don said:

One wonders about how wwers distinguish between

this would be the time where the whitewashers come in and delineate their policies for all of you to understand. cue the fanfare for the entry of the whitewashers... but i'm betting they won't do that. rather than explain a policy that you won't like one bit, they'll just stay silent and continue to be the black-box that you have to try and figure out from their actions... (and/or "non-actions", as the case might be.) but hey, can you blame them? they're just trying to protect their territory. each of them has put a _ton_ of work into p.g. -- quite literally thousands and thousands of hours, and some of them _tens_of_thousands_of_hours_. is it any wonder they want to protect the "old" versions? if they don't make that the traditional convention for p.g., then they know that _their_ work will soon be replaced too. the producers from the early days had to work _hard_. they had to buy expensive scanners and o.c.r. programs, or type in books by hand. and they did darn good work, considering the difficulty inherent in the task back then. now you guys wanna waltz in, with your scan-sets that cost you no work or time or energy, because you just downloaded them from google or the internet archive, who also did the o.c.r. for you. it's all so easy for you. you need to look at these matters from their perspective. there's also the tacit admission, when they "replace" an "old" e-text, that it was flawed, and needed corrections. that's sometimes a painful place to be forced to go to... so the question of updating e-texts is always gonna be one that is fraught with misgivings and mixed motives. *** on the other hand, the other problem here -- which many of you are conflating -- is the low quality of e-book files. here the problem lies with marcello, not the whitewashers. now, as most of you know, i think marcello is an asshole, because he _is_ an asshole. (most of you know that, too.) and yes, the problem with the low quality of e-book files is partly due to the fact that marcello is indeed an asshole. but unlike the difficulties involved with updating e-texts, it would be extremely simple to fix the e-book file output. a series of small changes would correct most of the flaws, right out of the box, and it wouldn't take much time at all. (this is why people can do the modifications so quickly and easily by themselves, because there's not that much to do.) but let me just, for half a minute here, defend marcello too. i can well understand why he would be stubborn about this, and refuse to implement even that series of small changes. it's because the people from d.p. have proven that they are unwilling to do what _they_ have to do, in order to improve the quality of the e-book output. so they've forced marcello to engage in a stand-off. he's saying, "if they won't budge, neither will i, and the quality of the e-book output will suffer." ok, so that's not a very strong defense, i grant you, but still, at least it shows why he might be motivated in such a way... otherwise, you've got to assume that he is purposely doing a sabotage of the e-book files for no good reason, and that would be beyond the pale, even for an asshole like marcello. you've got to explain why he wouldn't make the simple and obvious changes everyone knows would improve the output. *** underlying everything? the people who have the power to change things for the better have no interest in doing that. which is why, when you ask them for change or explanation, you will hear nothing except the sound of crickets chirping... -bowerbird