On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 02:13:35PM +0100, Jon Hurst wrote:
... The value in the MS is in its unequivocal nature. It says: "After much discussion amongst knowledgeable people, this, and only this, is what we at PG consider to be a version of this book. Everything else we publish is a derivation of this. If they don't match this, they are in error."
This is exactly opposite the PG policy. We specificaly do NOT adhere to any print edition. (That is part of why you will find it really hard to find a matching print source for many PG eBooks.) This can make it difficult to determine what to do with some error reports. Often, the original producer is involved, if he/she is still available. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Volunteers%27_FAQ Part of the challenge is the desire to turn an ambiguous situation into a dogmatic one. As pointed out, there are often many variations in print editions. Determining which is "right" is not always so easy. The PG approach is to emphasize readability, not adherance to a particular printed edition. That still leaves room for ambiguity, but it also gets out of being dogmatic about matching a particular print edition. Luckily, ambiguous error reports are not the norm. Usually it's pretty obvious when an error exists. The topic of adherance to a particular print edition was a perpetual battle that Michael Hart fought. Many scholars, in particular, wanted PG to only match particular printed editions, in order for them to be useful for scholarship-related purposes. This was always very firmly resisted, in favor of readability. -- Greg