On Sat, Dec 05, 2009 at 12:01:47PM -0500, Greg M. Johnson wrote:
I observed a bunch of things in the PG collection that were somewhere between maddening deficiencies in quality and simply how I wouldn't have done things. I could have made inflammatory demands that the whole system be rewrought according to my word. Instead I came up with my own custom DVD. And I'll testify that MH in discussing the idea was annoyingly non-paternalistic in not telling me how it had to be. ;)
And encouraging you to "just do it!" :)
So, when someone complains, it is great when they can just go fix something themselves. There's the story of the king who demanded the whole world be covered in soft leather to keep his foot from being struck on a stone. Maybe someone should come up with a custom DVD with all the good works in EPUB format.
Doable, I think. The XML/RDF catalog does include EPUB links, though they are not part of the static collection.
I would respect PG if it were to refuse to host any and all of these bleeding edge formats.
But we do host them...it's just that we're generating them on demand, which has numerous practical benefits for the producers, and is close to transparent for the human readers.
But I would love to be given the authority to create a raw text format without the 80-char line breaks.
Everyone can do that. Reformatting is permitted, as part of the license. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Permission_How-To
I agree that having these breaks (in the only TXT format available ) makes them unusable. The first-time visitor to PG probably won't be impressed that tools may be available to fix it.
That's why we provide MOBI, EPUB and other formats on demand. That way, the readers just need to click the chosen link. 80-character lines are only one of the choices. -- Greg