A feathery troll with competing business interests is once again abusing this PG list to smear the OpenReader e-book standard and the TeleRead Web Log. The normal rule is, "Don't feed the troll." But every now and then, as cofounder of OpenReader and moderator of the TeleBlog, I just may pop up with the facts for the benefit of newbies who don't yet know what's going on. Yes, e-book software from OSoft, our first implementer, been available for several years now to do SHARED annotations. Embedded forums and even blogs inside books will be on the way. Imagine how this could help such wonderful activities as collaborative learning in K-12. We're talking here about dotReader, the new name for OSoft's ThoutReader, except it'll work with the OpenReader format. dotReader is a real app for real users--developed by a real company, as opposed to a troll in the basement, so to speak. dotReader is named for Dorothy Thompson, an early foe of fascism and the leading female news commentator of the 30s and 40s. Miss Thompson also happened to be married to Sinclair Lewis, one of my favorites. She loved to annotate her books and share her literary enthusiasm with friends. Fittingly, then, an early book for dotReader will be Peter Kurth's "American Cassandra: The Life of Dorothy Thompson," which the L.A. Times hailed as "exemplary biography, thoroughly researched and entertainingly written." The next will very likely be a food guide, also the subject of stellar reviews. Readers will be able to use dotReader's interactive capabilities to help the coauthors of the food book stay up to date. Needless to say, OSoft is particularly keen on seeing public domain literature in its format. Anyway, I hope I've made this case for the R Word--Real. The real company behind dotReader consists of two super-hardworking guys who've bet their assets in a serious way and hired other programmers. This is American business and technology at its best. I'm reminded of Preston Tucker, who was to Ford, GM and the others what OSoft is to Adobe, Microsoft, Amazon and the rest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker). It's a shame that the troll is less interested in disc brakes than in badmouthing the Tuckers of e-book software. See the true details for yourself at http://www.dotreader.org. The site for the OpenReader standard is at http://www.openreader.org. The TeleBlog, where I've often discussed related issues, is at http://www.teleread.org/blog. You can reach OSoft CEO Mark Carey and CTO Gary Varnell through the info at http://www.dotreader.com/site/?q=node/21. Sign up for progress reports via dotReader's home page. Like the troll, the proprietary formatters aren't too happy. But OpenReader and dotReader are happening anyway; and I'm expecting an outcome much happier than Tucker's. OpenReader and dotReader have just returned from a highly successful visit to BookExpo America. Some major publishers have expressed serious interest. It's just a matter of getting one of them to be the first to benefit from OpenReader and dotReader--a major but not insurmountable challenge in a conservative industry such as publishing. Gary and Mark are also keen on hearing from smaller publishers, whose use of the format and compatible software will help with the larger houses. More importantly, the cause of small publishers is worthy in itself. The first version of dotReader will hit the Net for free this summer, thereby driving the troll crazy since all along he kept claiming that the OpenReader standard would be just vaporware. Might there be delays? Of course, as with any quality-minded effort. But yes, the launch will happen soon, and it would be good if the troll surpassed low expectations and apologized for his persistent falsehoods and abuse of the PG list.

... amazon -- which announced such a feature will be available soon in mobipocket -- could save themselves "a fortune in development costs" by using openreader instead of mobipocket. given that it's relatively trivial to embed this capability, i'm not sure what he's thinking.

Amazon could not give me a date when Mobipocket would have the shared annotations feature, so, in a Mobi context, we're not necessarily talking "soon" at all. The shared annotations will be available for now only via a Web browser, an e-book museum kind of deal, rather than downloadable e-book files. Besides, whether the issue is standards-compliance or user customization, dotReader does indeed leave Mobipocket behind in the dust. Those guys either don't get standards or bungled Mobipocket in certain ways. I love Mobipocket compared to Adobe, but OSoft's dotReader will be much better than either, and Amazon and rivals would be damn foolish not to use this rather affordable technology, which they would be free to rebrand. The main credit for dotReader, of course, goes to Gary Varnell and Mark Cary at OSoft, but Jon and I have contributed hundreds of suggestions to OpenReader first implementer. What's more, another terrific implementation, FBReader, is on the way; and you can bet I'll be bragging about FBReader, too, going by the high quality of the work (I'm basing this statement on what friends have told me). Other fine implementers cherished! Catch up with jon@openreader.org for OpenReader's preliminary specs and also to provide him your own feedback. Moreover, if you're a publisher, including the public domain variety, give us your thoughts on the traits you'd like for authoring and translation tools. Feedback from small guys especially cherished! I'd love for Gutenberg itself to offer OpenReader format and for, say, Michael Hart or Greg Newby to participate constructively in the standards-setting process. We want the OpenReader process moved to a group such as OASIS so we link up with established standard-setting. Yes, Michael, OpenReader-to-ASCII conversion will be trivial. Contrast that with Amazon's proprietary approach. Like the troll, by the way, Amazon reads my TeleRead blog. I hear you do, too. That's great. Despite my disagreements over various issues, such as the best way to achieve true QC, I continue to wish for Project Gutenberg's success since I don't want