On 2012-09-24, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
From what you say, it cannot get fixed without buy-in from the WWs and Marcello to a specific course of action, so the problem is really one of generating consensus around a course of action.
right. and that hasn't ever happened here. ever.
and it is clear that your plan will not do it either.
In which case my plan will be dead in the water. Nothing will have been lost, but nothing will have been gained. We can all agree that there is a problem that needs to be fixed. We can all agree that this problem can only be fixed if there is a consensus on a course of action -- going off on your own acheives precisely nothing of consequence. A consensus has never happened, and this has resulted in an obvious problem not being fixed. Therefore, before we can do anything else, we need something that has never happened before to happen. No one dies if it doesn't happen, but it would be nice if it did.
so you're not paying attention to the _real_ problem.
My understanding is that what you refer to as the _real_ problem is how the default version for each final format is selected. If so, I agree. If a redo is not the default _at_Project_Gutenberg_ it effectively does not exist on the Internet. But how do we decide that a redo is objectively superior to the original? There needs to be an agreed protocol on this before there is the slightest point to rolling up our sleeves and digging in. I guess agreement of such a protocol is what you mean by buy-in from Marcello and the WWs.
well, there's another problem. you wanna use tex. go over to d.p. and see the tex contingent there. it's tiny. the learning curve is obviously too hard.
_I_ want to use LaTeX, because I use LaTeX a lot and the book I piloted using it turned out really nicely. I don't care what anyone else uses -- lots of things work. I just want to make it as easy as possible for you to do a ZML version of something I've done a LaTeX version of and vice versa.
What I can't do is create the MS and RTT by myself.
you're wrong. a scan-set is easy to obtain.
and getting the text correct is not difficult.
But agreeing on which scan-set should be used _is_ difficult. Yes, you can of course do a heap of different editions, but you can expect any edition which is not the PG default to effectively not exist, so why bother doing it? Certainly diffing an OCR against a clean text will improve the clean text. Maybe this will be enough, maybe it won't.
so, you know, go ahead and do your demo. do it for one book, e.g., "pride and prejudice". get the text from that pointer i gave to my site.
To what end? It would just be a solo project, and I know that I can produce what I would consider a high quality book as a solo project. Without an agreed MS and a default download protocol, I would acheive precisely nothing. Everyone seems to agree that these things are the current show stoppers, so it would seem more productive to see if there is anything I can do to help the powers-that-be get these things in place.
until p.g. gives some indication that it _truly_wants_ corrected editions, you are simply wasting your time.
Agreed. An MS agreed and uploaded for the top 10 books and a protocol that states that a version derived from the MS _will_ become the default download would be that indication for me. I'll help any way I can. Cheers Jon