jim said:
People who are interested in figuring out the real "main point" should, again, take a look at: http://www.freekindlebooks.org/Dev/HuckDiff.txt which should give people some idea how many errors there are in the older PG texts.
jim seems intent on pointing out the utter deficiency of the widger version of "huck finn", so let me support that. oh yeah, i already have, in a post to this very listserve, less than 6 weeks ago, where i detailed the problems...
http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/private/gutvol-d/2012-October/010169.html to refresh your memory, here are the biggest flaws: 1. the italics are indicated by upper-casing, which means that all the uppercase-i personal pronouns that're _supposed_ to be italics are unrecognizable. 2. the headers are mistagged as plain paragraphs. (and not even bold, or big, or centered -- nothing!) 3. no scan-set is given as the source of the text. i believe jim that there are plenty of errors in #76, since i found a number of probable missing italics. but the bigger problem is that we can't even _check_ the text's accuracy, since we don't know the source... so, it should be clear that i support jim's contention, as far as it goes, but i don't think it goes far enough. *** if the only thing you have to say about the earliest p.g. e-texts is that lots of 'em are flawed, _big_deal_. we know many are flawed, and they need to be fixed. so the more important questions are the follow-ups. that's where my posts kick in. i'm sharing the details about what i believe will need to be done in order to make p.g. e-texts competitive with other digitizations. p.g. has a sad reputation for inaccuracy in its e-texts. so that has to be one of the biggest issues on its plate. there are other big issues as well, of course, such as the poor quality of the p.g. conversion to .epub/.mobi. but even if conversions are flawless, that's not gonna excuse the fact that the text itself is often incorrect... however, let's even go a step beyond _that_, as well... because even if your conversions are good, and your text is totally and completely accurate, if you do not have a way to _show_ your text is fully accurate, then you're going to lose out the competition to the entity who _does_ have a way to show their text is accurate. and the way to _show_ your text is "fully accurate" is to mount it side-by-side with the relevant page-scan. it also helps to have a comments section on the page, where people can leave error-reports, or discuss any anomalies in the text, or changes made from the scan. (people could discuss the _content_ on the page too.) this error-reporting functionality serves another need which p.g. has, to bring great transparency to _that_... *** but hey, i know you lurkers... ;+) you're not here for the _philosophy_, are you? heck no! you're here for the train-wreck... you wanna gawk at the car-crash, don't you? so far be it from me to deprive you of your desires... let me stir up some tempest in this teapot. hey, jim, i found over 20 differences between my "huck" and your "huck" -- in the _paragraphing_ alone. over 20! and my rough check says that about 2/3 are your errors, with about 1/3 being actual differences between editions. (i'm not ruling out the possibility that i made some errors; also, it is fully possible you're wrong and i'm wrong too.) so, jim, would you like to do the work to find those diffs? or do you want me to give you the list? let me know, jim. -bowerbird