ok, let's see if i can clear the decks here, so i can get to some serious work next week... *** a while back, michael intimated that i was talking out of my ass when i speak of errors in the p.g. library, and that i should have sent _him_ the reports, so here is supporting data... *** first is a piece i wrote on errors in the p.g. copy of "swiss family robinson", _still_ all uncorrected...
http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/2005cleanup/on_swiss_family_robinson (this error-report was posted two full months ago.) *** second is a new review of the "fixes" in "the secret garden":
http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/2005cleanup/the_secret_garden_fix_ana... this was a "re-do" of a book that was already in the p.g. library, so i was able to test my ideas on comparing dual digitizations... i have previously written on this project, in a gutvol-d message that was sent december 27th, shortly after the e-text was posted. in that message, i praised the accuracy, and noted 10 errors... this new post examines subsequent treatment of those errors. error-reports like this tend to get _very_ specific, so i've also posted the page-images online to help outsiders negotiate:
http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/2005cleanup/page000.jpg replace "000" in that u.r.l. with the page-number (zero-filled to 3 digits) to see the image-scan of each page as it's discussed in the error-report...
in a nutshell, though, i reported 10 errors, and just 2 were fixed! this in response to a carefully-prepared error-report that gave you the page-number, the incorrect text, and the necessary correction, written only after i had taken a _very_ close look at each page-scan... how many error-reports will you get that are so well-documented? yet a mere 2 out of the 10 reported errors were actually fixed! wow! is that a performance that you all believe that you can feel proud of? *** third, i talked about how "alice in wonderland" was _very_close_ to z.m.l. compliance, but _not_there_... sorry, my memory was just a little wrong, there are _3_ excessive linebreaks in alice30.txt (not just one, as i had reported), one before each of these lines:
CHAPTER I CHAPTER II `Thank you, it's a very interesting dance to watch,' said
of course, a linebreak that is "excessive" by z.m.l. standards is probably not something the _whitewashers_ will consider as an "error" that they need to "fix", but michael said that he wanted to know about such things, so i have told him... *** my messages were written in the course of ongoing threads, the first over on the bookpeople listserve, the second two right here. so all of these reports hit michael's e-mailbox. if you have any questions, do please feel free to ask them. otherwise, i will just sit back and wait for y'all to make these corrections... no need for a flame-war, though. i am convinced that you'll never build a better error-correction system, so somebody else (like me) will have to build one instead, and i'm prepared to do that... so save your energy... *** you will hear more from me starting on monday. which is appropriate, since tinsley likes to call me a "monday morning quarterback". heck, over on the d.p. forums, he's got it down to its acronym... get used to it, jim, you'll be hearing a lot from me, with _extensive_ demos, starting real soon now... -bowerbird p.s. if jim's thinly-veiled insults persist over at d.p., i'll have to start posting in those forums in response; is that _really_ what you guys want? think about it...