>PG has no control over the format submitted.

Nonsense.  I have tried submitting “other things” and have been told repeatedly that the “minimum requirements in practice of PG” is that a TXT and an HTML file be submitted, and that these two files pass through a large number of fitness tests required by PG, which in practice includes restrictions on the choice of char sets used in the internal rep of the TXT and of the HTML file.  So, in fact PG DOES have control over the format submitted, and the way PG asserts that control is by refusing to accept submission of formats and details of those formats that they choose not to support.

As a simple counter-example of the above claim “PG has no control over the format submitted” note that personally I would much rather be submitting TXT files which do not correspond to the PG requirements of including a gratuitous line wrap every 72 chars.  Or if I am required to submit TXT files with line wraps I would much prefer to retain the line wraps of the original text, because it is a royal pain for some future volunteer to have to “fix” the position of line wraps back to the original text in order to do additional processing of the text file in the future, for example because they want to find and include additional semantic information that can be found in the original page scans, but not in the TXT.  And in practice it is impossible to do this visual analysis unless one matches line breaks to the original page scans – as DP well knows.

Another example from a couple years ago is I asked PG how I could submit MOBI formatted texts of books they already had in other formats.  I was told that I was not allowed to do so.  So I set up an independent website to distribute PG books in MOBI format to my friends in the MOBI community -- retaining the PG licenses and legalese conditions.  Now, as hoped for, some years later PG has decided to support MOBI after all – at least to some extent. But: what a pain!

Why is this important to me?  Well, I happen to like classes of reader machines that the internal mechanizers of PG do not like.  PG likes big teletype like display machines, capable of displaying more than 72 chars per line.  [Your standard PC or Mac still remains fundamentally a teletype emulator] And PG likes tiny machines with extremely limited displays, also known as cell phones.  I personally do not like either of those classes of machines, but rather machines that are middle sized – small enough that I can pick them up and easily read them while lying in bed late at night for example.  But large enough that I can understand in context the ebb-and-flow of what the author wrote in some surrounding context. With these middle-sized machines issues of text reflow become a central issue in the pleasure (or lack thereof) of being able to use the machine.  And yes there are quite a number of tools one can use to help “fix” at least partially “broken” texts re these machines, including Calibre and say Mobipocket Creator.  But I’d rather not have to “fix” a text each time before I can read it.  And I’d rather it not be  “broken” in the first place.

So, in summary, as a “volunteer” am I free to do what I want?  Yes, certainly – but not if I want any of my efforts to ever show up on any PG website! As Bowerbird is only too happy to point out: “Please feel free to go somewhere else!”