From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Jun 5 14:33:21 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 17:33:21 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] the light markup revolution continues Message-ID: movable type -- a major blogging package -- is out with their first new version in years, and "markdown" -- a light markup system -- which was an option is now the _default_ installation... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070605/0266da7e/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Jun 12 14:32:46 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:32:46 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] one man digitizing hundreds of thousands of magazine pages Message-ID: paul ford digitized the entire run of harper's magazine, dating back to 1850. he scanned each page, did o.c.r., corrected the text, and uploaded it to a site he created. during the project, he also wrote and edited for the mag, and did tech support for the office, to fill up his free time. pretty awesome. i think he made some mistakes in the site design, but hey, considering the scope of what he did, i am still impressed. interview here: > http://voice.aiga.org/content.cfm/a-scanner-and-a-mission -bowerbird p.s. it's not clear if harpers had all of their back issues, so they made a deal to borrow them from bennington... (they _might_ have had the back issues, but they could destructively-scan the ones from bennington because they granted bennington free online-access in return...) ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070612/bb98b128/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Wed Jun 13 16:00:37 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:00:37 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] some things never change (part 473) Message-ID: two months back, david rothman gave us the rumor that amazon would release an e-book-machine "this spring"... > http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6454 (remember, this was the hilarious post where he reported the machine had been "demoed" at the london book-fair, when what _really_ happened was it'd been _mentioned_.) as if that weren't enough... with the end of spring upon us in just one week, he is now updating the rumor, saying the machine will be out "this fall". > http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=6704 i guess if he keeps updating this story every 6 months, then maybe it will "come true" _eventually_... :+) why anyone believes what this man says is just beyond me. or hey, maybe nobody does! -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070613/7f5b3b26/attachment.htm From da.ajoy at gmail.com Wed Jun 13 16:11:01 2007 From: da.ajoy at gmail.com (Daniel Ajoy) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:11:01 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] hosting for audio? Message-ID: <46703335.434.A118362@da.ajoy.gmail.com> I wonder if project guthemberg provides hosting for audios from texts in spanish that are in the public domain or have a CC by-sa license. Daniel From davidrothman at pobox.com Wed Jun 13 17:48:38 2007 From: davidrothman at pobox.com (David H. Rothman) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:48:38 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] The $199 laptop that Bowerbird was so skeptical about Re: some things never change (part 473) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <46709066.3020603@pobox.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070613/b8bb3eb0/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Wed Jun 13 18:22:36 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 18:22:36 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] hosting for audio? In-Reply-To: <46703335.434.A118362@da.ajoy.gmail.com> References: <46703335.434.A118362@da.ajoy.gmail.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 13 Jun 2007, Daniel Ajoy wrote: > I wonder if project guthemberg provides hosting > for audios from texts in spanish that are in the > public domain or have a CC by-sa license. > > Daniel We would be happy to provide hosting for eBooks and audio books in Spanish! Thank You!!! Give the world eBooks in 2007!!! Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg 100,000 eBooks easy to download at: http://www.gutenberg.org [coming up on 25,000 eBooks] http://www/gutenberg.cc [already passed 75,000 eBooks] http://gutenberg.net.au Project Gutenberg of Australia 1500+ http://pge.rastko.net 65 languages PG of Europe ~500 Blog at http://hart.pglaf.org > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From joshua at hutchinson.net Thu Jun 14 05:19:39 2007 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (joshua at hutchinson.net) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 12:19:39 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [gutvol-d] hosting for audio? Message-ID: <19550874.1181823579116.JavaMail.?@fh1038.dia.cp.net> We aren't really set up to handle new files directly. HOWEVER... We have an arrangement on-going with Librivox.org. They are well set up to handle all the logistics of audio books. Contact those folks (they would be thrilled with more Spanish texts). Plus, down the road, the audio book will get added to the PG archives. Due to the HUGE size of the audio files, it takes time to grab the files, convert them to the different formats we offer, tag up the files and upload them to PG servers. (For the interested, 227 audio books from Librivox have been posted here at PG, with another 23 audio books currently being uploaded at home as I type [those 23 books come in at around 10GB, so it takes many days of straight uploading on my DSL connection to get them in place].) Josh PS For ease of handling copyright claims, I believe Librivox only works with public domain books. >----Original Message---- >From: da.ajoy at gmail.com >Date: Jun 13, 2007 19:11 >To: >Subj: [gutvol-d] hosting for audio? > >I wonder if project guthemberg provides hosting >for audios from texts in spanish that are in the >public domain or have a CC by-sa license. > >Daniel > >_______________________________________________ >gutvol-d mailing list >gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 14 10:10:59 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:10:59 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] some things never change (part 473) Message-ID: i have _no_ "absolute defiance" about low-cost machines. (as usual, david seems not to know what words _mean_.) just like everyone else i know, i've considered them to be _inevitable_ for a very long time now. heck, i bought my _first_ "low-cost portable" way back in the early eighties -- those would be the _1980s_, for all you youngsters -- an $1800 osborne i which was one of my first true loves, and i have been buying "low-cost portables" ever since, right up to a sweet $1200 macbook just one month back. the osborne i weighed 22 pounds (or was it 27?), so even then, we winked at "portable", preferring "transportable". (one claim to fame was that it'd fit under an airline seat.) the macbook is down to couple pounds, so it's a breeze; little reason _not_ to carry it when you want the wi-fi web. the trend is clear with every electronic gadget out there -- it's gonna get cheaper and lighter. no big prediction there. where a point of _contention_ is, therefore, comes down to _when_ it reaches _exact_ points of cheapness and lightness. and it is on _that_ point that david's track record is laughable. though he wants to distract us with tales of a $199 machine, -- coming soon!, really!, take my word for it! -- the _truth_ of the matter is that -- way back a full year and a half ago -- david was making his prediction that the o.l.p.c. would be sold in the u.s. at a $200 price-point "within the next year". that forecast was so loony and ludicrous, i called him on it: > http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=3911#comment-35185 i told him if the o.l.p.c. was available for sale in this country at a $200 price in the following year, i'd buy him a big turkey for thanksgiving. of course, the year came and went, with no o.l.p.c. for sale in the u.s., at _any_ price. another 6 months have passed since then, and still _no_ o.l.p.c. has been sold, not a one, not here in the u.s., or _anywhere_ in the world... i have great hope for the o.l.p.c. project, which is _fantastic_. their push forward on screen technology clearly shows that the hardware industry has been largely sitting on its hands, or else keeping their advances shuttered in the back room. so even if o.l.p.c. shut down tomorrow, it has made a mark. but the _fact_ of the matter is that -- despite their deadline for ordering of may 31st -- o.l.p.c. still has zero real orders. third world countries can't afford 'em without help from the big banks, and the big banks just don't seem to want to help. (i wonder why? oh yeah, they'd rather _exploit_ than _help_.) and $200 is david's _high_ prediction. most of the time, he prognosticates a _$50_ machine. indeed, he did that in the very entry that i pointed to above. (imagine that!) i also said, lo those 18 months ago, that if there was _any_ full-on computer put on sale in the u.s. in the next 5 years, i would buy one for david. because by that time, lunch will cost $50, and even a _poet_ can afford to buy lunch for you. so, $50 lunch or $50 computer, whichever you prefer, david. but don't count on it, because i'm not going to lose that bet... nope, you'll be eating crow for the next 5 thanksgiving meals. on the crucial matter of _timing_, david is wrong wrong wrong. when you miss a prediction by 18 months in the tech world, you're only _half-right_ -- according to moore's law, anyway. if you miss it by _another_ 18 months, and another _still_, it's time for you to recognize your crystal ball is _defective_... *** oh yeah, and david makes it _seem_ like he is just "quoting" other sources. there's an incestuous little circle of sites that keep rehashing these rumors, and they often cite each other, juicing the story in the process. i documented it a while back, but didn't bother to send the thing to this list (since i figured most people here have already tuned out blogger rothman). but if anyone wants me to post it, just let me know and i will. *** and you _bet_, i will stand by what i said (as always): > Yes, certainly the day will come when we have > super-cheap machines. but no, it won't be soon, > and it's counter-productive and irresponsible > -- terribly -- to make people believe that > 'it's just around the corner'... > > what it does is mislead people about the important > e-book advances that are taking place _now_, with > the hardware that we already have. they wait for a > super-tomorrow that's _not_ gonna come tomorrow. david rothman's hype and lies are _counterproductive_ to the cause of electronic-books... the truth is better... -bowerbird p.s. david doesn't want a straightforward chain of debate. that's why he always changes the subject-headers, so as to isolate his "responses" in your threaded e-mail programs... of course, that's just a reflection of the way he tries to slip out of the straightforward discussion of the actual points... ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070614/6c2fe610/attachment-0001.htm From davidrothman at pobox.com Thu Jun 14 12:40:46 2007 From: davidrothman at pobox.com (David H. Rothman) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 15:40:46 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] e.e. cummings ii: the troll years (part 473) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <467199BE.3040508@pobox.com> as usual, e.e. cummings ii is pulling things out of context, quotes included, as part of his job to entice people to read the teleblog (http://www.teleread.org/blog). e.e. is my pr guy in los angeles, and I've given him the freedom to be at his trollish best. awsome, isn't it? and this is just within the confines of the lower case. imagine if i'd paid extra for caps. of course, even as e.e.'s client, I'm baffled why he fixates so much on time-related matters. could this be partly because of all the zml-related vaporware that he's so poetically puffed? Guilt mixed with a tendency to tar others with his own sins? or maybe long- or short-term brain damage from his recreational drugs? i won't claim infallibility as a prophet, but all in all, the teleblog has a pretty good record, as suggested by the large number of return visitors. it's been a leader in the fight for e-book standards, which upsets e.e., given his zml obsession--thereby making him all the more valuable to me (remember: that's http://www.teleread.org/blog). well, enough troll-feeding. it's time for me get back to the blog of which e.e. is the most devoted reader. david (with a reminder that bowertroll, as is always the case, started this round...how long until part 474?) David Rothman TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home http://www.teleread.org/blog From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 14 13:44:10 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:44:10 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] e.e. cummings ii: the troll years (part 473) Message-ID: david rothman said: > I'm baffled why he fixates so much on time-related matters. baffled? really? you didn't understand it perfectly when i said that _anybody_ could "predict" electronics will get lighter and cheaper? so the way to _prove_ yourself is to successfully predict how light and how cheap and -- most important of all -- _exactly_when_? at that, your guesses aren't just wrong, they're _terribly_ wrong. and your only recourse is to _attack_me_ when i point that out... > i won't claim infallibility as a prophet ha! you couldn't even claim "kinda close, sort of, if you squint...", let alone "infallible". -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070614/fa5e18db/attachment.htm From sankarrukku at gmail.com Mon Jun 18 07:45:40 2007 From: sankarrukku at gmail.com (Sankar Viswanathan) Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:15:40 +0530 Subject: [gutvol-d] PG Reader Preferences Message-ID: Many of the old books are available only in the text form. Somehow I got the impression that when a new and updated version is posted the readers would prefer to download the new version. But that does not seem to be happening. Take the case of a perennial favourite Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. This is available as etext# 11 http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11 A new version with illustrations was posted as etext19033 in December, 2006. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19033 But according to the Top 100 list, the readers downloaded only etext#11. Is my understanding wrong or is it that the readers prefer the plain text older version. Or is there any other reason ( like Google listing)? Should there be links to all other versions in the catalog listing of all versions, so that the reader is given a choice? Like etext#11 lists etext#928 and not etext#19033. Thanks, -- Sankar Service to Humanity is Service to God -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070618/53b41ea7/attachment.htm From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Mon Jun 18 09:47:39 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 18:47:39 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] PG Reader Preferences In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <7edd73pbjefk0nfjgfv9iolstfua8br4rg@4ax.com> On Mon, 18 Jun 2007 20:15:40 +0530, you wrote: >Many of the old books are available only in the text form. Somehow I got the >impression that when a new and updated version is posted the readers would >prefer to download the new version. > >But that does not seem to be happening. > >Take the case of a perennial favourite > >Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. > >This is available as etext# 11 > >http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/11 > >A new version with illustrations was posted as etext19033 in December, 2006. > >http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19033 > >But according to the Top 100 list, the readers downloaded only etext#11. > >Is my understanding wrong or is it that the readers prefer the plain text >older version. Or is there any other reason ( like Google listing)? > >Should there be links to all other versions in the catalog listing of all >versions, so that the reader is given a choice? Like etext#11 lists >etext#928 and not etext#19033. > >Thanks, I think in this case the users download the first entry listed. This book has several versions (probably from different editions also). Many other books in the top 100 are spam driven. People clicking links in spam emails are not our normal customers. They are so dumb that they can barely read (otherwise they would not click on porn spam links). -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org From greg at durendal.org Mon Jun 18 12:23:48 2007 From: greg at durendal.org (Greg Weeks) Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 15:23:48 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] posting size waiver. Message-ID: Can we get a waiver for the 25K minimum size limit for postings for the rule 6 SF pieces? They have to be cleared separately, so it's very difficult to aggregate them. In the case of the ASF stuff from 1959-1963 we would run afoul of the collection copyright if we tried to aggregate by issue anyway. Greg Weeks -- Greg Weeks http://durendal.org:8080/greg/ From vze3rknp at verizon.net Mon Jun 18 13:51:11 2007 From: vze3rknp at verizon.net (Juliet Sutherland) Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:51:11 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] posting size waiver. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4676F03F.30108@verizon.net> Sounds like a great idea to me. JulietS Greg Weeks wrote: >Can we get a waiver for the 25K minimum size limit for postings for the >rule 6 SF pieces? They have to be cleared separately, so it's very >difficult to aggregate them. In the case of the ASF stuff from 1959-1963 >we would run afoul of the collection copyright if we tried to aggregate by >issue anyway. > >Greg Weeks > > > From grythumn at gmail.com Mon Jun 18 14:06:59 2007 From: grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:06:59 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] posting size waiver. In-Reply-To: <4676F03F.30108@verizon.net> References: <4676F03F.30108@verizon.net> Message-ID: <15cfa2a50706181406x615bcf87t82d9b6dd76439753@mail.gmail.com> I definitely agree with the basic idea, although I would like to suggest that the rule be rewritten altogether to allow shorter works, "complete as published", as well. Pamphlets, for example, were very important in shaping public opinion during the American Revolution. Not all were collected later, or if they were, some are under a compilation copyright. R C On 6/18/07, Juliet Sutherland wrote: > > Sounds like a great idea to me. > > JulietS > > Greg Weeks wrote: > > >Can we get a waiver for the 25K minimum size limit for postings for the > >rule 6 SF pieces? They have to be cleared separately, so it's very > >difficult to aggregate them. In the case of the ASF stuff from 1959-1963 > >we would run afoul of the collection copyright if we tried to aggregate > by > >issue anyway. > > > >Greg Weeks > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070618/72046ff2/attachment.htm From gbnewby at pglaf.org Mon Jun 18 22:12:53 2007 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2007 22:12:53 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] posting size waiver. In-Reply-To: <15cfa2a50706181406x615bcf87t82d9b6dd76439753@mail.gmail.com> References: <4676F03F.30108@verizon.net> <15cfa2a50706181406x615bcf87t82d9b6dd76439753@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070619051253.GA13293@mail.pglaf.org> On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 05:06:59PM -0400, Robert Cicconetti wrote: > I definitely agree with the basic idea, although I would like to suggest > that the rule be rewritten altogether to allow shorter works, "complete as > published", as well. Pamphlets, for example, were very important in shaping > public opinion during the American Revolution. > > Not all were collected later, or if they were, some are under a compilation > copyright. > > R C The 25K is a guideline, not a fixed lower limit. I agree with posting smaller items when they are indeed their own "items." For short stories from magazines, it would be preferable to have the whole issue, but as Greg mentions not practical when only some of the stories are clearable. I'll remind the WW team that shorter items are fine, when these practical issues make a shorter piece difficult. BTW, one of my first PG "titles" was O Henry's "Gift of the Magi." That was too short for a full eBook (only a few pages), so Michael elected at the time to not assign an eBook number, but to add it to the collection. That's not how we'd do things today (we rely on eBook #s as a main identifier), but shows that flexibility is nice! -- Greg > On 6/18/07, Juliet Sutherland wrote: > > > >Sounds like a great idea to me. > > > >JulietS > > > >Greg Weeks wrote: > > > >>Can we get a waiver for the 25K minimum size limit for postings for the > >>rule 6 SF pieces? They have to be cleared separately, so it's very > >>difficult to aggregate them. In the case of the ASF stuff from 1959-1963 > >>we would run afoul of the collection copyright if we tried to aggregate > >by > >>issue anyway. > >> > >>Greg Weeks > >> > >> > >> > > > >_______________________________________________ > >gutvol-d mailing list > >gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > >http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From richfield at telkomsa.net Tue Jun 19 12:53:03 2007 From: richfield at telkomsa.net (Jon Richfield) Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:53:03 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Reader Preferences gutvol-d Digest, Vol 35, Issue 5 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4678341F.7030607@telkomsa.net> Sankar asked about: > > Many of the old books are available only in the text form. Somehow I > got the impression that when a new and updated version is posted the > readers would prefer to download the new version. Apart from users who misunderstand the function of the various versions, speaking for myself, it depends on the nature of the book. In the Alice books eg, Tenniel's drawings are valuable and enjoyable, but not vital to the stories. In some books, including some that I have prepared, the illustrations really are necessary for technical reasons. Sometimes I download a book unillustrated, to see what it is about, and only afterwards decide whether it is worth downloading the (much larger) illustrations as well. I know that Michael Hart is anti-bloatware and anti-illustration, but I recommend that we do not worry about it one way or the other, and simply upload or download as need and opportunity dictate for the individual. > > Is my understanding wrong or is it that the readers prefer the plain > text older version. Or is there any other reason ( like Google listing)? It is not that simple, as I think I have shown (adequately, I hope!) > > Should there be links to all other versions in the catalog listing of > all versions, so that the reader is given a choice? Like etext#11 > lists etext#928 and not etext#19033. Yes. I like the choice. Some people cannot afford the long downloads and do not need the pictures. Some need the graphics, or the book is worthless. Some simply are confused. One soon learns what the implications of the size indications and the names are. It is not for us to tell the user what he wants. Conversely, if there is a problem about preparing the works, the user simply must do without or go elsewhere. Cheers, Jon From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 21 11:35:08 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:35:08 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] the d.p. forums Message-ID: they're starting to jerk me around in the d.p. forums -- splitting off my posts to new threads, where they're ripped out of the context in which they were made -- so i guess i'll start having to make those points _here_ in addition to over there, so they can't rewrite history. of course, since my observations are about p.g. e-texts, perhaps i should've been making them here all along... but i figured that it would be best to go to the source of the "problems" in order to try and get them fixed, so i tried -- and will continue trying -- the d.p. forums.. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070621/3732c9de/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 21 11:50:34 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:50:34 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] the d.p. forums Message-ID: so here's the response that's being jerked around this morning. *** a d.p. person said this: > Is there a possibility to automatically > modify the page number flags to > the original book page numbers? if you've been on this list for long enough, you will remember that i've argued that filenames of scan-images should reflect the page-number of the scan within, which is essentially what this person -- a post-processor for the book -- wanted to do. *** in response, i said this: > thank you for this common-sense decision! > now if only the content-providers would get a clue. in other words, for those of you not familiar with d.p. processes, i suggested that the filenames should be fixed _at_the_beginning_ of a book's trip through the d.p. system, not on the _last_step_ (which is what post-processing is). *** in response, donovan said: > If you have a constructive suggestion, please share it. > Otherwise, please omit the insults. *** i responded this way to donovan: i thought it would be self-explanatory. especially since i've mentioned the benefits _lots_ of times. but if you want me to repeat it again, i'll be happy to do so. content-providers should name scans with their page-numbers. (i've provided detailed instructions here in the past, and will be happy to find that post if you really want it, but that's the gist.) this common-sense methodology provides considerable clarity. furthermore, if the filenames are regularized at the _outset_, so they'll retain the same names from the very start through their entire d.p. trip (including guiguts and the post-processor), references to the files (such as in the project thread) remain unconfused and meaningful even when viewed in retrospect... seriously, how crazy is it for the _post-processor_ to rename 'em? that's closing the barn-door after the horse got out of the barn... as project gutenberg increasingly decides to include the scan-set in the files that it gives to end-users, this gets more important... as the person who is doing the work of making d.p. scan-sets available on a long-term basis, i assume you'd realize that fact. (please don't tell me you mount them with confusing names.) however, since this "clear-name" methodology also delivers a _considerable_ benefit to the volunteers here at d.p., that's still the _main_ reason why it should be adopted here. it saves time. kudos to the people who have taken this common-sense position, including whoever mounted the "nut-grower" scans at p.g., which i noticed had adopted the conventions i described here long ago... it's not an "insult" to instruct the content-providers to "get a clue". it's simply a way to inform them that their decisions have _impact_ on the people who're handling their scans downstream, such that an unwise decision on their part robs later volunteers of time and energy. confusing filenames is one such unwise decision. the mounting of incomplete projects is yet another unwise decision that causes a tremendous amount of inefficiency downstream, and i've noticed that you finally cracked down hard on that practice, so i hardly think a "get a clue" admonition is that far out of line here. *** as i tried to make clear in this response, p.g. has a definite interest in making sure that the filenames are as unconfusing as possible to the end-users who will (eventually) be making use of the scan-sets... i suggest that p.g. insist on a clear filenaming convention. if d.p. wants to use confusing names internally, that's fine. but when the stuff is submitted to p.g., it should be clear... in this regard, as noted above, i am greatly encouraged by the fact that a recent scan-set that i looked at was indeed named with a clear filenaming methodology. thank you... