thinking all the time, marcello, all the time...
So you admit you were lying to the press
how outrageous! it's _their_ job to lie to _me_! :+) what was i thinking? oh yeah, i know. that "press release" never got any farther than the listserve where i "released" it, which -- if i remember correctly -- was populated by about two posters at the time, jon noring and me. hence, the joke... -bowerbird