On Sat, 5 Dec 2009, Greg M. Johnson wrote:
I observed a bunch of things in the PG collection that were somewhere between maddening deficiencies in quality and simply how I wouldn't have done things. I could have made inflammatory demands that the whole system be rewrought according to my word. Instead I came up with my own custom DVD.
By the way, Greg Newby is still anxiously awaiting some snail mail or instructions on downloading this or other collections you have!!!
And I'll testify that MH in discussing the idea was annoyingly non-paternalistic in not telling me how it had to be. ;)
I'm afraid this is the major complaint I receive. . .that I won't tell people what to do unless and until they totally go out of their way to convince me-- and even then they don't seem to like it very much.
So, when someone complains, it is great when they can just go fix something themselves. There's the story of the king who demanded the whole world be covered in soft leather to keep his foot from being struck on a stone. Maybe someone should come up with a custom DVD with all the good works in EPUB format.
We have had any number of people come up with wonderful alternatives!!! Let's have more!!!
I would respect PG if it were to refuse to host any and all of these bleeding edge formats. But I would love to be given the authority to create a raw text format without the 80-char line breaks. I agree that having these breaks (in the only TXT format available ) makes them unusable. The first-time visitor to PG probably won't be impressed that tools may be available to fix it.