What texts need for scholarly usage
When texts are displayed on various ereaders, the pagination is going to vary depending on the screen size, font chosen, etc. There's no way that you can usefully refer to Tractatus p. 15, say. Page references work ONLY when everyone is using the same deadtree text. What ebooks need is a software utility that can overlay any text with the same sort of reference system used for works like the Bible or the Qur'an. Matthew 5: 9 or Sura 24 Ayat 25. Only a system like this can cope with books printed/displayed in many editions and formats. It would have to be written to work with the most common ebook formats, and should be an add-on that could be toggled on or off. Most of the time you wouldn't want it, but when you did need to refer to a certain passage, you could turn it on. Wouldn't this be simple to code, if the book has a TOC with chapter headings? -- Karen Lofstrom
Hi. I do not understand what you are getting at. First Tractatus is logically number thereby already giving a reference system, namely the Wittgenstein'sche Nummierung! That is statements are already enumerated at can be referenced that way! If I understand you correctly, you want to have some sort of reference system built into the ebooks so that one may easily find a particular place in an ebook. Why reinvent the wheel. for many literary works there are already ways of referencing the text. E.g Drama Act I scene II line 5; In poems line number, latin text have there sentences number, etc. I understand the problem of different edition and have had to deal with them. In the world of acedemica there are rules for proper citation of texts and they include all information right down to the edition used. Now, for use in the class room there is always the problem of finding a particular text position when the class has different editions. That is why teachers often require that a particular text edition is used, so that in chapter xyz on page 123 JKL writes ... ! I have been in class where the on page 123 did not work. The communication was then "in the beginning/middle/end of chapter xyz" or "in the second paragraph of chapter xyz"! It works. everybody was able to find the text passage in their PRINTED BOOKS. As mentioned below, if a ebook has a TOC have of this work is done. Jump to the chapter, or search for the chapter heading, or jump to the page given in the TOC. Then ..., I believe you get the idea it is no different than using printed material. Naturally, in the electronic age it should be simpler. Well, one could always look for the text with find!! Still not satisfactory. The question would be what kind of reference can be used. Sentence numbering could be one way, but their might be differences in the algorithm, and then there is the problem of those without ebooks. I do not see this a problem particular to ebooks, but as a problem of the classroom in general. As we all know there are book editions which lend themselves easier for use in the classroom than others. So it comes down to the ebook having the PROPER information in it. I do not there is any feasible way to do this. I mean how to tell an ebook jump to Matthew 5:9 or Sura 24 Ayat 25 (???) unless you have a link for this. regards Keith. Am 17.10.2010 um 08:53 schrieb Karen Lofstrom:
When texts are displayed on various ereaders, the pagination is going to vary depending on the screen size, font chosen, etc. There's no way that you can usefully refer to Tractatus p. 15, say. Page references work ONLY when everyone is using the same deadtree text.
What ebooks need is a software utility that can overlay any text with the same sort of reference system used for works like the Bible or the Qur'an. Matthew 5: 9 or Sura 24 Ayat 25. Only a system like this can cope with books printed/displayed in many editions and formats.
It would have to be written to work with the most common ebook formats, and should be an add-on that could be toggled on or off. Most of the time you wouldn't want it, but when you did need to refer to a certain passage, you could turn it on.
Wouldn't this be simple to code, if the book has a TOC with chapter headings?
-- Karen Lofstrom _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d
Why make it harder than it has to be? Why reinvent the wheel yet again? A simple search for even just three short words such as: "not to be" will get us to Hamlet's soliliquy without much undue odd outragous fortune, and it will get us there very well in just about any edition. If you just add a word or two, it's even faster. . . . Page numbers just get you to the right page, a thousand, even plural thousands of characters might be there. When "not to be" is the right hit, it's also the place a person wants on the "page," not that pages are anything, anything at all, that arbitray publisher distinctions in nearly all cases. . . . On Sun, 17 Oct 2010, Keith J. Schultz wrote:
Hi. I do not understand what you are getting at. First Tractatus is logically number thereby already giving a reference system, namely the Wittgenstein'sche Nummierung! That is statements are already enumerated at can be referenced that way!
If I understand you correctly, you want to have some sort of reference system built into the ebooks so that one may easily find a particular place in an ebook.
