On Feb 23, 2011, at 11:44, bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
were you reading the list when i talked to jim?
Some of it, I think. I get bored easily by bickering that doesn't lead anywhere.
in order to know how to "fix up the poetry", i will need to know how you think it should be, as i'm not too good at the mind-reading stuff...
How about you read the complete mail that you're replying to _before_ replying to every single sentence separately? I told you exactly how _I_ would want it to look.
those stanzas were _printed_ in a certain way, so we now have to assume that's how sinclair wanted them to appear [...]
http://z-m-l.com/go/tjbus/tjbusp009.html http://z-m-l.com/go/tjbus/tjbusp090.html http://z-m-l.com/go/tjbus/tjbusp192.html [...] I would want it centered on the "page" (screen, whatever), but with left-aligned lines.
If you actually look at those printed pages and compare them with what I asked for, you'll see that it was printed in the way I would want it to look. Or rather, the other way round: I would want it to look like most books print poetry.
ok, if you can find a way to work out that miracle, do please let me know. and the rest of the world.
Well, since I'm a nice person, I will point you to an example: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35312 It is not perfect because I'm not willing to use tables just to have poetry centered nicely (which one could do if one were only interested in the look, but alas, I'm also interested in semantics, as far as that's possible in HTML), but it's still way, way better than your underscores.
that is, the viewer-app doesn't know the page-size.
No, but you _do_ know the approximate width of the poem, which is enough to approximately center it in HTML. As for epub and mobi, I'm fine with just having the poem set off from the left margin there, as it is in the example above.
it's that _nobody_ knows "how to do that"... as there are good reasons it cannot be done.
That's interesting. Why does it then work pretty well in the example above?
what's wrong with non-breaking spaces? or white underscores? i mean, seriously.
That I do _not_ want to copy them when I copy poetry. The poem in chapter 1 is not indented. It is just printed centered on the page. Thus, it should not be copied as: --- ______"Sudiev' kvietkeli, tu brangiausis; ______Sudiev' ir laime, man biednam, ______Matau — paskyre teip Aukszcziausis, ______Jog vargt ant svieto reik vienam!” --- like it currently is in your version, but as: --- "Sudiev' kvietkeli, tu brangiausis; Sudiev' ir laime, man biednam, Matau — paskyre teip Aukszcziausis, Jog vargt ant svieto reik vienam!” --- If you think that poetry with different indents should be copied with leading spaces (which I don't agree with, but that's okay, you don't have to share my opinions), then you can do those indents as non-breaking spaces, I guess. But _not_ the margin on the left that is just there because the poem is printed centered on the page. For the poem in chapter 16, I understand that some people (not I, but that's okay) would want to copy it as: --- "The vilest deeds, like poison weeds, Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there; Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair.” --- instead of: --- "The vilest deeds, like poison weeds, Bloom well in prison air; It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there; Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair.” --- but I'm pretty sure no-one would want to copy it as: --- ______"The vilest deeds, like poison weeds, ___________Bloom well in prison air; ______It is only what is good in Man ___________That wastes and withers there; ______Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, ___________And the Warder is Despair.” ---
but one thing you might want to consider is the case where a person copies text out of the browser-window. in most browsers, the indentation gets lost completely, which means that our nicely-and-correctly-indented poetry loses that nice and correct indentation.
Yeah, right. Remember that _I_ started talking about the indentation, not you. And that your poetry actually doesn't do it the way I would expect it to, because _margin_ and _indentation_ are two quite different concepts.
What does a tilde in the original mean?
see if you can figure it out!
Ah, that's quite a helpful answer!... I thought that they might be there to represent non-breaking spaces, but then "button~hole" doesn't make any sense to me, so I guess I can't figure out what they're there for after all. That's a pity.
And whatever they mean, why are they kept in the converted version?
because i forgot they were in there, so i forgot that i had to remove them. they're harmless. pretend they're gone.
... and that is as well, I am sure.
I'd also really like to have the dedication centered on the page, as it would be in a real book.
i assume you mean centered top-to-bottom?
No, I mean centered left-to-right.
we're building a converter-program. remember?
Yeah, so how about you offer us a way to download the converted HTML next, if you'd rather do that first instead of making the HTML actually look decent? I have quite a few more suggestions for making your HTML look better, but as you don't seem to be interested in them, go ahead and actually write your conversions instead. That would be quite useful as well, I am sure. Jana