ok, so i haven't talked about fadedpage in a while... mostly because there's been very little to talk about. the site is cruising along. the biggest news of note is that they switched to a "match-the-scan" meta-rule. that might not sound like a big deal, but they actually take it _seriously_, as primary directive, not a fallback. thus, they utilize _no_ blank line between paragraphs, for example, but instead indent paragraphs (2 spaces). nor are proofers instructed to close up contractions... whether or not you enjoy this approach across the board -- i don't -- you must admit it's better than the thicket of complexity into which distributed proofreaders descended my preference against a "match-the-scan" meta-rule is that i think digitizers should iron out the irrelevant differences in presentation marking the variety of public-domain books. our goal should be to create a uniform library for cyberspace, so our books can meaningfully "talk to each other", a la kelly. a "match-the-scan" meta-rule _celebrates_ those differences. roger might counter that he will attain uniformity of output via the .tei markup he's exploring. yeah, you read that right. mr. frank is looking at .tei as a possible format for his books. and nobody seems to be saying what a mistake he is making. i guess nobody cares very much about the time he is wasting. oh well, at least he's saying that .tei will have to prove its way, rather than be issued as edict, so common sense will prevail... eventually. but my word, if we had all the time .tei has wasted. the good news is that, in exploring .tei markup, roger learned that one can indeed automate the handling of _quote-marks_, which is significant, since that's the last thing that i said to him which pissed him off. eventually he always seems to learn what i try to teach him, he just refuses to learn it _from_me_ is all... speaking of which, it's nice to see roger has taken a solid stand against the excessive individualization of d.p. post-processing... he's recognized that it means that the books can't be maintained in the long run, or improved, which means they will eventually be discarded, which is sad. of course, i was saying this 5 years ago, back when i still believed it was important to care what d.p. did... so it's good to see that someone like roger (who gets spitting mad at whatever i say) _finally_ will come around to say the same thing, and say it in the mush-meal type of way dale carnegie might say it. anyway, back to fadedpage... *** the very best thing about the site is fadedpage trusts its people. and that's a huge step forward from what d.p. has devolved into. not enough can be said about this fundamental shift in attitude. the next best thing about fadedpage is that the interface is slick. roger has _singlehandedly_ built an experience superior to d.p. ok, maybe he got a smidge of help from dkretz, but otherwise he programmed the thing by himself, and he did it from scratch, and the code is lean and mean, and flexible and agile, and it rocks. the d.p. interface, while it isn't "bad", has none of those qualities. it's old and brittle, and everyone's afraid if they touch it, it'll break. given these two huge advantages, fadedpage is a real winner... *** the saddest thing about fadedpage is that it has so few believers. on an "average" day, it will pull just a half-dozen volunteers... if you look back a week, a dozen people might've been active. d.p. has gotten even more insular over the years, and people seem to be truly disinclined to even _explore_ an alternative. as a result, fadedpage hasn't posted many books. since january, they've completed 26 titles, and most of them were quite simple. that's just 1 book a week. i don't know how many _hours_ were volunteered at fadedpage, so i can't judge their _efficiency_ yet, but on an absolute basis, 1 book a week is _not_ a lot of output... roger might be fine with this "boutique" approach, but it's still more of a cult than anything else, and a very small cult at that. *** and there you have it, the good, the bad, and the ugly of fadedpage. the good part is its refreshing attitude and its wonderful interface. the bad is that it hasn't shown that it can attract a critical mass. and the ugly is that it's still being distracted by crap like t.e.i. *** so, at its 6-month "anniversary", that's the scoop on fadedpage... -bowerbird