al said:
However, it seems to me that simply indenting not-to-be-formatted lines, and doing nothing else, is at least somewhat pointless.
it's not "pointless" to make _some_ "corrections", but not all, to a text. that's what whitewashers do quite often, when _you_ "correct" a text...
Many of PG's older texts have other problems than that (missing illustrations, ASCII only rather than Latin1 or UTF8, missing/incomplete indexes, etc, etc, etc.)
that's right. but you whitewashers don't fix all of those problems. you apply the corrections that've been submitted, and you run the text through the new version of your tools, and you might also do some other checks (and thanks for doing that), and then you post it.
A far more desirable approach would be to pick an old PG text, find a scanset in IA/Google/wherever, get a copyright clearance, and do a new version of it, either from scratch, or a complete re-proof of the existing file(s), doing whatever is needed to bring it up to current standards.
i fully agree that that would be "more desirable". it would also be a heck of a lot more work. and that's the trade-off, is it not? still, someone who does _some_ of the "corrections" -- whether that is to make the text robust to rewrapping or some other subset of stuff -- is not engaging in a "pointless" exercise. they're improving the text, and -- just as i thank you whitewashers for improving the text when you do _your_ "corrections" -- i would thank any other person who improved the text when they do _their_ "corrections". i fully approve of an iterative process that steadily cumulates "partial corrections"...
Note: Complaints that the Repost team (mostly myself and David Widger, between us doing considerable clean-up work on several thousand of PG's old files) "should have done more" will fall on deaf ears. We're only two people, we're also 2/3 of the Whitewashers, and 2/3 of the Errata team, and we both produce independently. Back off.
i have never "complained" about the "corrections" by whitewashers. i _have_ pointed out that these "corrections" are _not_ complete, in the sense that many errors and inconsistencies and omissions _survive_ this "correction" process. but again, i do not condemn any "corrections" because they are not complete. i welcome and appreciate _all_ "corrections", even incomplete ones, because they move the text closer to _perfection_, and that's what i advocate... i wasn't "complaining" to report your corrections" are incomplete. i felt the need to point that out because you _do_not_ point it out. you say that "errors were corrected" and you simply leave it at that. i believe that many people probably conclude, from your statement, that you've made a good-faith effort to actually _find_ all the errors -- such as by comparing the text with a newly-obtained scan-set -- when, in point of fact, you have not actually gone to those lengths... nobody is "blaming" you, or "criticizing" you for doing what you do, or for not doing what you're not doing. so there's no need to tell us to "back off". that's insulting, and you really shouldn't be so sensitive. we're just stating the facts. _clearly_. because you haven't done that. so, can we all agree that "partial corrections" are _not_ "pointless"? because that would be a huge step in the right direction, yes it would. -bowerbird