project gutenberg was hit in the middle of the road, bloody and bruised, and with a ton of broken bones. so what do you guys do? you make a circle-jerk, trying to create a dialog on how you should draw up plans to build a hospital... it's all very amusing. except, you know, for the guy in the middle of the road. *** marc d'hooghe said:
All those who are comma fucking and mosquito sifting right now - what does all that mean to the general public?
fantastic question, marc. thanks for asking it. i answered you, and turned it into an e-book... you can access that book online, here:
i'll also append the text of the book here, but since my approach was an examination of _screen-shots_ from a couple p.g. kindle files, it'll probably be better to view the thing online, so you see the screen-shots. if you want to review the screen-shots separately, they all can be found in that very same directory:
http://z-m-l.com/go/ansmd/ansmdp001.png http://z-m-l.com/go/ansmd/ansmdp002.png ... http://z-m-l.com/go/ansmd/ansmdp025.png
once you actually _look_ at these derivative formats, like i do here, you realize that there are a few flaws in the converter that account for a large number of the goofy stuff that most users find so objectionable, meaning that it wouldn't be hard to fix the problems, and thereby increase end-user-satisfaction immensely. which is the right way to _start_ treating this patient who is bloody and bruised in the middle of the road. -bowerbird {{ansmdp001.png}} watching alice by bowerbird [[1]] {{ansmdp002.png}} table of contents watching alice ......... 1 table of contents ......... 2 the object of this drill ......... 3 so what do we see right away? ......... 4 the title-page screen ......... 5 divorce is not good for the children ......... 6 and now the corpse... i mean the body ......... 7 a tail of woe ......... 8 paragraphs set adrift in the sea ......... 9 shall we dance? ......... 10 maybe we need an update of the input ......... 11 did you ever do collage in school? ......... 12 i majored in collage at college ......... 13 blue plate special coming right up ......... 14 more paragraphs set adrift at sea ......... 15 this screen hit an iceberg and is now sinking ......... 16 use extreme caution due to wide load ahead ......... 17 another tail of woe ......... 18 getting a head of your self ......... 21 a much nicer dance ......... 22 followed by vomit on the dance-floor ......... 23 left to die all alone by yourself ......... 24 so that does it for the kindle versions ......... 25 [[2]] {{ansmdp003.png}} the object of this drill marc d'hooghe said:
All those who are comma fucking and mosquito sifting right now - what does all that mean to the general public? please enlighten?
excellent questions, marc! i'm not too sure i know what the other people here have in mind... but my intentions with these issues are _to_root_out_the_huge_failure._ the .epubs and .mobis generated by project gutenberg are _flawed._ they often do not work right, and even when they "do", they're ugly. so i'll point out some of the flaws, so you see what i'm talking about. i'm gonna work with a classic text: alice's adventures in wonderland... many e-book aficionados consider "alice" to be the flagship e-book... michael hart, for instance, loved it. so let's take a look at this trophy... as befitting the legendary status of this book, its p.g. e-text # is 11...
