so much to chat about, i'll have to go outline: 1. agility=ability for zen markup viewer-apps 2. sloppy thinking lumps donations with ads 3. #3 of "monday morning quarterback" is up 4. thanks for the support, brent, but stay low 5. i've just posted another demonstration-book *** 1. because the format of the z.m.l. format is so very transparent, it's easy for apps to grok it. and to manipulate it. and to slap it into output. thus the programs will become especially _agile_. 100k of script, 90k boilerplate, so you write 10k just do the specific job you want done right now, and you're debugging, with the whole wide world (if you want) to help you find and fix that mistake. the job gets done, and you're off to the next one... your xml programs, however, will be bloatware, with that heavy-markup requiring complex code that'll be a nightmare to try to modify on the fly. and thus improvements will be slow in coming... and, as usual, the race goes to the swift. the truth of the matter will be that the abundance of the _zml_ viewer-programs, not the _xml_ ones, plus their _agility_, will be the defining features that tips things _to_ me (and not _away_ as you suggest). *** 2. ok, i will explain how donations differ from ads. a donation is a _reward_ giving a stamp of affirmation signing a relationship whose past has _proven_ worth, a firm avowal of underlying root in a _gift_economy_. it says, "job well done, my friend, thank you very much." an ad-sale is an _exchange_ that sets an expectation that the relationship will _deliver_ worth in the future, and becomes a symbol of foundation based on _barter_. it says, "ok, i'd better get my money's worth out of this." to the greatest extent possible now, the world needs relations built on a cornerstone of _gift_, not _barter_. project gutenberg is one of the leading lights in that move to future that is gift-based, not barter-based... and besides, in an organization that runs so completely on volunteer labor, a little money would be a bad thing. a terrible thing. the only person who can reasonably expect _anything_ out of project gutenberg is michael, and even for him, it's only due to all the years he spent in the wilderness, not for being on a now-heavily-populated bandwagon. *** 3. issue #3 of "monday morning quarterback" is out. this one is short and sweet, focusing on just one point: ================================== each scan you make should have, in its filename, the _page-number_ of the page which it pictures. ==================================

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bpsuper/message/7 http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/bowerbird/mmq/mmq03.txt

*** 4. while i appreciate your agreement with me, brent, there's no real need to speak. you'll only draw flames, and it's better just to let these lying dogs die peacefully. we're past the debate stage, anyway, and eating pudding. hey, i'm gonna use something like that as my slogan -- we _would_ eat our own dogfood, but we don't _make_ dogfood; we make _pudding_, and we _love_ to eat it! it's _good_! *** 5. another demo-book went up today, this one titled "the hacker manifesto", by mckenzie wark. wark is writing a new book in public, via a blog, a test of the institute for the future of the book:

http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/

the u.r.l. of my demo is:

http://www.greatamericannovel.com/ahmmw/ahmmwc001.html

i think i've forgotten to remind you so far that it's a better overall reading experience if you go into full-screen mode to do your reading. (or hide all the toolbars if that's all you can do.) not only does it remove unnecessary distraction, allowing you to immerse yourself in the material, but it also means the type and scans can be bigger. (no one should complain e-books are hard to read, because they can easily make e-books _easier_ to read than paper, just by making the type _bigger_.) also, if you hadn't noticed yet, clicking the image "turns the page" to the next page. (clicking the left image on the 2-up interface "turns back to" the preceding facing-pages spread in the book.) as i said before, on a fast pipe, where scans take less than a second or two to download, you can speed through a book fairly quickly. anyway, that's 5 demo-books up now:

http://www.greatamericannovel.com/mabie/mabiep001.html http://www.greatamericannovel.com/myant/myantc001.html http://www.greatamericannovel.com/tolbk/tolbkp001.html http://www.greatamericannovel.com/sgfhb/sgfhbc001.html http://www.greatamericannovel.com/ahmmw/ahmmwc001.html

pudding is served. it's the beginning of the end for heavy markup... :+) -bowerbird