a review of some digitization tools -- 008
today, we look at "the genius" by theodore dreiser, another one of the p.g. books jim adcock digitized. this one is #31824, in case you're interested in it... *** for this book, we find that jim used these tags... 1. paragraph and break tags -- [p] and [br] on the first page (e.g., cover page), he used a "class" attribute, for the purpose of centering. some markup bureaucrats call this "tag abuse", arguing that frontmatter is "not a paragraph"... i'm a little more pragmatic than that. 2. horizontal rules -- [hr] of varying widths 3. headers -- [h1] for title, [h2] for chapters 4. sizing commands -- [big] and [small] more "tag abuse". i might not agree with the label of "tag abuse", but these sizing tags are largely unnecessary, in my humble opinion... and i doubt jim actually put them in manually. more than likely, they're cruft from some tool. 5. smallcaps -- [span class="smcap"] i believe smallcaps are unnecessary as well, as they are almost always _presentational_... (and when they are not, we need to use a substantial way to indicate their actuality.) 6. divisions -- [div][/div] these were probably cruft from calibre again. they don't really add anything to the markup. 7. blockquot divs -- [div class="blockquot"][/div] i'm not sure why jim used a div with a class of "blockquot", instead of just a [blockquote] tag. probably more calibre cruft, if my guess is right. 8. poetry -- [div class="poem"][div class="stanza"] using divs and spans to do poetry indents is extremely typical of the convoluted crap that markup bureaucrats want to impose on you; can work just fine to create an indent, but that would make things too easy for you! 9. anchor-names and links -- [a name] and [a href] and finally, we have anchor-names and links, to provide the table-of-contents as expected. *** so, in summary, even though there were a few new features in this book -- such as _poetry_ -- for the most part it was "the same old same old". as in the last book, however, we find that jim is starting to introduce a lot of markup "cruft" into his books, much of it probably due to his "tools". thank goodness we're gonna create better tools, ones that don't put a lot of noise in our markup. -bowerbird [p][/p] [br] [p class="pg1"][/p] [hr style="width: 5%;"] [hr style="width: 25%;"] [hr style="width: 45%;"] [hr style="width: 65%;"] [h1][/h1] [h1][a name="THE_GENIUS2" id="THE_GENIUS2"][/a]THE "GENIUS"[/h1] [big]"GENIUS"[/big] [span class="smcap"]1915.[/span] [span class="smcap"]By JOHN LANE COMPANY[/span] "[span class="smcap"]Ruby.[/span]" "[span class="smcap"]Marietta.[/span]" "[span class="smcap"]Norma Whitmore[/span]." "[span class="smcap"]DEAR EUGENE[/span] "[span class="smcap"]SUZANNE.[/span]" "[span class="smcap"]Eugene.[/span]" [div class="blockquot"]Flower Face[/div] [div class="poem"][div class="stanza"] [span class="i0"]"'Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss[/span] [span class="i0"]Though winning near the goalyet, do not grieve;[/span] [span class="i0"]She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,[/span] [span class="i0"]For ever wilt thou love and she be fair.'"[/span] [/div][/div] [h2 class="padit"]BY THEODORE DREISER[/h2] [h2][a name="BOOK_I" id="BOOK_I"][/a]BOOK I[/h2] [h2]YOUTH[/h2] [h2][a name="I_CHAPTER_I" id="I_CHAPTER_I"][/a]CHAPTER I[/h2] ... [h2][a name="I_CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="I_CHAPTER_XXVIII"][/a]CHAPTER XXVIII[/h2] [h2][a name="BOOK_II" id="BOOK_II"][/a]BOOK II[/h2] [h2]THE STRUGGLE[/h2] [h2][a name="II_CHAPTER_I" id="II_CHAPTER_I"][/a]CHAPTER I[/h2] ... [h2][a name="II_CHAPTER_XLIV" id="II_CHAPTER_XLIV"][/a]CHAPTER XLIV[/h2] [h2][a name="BOOK_III" id="BOOK_III"][/a]BOOK III[/h2] [h2]THE REVOLT[/h2] [h2][a name="III_CHAPTER_I" id="III_CHAPTER_I"][/a]CHAPTER I[/h2] ... [h2][a name="III_CHAPTER_XXIX" id="III_CHAPTER_XXIX"][/a]CHAPTER XXIX[/h2] [h2][a name="LENVOI" id="LENVOI"][/a]L'ENVOI[/h2] [a name="THE_GENIUS" id="THE_GENIUS"][/a]THE "GENIUS" [a name="BOOK_I" id="BOOK_I"][/a]BOOK I [a name="I_CHAPTER_I" id="I_CHAPTER_I"][/a]CHAPTER I ... [a name="I_CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="I_CHAPTER_XXVIII"][/a]CHAPTER XXVIII [a name="BOOK_II" id="BOOK_II"][/a]BOOK II [a name="II_CHAPTER_I" id="II_CHAPTER_I"][/a]CHAPTER I ... [a name="II_CHAPTER_XLIV" id="II_CHAPTER_XLIV"][/a]CHAPTER XLIV [a name="BOOK_III" id="BOOK_III"][/a]BOOK III [a name="III_CHAPTER_I" id="III_CHAPTER_I"][/a]CHAPTER I ... [a name="III_CHAPTER_XXIX" id="III_CHAPTER_XXIX"][/a]CHAPTER XXIX [a name="LENVOI" id="LENVOI"][/a]L'ENVOI [a href="#BOOK_I"][b]BOOK I[/b][/a] [a href="#I_CHAPTER_I"]CHAPTER I[/a] ... [a href="#I_CHAPTER_XXVIII"]CHAPTER XXVIII[/a] [a href="#BOOK_II"][b]BOOK II[/b][/a] [a href="#II_CHAPTER_I"]CHAPTER I[/a] ... [a href="#II_CHAPTER_XLIV"]CHAPTER XLIV[/a] [a href="#BOOK_III"][b]BOOK III[/b][/a [a href="#III_CHAPTER_I"]CHAPTER I[/a] ... [a href="#III_CHAPTER_XXIX"]CHAPTER XXIX[/a] [a href="#LENVOI"]L'ENVOI[/a]
Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
5. smallcaps -- [span class="smcap"]
i believe smallcaps are unnecessary as well, as they are almost always _presentational_... (and when they are not, we need to use a substantial way to indicate their actuality.)
Small caps are frequently used to indicate when a personal name at the end of a letter is actually a signature. That is the case here. In the presentation of genealogical information, they are also used to distinguish individuals whose line will be explored further from those who are not. Small caps are a reasonable choice, and if they are in the original, why not mark them up as such? If we didn't, what would be "a substantial way to indicate their actuality"?
8. poetry -- [div class="poem"][div class="stanza"]
using divs and spans to do poetry indents is extremely typical of the convoluted crap that markup bureaucrats want to impose on you; can work just fine to create an indent, but that would make things too easy for you!
I have a book of poetry in which some of the lines are so long that they wrap, and the publisher has taken care to indent the wrapped part. Marking up individual lines with divs will allow a more flexible presentation than just using at the start of lines -- you'll be able to cope with indentation and wrapping in one go, whatever the readers' chosen screen width and font size.
as in the last book, however, we find that jim is starting to introduce a lot of markup "cruft" into his books, much of it probably due to his "tools".
Jim has already said that he has tried a variety of tools over time and that he wasn't pleased with all the results. However, if you weren't so keen on pillorying his efforts in the name of education, you'd see that some of the markup you decry as presentational or "cruft" is just what we need to preserve the original work with fidelity and flexibility.
Jim has already said that he has tried a variety of tools over time and that he wasn't pleased with all the results....
Reviewing my work on Dreiser "Genius" -- another really big book I did at Michael's request -- I find that this is a case where I tried using a DP tool -- sorry I don't remember what it was -- at that time I was still trying to make my peace with working with DP, or not, and I thought that this was a big book where college students might indeed want page refs, and the DP tool "supported" page refs. Well, I used the tool and it more-or-less supported page refs putting the page refs about +/- one paragraph to where the page actually started, and then I spent literally the next three days fixing all those page refs so that they would be more correctly positioned, after which I said "never again!" [Not to be taken as a complaint of DP, I've just decided I'm personally not cut out for waiting 1+ years for "my book" to pop up off and on queues -- and when it does pop up off a queue I'm probably out of town that week]
Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting sick and tired of BB insulting my work and not even being man enough to engage in a two way conversation about it.
On 12/01/2011 01:54 AM, Jim Adcock wrote:
Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting sick and tired of BB insulting my work and not even being man enough to engage in a two way conversation about it.
The rest of us used their mail filters to get rid of him. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
Hi Jim, Sure BB's attitude is sometimes very tiresome ! He also, has had often a very bad choice of expression, but after some many years have you not learned to ignore it for what it is! Heh, when he gets nasty, it truly shows that he has no true argument that is decently valid. So he provokes, provokes …. regards Keith Am 01.12.2011 um 01:54 schrieb Jim Adcock:
Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm getting sick and tired of BB insulting my work and not even being man enough to engage in a two way conversation about it.
participants (6)
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Bowerbird＠aol.com -
James Adcock -
Jim Adcock
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Keith J. Schultz -
Marcello Perathoner -
Paul Flo Williams