Dick Adicks wrote:

Is there a sub-group to help Mac users to create e-texts that will communicate successfully with PCs? Are there individual volunteers who use Macs and can advise others?

There's the issue of character sets. I think the Mac uses a proprietary character set (as does windows). If you export the text to utf-8 before sending it in, you should not have any problems. Then there's the issue of support tools. There exist some PG tools to help you check your work but AFAIK they work on windows. You may want to read the FAQ www.gutenberg.org/faq/ and the DP fora and maybe contact Jim Tinsley, who wrote some of the tools. And steer clear of people on this list who claim to be Mac programmers. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org

I have produced a number of ebooks using a Macintosh. The key step is converting the MacRoman text to Unicode UTF-8 text. One option for this step is Cyclone available at http://free.abracode.com/cyclone/ I also use a program that I wrote using Symantec C++ as it is compatible with Mac OS 7 while Cyclone requires Mac OS 8.6. The tools and process I use for creating ebooks are listed below. Hardware: Macintosh Quadra 840AV, Color OneScanner 1200/30, Compaq Deskpro 667, and an RCA REB1200 ebook reader Software: Mac OS 7.6, Xerox TextBridge Pro 8, Microsoft Word 5.1, custom programs written using Symantec C++ 8, Windows 2000, Gemstar eBook Publisher, and REB Librarian Steps: 1. Scan book using TextBridge. This creates text files encoded using MacRoman and does not create image files. 2. First round of spell check and proofing using Word. 3. Dehyphenate using custom program. This program creates a dictionary of all words in the file and uses an external dictionary to decide which words to remove their hyphens. This can also be done manually using Word. 4. Convert MacRoman text file to UTF-8 text file. Also convert Macintosh line breaks, CR, to Windows line breaks, CR-LF. 5. Add minimal HTML markup which includes paragraph tags and HTML entities for non-ASCII characters. This is a separate file than the UTF-8 file and uses ASCII encoding. 6. Copy text files to computer running Windows 2000. 7. Add additional HTML markup for character styles, headers, and other formatting using printed book as source. 8. Convert HTML file to IMP format using Gemstar eBook Publisher. 9. Copy to REB1200 for proofing using REB Librarian. Make corrections to both text and HTML files. 10. Convert UTF-8 text file to ASCII encoding. The final results are three files: ASCII text file, UTF-8 text file, and an HTML file. Jeffrey Kraus-Yao -----Original Message----- From: gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org [mailto:gutvol-d-bounces@lists.pglaf.org] On Behalf Of Dick Adicks Sent: 20 May, 2005 20:15 To: Gutvol-d Subject: [gutvol-d] PG for Mac users Is there a sub-group to help Mac users to create e-texts that will communicate successfully with PCs? Are there individual volunteers who use Macs and can advise others? Dick Adicks _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d