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070621/83f35488/attachment.htm From vze3rknp at verizon.net Thu Jun 21 17:45:51 2007 From: vze3rknp at verizon.net (Juliet Sutherland) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:45:51 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <467B1BBF.4010407@verizon.net> I have taken the unprecendented step of banning bowerbird from the DP forums. His behavior there, despite many warnings, has continued to be insulting. I expect that he will now start posting again here. JulietS From klofstrom at gmail.com Thu Jun 21 17:57:25 2007 From: klofstrom at gmail.com (Karen Lofstrom) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 14:57:25 -1000 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: <467B1BBF.4010407@verizon.net> References: <467B1BBF.4010407@verizon.net> Message-ID: <1e8e65080706211757s38e2fae8oa30467c0c517f13f@mail.gmail.com> On 6/21/07, Juliet Sutherland wrote: > I have taken the unprecendented step of banning bowerbird from the DP > forums. His behavior there, despite many warnings, has continued to be > insulting. I expect that he will now start posting again here. Oh thank you, thank you! -- Zora From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 21 18:37:24 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 21:37:24 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums Message-ID: juliet said: > I have taken the unprecendented step of banning bowerbird > from the DP forums. His behavior there, despite many warnings, > has continued to be insulting. I expect that he will now > start posting again here. juliet, i've been posting here all along. and yes, i expect to continue posting... plus there are a lot more soapboxes in cyberspace... *** here's the e-mail that juliet sent me: > I have banned you from the DP forums. > You still have access to the site to assist with > proofing and preparing books. I have been > resisting banning you for a long time now, > but you've finally pushed so much that I must act. > You will undoubtedly characterize this as DP being > unwilling to accept constructive criticism. That is > not the case. You have been banned for insulting > and personal attacks against individual volunteers > and for disrupting so many discussions that you > have become a Public Nuisance. anybody who thinks i was making "insulting and personal attacks" on them is unable to separate their own identities from the inefficient d.p. workflow i was trying to improve... but that is neither here nor there now, is it? *** anyway, here was my response to juliet: juliet- >?? You will undoubtedly characterize this as >?? DP being unwilling to accept constructive criticism. >?? That is not the case. you're right i "characterize" it that way. as to whether that "is" the case or "not", we'll let disinterested observers decide... banning schmanning.? like i said, i can offer my constructive criticism from _outside_ or _inside_, it makes no matter to me. *** the d.p. workflow _is_ most definitely inefficient. and i was devastatingly effective describing how. that's information that the _world_ needs to know, and i intend to share it, and share it quite widely... i won't bother to do it here. i'll do it on a space where _i_ can control who is allowed to speak... but hey, i harbor no hard feelings toward d.p. quite the contrary, as i explained in one of those "insulting and personal attacks" i posted just today, i _love_ those volunteers creating our cyberlibrary... i love them so much that i wish they weren't saddled with an inefficient workflow that wastes far too much of the time and energy they devote to our vital cause. which is why i feel the need to point out a better way. i just hope no one takes it personally... :+) looks like this summer is gonna be a hot one, eh? ;+) -bowerbird p.s. juliet, the correct spelling is "unprecedented"... ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070621/ecb04262/attachment.htm From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Thu Jun 21 18:44:03 2007 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 02:44:03 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9c6138c50706211844t6aff991bg9123dc4849ff0b81@mail.gmail.com> 2007/6/22, Bowerbird at aol.com : > -bowerbird > > p.s. juliet, the correct spelling is "unprecedented"... > BB's priceless "constructive criticism"... From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 21 19:13:03 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 22:13:03 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums Message-ID: ricardo said: > BB's priceless "constructive criticism"... hey, it might help that spelling error from showing up in some future e-text here at project gutenberg... ;+) -bowerbird p.s. i welcome any input when _i_ make a spelling mistake... p.p.s. of course, i spellcheck before i send an e-mail out, so you're much more likely to catch me in some other type error, like inserting word a in the space wrong, know mean i what? and i used to make a lot of mistakes on its/it's, but i think i have corrected that flaw, but maybe i'm still making them and just not noticing, so if i _do_ make one of those, please tell me! ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070621/b6dc2fb2/attachment.htm From mlockey at magma.ca Fri Jun 22 23:28:30 2007 From: mlockey at magma.ca (Michael Lockey) Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:28:30 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20070623062823.0A5A7352621@mail1.pglaf.org> Bowerbird: anybody who thinks i was making "insulting and personal attacks" on them is unable to separate their own identities from the inefficient d.p. workflow i was trying to improve... So your sneering attack on me for my maimed hand was your attempt to improve me through faith healing? That was why (as here) you point out meaningless spelling mistakes? that's information that the _world_ needs to know, and i intend to share it, and share it quite widely... Just make sure you get our web address (HYPERLINK "http://www.pgdp.net/"www.pgdp.net) right. i _love_ those volunteers creating our cyberlibrary... i love them so much that i wish they weren't saddled with an inefficient workflow that wastes far too much of the time and energy they devote to our vital cause. which is why i feel the need to point out a better way. Just because Athena sprang, full-blown, from the brow of Jove, doesn?t mean we stand in awe of every case of mastoiditis. Vasa (by the way, feel free to spout away on dp-Canada (which doesn?t exist). You?re already banned from dp-50 (which does). Not that we expect it?ll lower the throughput?) No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.472 / Virus Database: 269.9.4/860 - Release Date: 6/21/2007 5:53 PM -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070623/647d4fda/attachment.htm From marcello at perathoner.de Sat Jun 23 14:02:38 2007 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 23:02:38 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <467D8A6E.7010400@perathoner.de> > -bowerbird http://www.joke-archives.com/computers/flamersbible.html -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster at gutenberg.org From Bowerbird at aol.com Sat Jun 23 14:55:35 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sat, 23 Jun 2007 17:55:35 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums Message-ID: -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070623/0db07914/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Sun Jun 24 17:54:04 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 20:54:04 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] after the iphone Message-ID: after the iphone, any carryaround device that _does_not_ connect to the internet will be seen as _dumb_. really dumb. dumb dumb dumb... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070624/1c09127e/attachment.htm From hart at pglaf.org Sun Jun 24 18:32:52 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 18:32:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] after the iphone In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Sun, 24 Jun 2007, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > after the iphone, any carryaround device that > _does_not_ connect to the internet will be seen > as _dumb_. really dumb. dumb dumb dumb... Two comments: 1. That's probably what the Palm VIII guys thought, and the Kyocera Palm-powered cell phones, etc. . . . However, you might be right. . .in terms of persons, or corporations, who already pay for both cell phone and broadband. . . . However, the people not near the top of the Pyramid, i.e. the majority of the 3 BILLION people who should have operating cell phones by the end of the year... these will not be able to afford the monthly fees of the communications services and we will once again-- history is so cyclic--see a version of "SneakerNet." > after the iphone, any carryaround device that > _does_not_ connect to the internet will be seen > as _dumb_. really dumb. dumb dumb dumb... 2. I remember when I bought my very first computer, back around the time that CP/M was still the thing-- and the people I was buying it from could not get it through their minds that I wouldn't buy it unless it came with a serial port and a modem. Well, acoustic coupler, actually. They just didn't understand that having a computer's connectivity at zero wasn't going to make sense in a world connected by the Internet. Today, with size limitation being out the window, it only makes sense that each device be interconnected, or at least interconnectABLE. . .unless you want the isolation of living out of touch with the world, but for the approved and sanctioned sources that are one way streets. . . . Hee hee! mh From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Jun 25 00:05:40 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 03:05:40 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] after the iphone Message-ID: michael said: > However, the people not near the top of the Pyramid, > i.e. the majority of the 3 BILLION people who should > have operating cell phones by the end of the year... yeah, what i said was very u.s.-centric. which reminds me, i read in at least one place that the iphone will only work in the u.s. don't know if that's because of the phone, or the at&t network, or even if it's inaccurate. it's just what i've heard... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070625/34e06223/attachment.htm From schultzk at uni-trier.de Mon Jun 25 03:59:46 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:59:46 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: <467B1BBF.4010407@verizon.net> References: <467B1BBF.4010407@verizon.net> Message-ID: <91C90305-508C-4A55-AA24-F3EF2831CB34@uni-trier.de> Hi Juliet, So he is banned from the DP Forums!! It is your right to do so. BTW: Do you know if he has gotten any unpaid parking fines? Or has he been banned from bars, restaurants, brothels? I do not see the need to mention it here? Unless, you have you own personal interests!? Keith. Am 22.06.2007 um 02:45 schrieb Juliet Sutherland: > I have taken the unprecendented step of banning bowerbird from the DP > forums. His behavior there, despite many warnings, has continued to be > insulting. I expect that he will now start posting again here. > > JulietS > > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From schultzk at uni-trier.de Mon Jun 25 04:10:09 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 13:10:09 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] after the iphone In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Well, I remeber right the iPhone is quad-band so it will work as a phone most everywhere. Far as some of the other gimmics are concerned, they will be US-only until iPhone launches here in Europe (Gemany late fall). By then there will be providers to offer the services. Keith. Am 25.06.2007 um 09:05 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > michael said: > > However, the people not near the top of the Pyramid, > > i.e. the majority of the 3 BILLION people who should > > have operating cell phones by the end of the year... > > yeah, what i said was very u.s.-centric. > > which reminds me, i read in at least one place that > the iphone will only work in the u.s. don't know if > that's because of the phone, or the at&t network, > or even if it's inaccurate. it's just what i've heard... > > -bowerbird > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070625/f61b22ea/attachment.htm From grythumn at gmail.com Mon Jun 25 04:24:37 2007 From: grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 07:24:37 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: <91C90305-508C-4A55-AA24-F3EF2831CB34@uni-trier.de> References: <467B1BBF.4010407@verizon.net> <91C90305-508C-4A55-AA24-F3EF2831CB34@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: <15cfa2a50706250424h599885b0id8edad45fa71f4d4@mail.gmail.com> First, your accusation is uncalled for and extremely rude. An apology to Juliet is in order. Second, this list is to discuss issues regarding ebook production and Project Gutenberg in general. While DP is now legally a separate entity, it is one of the primary providers of etexts to PG; in addition, both Juliet and Bowerbird are active posters on this list. An explanation regarding why, for the first time, it was found necessary to ban someone from the DP forums is certainly on topic. R C On 6/25/07, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > Hi Juliet, > > So he is banned from the DP Forums!! > It is your right to do so. > > BTW: Do you know if he has gotten any unpaid parking fines? > Or has he been banned from bars, restaurants, brothels? > > I do not see the need to mention it here? Unless, you have you > own personal interests!? > > Keith. > > Am 22.06.2007 um 02:45 schrieb Juliet Sutherland: > > > I have taken the unprecendented step of banning bowerbird from the DP > > forums. His behavior there, despite many warnings, has continued to be > > insulting. I expect that he will now start posting again here. > > > > JulietS From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Jun 25 13:24:45 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:24:45 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] jason epstein's book-machine is out of beta Message-ID: jason epstein's book-machine is out of beta. > http://www.engadget.com/2007/06/21/new-york-public-library-gets-first-espresso-book-machine/ lots of titles available, thanks to the open content alliance... