This looks rather interesting; I plan on looking at it in depth in the next few days. The markup kinda reminds me of SiSU, which I also thought was pretty cool. Alex On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 10:36 PM, John Redmond <john_redmond@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
"There are certainly a lot of "nay sayers" on this list, who will say nay to just about any new format proposal, but they don't really run everything, and if you send a new format to Greg Newby or myself, we'll give it a try at least 99% of the time."
I have been following the discussion of the commercialisation of PG text, and these words have finally moved me to respond:
I introduced myself to this group earlier this year, offering to become involved in styling some of the files. At the time, I had difficulty in deciding whether or not I was welcome and on one occasion I was certainly convinced that I was being patronised (yes, it was YOU, BB).
I was not encouraged, but I was not deterred, either. And now suddenly the tenor of the discussions seems to have changed in light of the ereaders and the associated commercialism. I appreciate that PG wishes, quite rightly, to be accessible to all, including those who do not have the latest hardware or ereader, and that text versions are de rigeur. But there is suddenly a market for spiffed-up versions of the texts. And the money-spinners are happy to charge for them.
Surely the time has come for PG to offer at least some of the books in sexier formats. EPub seems suddenly to be inevitable, though I don't like it much, and I would much prefer to distribute PDF documents. But they are inevitably bulkier!
So where am I going with this. I have some Tcl scripts that will adapt existing PG text files to PDF and ePub/XHTML. And I am sure that there are many other script systems that will do the same sort of thing (yes, BB, I know about z.m.l). If something is not tried, the world will be using commercial files that would not exist if it were not for PG. And paying for them!
As demonstration, look at my site (www.limpidsoft.com) where I have various versions of some 20 classics. Not mentioned on the main page, however, is a set of versions of Ivanhoe: www.limpidsoft.com/new/ivanhoe-a4.pdf www.limpidsoft.com/new/ivanhoe-a5.pdf www.limpidsoft.com/new/ivanhoe.html www.limpidsoft.com/new/ivanhoe.txt (the marked-up version)
I mention this book because it demanded that I add dropcaps and notes (footnotes for PDF and endnotes for XHTML) to the scripts. The notes made processing this book significantly more complex than most of the other books.
So there you are! The scripts are still in flux, but the results look encouraging. Anyone interested?
John Redmond
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