nearly exactly one year ago, i came on the gutvol listserves, challenging the gutvol-p markup wonks as all-talk/no-action, noting that in spite of years of discussion, they hadn't made any of the promises of a heavy-markup strategy materialize, and indeed hadn't even gotten many of the e-texts marked up! a year later, after an exchange of literally hundreds of messages -- maybe thousands, i don't know, i wasn't really counting them -- many of them inflammatory, the situation is essentially the same. i tried to wake people up to a simpler way that was still effective. but nobody here was willing to hear it. in fact, i was "moderated", blamed for the flaming that my detractors used to victimize me. i don't play the victim role though, so i'm off now, to work on my own. i'll drop by again in another year, and see if y'all have made any progress by then, or if you're still stuck in the same old merry-go-round circles... in the meantime, i'll start up a blog, telling the world all the things that i think you're doing wrong. because i think they deserve to learn them. i tried to tell you all this personally, as friends, here on your own lists, but you weren't willing to listen. so now i'm going public. i tell you this so you know i'm not going "behind your backs". heck, you might want to read the blog yourself; maybe it'll help you see what you've been missing. here's a message i posted a while back. you can call it "21 steps to happiness". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ here's a little _overview_ to help you get your bearings, at least in regard to _my_ work, _my_ viewer-program, _my_ format, _my_ markup system, and _my_ philosophy. 1. the e-texts -- as they are now -- must be regularized. 2. i can write programs to do most of that automatically. 3. the results need to be checked for quality control, and 4. some missing information will need to be re-inserted. 5. once that is done, the files will be _finished_, in that 6. my viewer will present them as high-powered e-books. 7. users can push a button to create high-end .html files, 8. or save text as an .rtf file, or print out to paper or .pdf, 9. in a way that gives 'em customized high-quality output. 10. my program will do text-to-speech, and screenshots, 11. and let people explore the project gutenberg library, 12. and easily report errors they encounter in any e-text. 13. those error-correction reports will be automatically 14. routed to a system that presents all the material, so 15. a human only has to say "yes" to approve the mod, and 16. change-logs will be updated and a notice distributed. 17. this e-text standardization and ease of handling will 18. nurture a flowering of synergistic uses of the library 19. by an array of creative and imaginative programmers 20. that will engender a book-driven revolution in thought. 21. and everyone will live happily ever after. the end. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ in the absence of a more compelling vision from anyone else, i now depart... -bowerbird