On Fri, Nov 12, 2004 at 07:11:46AM -0800, Tony Baechler wrote:
At 06:23 AM 11/12/2004 -0800, you wrote:
Actually, it's pretty easy to find all the original Project Gutenberg eBooks, as well as the newer versions, because so many places keep them, usually in the thousands for any of our eBooks that have been out for even a week.
Hello. Actually, I've had a hard time finding any of the very early editions of PG files. There are some old files in the etext90 directory, but not edition 10 of the first several ebooks. I would be interested to find the very first edition of when10.txt or whatever it was called as MH posted it. Even the old GUTINDEX.* files have been removed, with the earliest being GUTINDEX.96 when it used to be GUTINDEX.90.
Michael might have some of the older files. There are a few sources, like old Walnut Creek CDs, that might also be able to help. These days, we essentially never delete anything (not strictly true, but close enough... and we run a no-delete mirror for when mistakes happen). But in the past, Michael would remove older files. This was largely due to space constraints on the hosting servers. As for the GUTINDEX* files, we don't keep older files around, since they are essentially always updated weekly. I can see the reason for interest in looking back through older files, though - maybe we'll start doing this in a new subdirectory. Note that the GUTINDEX files have been through many iterations. Michael used to maintain them, then I did, and now George Davis does. The filenames have changed, and so has the format. For the most part, this has been simply to accommodate the changing nature of the publications, enhanced metadata (like contents listings), and other pragmatics. Unrelated story: I needed to print GUTINDEX.ALL the other day (as part of an affadavit for another legal case I'm helping with, where we once again show there are "significant non-infringing uses" for online content). It's about 550 pages. Whew! I hope that's the only time in this decade anyone needs to print it. -- Greg