Why reinvent the wheel. for many literary works there are already ways of referencing the text. E.g Drama Act I scene II line 5; In poems line number, latin text have there sentences number, etc.
I understand the problem of different edition and have had to deal with them. In the world of acedemica there are rules for proper citation of texts and they include all information right down to the edition used.
Now, for use in the class room there is always the problem of finding a particular text position when the class has different editions. That is why teachers often require that a particular text edition is used, so that in chapter xyz on page 123 JKL writes ... ! I have been in class where the on page 123 did not work. The communication was then "in the beginning/middle/end of chapter xyz" or "in the second paragraph of chapter xyz"! It works. everybody was able to find the text passage in their PRINTED BOOKS.
As mentioned below, if a ebook has a TOC have of this work is done. Jump to the chapter, or search for the chapter heading, or jump to the page given in the TOC. Then ..., I believe you get the idea it is no different than using printed material.
Naturally, in the electronic age it should be simpler. Well, one could always look for the text with find!!
Still not satisfactory. The question would be what kind of reference can be used. Sentence numbering could be one way, but their might be differences in the algorithm, and then there is the problem of those without ebooks.
I do not see this a problem particular to ebooks, but as a problem of the classroom in general. As we all know there are book editions which lend themselves easier for use in the classroom than others. So it comes down to the ebook having the PROPER information in it.
I do not there is any feasible way to do this. I mean how to tell an ebook jump to Matthew 5:9 or Sura 24 Ayat 25 (???) unless you have a link for this.
regards Keith.
Am 17.10.2010 um 08:53 schrieb Karen Lofstrom:
When texts are displayed on various ereaders, the pagination is going to vary depending on the screen size, font chosen, etc. There's no way that you can usefully refer to Tractatus p. 15, say. Page references work ONLY when everyone is using the same deadtree text.
What ebooks need is a software utility that can overlay any text with the same sort of reference system used for works like the Bible or the Qur'an. Matthew 5: 9 or Sura 24 Ayat 25. Only a system like this can cope with books printed/displayed in many editions and formats.
It would have to be written to work with the most common ebook formats, and should be an add-on that could be toggled on or off. Most of the time you wouldn't want it, but when you did need to refer to a certain passage, you could turn it on.
Wouldn't this be simple to code, if the book has a TOC with chapter headings?
-- Karen Lofstrom _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d
_______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d
Agreed. Am 17.10.2010 um 18:47 schrieb Michael S. Hart:
Why make it harder than it has to be?
Why reinvent the wheel yet again?
A simple search for even just three short words such as:
"not to be"
will get us to Hamlet's soliliquy without much undue odd outragous fortune, and it will get us there very well in just about any edition.
If you just add a word or two, it's even faster. . . .
Page numbers just get you to the right page, a thousand, even plural thousands of characters might be there.
When "not to be" is the right hit, it's also the place a person wants on the "page," not that pages are anything, anything at all, that arbitray publisher distinctions in nearly all cases. . .
Michael S. Hart wrote:
Why make it harder than it has to be? Why reinvent the wheel yet again? A simple search for even just three short words ...
Because you can't put "search for XXX" as a scholarly citation. Pagination has been the old scholarly default, but it doesn't work if there is more than one edition of the book. I should have expected that a community such as this, which contains no scholars and is often hostile to them (or should I be saying us? I'm an independent scholar, if not an academic), wouldn't understand. Part of the solution has to be ebook readers and software that make displaying scholarly apparatus, such as footnotes and sidenotes, endnotes and references, as well as the suggested chapter and verse numbers, easy to do. Also making annotations, inserting notes, making links. We'll get there eventually. -- Karen Lofstrom
Karen Lofstrom wrote:
I should have expected that a community such as this, which contains no scholars and is often hostile to them (or should I be saying us? I'm an independent scholar, if not an academic), wouldn't understand.
I'm not hostile at all, but I have 2 objections: 1. The number of scholars using PG texts is epsilon. Scholars don't use texts digitized by somebody they don't trust. They digitize themselves or use facsimiles. 2. You should approach the relevant standard bodies, ie. IDPF and DAISY, and software companies, ie. Adobe and Apple, not PG. FYI PG does include page number entries in the EPUB TOCs it generates. The ebook readers just don't use them yet.
