And, later on aesthetic form for the texts/books.
Writing, formatting, and publishing books is an art form. When people "transcribe" books leaving out that artistry, and transgressing the rules of the last 500+ years of formatting books then they have in fact failed in their transcription. Having said that it is possible to maintain the artistry of the original book while transcribing it and publishing it in "more modern form." In fact looking back at books published turn of the century one can find books which were 100 years ahead of their time, and books that languished 200+ years behind their time - both in terms of quality, artistry, and in the quality and techniques used to format that book - so this is not a new issue. Bottom line truth: Much of what PG publishes looks like crap -- even when that which the volunteer transcriber submits was a reasonable effort in the first place. Is it possible to read something that looks like crap? Yes. Should PG "customers" be subjected to reading something that looks like crap? No. Should PG "customers" be told to "go somewhere else" if they don't like looking at crap? No. Rather PG should take a good hard look at what they are publishing, stop making excuses, and do what is necessary to stop publishing something that looks like crap. IMHO.