On Wed, 23 Mar 2011, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote: a lot of stuff. . . . My reply. . .just wait. . . . I'll announce the first few "Perfect eBooks" soon enough. Hee hee! Michael

jim said:

...

   The famous title I reworked    still had at least a dozen "obvious errors"    that have never been fixed - even after    100s of thousands of downloads

one of those times where michael hart "solicited" my help and got no response was when he suggested that i could help on a project aimed at creating an e-text that was "error-free"...  i rolled my eyes...

first, there's no such thing, as michael himself has been quick to say all along.

second, at some point in time, decisions have to be made that are not about "errors" per se, but which flow from the philosophy with which you are attacking the task at hand. for instance, when a specific chapter-header fails to match its entry in the table of contents, do you change one of them to _force_ a match? well, it depends on what you want to be doing... decisions like these become far more important than "correcting errors" very early in the process.

third, and the main reason i rolled my eyes and decided to give no response is because i have already demonstrated -- countless times here, right on this listserve -- how to go about the process of creating an "error-free" digitization: by comparing two independent digitizations and resolving the differences between them.  bingo.

so i've been through the routine time after time, and now michael is proposing we do the routine? what a strange and curious request.  i didn't get it.

so rather than send back a reply saying "wake up!", i just opted not to say anything.

at any rate, the reason i bring all of this up now is because here's a situation where they actually have two separate digitizations, and they did not even do a simple comparison of one against the other?

that's stupid, to a degree that is embarrassing...

and -- this is most telling of all -- not surprising.

-bowerbird