Part of the solution has to be ebook readers and software that make displaying scholarly apparatus, such as footnotes and sidenotes, endnotes and references, as well as the suggested chapter and verse numbers, easy to do. Also making annotations, inserting notes, making links.
If you get me a (substantial) funding I can hack FBReader into doing this. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 7:48 AM, Marcello Perathoner <marcello@perathoner.de> wrote:
1. The number of scholars using PG texts is epsilon. Scholars don't use texts digitized by somebody they don't trust. They digitize themselves or use facsimiles.
Another one of those ebook chicken-and-egg problems. In the past it was: people won't buy ebook readers because there's nothing to read on them; publishers won't publish in e because there's no convenient way to read the books. I believe that DP and PG had a great deal to do with breaking this impasse, by making many thousands of books available FREE ... which is always a selling point. Now the impasse is that scholars won't use ebooks because the books don't fit their needs, and we won't tune the books to their needs because no scholars use ebooks. We will get past this one too. As for scholarly digitisation efforts ... they're often useless for course work because the instititutions try to PREVENT easy access. You can only read the books on their website, and can't easily download. Nasty grasping behavior. Eventually the scholars will realize that DP's later efforts, with pagination and specification of the edition from which the scans were taken, are trustworthy. -- Karen Lofstrom
The most important point however is that you cannot change how books are quoted in existing books since hundreds of years. Assume that you have a book A printed, say, in 1922, that quotes a standard edition of a book B in the standard way, with a page number. Assume that you have an e-copy of B and you are reading A. How can you find the reference unless you have kept page numbers in B? Carlo
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 8:21 AM, Carlo Traverso <traverso@posso.dm.unipi.it> wrote:
The most important point however is that you cannot change how books are quoted in existing books since hundreds of years. Assume that you have a book A printed, say, in 1922, that quotes a standard edition of a book B in the standard way, with a page number. Assume that you have an e-copy of B and you are reading A. How can you find the reference unless you have kept page numbers in B?
Good point. Clearly we need to have both page numbers and chapter/verse notation, not displayed as a default (that would be distracting), but available to toggle on when needed. Though the "standard edition" may not exist for some of the books most often assigned in literature courses. If an instructor assigns _Moby Dick_, which must exist in dozens of editions, then which edition is to be considered standard? Are you going to force a student to buy the XXX edition if she has the YYY edition? If, writing a scholarly paper, you cite page numbers from YYY, they will not necessarily match the page numbers from XXX. Which is why canonical texts like the Bible and the Qur'an are given the chapter/verse treatment. -- Karen Lofstrom
Karen Lofstrom wrote:
Though the "standard edition" may not exist for some of the books most often assigned in literature courses. If an instructor assigns _Moby Dick_, which must exist in dozens of editions, then which edition is to be considered standard? Are you going to force a student to buy the XXX edition if she has the YYY edition? If, writing a scholarly paper, you cite page numbers from YYY, they will not necessarily match the page numbers from XXX.
In TEI you can milestone any number of editions you like. You can also mark up alternative text versions. You can thus produce multiple editions with correct page numbering out of one TEI master. Just a small matter of programming.
Which is why canonical texts like the Bible and the Qur'an are given the chapter/verse treatment.
The smart thing would have been to give every text this treatment. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 2:40 PM, Marcello Perathoner <marcello@perathoner.de> wrote:
Karen Lofstrom wrote:
Which is why canonical texts like the Bible and the Qur'an are given the chapter/verse treatment.
The smart thing would have been to give every text this treatment.
Yes, I'm sure that when they published those lesbian bondage novels in the late 50s, they should have anticipated that they would be used in college courses in the 80s, and put in chapters and verses. "87. And Jenny brought down her whip upon Kari's back. 88. And again. 89. And again." It really is distracting in straight reading and give a feel that many readers don't like; there will always be editions of Frankenstein and Dracula without obvious verses so long as people actually read them for fun. -- Kie ekzistas vivo, ekzistas espero.
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 8:56 AM, David Starner <prosfilaes@gmail.com> wrote:
It really is distracting in straight reading and give a feel that many readers don't like ...
