David Starner wrote:
The reason that there isn't a TEI file posted along with *every* ebook is that most PPers at DP don't care to produce one.
And the reason for that is not only is it a lot more work than an HTML edition, unsupported by any sort of tools, it's worthless to the end user, as apparently no one at PG can get decent output from it.
Thats a lot of misinformation in such a short paragraph. 1. More work ... Of course you have to learn TEI, as you had to learn HTML. No difference there. Once you have mastered it, it is actually a lot less work, because TEI was designed for text preservation, while HTML was designed to bring scientific papers online. It is also less work because from one master you get the HTML, the TXT and the PDF. It is also less work fixing errata, because you fix the master instead of having to fix 2 or 3 different files. 2. Unsupported by tools ... PG has an implementation of TEI. I know you don't like it because you haven't figured out how to produce pretty title pages. But you don't have to use that one, there are plenty other. TEI is being used by many projects: http://www.tei-c.org/Activities/Projects/ and has a full suite of tools: http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/Category:Tools 3. Worthless to the end user ... TEI is a master format. Its use is in producing formats suitable for end-user consumption. Anf if we don't equate end user == reader but try: end user == librarian or end user == lunguistic researcher we find that TEI is many times as useful as HTML. 4. No decent output ... `Decentness´ is a matter of debate. At DP some PPers think it is essential to use every CSS feature at least once in every text, having pictures float right and left and text flowing around them and having illuminated dropcaps and printers ornaments and page numbers all over the place. PGTEI cannot (yet) do that. I very much prefer a simple layout, with only essential pictures smack in the middle of the text flow at the point they logically belong. A formatting that is easily ported to all existing devices. PGTEI excels at this. Ironically `decent´ DP output is already falling to pieces on ePub devices (not even to mention Mobipocket) because ePub does not support CSS position: absolute. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org