On 2012-09-27, Roger wrote:
I have not heard of an external P3.5 round and then loading images back in. The reload would have to be done by the squirrels.
Para deleted in favour of Carlo's answer. My idea here was much more technical and much, much worse.
Another problem will be to do the diff, you'll have to join the pages and then put them back as individual files, properly (by DP standards) split again.
I've already got code that would handle this.
A bigger issue is that the process would involve formatting that--correct me if I'm wrong--would not be used to post-process the book. The RTT is what is going to PG and whever wants to would start from that. There would be no PP at DP on the text.
If it is a rule that we use the whole process or none of it, there is no reason not to capture all the useful bits. P3 (or P2 if P3 skipped) to turn into an RTT for the diffs and anyone that wants to work from clean text (i.e. me), F2 (or F1 if F2 is skipped) output for you. I'm sure we could come up with something useful that falls under the title of PP.
Bowerbird put it succinctly and early: this is not going to happen because of DP and PG realities. We are still discussing it but we're getting to the same conclusion.
On reflection, I think that we can work with PG realities. We can improve the extant text through the errata system, we can provide something better as a buried project for those in the know and we can provide excellent final formatted versions externally based on these buried versions. Maybe we can even give Amazon the nod about the new versions -- that really would be consequential. Unfortunately I do think DP is necessary. I would love for Bowerbird to prove me wrong, but the response to his P&P "pilot" didn't fill me with confidence. We know that, technically at least, DP would work. It is a simple numbers game: there are 1000 odd people who _want_ to do the fastiduous painstaking work that, if we're honest, we want to avoid. That resource is pretty much unique. As far as I am concerned we are sunk if it is not forthcoming. So it comes down, finally, to the fact that I need to discuss all this with Louise. I therefore need a final piece of advice from this list. What is the best way to approach Louise with a proposal such as this? Cheers Jon