On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 04:46:56PM -0400, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
greg said:
If it's not online and on the fly, then it's not what I've been talking about. Sorry.
your model and my model differ.
I guess so. The main PG server 280000 files in dozens of formats and languages, with millions of hits per months. You're not offering anything that can help them, except for a mailing list subscription for an outdated beta. Your earlier message said you could offer reformatting into any reasonable format, as long as the input was sufficiently well-formed to your standards. Sounds like you don't actually have any such thing. Put it up for free public download, and I'll change my tune in a heartbeat.
my model calls for online maintenance of one file per book -- the master version -- in z.m.l. format.
once a person has downloaded that master version, a program running on their personal machine is used to convert that master version into auxiliary versions.
So you're against storing (or creating) WAP versions, Braille versions and MP3 versions on our server? That's cutting out a whole lot of potential readers I would like to support. Nobody's stopping anyone from running a program on their own computer to do whatever conversion they like. Why are you trying to stop me from enabling various conversions on the server, for people who want or need to get conversion done there? -- Greg
i can certainly port my source-code over to perl, so it would run on the web. but that's not what my model is.
my model is to put the power into the hands of the user. i don't like methods that _require_ access to the internet.
You seem to be saying that there is exactly one application in the world that can change a ZML-formatted eBook into HTML, PDF and a variety of other formats.
one so far, yep.
but i don't see any reason why a multitude of other programmers couldn't build their own programs that would do the same thing.
how many such programs do you think people need?
it is also of importance to keep in mind my main orientation, which is to provide a reader-program that is so superior that nobody even _wants_ to do a conversion to another format...
realistically, i can't see anyone ever using my app to make a .pdf, because why would they want to use acrobat as their viewer-app? and they won't convert to .html to read the e-book in a _browser_, that's for sure. the only conversion i can see them doing is .html so they can put it on a rocketbook or one of the other handhelds, and those machines will all be on the scrapheap before too long...
If/when there is such an application that can run on our Unix/Linux servers, operate on the fly, and integrate with the Web back end, it will be great to provide access to PG readers.
i don't program much in any of the scripting web-languages, so you'd have better luck trying those three d.p. programmers that i pointed you to -- thundergnat, donovan, and bill flis.
as a said, their tools are already doing the vast majority of the work involved in ascii-to-html conversions for post-processors.
and it would be _great_ to standardize your .html versions. the one-off nature of your current .html versions means that all of them will have to be replaced eventually, which is gonna break the hearts of the post-processors who worked so hard on them and expected that hard work to last many decades...
i would be happy to consult with anyone who wants to do an open-source version of these converters. i could certainly offer pseudo-code (and even realbasic code, if it helps) that would serve as a guide in programming routines. for the most part, however, i think the translation of z.m.l. structures to (x).h.t.m.l. should be rather obvious and totally straightforward. i surely have encountered no difficulties in doing exactly what is needed.
examples of some .zml files with .html conversions can be seen here:
http://www.greatamericannovel.com/ahmmw/ahmmw.zml http://www.greatamericannovel.com/ahmmw/ahmmwc001.html
http://www.greatamericannovel.com/mabie/mabie.zml http://www.greatamericannovel.com/mabie/mabiep001.html
http://www.greatamericannovel.com/myant/myant.zml http://www.greatamericannovel.com/myant/myantc001.html
http://www.greatamericannovel.com/sgfhb/sgfhb.zml http://www.greatamericannovel.com/sgfhb/sgfhbc001.html
Where can users who might be interested download your viewer app from?
they can get a beta version by signing on to the beta-test listserve:
zml_talk-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
that beta-version is very old, though, and doesn't have the converter routines that we have been talking about here...
i'll be bringing the program out of beta in the next month or two; people will be able to download a copy from the z.m.l. website (new!):
i now have one brave linux alpha-tester, so watch for a linux version!
-bowerbird
_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d