governments, library bureaucrats and big publishers or even small ones to dictate which books survive. We need all kind of approaches. It is unfortunate that the troll is casting issues in terms of one vs. another. I'd love to see my own library efforts reinforce PG's and vice versa. As for the troll's competing business interests vs. OpenReader's: 1. Jon Noring tells me that the feathery troll has given his ZML-related app a $50K price tag. True? Or is the troll just doing his reader as part of an Albert Schweitzer act for the good of humanity. If the price is a mere $50K, I'm amazed. Isn't the app worth with more? Poor creature. The many hours spent trolling against OpenReader are seemingly part of the development costs of his ZML work. I'm flattered that we're such a high priority. Before the troll gave up, he'd made hundreds of posts of the TeleBlog, and many and perhaps even most of them were either diatribes against either OpenReader or those involved. 2. From what I hear--true?--the troll is refusing to open source his app. By contrast, OSoft, despite having bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on development costs, is open-sourcing everything but the rather optional DRM that it added only at the vehement insistence of publishers. 3. If the troll's ZML surprised the cosmos and caught on, it would be trivial for the free dotReader to read it since it'll work with almost any XMLish format despite the focus on OpenReader, the new standard. Whoops. There goes the business model of either the troll or whoever buys his app. On a very related topic, no, the troll was not banned from the TeleBlog, but I do agree with him that it would be a big time-waster for him to return to the area and continue his trolling. Then he'd go on moderation, waste a lot of people's time and perhaps end up after all being the first of many hundreds of commenters to be banned--well, with the exception of the less subtle spammers. For the troll's acknowledgment that he didn't want to play by the TeleBlog's rules, check out the message below. You'll see that when our spam filters kept eating up the troll's remarks, Jon Noring offered to work with the him to solve the problem for both him and the TeleBlog; we don't like any legit comments to vanish. Alas, however, the troll turned down the suggestion. All we wanted in return was civil conduct. For those who don't know, Jon is a TeleBlog participant and the main founder of OpenReader--someone who, unlike the troll, has been highly active in mainstream e-book standards setting efforts with both small and large publishers involved. Significantly, the TeleBlog is Usenet NOT. We are a community where we compare notes on e-book technology and news, and where we welcome constructive disagreement rather than the trollish kind so well defined in the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll). If our ill-feathered friend changes his ways and acts civilly, rather than doing troll spams, of course he'll be welcome back--with the expectation that he'll be a full community member as opposed to working constantly for his $50K or whatever he wants for his app. Along with the other TeleBlog regulars, I love Usenet as Usenet, but we'll not alter the community nature of the TeleBlog to make it troll-friendly. As for the PG list, which the troll has used to disparage not just me and OpenReader but also the whole TeleBlog community (supposedly we're all "unrealistic" or whatever the adjective--not just the evil moderator), it's the decision of Michael and Greg. If they want to keep the PG list unmoderated, that's fine. At the same time they would do well to remember how Joseph McCarthy took advantage of the "objective" nature of the press to engage in never-ending character assassination against opponents, just as the troll is doing against those he sees as business rivals standing in the way of his $50K and his pride. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mccarthyism for more on McCarthy's lies, which branded a number of people as unAmerican, ranging the composer Aaron Copeland to the novelist Dashiell Hammett. The troll's McCarthy-style posts are a vicious and highly disreputable use of the PG list, and it's high time that more responsible members of the list asked the troll to stop them. As Joseph Welch, a U.S. Army lawyer, told the late Senator from Wisconsin: "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?" The troll is not just an innocent clown. While he delights in jousting with those he perceives as enemies and is motivated by his product-related pride as much as anything else, he also wants cash for this competing reader app; and he doesn't care whom he smears along the way. Michael Hart, whom the troll admires, and whom I do, too, regardless of my disagreements on certain matters, perhaps can tell the troll to stop doing his McCarthyism act. The troll's Internet McCarthyism--this repeated use of outright lies in a forum to which he has easy access--reflects badly on the PG list and lowers newbies' impression of a valuable group like PG. Thanks, David Rothman Cofounder of the OpenReader Consortium http://www.openreader.org Moderator of the TeleBlog http://www.teleread.org/blog davidrothman@openreader.org | dr@teleblog.org | 703-370-6540 P.S. This list is normally devoted to PG, not TeleRead or OpenReader. I wouldn't be commenting here except that the troll keeps gratuitously introducing these topic in a negative and misleading way. ================================================ ------------Original Message------------ From: Bowerbird@aol.com To: gutvol-d@lists.pglaf.org, Bowerbird@aol.com Date: Thu, Apr-13-2006 7:22 PM Subject: re: [gutvol-d] don't believe everything you read on the internets like i said, it doesn't matter to me if i'm banned or not, because i want to stop wasting time over there anyway. and since i am certainly not about to change what i say _or_ how i say it, it would only be a matter of time before i was banned eventually, "for the good of the community". besides, jon, with adobe plotting against openreader, you've got much bigger fish to fry than my fat old ass... -bowerbird