Why did you send this to me? Peace, Don -----Original Message-----
From: Bowerbird@aol.com Sent: Aug 1, 2006 3:19 PM To: gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org, Bowerbird@aol.com Subject: [gutvol-d] foreign dishes
e-text #10011 is a delightful little recipe-book, dating from 1908, with "365 foreign dishes" in it, one "for every day in the year". in keeping with this, entries are ordered from january 1 to december 31.
the e-text was very well-done (a little cooking pun).
close analysis in the process of z.m.l. transformation revealed just one tiny glitch -- an extra empty-line -- which was located rather easily, as can be seen here:
http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011glitch.jpg
you can compare the original p.g. file with the z.m.l. version, side-by-side, by opening up these url's in separate windows:
http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011.txt http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/etext10011/10011.zml
to sum up, the changes involved reworking all the headers a little bit, and introducing a "contents" menu for the dishes under each month...
then i generated a .pdf of it:
as you will notice, this .pdf presents each of the dishes on its own page. this gives a very clean look, and will eventually provide great navigation. (my work-flow does not yet provide auto-hotlinking in the .pdf version.)
indeed, in cases like this, the .pdf makes a _better_ e-book than .html, and you can judge it for yourself by viewing the p.g. html-book, here:
of course, you'd want to generate another .pdf if you were printing it, so as to use fewer pages. but this format is great for on-screen use; the ability to page from one recipe to the next, with each presented in a consistent position, is far less trying than scrolling through them...
this is a common scenario, actually, with another example of it being the reading of a listserve digest. when each message comes up at the top of the screen, automatically, and you can skip it with a keypress to go to the next, it's much easier to navigate than when you must scroll and scan the text to try and locate the beginning of the next message.
i will share frequent observations as i go about the task of converting the p.g. library over to .zml, so i thought i'd start with this simple one. comments of any type are welcomed, from _just_about_ anyone... ;+)
-bowerbird
p.s. if you try the norwegian fish pudding (march 24), let us know!