so let's take a look at the .mobi and the .epub which p.g. auto-generates, shall we? today we'll do the .mobi version... this is not an _exhaustive_ review -- i won't point to all the flaws -- but rather just an illustrative one. so let's get right to it, shall we? [[3]] {{ansmdp004.png}} so what do we see right away? this is what we see right away... legalese is ugly. make it go away. [[4]] {{ansmdp005.png}} the title-page screen here's the "title-page" screen. it has the title, but that's all. there's room for more stuff -- like the author's name -- but nothing more is here... [[5]] {{ansmdp006.png}} divorce is not good for the children we have to wait for the second screen to learn the author. and then, again, that's all we get. a big screen, with nothing but the author's name on it and a line informing us of the edition. [[6]] {{ansmdp007.png}} and now the corpse... i mean the body now we get to the actual text. good. except that's not a very nice header. the word "chapter" is all-uppercase, which gives it unnecessary gravitas, compared to the title of the chapter, which is entirely more informative... and the way the chapter-number and the chapter-title run together is ugly. the original p-book had the number on one line, and the title beneath it; that's a much better way to display it. also, we see that this book still has the all-uppercase version of _italics,_ so we sigh at the antiquated practice. [[7]] {{ansmdp008.png}} a tail of woe one of the famous things in "alice" is the formatting of "the mouse's tale". it plays off the "tail/tale" homonym, as the type was set in the shape of the curled tail of a mouse, complete with the nice touch that the type got _smaller_ toward the end of the tail. e-book viewer-programs can't manage small type as nicely as the printed page, but we should at least get the _shape_ of the tail right. but alas, the formatting here simply pulls all the lines to the left. that has to be regarded as a _total_fail._ you cannot mangle something so iconic... (and if you _are_ gonna mangle it, then at least show the people a _picture_ of what you _should_ have done for 'em.) [[8]] {{ansmdp009.png}} paragraphs set adrift in the sea another problem with this file is that the paragraphs have been set adrift... the spacing between paragraphs is too large. it's as if there are _two_ blank lines between each paragraph. one would be sufficient. indeed, since these paragraphs are also _indented,_ some people would "inform" you that there should be _no_ blank space between the paragraphs. they'll tell you that you have to use _either_ block-style or indent-style. i don't know about that. i kinda like the hybrid style, especially with only half a blank line between paragraphs. but two blank lines between paragraphs? that's clearly too much, and it's a big flaw on pages like this, with many paragraphs. (pages with a lot of dialog are the worst.) also note that the last few paragraphs on this page are not tagged correctly... they're in a different font, monospaced, and with the formatting being improper. [[9]] {{ansmdp010.png}} shall we dance? this page contains "the lobster dance", yet another famous piece in the book. as you see, it's not formatted very nicely. the monospaced font is particularly ugly... but even in a regular font, it wouldn't work. the long-line/short-line pacing is faulty... [[10]] {{ansmdp011.png}} maybe we need an update of the input ok, so we see that venerable #11 is _not_ looking all that good when p.g. updates it with generated formats for the modern age. but maybe a more-recent rendering will? especially one which started life with .html, rather than as a .txt file like good old #11? so let's look at #28885, dated may of 2009, done by -- among others -- jana, who just posted here recently, so might provide input. the first thing to notice, again, is the legalese -- an awful way to present a book to a person. like a good dish, the presentation _matters..._ and yet another thing to notice here is that the table of contents -- in the left panel -- is defective. none of the chapters are listed. oops. and ok, yes, if you click on "contents", you are taken to the table of contents, where the individual chapters _are_ listed and linked. the purpose of the contents in the left-panel, however, is precisely so you see the contents _without_ having to jump to the contents page, so you don't have to leave the page you are on. so right off the bat, we have a major flaw here, with the fact of that missing table-of-contents. [[11]] {{ansmdp012.png}} did you ever do collage in school? this next screenshot is the "title-page" screen. it's "interesting", that's for sure, kind of a collage, with the title-type rendered at the screen-bottom. i'm not sure it's too impressive as a "title-page", but i give it credit for being artsy and creative... [[12]] {{ansmdp013.png}} i majored in collage at college more creativity via collage on the next screen... [[13]] {{ansmdp014.png}} blue plate special coming right up next up, we have a "list of the plates", hotlinked. this is really nice. people like to look at pictures, and this gives them a fairly easy way to do that... so bonus points here for convenience for the user. unfortunately, before i can even add in the bonus, i will have to subtract points for some major flaws. first up, we have the chapter starting mid-screen. this is very bad, and serves as a frightening omen. moreover, the chapter-title isn't made prominent. it's not in bigger type. it's not bold. not centered. none of the trappings that would mark it as a title have been