On Sat, 5 Mar 2005 11:35:52 -0700, Jon Noring <jon@noring.name> wrote:
The collection (of one so far, and it is essentially a working demo for learning purposes) does not state to be "Jon Noring's" collection. Go to http://www.openreader.org/myantonia/ and tell me what it says there, and if it prominently mentions my name.
The comment about DjVu and IE6 seems out of place; there's plugins for Netscape there too. It seems like an interesting project. I'm not sure I have the time or ability to help, but I willing to make the offer.
Readers will appreciate the thoroughness expended to modernize a text for them, and will have warm fuzzies that it is "accurate" when the editor *takes the time* to explain what they did. This builds *trust* with the reader.)
I got into a bit of a flame war on bookpeople by suggesting that a translation might stand a few words on why.
So? What do you care? Is there a law saying any digital text version of a public domain work *must* be submitted to PG? Does PG have a government monopoly on the Public Domain? Of course not.
I've cared because a central library makes it easier to find a work, instead of having to search in several places. Also, Project Gutenberg has a long history, indicating it will be around tomorrow and the day after that, and it's decentralized, meaning that if it's not, everything won't just disappear.
And the word "trust" is an important core human concept -- society works only when there is sufficient trust between people, and trust in the various products of their labors. So any human endeavor which does not put "trust" as #1 is prone to eventually fail.
I don't agree. PG has not put "trust" as an explicit concept, but people being as they are, they trust that the PG works are done competently. When I gave my sister a copy of "A Doll's House", I didn't check editions and quality of translation; I just bought a random copy. You want works to be verifiable, but most people just don't worry about that; they "trust" others to do a good job.
I'd like feedback from the DP folk as to their policy regarding reproducing the non-ASCII characters (Latin 1, Latin Extended, Greek, etc.) It would not surprise me if DP, as a matter of policy, reproduces them.
We mangle the Greek via transliteration still, but we always get Latin-1 right, and we more or less get Latin Extended correct. (OE is usually broken, but accents are recorded, and I assume most PMs are aware enough to catch the weird characters.) Hebrew, Arabic and friends are usually, hopefully, handled by the PPer.
nope. it's just that i see them as _unnecessary_ to this book. if a reader thinks it _is_ necessary, make the global-change.
Why judge that on a book for book basis? In fact, you can't, since your programs don't tend to support "accented" characters in any texts. Certainly, the majority of pre-1850 works have at least one Greek quote that ASCII will horribly and irrevocably mangle. French quotes are exactly uncommon in our era of books, either.