Which is why I'm suggesting that the software should allow you to toggle the display on and off. 99% of the time you'd want it off, but if you're citing a passage or looking up a reference, you'd turn it on. For those specific needs, the display would be necessary. -- Karen Lofstrom
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Karen Lofstrom <klofstrom@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael S. Hart wrote:
Why make it harder than it has to be? Why reinvent the wheel yet again? A simple search for even just three short words ...
Because you can't put "search for XXX" as a scholarly citation. Pagination has been the old scholarly default, but it doesn't work if there is more than one edition of the book.
I should have expected that a community such as this, which contains no scholars and is often hostile to them (or should I be saying us? I'm an independent scholar, if not an academic), wouldn't understand.
Part of the solution has to be ebook readers and software that make displaying scholarly apparatus, such as footnotes and sidenotes, endnotes and references, as well as the suggested chapter and verse numbers, easy to do. Also making annotations, inserting notes, making links.
We'll get there eventually.
The simplest way to do a cite would be along the lines of 'The book of so and so' by 'Mouse, Antony'. Retrieved from Project Gutenberg on 10 Oct 2020, etext #50000, HTML format, characters 45,123-45,293.
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 2:23 PM, Robert Cicconetti <grythumn@gmail.com> wrote:
The simplest way to do a cite would be along the lines of 'The book of so and so' by 'Mouse, Antony'. Retrieved from Project Gutenberg on 10 Oct 2020, etext #50000, HTML format, characters 45,123-45,293.
I neither know how to find those characters nor locate those characters. In fact, that's not even well-defined; is that a grapheme count, or a Unicode code-point count (which is not invariant under normalization)? What about multiple spaces that are merged as one? Publishers have historically frequently kept page numbers the same (not for scholars, but because it was cheaper to make a fix if you didn't have to reset anything other than that page), but anything we do is going to change the character count. -- Kie ekzistas vivo, ekzistas espero.
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 2:34 PM, David Starner <prosfilaes@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 2:23 PM, Robert Cicconetti <grythumn@gmail.com> wrote:
The simplest way to do a cite would be along the lines of 'The book of so and so' by 'Mouse, Antony'. Retrieved from Project Gutenberg on 10 Oct 2020, etext #50000, HTML format, characters 45,123-45,293.
I neither know how to find those characters nor locate those characters. In fact, that's not even well-defined; is that a grapheme count, or a Unicode code-point count (which is not invariant under normalization)? What about multiple spaces that are merged as one? Publishers have historically frequently kept page numbers the same (not for scholars, but because it was cheaper to make a fix if you didn't have to reset anything other than that page), but anything we do is going to change the character count.
Shrug. Then a byte offset, with the full version (charset, encoding, etc) specified. This'll be off if someone converts between unicode or other charset, or if they change line endings, but if you stick to the official version d/led from PG on a specific date, it'll be consistent. R C
Hi Karen, Am 18.10.2010 um 19:14 schrieb Karen Lofstrom:
Michael S. Hart wrote:
Why make it harder than it has to be? Why reinvent the wheel yet again? A simple search for even just three short words ...
Because you can't put "search for XXX" as a scholarly citation. True enough it is not a citation, but a away of finding the passage.
Pagination has been the old scholarly default, but it doesn't work if there is more than one edition of the book. Since when is pagination the default. I do not think that Shakespeare folios have pages or even earlier texts. One does not quote Chaucer by pages, nor ancient roman philosophers, nor drama, nor is the Bible. Besides how many Bibles and editions are there.
I should have expected that a community such as this, which contains no scholars and is often hostile to them (or should I be saying us? I'm an independent scholar, if not an academic), wouldn't understand.
Part of the solution has to be ebook readers and software that make displaying scholarly apparatus, such as footnotes and sidenotes, endnotes and references, as well as the suggested chapter and verse numbers, easy to do. Also making annotations, inserting notes, making links.
We'll get there eventually.
There are rules for citing webpages and editions. Having different ebook edition is not hard to cite. For a decent cite one mentions the edition, chapter and paragraph would be enough and is adequate. As far a scholarly citation is concerned a good scholar will only cite the original text and since there are not that many texts purely published as a e-text, a proper nomenclature has not been developed, yet. When the need arises I am sure a standardization for quoting ebooks will show up. regards Keith.
On Mon, 18 Oct 2010, Karen Lofstrom wrote:
Michael S. Hart wrote:
Why make it harder than it has to be? Why reinvent the wheel yet again? A simple search for even just three short words ...