included here. again, this is a big flaw. meanwhile, as before, "chapter" is all-caps. ugly. but then, these problems are compounded further. we see the postprocessor tried to "get fancy" here, and installed a drop-cap. yes, it's very "decorative", but .mobi doesn't handle images very well right now, so the drop-cap -- the letter "a" -- goes on one line, and the rest of the word/sentence continues _below._ so instead of starting with "alice was beginning to", the line now says "lice was beginning to", and i don't think _lice_ is something the reader should conjure at this point in time, right at the start of this story... alice has quite beautiful hair, and we don't want to have to wonder if she's been infested with head-lice. that's not what the "wonder" in wonderland is about. [[14]] {{ansmdp015.png}} more paragraphs set adrift at sea this screen reveals this version, too, has the glitch of too much space between paragraphs. plus, in addition, there is a _ton_ of space on top of "down, down, down". i don't know what the problem is, but this is a problem. [[15]] {{ansmdp016.png}} this screen hit an iceberg and is now sinking on the next screenshot, we see we have some troubles with orphans. many reader-programs have this flaw, and there isn't a whole lot we can do to _avoid_ it, but what we see here is that bad omen i mentioned earlier. chapter 2 starts right beneath it, and thus _exacerbates_ the orphan. a new chapter should start on a new screen, to wash away any memory of an orphan right before it. and, of course, we have the chapter-title which doesn't _look_ like it's a title, the overbearing all-caps "chapter", and the embarrassing drop-cap too. not to mention the spacey paragraphs. in addition, we have an _invitation_ which is not formatted nicely, as it was in the p-book... so all in all, this screen is pretty much a disaster. [[16]] {{ansmdp017.png}} use extreme caution due to wide load ahead the next screenshot shows us a page containing a picture. the postprocessor floated the picture to the right and put the caption to the left of it. which works very nicely here, because i have a large monitor. but it should be obvious that such a design won't work as well on a smaller screen. there, it works better to put a caption _below_ its image... also, given that the picture takes up so much of the screen, the spacey paragraphs below seem even more isolated and the screen ends up having far too much white-space on it... [[17]] {{ansmdp018.png}} another tail of woe here we have the mouse-tail. once again, a total failure... [[18]] {{ansmdp019.png}} ...complete utter failure... [[19]] {{ansmdp020.png}} ...all the way to the end... also, here's yet another page with lots of dialog, which causes our spacey paragraphing to grow discomforting to what is an unbearable extreme. [[20]] {{ansmdp021.png}} getting a head of your self and now that bad omen morphs into a bad dream, what with a chapter-head separated from its body. when you start each chapter on a new screen, you avoid the possibility of decapitations like this one. [[21]] {{ansmdp022.png}} a much nicer dance the lobster dance got formatted better in this version than it was formatted in the .mobi for the earlier one. seems a bit weird that the last line of each verse is separated, but maybe that's how the p-book had it. i don't remember it that way, but, uh... alzheimer's. i'd also wanna check indentation against the p-book, but that's also an issue of postprocessor prerogative, and i don't have any objections to how it looks now. [[22]] {{ansmdp023.png}} followed by vomit on the dance-floor the verse on this page, however, is done very badly... [[23]] {{ansmdp024.png}} left to die all alone by yourself it's really embarrassing when your whole book ends on an orphan. embarrassing for you, and the company who programmed the app that did such a stupid thing. (i'm looking at you, amazon. looking squarely at you.) and yeah, the transcriber's note, which instructs you to hover the mouse over a correction (with its dotted line) in order to get the original text, will be quite amusing to people reading on their iphones and tablets and all the other form-factors which don't happen to have a mouse. it just goes to show the mindset of the post-processor... they think they're making e-books for the ages, and they seem to have no idea how limited their vision actually is... if there's anything we should have learned by now, it's that whatever our idea of the future, the future will be not-that. oh yeah, and now we have the legalese at the book's end... it assaulted us on the way in, and now again on the way out. please just make it go away. put it in an "about" box that end-users can totally and completely and utterly _ignore._ i'll accept one line -- a link to the legalese on the p.g. site. anything more than that is _too_much._ make it go away... [[24]] {{ansmdp025.png}} ok, so that does it for the kindle versions so, we've looked at two versions of "alice in wonderland", and found that the kindle edition which is generated is, to put it mildly, flawed. many of the problems _could_ be solved by simple improvements to the converter routine, having the appeal of fixing other auto-generated versions. some of the other problems might require some easy edits to the input-files, so that they will be converted correctly... but there appears to be no reason that this book cannot display nicely on the kindle, befitting its status as legend. sometime later this week, we'll take a look at the .epubs which are generated by the project gutenberg converter. -bowerbird [[25]]