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070625/b7efdff5/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Mon Jun 25 18:57:07 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 21:57:07 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] $400,000 for a $19 ebook Message-ID: 37signals, a web-apps software company with a philosophy that has simplicity as its cornerstone, has sold "over 20,000 copies" of its $19 e-book detailing that philosophy, which means they've pulled down about $400,000 for that single .pdf. thing is, you can read it for _free_ on their site... oh yeah, they've also been selling a p.o.d. version, with a $29 price-tag, and have undoubtedly made a few bucks off that version as well. pretty sweet... so i guess we can safely say that it was a smart move they politely declined when a publisher got wind when they were planning to do the book and came calling... you know the old saying: 100% of a big thing is a whole lot more than 10% of a big thing... ;+) > http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070625/64264028/attachment.htm From schultzk at uni-trier.de Tue Jun 26 04:34:23 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 13:34:23 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: <15cfa2a50706250424h599885b0id8edad45fa71f4d4@mail.gmail.com> References: <467B1BBF.4010407@verizon.net> <91C90305-508C-4A55-AA24-F3EF2831CB34@uni-trier.de> <15cfa2a50706250424h599885b0id8edad45fa71f4d4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi Robert, First off, I did not make an accusation, just an observation! Second, I question her motives for posting here! As you have well stated DP IS A SEPERATE ENTITY !! So why post that information here! It belongs in the DP Forums. As a/the moderator for the DP forums I assume that she had good reason to do so. I did not question her motives for banning BB. I assume you are also connected with DP and from your reaction I can well see that those over at DP have absolutely no idea what insults, critic, or tongue in cheek is. If Juliet is indeed offended, I would assume she will speak up herself. If you wish to discuss this matter further, feel free to contact me directly as I do not believe the subject is of interrest to the others on this list. regards Keith. Am 25.06.2007 um 13:24 schrieb Robert Cicconetti: > First, your accusation is uncalled for and extremely rude. An apology > to Juliet is in order. > > Second, this list is to discuss issues regarding ebook production and > Project Gutenberg in general. While DP is now legally a separate > entity, it is one of the primary providers of etexts to PG; in > addition, both Juliet and Bowerbird are active posters on this list. > An explanation regarding why, for the first time, it was found > necessary to ban someone from the DP forums is certainly on topic. > > R C > > On 6/25/07, Schultz Keith J. wrote: >> Hi Juliet, >> >> So he is banned from the DP Forums!! >> It is your right to do so. >> >> BTW: Do you know if he has gotten any unpaid parking fines? >> Or has he been banned from bars, restaurants, brothels? >> >> I do not see the need to mention it here? Unless, you have >> you >> own personal interests!? >> >> Keith. From hart at pglaf.org Tue Jun 26 06:22:04 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:22:04 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] $400,000 for a $19 ebook In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Mon, 25 Jun 2007, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > 37signals, a web-apps software company with a > philosophy that has simplicity as its cornerstone, > has sold "over 20,000 copies" of its $19 e-book > detailing that philosophy, which means they've > pulled down about $400,000 for that single .pdf. > > thing is, you can read it for _free_ on their site... > > oh yeah, they've also been selling a p.o.d. version, > with a $29 price-tag, and have undoubtedly made > a few bucks off that version as well. pretty sweet... > > so i guess we can safely say that it was a smart move > they politely declined when a publisher got wind when > they were planning to do the book and came calling... > > you know the old saying: 100% of a big thing is > a whole lot more than 10% of a big thing... ;+) > >> http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ > > -bowerbird 5% All the authors I have asked, and that's plenty, get 5%. One got an extra 1% for signing away extra electronic rights that were not included in the first contract. J. K. Rowling gets the highest I have heard of for major books: 8% Any other reports for books selling over 100,000 copies? Thanks! Michael From grythumn at gmail.com Tue Jun 26 08:58:06 2007 From: grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 11:58:06 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: References: <467B1BBF.4010407@verizon.net> <91C90305-508C-4A55-AA24-F3EF2831CB34@uni-trier.de> <15cfa2a50706250424h599885b0id8edad45fa71f4d4@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <15cfa2a50706260858v4a4120f0r886f15dd3502c9be@mail.gmail.com> *interspersed* On 6/26/07, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > Hi Robert, > > First off, I did not make an accusation, just an observation! On the contrary: >> BTW: Do you know if he has gotten any unpaid parking fines? >> Or has he been banned from bars, restaurants, brothels? >> >> I do not see the need to mention it here? Unless, you have you >> own personal interests!? Accusing Juliet of posting here the ban here for personal reasons (with an implication that it is some sort of personal vendetta) is not an observation. If you wished clarifications for the reasons for her posting, a simple question is much more likely to get a response than the above. > Second, I question her motives for posting here! > > As you have well stated DP IS A SEPERATE ENTITY !! So why post that > information > here! It belongs in the DP Forums. As a/the moderator for the DP forums > I assume that she had good reason to do so. I did not question her > motives for > banning BB. > > I assume you are also connected with DP and from your reaction I can > well > see that those over at DP have absolutely no idea what insults, > critic, or > tongue in cheek is. I am a Project Manager over at DP, with over a hundred items posted to PG, and Juliet has well over a thousand. While DP is indeed a separate entity for money purposes, all of our clearances are handled by PGLAF, and all of our output eventually makes it to PG's archive. DP is very much a part of PG, as much as the independent ebook producers*, librivox, or any of the other regular contributors. Call DP a partner, major contributor, what have you, but what happens at DP affects PG and vice versa. (I am not sure if these are Juliet's reasons for posting here; these is my conjectures.) Posting the ban here, in a related venue willing to tolerate Bowerbird, allows him to make his counter arguments if he wished (which he did) in a way that did not continue the disruption in the DP forums. It was also an announcement of a major policy change at DP; up to now we had managed solely with community standards. The ban is a sign of growth, I'm afraid, and not a thing done lightly. I have made allowances for the likelihood that English is not your first language; even so, the implication that she took the actions that she did for personal reasons is indeed insulting to anyone who knows her or has worked with her. Juliet has more patience and tolerance than anyone I've met; how she keeps DP running as smoothly as it does is a mystery to me. I doubt if she will reply to this thread; she avoids conflict as much as possible. > If Juliet is indeed offended, I would assume she will speak up herself. > > If you wish to discuss this matter further, feel free to contact me > directly > as I do not believe the subject is of interrest to the others on > this list. Your original comment was posted publicly; my reply was as well. I think I will stop here; if I have not convinced you, I am unlikely to in the future. If you would like some specific point clarified, I will do so, (on or off list, your choice) but I'd rather be prepping a book or watching a movie or such. To summarize: DP is indeed a part of PG; Major policy changes at DP can affect PG; posting here in a related forum allows the banned party to make his own case, should he desire. R C (*As an aside, I'm not sure how they do it; I've tried taking a book all the way from raw scans to final HTML, one that I reread regularly, and I gave up midway through the second proofreading pass. Ma 'ats off to y'all.) From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Jun 26 09:00:16 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 12:00:16 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] $400,000 for a $19 ebook Message-ID: michael said: > 5% > All the authors I have asked, and that's plenty, get 5%. > One got an extra 1% for signing away extra electronic rights > that were not included in the first contract. > J. K. Rowling gets the highest I have heard of for major books: > 8% i was being generous to the publishers in saying 10%. the royalty rate can be -- and _is_ -- a negotiated point, like everything else. there's no such thing as a "standard contract". regardless of what the company tries to convince its authors... and, of course, since the publisher came to them, that gave 'em some bargaining power. i couldn't find it in a quick search, but i seem to remember they said they'd been offered a 7% royalty, and a fairly good "advance". the main sticking points for them were that it would take 6-9 months for the book to come out, and they would have to cede some control over to the publisher. as it was, they earned much more by doing the job themselves, and much quicker even than they'd have been paid an advance. _and_ they were in complete control. (they reworked the .pdf shortly after its release in response to some reader complaints, which was entirely in keeping with their "keep flexible" mantra.) i think it's not uncommon for authors for some types of books to get 10%-12%. and i'd be absolutely _astounded_ if rowling is settling for 8%. she could command up to 50% if she wanted. (i've heard -- unconfirmed -- that that's what stephen king gets.) not that she needs it, of course; whatever she gets has made her the richest woman in britain, except maybe for the queen, and a lot of the queen's wealth isn't really available to her individually. plus she gets a ton of money from movie deals and ancillary stuff. but yeah, you're absolutely right that 5% is a very common royalty. and, in the end, most authors never "earn back their advance", so it doesn't really even matter what their royalty would have been... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070626/cedbd71d/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Tue Jun 26 09:33:48 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 12:33:48 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums Message-ID: keith said: > I do not see the need to mention it here? i don't think it was inappropriate. i've talked about the p.g. forums here before -- and likely will again -- if only to reiterate that they don't like criticism there, even if it's constructive, _especially_ if it's ongoing... indeed, i had made a post about the d.p. forums -- saying i was being jerked around over there -- earlier in the same day that juliet made her post. *** grythumn said to keith: > First, your accusation is uncalled for and extremely rude. keith, this reaction is typical. anything they don't like to hear is badly misinterpreted, and they go into denigration mode... > An apology to Juliet is in order. ...and act like they've been terribly wronged, and "deserve" an "apology". it's really kinda sad it's become such a cult, in the sense that they see themselves as "insiders" and consider anyone voicing an opinion to be an "outsider", who must then be attacked. r.c., keith didn't do anything wrong. he voiced his opinion. as i just said, i don't even happen to agree with his opinion, but my word, what is the problem with him voicing it? and if you have an opinion that differs with keith's opinion, then feel free to voice it! but do not demand an "apology", as if your opinion was somehow privileged as "the truth". > An explanation regarding why, for the first time, > it was found necessary to ban someone from > the DP forums is certainly on topic. except that "explanation" was no explanation at all. (although i did get quite a chuckle-snort when juliet tried to brand me as "a public nuisance". how silly...) the _real_ explanation is that my willingness to continue to point out the ongoing ramifications of poor workflow -- and how it wastes the time and energy of volunteers, and likely chases many of them away, never to return -- became so embarrassing to them that they silenced me... sometimes, the truth can make you feel uncomfortable. and if you want to find my "i told you so" post which broke the camel's back, you can search their forums for "tar-baby" and "that's what happens". you'll find it was pretty innocuous. but -- to tell you the truth -- most of my constructive criticism was pretty obvious; it was just common sense, thus was innocuous too... still, as indicated, it had gotten to the point that i was saying "i told you so", and that irritated them greatly. bad enough i had told them so; even worse i said it. _especially_ since i had said, on the day i was banned, that i would start mounting some programs that will prove how easy it is to do the things i was suggesting. (and they do _not_ want to have their volunteers see -- with their own eyes -- how things could be better.) it wasn't juliet per se, it was a mob of people doing a cyberspace exile. and they're pleased with themselves. (they had a "bowerbird has left the building" thread that went on for 3 or 4 pages, telling why it was "necessary".) people who have been on this listserve for a few years will remember that they pulled the same crap behind the scenes here that got me "moderated" for a while... some people just can't take criticism. and if you insist, they will silence you if they can... yeah, it's kinda sad, but what are ya gonna do? for me, i have to be honest. so they might have been able to exile me, but they were not able to lynch me (as some of them would've liked), so i'll soon be posting my demo programs, you betcha. and speaking my mind... :+) -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070626/5ed265b9/attachment-0001.htm From schultzk at uni-trier.de Thu Jun 28 01:05:52 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 10:05:52 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi, Thanx for your support, yet I expected the flack! The reaction is typical of people within shall I say elite groups. I find it sweet of Robert to be "the knight in shining armour". My color is black, as I would say yours is to. If it was worth it I would take Robert's comments apart and show him how he contradicted himself in trying to make a point which was not an argument at all. Though he may feel that he said something that was proving that I had accused, said something wrong, or was truely rude. No big deal. Anyway, enough of this OT. I will still enjoy your posts here.- Maybe I will go over to DP for the fun of it. If I do I am curiuos how long it will take to get myself banned? I too, believe that the DP workflow is heavily flawed, amoung other things. regards Keith. Am 26.06.2007 um 18:33 schrieb Bowerbird at aol.com: > keith said: > > I do not see the need to mention it here? > > i don't think it was inappropriate. i've talked about > the p.g. forums here before -- and likely will again -- > if only to reiterate that they don't like criticism there, > even if it's constructive, _especially_ if it's ongoing... > > indeed, i had made a post about the d.p. forums > -- saying i was being jerked around over there -- > earlier in the same day that juliet made her post. > > *** > > grythumn said to keith: > > First, your accusation is uncalled for and extremely rude. > > keith, this reaction is typical. anything they don't like to hear > is badly misinterpreted, and they go into denigration mode... > > > > An apology to Juliet is in order. > > ...and act like they've been terribly wronged, and "deserve" > an "apology". it's really kinda sad it's become such a cult, > in the sense that they see themselves as "insiders" and > consider anyone voicing an opinion to be an "outsider", > who must then be attacked. > > r.c., keith didn't do anything wrong. he voiced his opinion. > as i just said, i don't even happen to agree with his opinion, > but my word, what is the problem with him voicing it? > [rest deleted] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070628/9afd110e/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 28 01:35:53 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 04:35:53 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums Message-ID: keith said: > No big deal.? i agree. it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood... :+) anyway, i think everyone has gotten the message now that "bowerbird is banned from the d.p. forums", so probably we can put this thread to bed... in retrospect, i wish they woulda banned me two months ago, because then my iphone initiative woulda been ready by now. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070628/3463b099/attachment.htm From prosfilaes at gmail.com Thu Jun 28 05:21:50 2007 From: prosfilaes at gmail.com (David Starner) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 07:21:50 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6d99d1fd0706280521u5eb039f0o43a174473b464370@mail.gmail.com> On 6/28/07, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > The reaction is typical of people within shall I say elite groups. What do you mean elite groups? The only thing elite about DP is that the people who make up DP actually want to do volunteer work. > Anyway, enough of this OT. I will still enjoy your posts here.- Maybe I > will > go over to DP for the fun of it. If I do I am curiuos how long it will take > to get myself banned? Only one person has ever got banned from the DP forums. You could follow in his footsteps and annoy and infuriate enough people and be banned, but if you show the skill in working with others that 99% of humanity has mastered, you won't be banned. > I too, believe that the DP workflow is heavily > flawed, > amoung other things. It's not that that got Bowerbird banned from DP. It was rudeness, insults and unwillingness to concede that people could reasonably disagree with him that got him banned. On the other hand, the concept that you can judge something you are unfamiliar with that has been an huge success as "heavily flawed" is a bad sign. It's amazing--or perhaps not--that people respond better to criticism that comes from someone who has done some work, which shows they really understand the process, and which acknowledges the successes of the project and that the project could probably go along just fine without you. Claiming to know how well something works without having seriously used it does not endear you to the people who do use it and for whom it works perfectly well. From schultzk at uni-trier.de Thu Jun 28 06:10:39 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:10:39 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: <6d99d1fd0706280521u5eb039f0o43a174473b464370@mail.gmail.com> References: <6d99d1fd0706280521u5eb039f0o43a174473b464370@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi David, To comment on what I meant by elite groups is OT! Furthermore, I never said DP was an elite group! The reactions and attitude are, so explaining this point is fruitless. DP is doing a humongous task. As far as efficiency is concerned let me state this: "Cars are efficient, yet they could by far more efficient. over twenty years ago an engineer had modify the standard design where the car used only 3 liters per 100 kilometers of gas. In this day and age we need gas efficient cars, so where are they? Would you not say that there is something wrong in the way cars are designed, today?" Now in the light of what I just wrote you might understand why I can say the DP way of doing things is flawed. regards Keith. Am 28.06.2007 um 14:21 schrieb David Starner: > On 6/28/07, Schultz Keith J. wrote: >> The reaction is typical of people within shall I say elite groups. > > What do you mean elite groups? The only thing elite about DP is that > the people who make up DP actually want to do volunteer work. > >> Anyway, enough of this OT. I will still enjoy your posts here.- >> Maybe I >> will >> go over to DP for the fun of it. If I do I am curiuos how long it >> will take >> to get myself banned? > > Only one person has ever got banned from the DP forums. You could > follow in his footsteps and annoy and infuriate enough people and be > banned, but if you show the skill in working with others that 99% of > humanity has mastered, you won't be banned. > >> I too, believe that the DP workflow is heavily >> flawed, >> amoung other things. > > It's not that that got Bowerbird banned from DP. It was rudeness, > insults and unwillingness to concede that people could reasonably > disagree with him that got him banned. > > On the other hand, the concept that you can judge something you are > unfamiliar with that has been an huge success as "heavily flawed" is a > bad sign. It's amazing--or perhaps not--that people respond better to > criticism that comes from someone who has done some work, which shows > they really understand the process, and which acknowledges the > successes of the project and that the project could probably go along > just fine without you. Claiming to know how well something works > without having seriously used it does not endear you to the people who > do use it and for whom it works perfectly well. > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From prosfilaes at gmail.com Thu Jun 28 07:43:11 2007 From: prosfilaes at gmail.com (David Starner) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 09:43:11 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: References: <6d99d1fd0706280521u5eb039f0o43a174473b464370@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <6d99d1fd0706280743o58431ab2x77562591b36b0c18@mail.gmail.com> On 6/28/07, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > "Cars are efficient, yet they could by far more efficient. > over twenty years ago an engineer had modify the standard design > where the car used only 3 liters per 100 kilometers of gas. > In this day and age we need gas efficient cars, so where are they? > Would you not say that there is something wrong in the way cars > are designed, today?" Yes, but that's a hypothetical. In reality, cars are about as efficient as we could expect them to be; all the ways to improve gas efficiency involve tradeoffs that consumers don't want. All known speedups to DP involve potential loss in quality--putting pages under fewer eyes or less skilled eyes. Also, engineers have driven and worked on cars. Unless you've used and programmed the DP code, saying that it's heavily flawed is a judgment that you're just not competent to make. From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 28 10:29:18 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:29:18 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency Message-ID: david said: > It's not that that got Bowerbird banned from DP. um, actually, it is. or that _was_ the thread, anyway... but it'd be better to talk about something important. so i just changed the subject-header. > It was rudeness, insults and unwillingness to > concede that people could reasonably disagree with him > that got him banned. robert just gave us an excellent demonstration of the way that the "rudeness" and "insult" labels are applied by y'all... as for an "unwillingness to concede" that people can "reasonably disagree" with me, i'm always _eager_ to hear the _reasons_ someone might "disagree" with me. indeed, that's what dialog and discussion are all about. but i rarely got that over in the d.p. forums. (just like i rarely get it here on this listserve.) instead, i got insults. and a lack of respect. and a refusal to engage honestly. and then -- as if the hypocrisy made everything ok -- some people characterize _me_ as the bad guy there... and then think because they ganged up, it makes sense. you might fool the people who have no idea what really happened. maybe that's a big enough victory for you... > On the other hand, the concept that you can > judge something you are unfamiliar with > that has been an huge success as "heavily flawed" > is a bad sign. if you mean to apply that logic to me, it doesn't fit... first of all, i'm not at all unfamiliar with the process of digitizing books. i'm extremely versed in every aspect. and every "flaw" i have pointed out in the d.p. workflow is indeed a flaw. heck, a good many of them have been acknowledged explicitly by most of the people involved. which isn't surprising, as it's usually just common sense. as to the success of distributed proofreaders, _i_see_it_. i have acknowledged it, and congratulated it, quite often. in absolute terms, it has digitized a good number of books, recently celebrating its 10,000th. that's quite respectable... in _relative_ terms, where we consider the amount of human time and energy spent on digitizing those 10,000+ books, the record might not be so unequivocal, however. that's due to inefficiencies that _many_ people see in the d.p. workflow. and, to be quite frank, many _more_ people might see that inefficiency even more clearly if it were pointed out to them. in other words, if people were to become "more familiar with" the workflow at d.p., they might become _less_ impressed and more jaded about the time and energy that has been _wasted_ in the creation of those 10,000+ books. if we had _that_ data, we might all be interpreting d.p. as a massive failure instead... just like we would laugh at a car that got 14 miles per gallon... or, to put it another way, with a more efficient workflow, d.p. volunteers might have digitized 15,000 books. or 20,000... and if we also consider that a more volunteer-friendly workflow might have done a _much_ better job of _retaining_ the people who volunteered for d.p., then the total might have grown to 30,000 or 40,000 books digitized -- or 60,000 or 80,000... am i complaining because "only" 10,000+ books have been done? no. i'm _glad_ for that. why would i look a gift horse in the mouth? on the other hand, if that gift horse has an infected tooth that is hindering his abilities and causing him unnecessary pain, then it's _incumbent_ upon me to help him, if i really truly care about him. (and even if he kicks and screams when i try, i must _continue_...) > It's amazing--or perhaps not--that people respond better to > criticism that comes from someone who has done some work, > which shows they really understand the process, and which > acknowledges the successes of the project and that the project > could probably go along just fine without you. i have "done some work". i do "really understand the process". and i most certainly "acknowledge the success of the project", and fully grant the project can "go along just fine" without me. so i think i'm perfectly capable of making observations about d.p. > Claiming to know how well something works > without having seriously used it does not endear you > to the people who do use it and for whom it works perfectly well. are you really trying to imply the d.p. system "works perfectly well"? because i can point to lots of cases where problems have been -- and continue to be -- explicitly acknowledged, even if they are not widely recognized as exerting impact more broadly than is assumed. of course, there are also many situations where there appears to be a large-scale blindness about the underlying problems in the workflow, as well as a frequent and serious _denial_ of a good number of flaws... but i don't think _anybody_ seriously claims it all "works perfectly well". so this is a very good example of hyperbole drowning out rationality... if you want people to "reasonably disagree" with me, give 'em _reasons_. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070628/6ab0e34d/attachment-0001.htm From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Thu Jun 28 10:39:55 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:39:55 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6gs783p92it5ktqk89octcg682hfkfb2fe@4ax.com> I now ask for banning bowerbird here also. This is clearly against netiquette. -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 28 10:50:36 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:50:36 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 Message-ID: with book digitization, it all starts with the scan-set. the first place d.p. wastes the time and energy of its volunteers is by saddling them with inferior scans... here is a scan from a recent project i looked at: > http://www.z-m-l.com/go/ortenmc/123.png you can see other scans in this scan-set by changing the number in the u.r.l. (zero-pad it to three places.) the first thing you need to know is that i didn't pick this project. it was one that was suggested to me... the second thing is that the project manager who put up these scans is one of the _better_ ones there. (there's even a forum thread calling him "mark terrific".) he's a hard worker, so it's not surprising that he would not hesitate to ask other volunteers to work as hard... but these scans are not as good as they _could_ be. and they're certainly not as good as they _should_ be. so they shouldn't be pushed in front of volunteers... (at least not in _my_ opinion; if you disagree, fine, but i'm sure you can see my opinion is not unreasonable.) it's also the case that scans should be _regularized_. that is, they should be _cropped_ to a uniform size, with consistent placement of the text on the graphic, and _straightened_ to obtain the best possible o.c.r. these scans look like they might also benefit from _despeckling_, so an experiment should be done. i hasten to add -- lest someone distort my point -- that not _all_ d.p. scans are this bad. but some are. and the "some" that are this bad -- or even worse -- waste the time and energy of the volunteer proofers. and -- because someone will distort this as well -- i'm fully aware that d.p. is getting scan-sets from lots of other places currently, so it doesn't have _full_control_ over the level of quality obtained. but, as should be clear, manipulations _can_ be done on the scans to improve their quality, _and_ it _is_ still possible to scan the book yourself, _and_ the decision _can_ be made that a particular scan-set is simply not good enough to put in front of volunteers, not if their continued volunteer participation is valued... so that's item #1, bad scans... more items will follow... -bowerbird p.s. and if there is any "reasonable disagreement" with the position that bad scans waste volunteer resources, _please_ do voice it... but i think it's just common sense. ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070628/471d7a30/attachment.htm From klofstrom at gmail.com Thu Jun 28 10:59:36 2007 From: klofstrom at gmail.com (Karen Lofstrom) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 07:59:36 -1000 Subject: [gutvol-d] DP efficiency Message-ID: <1e8e65080706281059y388ed0f7yd7ab7ee50cf9fb96@mail.gmail.com> As for DP efficiency -- I don't see any reluctance to accept informed criticism, or to experiment. We went from two rounds to five, for the sake of quality. Bottlenecks developed. DP is now experimenting with letting some easy projects skip the third proofing round, and planning an experiment called "second pass" that will exploit the much larger labor pool we have in the first proofing round. Critics are invited to come take part in "second pass". -- Karen Lofstrom From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 28 11:38:01 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:38:01 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #2 Message-ID: after the scan-set, the next step is o.c.r. there are a ton of ways the d.p. workflow is suboptimal with o.c.r. first, as was mentioned in the last post, the quality of the scans is a _major_ determinant of the o.c.r. quality. bad scans, bad o.c.r. crooked scans, bad o.c.r. inappropriately-cropped scans, bad o.c.r. speckled scans, bad o.c.r. all of these things are common sense... nonetheless, d.p. routinely uses bad scans. it's a waste of time... you'll remember i pointed to this scan: > http://www.z-m-l.com/go/ortenmc/123.png so let's take a look at the o.c.r. out of that scan: > http://www.z-m-l.com/go/ortenmc/p0-123.txt ick. pretty bad, huh? just a couple notches better than a type-in (i.e., a book where scans are so bad you retype instead of o.c.r.). *** it's worth noting that even scans that _look_ pretty bad _can_ yield _amazingly_ good o.c.r. results, if only you do some experiments... sometimes despeckling helps. sometimes it doesn't. there have been _lots_ of reports that changing the _resolution_ of the scans can make a _huge_ difference in the quality of o.c.r. surprisingly, sometimes _lower_ resolution creates _better_ o.c.r. jose menendez has said that -- using his "textbridge" program -- he _routinely_ gets "almost perfect" o.c.r. using _200dpi_ scans... i've looked long and hard for any evidence that d.p. volunteers doing the o.c.r. perform such experimentation. i've seen none. and that doesn't surprise me, since their o.c.r. is often lousy... my guess is that doing some experimentation on the scan above would improve the o.c.r. that you get from it, maybe significantly. *** next, the quality of o.c.r. results varies wildly between o.c.r. apps. indeed, although there are reports of some excellent results from a wide variety of o.c.r. programs, the most common finding is that abbyy finereader is far-and-away the best o.c.r. on the planet... furthermore, there are reliable reports (with, again, exceptions) that the latest version of abbyy (v8) gives the best recognition... but once again, d.p. scans are _often_ processed by volunteers who use different o.c.r. programs, or versions that are not the latest one, which give them suboptimal output... of course, then the proofers have to deal with these bad results, which means even more of their time and energy is being wasted. (and the double-whammy of bad scans and bad o.c.r. is a _killer_.) *** it's also the case that abbyy makes a special version that is geared _specifically_ to old books, just _exactly_ like the ones d.p. does... yet i have never seen even a single report that anyone from d.p. has ever even _tested_ that special version to see how good a job it does. yes, this special version costs extra, but even the _regular_ version of abbyy is commercial software. and until you test the special version, how can you make an informed judgment on whether it is _worth_ it? the typical attitude at d.p. headquarters seems to be that as long as they have volunteers to correct the o.c.r. results, the o.c.r. can be bad. that, to me, indicates they don't fully appreciate the precious donation of time and energy that their volunteers make. (but hey, if there is any "reasonable disagreement" with that attribution, i would love to hear it.) besides, i've also never heard any reports of anyone (from d.p. or p.g.) even _approaching_ abbyy to see if abby would offer them a free copy. maybe they would, maybe they would not (they're located in russia, so i could fully imagine them laughing at rich americans asking for charity, but isn't it worth the slight chance of being laughed at to take the risk?) heck, i would've already asked them _myself_, but i'm running a test to see _exactly_ how long it takes someone from d.p. to make the request. it's also possible -- but as far as i can discern, not done that often at d.p. -- to "train" an o.c.r. program so that it gets better recognition on a book. it's been my experience, though, that a good post-o.c.r. clean-up app can give results that are as good as you get from "training" the o.c.r. program. but since (as we will see in item #3) d.p. doesn't routinely _utilize_ such a clean-up program, perhaps they _should_ invest in some training instead. (when the project mentioned above was suggested to me, one d.p. person did do some training with abbyy, and he said he got _much_ better output. which doesn't surprise me in the slightest.) but anyway, that's item #2, inefficiency in the way the o.c.r. is done... these first 2 items -- bad scans and bad o.c.r. -- waste a _huge_ amount of the valuable time and energy that the volunteers are _donating_ to d.p. d.p. would be _immensely_ more efficient if it reprioritized these items... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070628/2045063f/attachment.htm From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Thu Jun 28 11:41:25 2007 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:41:25 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9c6138c50706281141s2ddbfbaal1bc1c0bcf3e72ff6@mail.gmail.com> 2007/6/28, Bowerbird at aol.com : > but, as should be clear, manipulations [like cropping, straightening and depeckling] _can_ be > done on the scans to improve their quality, _and_ > it _is_ still possible to scan the book yourself, _and_ > the decision _can_ be made that a particular scan-set > is simply not good enough to put in front of volunteers, > not if their continued volunteer participation is valued... Please do write a tutorial on that. Mind that content providers are not professional picture editors. You can get some inspiration by reading PG's and DP's Scanning FAQ's. From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Thu Jun 28 11:53:32 2007 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:53:32 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9c6138c50706281153q49738cf8i2950ac31f4727fdf@mail.gmail.com> 2007/6/28, Bowerbird at aol.com : > but once again, d.p. scans are _often_ processed by volunteers who > use different o.c.r. programs, or versions that are not the latest one, > which give them suboptimal output... [like abbyy's non-old-books standard version] Please do write a tutorial on that. Mind that most volunteers can only afford a suboptimal package. You can get some inspiration by reading PG's Scanning and DP's Content Providing FAQ's. From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 28 11:53:34 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:53:34 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 Message-ID: ricardo said: > Please do write a tutorial on that. that ain't necessary. the knowledge is already over there at d.p. the point is that d.p. isn't _acting_ on the knowledge that it has. everyone knows straight scans will give you better recognition. and if all of the scans are uniformly cropped, you can set up "recognition zones" that give you much more detailed results. (for instance, the run-heads and footers are separated from the body-text, which helps later with in post-o.c.r. clean-up.) this is common-sense, not "tutorial" material. plus, it runs deeper than that too. you want cropped and straightened scans because people are going to want to _look_ at those scans down the line... but so far that aspect doesn't seem to have much importance in the mindset of "the powers that be" (as they call themselves) at d.p., so there's little sense in me drawing attention to it now, especially when my focus here is on the _inefficient_workflow_ that is wasting too much of the time and energy of volunteers. and -- just to remind people here -- i _tried_ to say all of this over at d.p., but i was _banned_ because i'm "a public nuisance". now d.p. people are advising me to "please write a tutorial"... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070628/53d01919/attachment-0001.htm From grythumn at gmail.com Thu Jun 28 12:00:36 2007 From: grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:00:36 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 In-Reply-To: <9c6138c50706281141s2ddbfbaal1bc1c0bcf3e72ff6@mail.gmail.com> References: <9c6138c50706281141s2ddbfbaal1bc1c0bcf3e72ff6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <15cfa2a50706281200o7f207573odac2206d528b862c@mail.gmail.com> On 6/28/07, Ricardo F Diogo wrote: > 2007/6/28, Bowerbird at aol.com : > > but, as should be clear, manipulations [like cropping, straightening and depeckling] _can_ be > > done on the scans to improve their quality, _and_ > > it _is_ still possible to scan the book yourself, _and_ > > the decision _can_ be made that a particular scan-set > > is simply not good enough to put in front of volunteers, > > not if their continued volunteer participation is valued... > > Please do write a tutorial on that. Mind that content providers are > not professional picture editors. You can get some inspiration by > reading PG's and DP's Scanning FAQ's. 1) Despeckling has a distressing tendency to eat periods and other punctuation. For noisy scans, I despeckle the scans sent to the OCR engine, but leave the proofer's scans alone. 2) Deskewing is automatic in most modern OCR programs. 3) Cropping is encouraged, when it can be done in an expeditious manner. A little whitespace doesn't hurt things, however. 4) Scans can, and are, rejected as being inadequate. Where the line is drawn depends on the CP/PM, and ultimately the proofers. If people don't like the scans, they won't work on a project. Basically, BB's above comments show a regrettable lack of real world experience. However, if Bowerbird choses to actually write a guide, I will read it and comment upon it... documentation always lags behind current practice and we welcome anyone willing to actually work. Note that for documentation to be useful, however, it must be in a readable format with standard punctuation, line breaks, capitalization, etc. R C (Who sincerely doubts that we shall see any such thing...) From joshua at hutchinson.net Thu Jun 28 12:03:36 2007 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (joshua at hutchinson.net) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:03:36 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 Message-ID: <14785234.1183057416235.JavaMail.?@fh1040.dia.cp.net> >----Original Message---- >From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com > >2007/6/28, Bowerbird at aol.com : >> but, as should be clear, manipulations [like cropping, straightening and depeckling] _can_ be >> done on the scans to improve their quality, _and_ >> it _is_ still possible to scan the book yourself, _and_ >> the decision _can_ be made that a particular scan-set >> is simply not good enough to put in front of volunteers, >> not if their continued volunteer participation is valued... > >Please do write a tutorial on that. Mind that content providers are >not professional picture editors. You can get some inspiration by >reading PG's and DP's Scanning FAQ's. Ah, you've reached the tripping point in any discussion with the bird. He *loves* to point out what everyone else is doing wrong (and yes, he does like to say it as insultingly as he can in passive-aggressive manner). However, he will *never* step up to plate to actually do anything to help fix the things he says are wrong. That being said, the part he doesn't seem to get is that the folks doing the scanning and the OCR ... are volunteers, too. And, at different times in DP's history, they were, by far, the bottleneck in the process. Increasing the front end workload might help quality, but could create a bottleneck in the area where we have some of the smallest number of volunteers. DP history is one of balancing. Increase quality or increase throughput? Increase automation and increase the number of errors introduced by that automation? Increase the quality of automated tools at the expense of developer time on other parts of the system? In terms of page scans: you could have MUCH better quality with full grayscale scans or higher DPI ... but then each page would get prohibitively large. At what point do you say that the quality is good enough? At what point is the file "too large"? DP has come to the conclusion that 300dpi and black and white is generally good enough (and there are exceptions to this rule ... I've had a couple where I posted the page scans in 4bit grayscale to increase the readability of small text). The problem at DP is, and probably always will be, lack of developer time. If I could only win the lottery, I'd fund a full time developer or two ... but, as my wife says, the fact that I don't play the lottery lowers my chances of winning (though probably not by much). Josh From jon at noring.name Thu Jun 28 12:45:17 2007 From: jon at noring.name (Jon Noring) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:45:17 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <481733957.20070628134517@noring.name> Bowerbird wrote: > with book digitization, it all starts with the scan-set. > > the first place d.p. wastes the time and energy of its > volunteers is by saddling them with inferior scans... This is one area where, in general principle if not the details, I agree with Bowerbird. I've suggested that DP *strongly encourage* higher resolution scans of all books, and to keep/archive the scans so they are publicly available. The original scan sets can and should be donated to the Internet Archive for safekeeping and public availability. If necessary, mail TIA a DVD of the scan sets if they are too big to transfer online. My view is that many of these old books may not get scanned that many times, and some possibly only once, so it is best to *do it right* the first time to achieve archival quality. These scan sets have value in and of themselves, and should not be considered only an intermediary to full text digitization. This means more careful scanning, taking one's time. Set resolution at 600 dpi, preferably full color, but at least grey scale. Illustrations should be done 600 dpi full color or even 1200 dpi (which is the physical limit of most flatbed scanners due to noise/ vibration), even for black and white books. Output master images should be losslessly (not lossy) compressed such as PNG. Other things should also be done to improve quality, such as periodic cleaning of the scanner glass. I'd even consider vacuuming the book pages before scanning to get as much dust off as possible so as to minimize speckle due to dust. (For books that can be chopped and run through a sheet-feed scanner, there'd be other suggested procedures...) (I did all of these things for the books I've scanned, except vacuuming the pages which I should have done. One of the books I scanned is most of the way through the DP process, a copy of the original 2nd edition of Burton's "Kama Sutra".) Of course, scan everything, even blank pages. The front outside cover, the edge spine and the back outside cover. Then number the files based on order of appearance in the volume: #0 is the back spine, #1 is the front book cover, #2 is the inside of the book cover, etc., with the last # being the back of the back cover. Later, as Bowerbird as suggested, add the page numbers (when given) to the filenames (he and I disagree on the details