Because you can't put "search for XXX" as a scholarly citation. Pagination has been the old scholarly default, but it doesn't work if there is more than one edition of the book.
I should have expected that a community such as this, which contains no scholars and is often hostile to them (or should I be saying us? I'm an independent scholar, if not an academic), wouldn't understand.
Part of the solution has to be ebook readers and software that make displaying scholarly apparatus, such as footnotes and sidenotes, endnotes and references, as well as the suggested chapter and verse numbers, easy to do. Also making annotations, inserting notes, making links.
We'll get there eventually.
-- Karen Lofstrom
We should be writing for "Everyman" not for every scholar. Michael
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Michael S. Hart <hart@pglaf.org> wrote:
We should be writing for "Everyman" not for every scholar.
"Everyman" will never read most of what DP has proofed. I'm currently proofing a translation of the Kashf-el-Mahjub, a Persian Sufi treatise, and Durkheim's _Elementary Forms of the Religious Life_. They will be useful to someone -- perhaps, in the case of the Durkheim, to generations of students. But not to Everyman. Everyman is reading _The Da Vinci Code_. -- Karen Lofstrom
I have higher aspirations for Everyman, or I never would have started all this. I see literacy and education advancing now as much as after Gutenberg's Press. If we build it, they will come. . . . Michael On Mon, 18 Oct 2010, Karen Lofstrom wrote:
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Michael S. Hart <hart@pglaf.org> wrote:
We should be writing for "Everyman" not for every scholar.
"Everyman" will never read most of what DP has proofed. I'm currently proofing a translation of the Kashf-el-Mahjub, a Persian Sufi treatise, and Durkheim's _Elementary Forms of the Religious Life_. They will be useful to someone -- perhaps, in the case of the Durkheim, to generations of students. But not to Everyman.
Everyman is reading _The Da Vinci Code_.
-- Karen Lofstrom _______________________________________________ gutvol-d mailing list gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org http://lists.pglaf.org/mailman/listinfo/gutvol-d
Am 18.10.2010 um 22:14 schrieb Karen Lofstrom:
On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:01 AM, Michael S. Hart <hart@pglaf.org> wrote:
We should be writing for "Everyman" not for every scholar.
"Everyman" will never read most of what DP has proofed. I'm currently proofing a translation of the Kashf-el-Mahjub, a Persian Sufi treatise, and Durkheim's _Elementary Forms of the Religious Life_. They will be useful to someone -- perhaps, in the case of the Durkheim, to generations of students. But not to Everyman. As I have mentioned before not citing the original can be dangerous. But, then again who says the original will not appear as a ebook. On the other hand unless you are analyzing Durkheim's work directly a comment of where you are taking the idea from would be sufficient and page numbers are not needed.
regards Keith
Part of the solution has to be ebook readers....
Which do not currently have support nor conventions for page number references. Some PG books "fake it" but the results usually end up difficult to implement (in my experience) and intrusive in practice when reading. It would be nice if ebook readers supported page number refs -- and ways to turn the display of page number refs on and off -- but currently they don't.
On 17 October 2010 07:53, Karen Lofstrom <klofstrom@gmail.com> wrote:
When texts are displayed on various ereaders, the pagination is going to vary depending on the screen size, font chosen, etc. There's no way that you can usefully refer to Tractatus p. 15, say. Page references work ONLY when everyone is using the same deadtree text.
Most e-readers use HTML (albeit indirectly), and HTML already has a standard for references: <a name='whatever'/> If you want to find, say, act 2 scene 3 of the Polish translation of Romeo and Juliet, you can: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27062/27062-h/27062-h.htm#Akt2_Scena3 Most PG HTML editions these days keep the original page numbers (to the extent possible). Want to see what was on page 42 of that book? http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27062/27062-h/27062-h.htm#Page_42 -- <Leftmost> jimregan, that's because deep inside you, you are evil. <Leftmost> Also not-so-deep inside you.
participants (9)
-
David Starner -
Jim Adcock -
Jimmy O'Regan -
Karen Lofstrom -
Keith J. Schultz -
Marcello Perathoner -
Michael S. Hart -
Robert Cicconetti -
traverso＠posso.dm.unipi.it