of the filename syntax, but not the necessity to do this -- I like to keep the original sequence numbers, and then add a field in the filename for indicated page number.) Now, it is true that for OCR one doesn't need such high resolution. But it is trivial to use graphics programs (e.g. Paint Shop Pro) to downsample the master scans to prepare for OCR. Again, the scans should not be made only for OCR purposes, but to be a digital representation of the original book, sufficient for archival purposes to preserve our public domain. I believe many volunteers would gladly take this to heart if they are asked to and given reasons why. In fact, I think some volunteers have this "do it right the first time personality" and will get excited to do work for DP when "anality" is appreciated. I've advocated, and twice almost started, a Distributed Scanners, to hopefully evolve to take over the scanning side of the DP process. DS would perfect the requirements and processes to do volunteer book scanning, and could eventually even make deals with companies, such as PlusTek, to get equipment at a large discount. Imagine an army of 1000 "do it right" book scanner volunteers. If each scanned only one book a week, that would be 52,000 books in a year, or half a million in a decade. If the army was 10,000, imagine the number (now I sound like Michael ). The biggest bottleneck may be finding books and other types of documents for them to do -- there'd probably be some duplication which is just fine. For the archive of the discussion of "Distributed Scanners", see the YahooGroup: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/distscan/ . Many of the participants did not view archival quality as important -- that is, they still believed it only necessary to scan for the minimal needs of OCR so as to ram through as many books as possible in the shortest amount of time (definitely not the "do it right the first time" viewpoint.) This philosophical difference led to some disagreements... Jon Noring From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Thu Jun 28 12:53:12 2007 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 20:53:12 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 In-Reply-To: <481733957.20070628134517@noring.name> References: <481733957.20070628134517@noring.name> Message-ID: <9c6138c50706281253n593f17e4s41d3e69686857679@mail.gmail.com> 2007/6/28, Jon Noring : > I've suggested that DP *strongly encourage* higher resolution scans of > all books, and to keep/archive the scans so they are publicly available. > The original scan sets can and should be donated to the Internet Archive > for safekeeping and public availability. If necessary, mail TIA a DVD > of the scan sets if they are too big to transfer online. DP keeps the scans. There are plans to distribute all scan-sets/raw images at PG, next to the e-book. Not sure why it hasn't already been done (I believe some programming is needed). From jon at noring.name Thu Jun 28 13:06:38 2007 From: jon at noring.name (Jon Noring) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:06:38 -0600 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 In-Reply-To: <9c6138c50706281253n593f17e4s41d3e69686857679@mail.gmail.com> References: <481733957.20070628134517@noring.name> <9c6138c50706281253n593f17e4s41d3e69686857679@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <317841310.20070628140638@noring.name> Ricardo wrote: > Jon Noring : >> I've suggested that DP *strongly encourage* higher resolution scans of >> all books, and to keep/archive the scans so they are publicly available. >> The original scan sets can and should be donated to the Internet Archive >> for safekeeping and public availability. If necessary, mail TIA a DVD >> of the scan sets if they are too big to transfer online. > DP keeps the scans. There are plans to distribute all scan-sets/raw > images at PG, next to the e-book. Not sure why it hasn't already been > done (I believe some programming is needed). What I wrote previously was not quite complete, but to have covered all the nuances would have increased the already long-length of that message. The important thing is that the scan sets be redundantly archived with proper metadata. If the scan sets are of reasonably high archival quality, I *know* Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive will gladly take them and archive them in his system. This should be done whether or not DP finalizes their archival and retrieval system for scan sets. Jon Noring From shabam.dp at gmail.com Thu Jun 28 14:24:13 2007 From: shabam.dp at gmail.com (shabam) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:24:13 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] LoCC and Subject fields Message-ID: <1ac896090706281424y6b7a628ya8c4dbac92c90d9c@mail.gmail.com> Alright, I don't follow this thread much, as the constant bickering bugs me. But there is something with the PG catalog that has bugged me for a while. If I want to search for a topic, say "Wood Turning." I type into the subject field "Wood Turning". Nothing. Ok. Maybe it is in a different subject name, so I search for "Lathe". Nothing... How about simply "wood"? nothing... Well, lets see about LoCC. Wood Turning, by my library is placed in Handicraft - Arts and Crafts, and it is the only logical place I can think of, so I search for TT.... It is not even there... OK. Maybe it is in Art, so lets check N, NK, and NX. NK has some interior design books, and these are at least related... I search by title "Wood Turning" and I get this e-book that I produced: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/15460 (A Course in Wood Turning). I know of several other books that would fit this category as well. I see there is no LoCC attached to it, nor is there a subject. I've looked at many book, and rarely find one with either of these. I seem to remember someone talking (probably 3 years ago) about adding in LoCC information, but I think they stopped pursuing it (or I stopped listening). Can this information be added to the catalog? If so, is there something I can do to help (not wanting to be the type that complains and is not willing to help). I can't guarantee much help, but even if there is something I can do to get them on the works I produce, that would be a help. I'd like to get them added to other works as well. Is this something that I should just send to errata for older books, and place into the notes section when I upload new stuff? Currently, you basically need to know the title name or author in order to find a book. But how many people are going to know about "A Course in Wood Turning" unless they are specifically told by someone? Yeah, they could stumble upon it, but if they have an interest in wood working, or wood turning, they might search for that, and finding nothing in LoCC "TT" (Technology - Handcrafts, Arts and Crafts) at all, and nothing related under LoCC "T" (Technology) they might then give up. And, imo, we want these books to be accessible to the masses, and this is a stumbling block. Thanks, Jason From vze3rknp at verizon.net Thu Jun 28 15:06:41 2007 From: vze3rknp at verizon.net (Juliet Sutherland) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:06:41 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 In-Reply-To: <14785234.1183057416235.JavaMail.?@fh1040.dia.cp.net> References: <14785234.1183057416235.JavaMail.?@fh1040.dia.cp.net> Message-ID: <468430F1.10008@verizon.net> joshua at hutchinson.net wrote: >>2007/6/28, Bowerbird at aol.com : >> >> >>> but, as should be clear, manipulations [like cropping, >>> >>> >straightening and depeckling] _can_ be > > >>> done on the scans to improve their quality, _and_ >>> it _is_ still possible to scan the book yourself, _and_ >>> the decision _can_ be made that a particular scan-set >>> is simply not good enough to put in front of volunteers, >>> not if their continued volunteer participation is valued... >>> >>> >That being said, the part he doesn't seem to get is that the folks >doing the scanning and the OCR ... are volunteers, too. > > We value the participation of our content providing voluteers as much as the participation of our proofing volunteers. As someone who has probably done more scanning, OCR, and prep work than anyone else (over 1000 projects) except maybe David Widger, and as one of the Powers That Be at DP, I must say that on many points bowerbird is just uninformed or making unfounded assumptions and accusations. We do strongly encourage deskewed, reasonably well cropped, decent scans. When there have been content providers who are not doing a minimally acceptable job at that, they have gotten notes from me or someone else with authority and experience in scanning. Same for overly large scans, missing pages, etc. As someone else pointed out, Finereader automatically deskews pages unless they are extremely badly skewed. Most content providers do draw text blocks for recognnition where the OCR doesn't get it right. Again, the worst offenders will here from me once the matter is brought to my attention. We expect all content providers to do some pre-processing on their projects. Probably not as much as bowerbird would advocate, but again, but certainly we do far more than "nothing". And content providers who consistently don't do at least minimal preprocessing and who are brought to my attention will hear from me. These expectation are written down in the Content Providing part of our wiki. Over the years, a number of us have experimented with different resolutions, sizes, etc of scans to see what works best for OCR. I, too, found Jose Menendez experience as reported here to be very interesting. There are, however, trade-offs involved in what I, as a volunteer doing the scanning and prep work, am willing to do between effort and result. Some things might be a good idea, but in practice require more effort than I'm willing to do. Remember, again, that the content providers are all volunteers. We provide guidelines for them to work to, take action when certain minimal standards are violated, and generally treat the whole thing in the same spirit as we treat the proofing, formatting, post-processing etc. Re OCR, the majority of our content providers use Abbyy Finereader. It is what we strongly recommend. The ones who don't use it, typically can't afford to buy it or already have another good OCR program. I did approach Abbyy several years ago about various issues relating to Finereader and DP's experience with it. But I got nowhere. The only "old-book" version that I know about is one that OCR's black letter and fraktur texts. The pricing on it is over a thousand dollars, requiring both the purchase of the OCR package and then upfront purchase of the use of it on a fixed number of pages. It also only works with Windows, as far as I know, so we wouldn't be able to run it on our LINUX server. If the pricing has come down significantly (which I hope it will) or there is some other package that I'm not aware of, I always appreciate having these things pointed out. All of this has been said in the DP forums, several times. I only repeat myself here for those who aren't aware of what DP actually does. JulietS From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 28 15:19:01 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 18:19:01 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] LoCC and Subject fields Message-ID: jason said: > And, imo, we want these books to be accessible to the masses, > and this is a stumbling block. del.icio.us -- and all the other social network tagging sites -- is a logical answer to this, not an antiquated library indexing... start tagging the wood-turning books with "wood" and "turning" and "arts" and "crafts" and "lathe", and your word-turning books will _pop_up_ whenever they overlap with similarly-tagged stuff, such as websites. and, of course, if you put up a web-page that sets up a nice rich network of links involving all these concepts, google will pull it up in the results whenever people do searches. heck, even putting some illustrations from a book onto flickr and tagging them appropriately would probably hook a lot of people. (nothing like some pron of a lathe, or any other cool machinery, to get the guys to pull out their yardsticks, ya know what i mean? you can put the project gutenberg u.r.l. in the description-field.) while you're at it, if you actually have the equipment to operate, shoot yourself having fun doing that, and post it up on youtube. it's easy to "be found" in cyberspace if you play your cards right... play 'em wrong -- by using some library of congress stuff which none of your end-users is hooked into -- and you'll be invisible. (this is _not_ to say that that stuff couldn't be of _some_ use, but you'd have to make sure the cost-benefit ratio justified the work. if you really want to pursue _that_ angle, then find a way to lower the costs -- and the best suggestion i have for you there is to dig into the amazon a.p.i. and find out if you can scrape info there -- and to raise the benefits -- where the best suggestion i have for _that_ is to get project gutenberg's e-texts pointed to by amazon, and if you manage that, _then_ you will have accomplished much.) -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070628/095e6098/attachment-0001.htm From shabam.dp at gmail.com Thu Jun 28 15:55:22 2007 From: shabam.dp at gmail.com (shabam) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:55:22 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] LoCC and Subject fields Message-ID: <1ac896090706281555k70cefe67o35ab26a66b06b298@mail.gmail.com> I'm looking to improve the PG catalog, not get my one book ranked higher in Google. I don't care about that book, I just use it as an example. I do however want to be able to find books on a particular subject that are in the PG catalog. While LoCC might be "antiquated" it is what is used by many libraries. Either that or Dewey. Either way, having that information in our catalog might allow a library to link into our system and add our books to their catalog, increasing the readership of our books (I'm not a librarian and do not know how these systems work, so I could be wrong). If PG had a tagging system, that would be fine. But PG does not (as far as I know) have such a system. And unless I am wrong, there is not the developer power to build such a system. So, if I want to help improve the PG catalog, I have to work within the system that is currently there. Just like when I'm at work, I have to work within the system that is there. I may not always want to work within the system, and I may provide suggestions on how to improve the system, but if I go off on my own, I'm no longer part of the team, and my work has less meaning. So I am seeing how I can help improve the system we currently have, not build another system. I'm not sure how the "Subject" field works. Perhaps it has some "tagging" capabilities, and can be used as a tagging system.... Jason From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 28 16:00:16 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:00:16 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 Message-ID: ok, just so the list subscribers here know, i'm _not_ going to get in a big back-and-forth on every message in this series... i'm laying out this knowledge here for people who might be interested in the digitization process _in_general_, and not as it relates to d.p. specifically, _except_ to point out where there are massive deficiencies in the workflow used at d.p., based on these common-sense observations on digitization. the people from d.p. had their chance to "debate" with me, in their own house, and they frizzled it away, so i won't be drawn into a bogged-down discussion on _this_ listserve... if they won't let me post here in peace, i'll go elsewhere, eventually to a blog of my own if that's what it has to be, where i can disallow anyone else the right to interfere... all that having been made clear, though, i will respond to the post that robert made, since he was fairly rational and -- especially in view of his posts immediately prior to that -- i'd like to give positive reinforcement to rational discourse... *** robert said: > 1) Despeckling has a distressing tendency to > eat periods and other punctuation. that is sometimes true, yes. not always the case, but sometimes. > For noisy scans, I despeckle the scans sent to the OCR engine, > but leave the proofer's scans alone. despeckling is a dicey thing. and there's no reason to reiterate that, because my original post expressed that. i have also suggested -- directly over on the d.p. forums -- that it might be productive to do o.c.r. before and after despeckling, and to have a comparison program mediate the output, so that the best results were "boiled down" out of their combination... (i suggested this when i accidentally observed it was _working_ quite well when i happened to be comparing two o.c.r. outputs, one which had been despeckled and one which had not been. so if you're thinking "that could never work", well, you're wrong.) also, just to note that robert's single point here confirms the "dicey" nature of despeckling, he does despeckle "noisy" scans, and he certainly wouldn't do that if despeckling _always_ had "a distressing tendency to eat periods and other punctuation". you need to _test_ what will work best with each particular book, and it's that very _testing_ that i was suggesting, and saying that most of the d.p. people who do o.c.r. do _not_ do such testing, and it shows by the fact that o.c.r. results are often quite poor... > 2) Deskewing is automatic in most modern OCR programs. but -- as i said in my point -- "modern o.c.r. programs" are _not_ always used. and besides, in the same way that deskewing is good for o.c.r. recognition (because it creates letters that more closely resemble an "ideal type" -- pun intended), so too is a straight scan much more comfortable to a _human_ eye. especially when that eye is looking at hundreds of lines of type on dozens of scans every day. you want straight scans not just for good o.c.r., but to spare the eyes! so if you're giving crooked scans to your proofers, please stop that... (and then there's the future people looking at the scans as well, but -- as i said earlier -- i'm limiting this thread to the factors that cause inefficiency in the d.p. workflow. straighten your scans for d.p. users; over the course of _thousands_ of scans proofed daily, it all adds up.) besides, deskewing (and most cropping) can be done _automatically_, in a _batch_ process. so why in the world would you be so resistant? > 3) Cropping is encouraged, when it can be done in an expeditious > manner. A little whitespace doesn't hurt things, however. i don't advocate removing _all_ whitespace. margins are necessary. and, truth be told, it has absolutely nothing to do with the margins. the _important_ thing is that the type is positioned _consistently... if there is a one-inch top-margin and a one-inch left-margin, fine!, just so long as it's the same one-inch at top and left on _every_ page. and the fact that you would misunderstand what i said indicates that you don't have a clue on the importance of this particular variable... when the upper-left corner of the text bobs around from scan to scan, it wastes valuable mental energy to make the adjustment. if it is stable, on the other hand, the result is calming, and has much better esthetics. the same is true for skewed pages, which typically slant one way for the left-hand pages, and another way for the right-hand pages, so -- as you thumb through them -- you get a feeling of seasickness... (i'll give examples of this in coming days, to illustrate the point well, if anyone needs an actual demonstration. it might seem like a small point, when we're discussing it. but when you _see_ it, it is _clear_.) > 4) Scans can, and are, rejected as being inadequate. not enough. not nearly enough. i pointed to an actual scan-set, one that is in d.p. right now. and i can point to lots and lots more, if it's really necessary... i'm not saying _all_ d.p. scan-sets are crooked. indeed, i'm gonna show a straight one shortly, just so people can see how nice it is... but i _am_ saying that far too many are crooked, by my count... > 4) Scans can, and are, rejected as being inadequate. > Where the line is drawn depends on the CP/PM and that's an _excellent_ summation of the problem, thank you. because neither the content provider nor the project manager have to _pay_the_price_ for bad scans. the _proofers_ pay it... so you've got people _early_ in the workflow making decisions that impose costs on the people working _later_ in the process. so yeah, a content provider might save themselves an hour or two. but their decision makes the proofers work four or five hours more. and therein lies the _inefficiency_ of the workflow, in a nutshell... if you constantly have an endless supply of people who are putting gasoline in your car, you surely will not realize that -- even though you've managed to cover a lot of distance -- you're actually getting _terrible_ gas mileage... _terrible_... > and ultimately the proofers. If people don't like the scans, > they won't work on a project. except that they will often proof one or two pages in a project before they give up on it completely, which means that the book still continues to move through the system -- albeit very slowly... and bad scans are probably one _main_reason_ why there are now so _many_ books moving so glacially through the system... and -- of course -- those books are now blocking _other_ books. even worse, you have no real idea how big the problem might be. your "feedback mechanism" is so obtuse it cannot be measured... the thing you know for sure, though, is it was a false economy. you _thought_ you were saving time by ignoring set-up tasks, but your failure to do them has now cost you plugged-up pipes, where some books are so bad that they drove away all proofers. moreover, you've basically shoved under the rug the aspect of this problem that makes it _tremendously_huge_, namely that some of the disaffected proofers won't just "drop that project"; they will _drop_out_of_d.p._completely_, because "it's too hard", or "it just doesn't seem to be as much fun as it used to be", or maybe they'll find themselves "too busy with libre vox now"... and once you burn out most volunteers, they never come back. when d.p. drew all of its volunteers by itself and its own efforts, turning off these digitization volunteers wasn't quite so negative. after all, if you had _attracted_ the volunteers, then it would seem you had the "right" (even if not the desire) to disenchant them too. but the big majority of the new volunteers you got in the last year have _not_ been ones that you attracted yourself. they have been drawn by the banner on the project gutenberg website instead. and i'm not sure you can claim the "right" to disenchant _them_. and honestly, you don't want to disenchant your people _at_all_, do you? no, of course you don't. you want them to be happy and have fun doing what they do, and feel satisfied about everything... > Basically, BB's above comments show a regrettable lack > of real world experience. However, if Bowerbird choses to > actually write a guide "choses to"? is that some kind of lolcat speech, or what? :+) well, ok, i guess robert has run out of rational things to say, which means that i can close this off now. thanks for reading. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070628/1a24444d/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Thu Jun 28 16:15:05 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 19:15:05 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] LoCC and Subject fields Message-ID: jason said: > I'm looking to improve the PG catalog what you _really_ want -- or really _should_ want -- is to improve the findability of the books, thank you very much. no matter how much you "improve" the p.g. catalog, it's not gonna be that effective at improving findability. > I don't care about that book, I just use it as an example. i wasn't under the impression you cared about one book. the points i made are applicable to the library as a whole. > I do however want to be able to find books on a particular subject > that are in the PG catalog. if this is about _you_personally_, then i can understand that. if it's about the generic end-user, the p.g. catalog is almost entirely unimportant in the realm of improving findability... > While LoCC might be "antiquated" it is what is used by many libraries. yes, and if you followed what those librarians are saying now, you'd know that it's along the lines of "all of our users are now going to google to find stuff instead of coming to us, woe is us," and they're trying to abandon their antiquated indexing systems. by the time you get to the party, all the beer is going to be gone, and the wild women will have left hours ago... > If PG had a tagging system, that would be fine.? But PG does not > (as far as I know) have such a system.? And unless I am wrong, > there is not the developer power to build such a system.? you don't need to build a system. del.icio.us already has one. in fact, it would be _counterproductive_ to build another one, since you'd just have to try and pull users over from del.icio.us. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070628/e96c5d27/attachment.htm From sly at victoria.tc.ca Thu Jun 28 16:59:56 2007 From: sly at victoria.tc.ca (Andrew Sly) Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 16:59:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] LoCC and Subject fields In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Thu, 28 Jun 2007 Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: From schultzk at uni-trier.de Fri Jun 29 00:51:05 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 09:51:05 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] bowerbird is banned from the DP forums In-Reply-To: <6d99d1fd0706280743o58431ab2x77562591b36b0c18@mail.gmail.com> References: <6d99d1fd0706280521u5eb039f0o43a174473b464370@mail.gmail.com> <6d99d1fd0706280743o58431ab2x77562591b36b0c18@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Hi David, Sorry, the car I mentioned is/was reality. Volkswagen bought his rights for the modification of the rabbit. Reality I had a 90 hourse power Honda Civic that only needed 4 liters per 100 kilometers 8-10 years ago. No trade-offs. Only needed to drive 120 kph (75mph) plenty fast enough. I have not work on the DP code, maybe I will. I have programmed web-pages, programs and software engineered and I would say I know what I am talking about. I dissagre with about fewer and less skilled eyes. I would require major redesign and programming which is probably undesirable at this time as the migration to a different system has its cavets in a running system. Yet, I am sure you know all about that! I just though of another great success story MS Word. Probably, not the worst Word processor around, but one of them. regards Keith. P.S. For the fun of it: I have never in my life been called incompetent!! ;-)) Keith. Am 28.06.2007 um 16:43 schrieb David Starner: > On 6/28/07, Schultz Keith J. wrote: >> "Cars are efficient, yet they could by far more efficient. >> over twenty years ago an engineer had modify the standard >> design >> where the car used only 3 liters per 100 kilometers of gas. >> In this day and age we need gas efficient cars, so where >> are they? >> Would you not say that there is something wrong in the >> way cars >> are designed, today?" > > Yes, but that's a hypothetical. In reality, cars are about as > efficient as we could expect them to be; all the ways to improve gas > efficiency involve tradeoffs that consumers don't want. All known > speedups to DP involve potential loss in quality--putting pages under > fewer eyes or less skilled eyes. > > Also, engineers have driven and worked on cars. Unless you've used and > programmed the DP code, saying that it's heavily flawed is a judgment > that you're just not competent to make. > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From schultzk at uni-trier.de Fri Jun 29 01:00:01 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:00:01 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency In-Reply-To: <6gs783p92it5ktqk89octcg682hfkfb2fe@4ax.com> References: <6gs783p92it5ktqk89octcg682hfkfb2fe@4ax.com> Message-ID: <7A63F309-4242-463F-9A1F-71218A4CCDBA@uni-trier.de> Excusssssseee MEEEEEE! What has BB said here that is against netiquette!! Am 28.06.2007 um 19:39 schrieb Robert Marquardt: > I now ask for banning bowerbird here also. > This is clearly against netiquette. > -- > Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Fri Jun 29 01:07:58 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:07:58 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency In-Reply-To: <7A63F309-4242-463F-9A1F-71218A4CCDBA@uni-trier.de> References: <6gs783p92it5ktqk89octcg682hfkfb2fe@4ax.com> <7A63F309-4242-463F-9A1F-71218A4CCDBA@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: <20070629080758.235250@gmx.net> > Excusssssseee MEEEEEE! > > What has BB said here that is against netiquette!! Simple. It is not the content, but the message itself. Evading a ban by changing the forum is against netiquette (especially if it is off topic in that forum). This makes the message offending no matter what the content really is. -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org GMX FreeMail: 1 GB Postfach, 5 E-Mail-Adressen, 10 Free SMS. Alle Infos und kostenlose Anmeldung: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/freemail From schultzk at uni-trier.de Fri Jun 29 01:15:19 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:15:19 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 In-Reply-To: <15cfa2a50706281200o7f207573odac2206d528b862c@mail.gmail.com> References: <9c6138c50706281141s2ddbfbaal1bc1c0bcf3e72ff6@mail.gmail.com> <15cfa2a50706281200o7f207573odac2206d528b862c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: QED! BB seems to me to know very well what he is talking about and you are saying so! You are also, contradicting yourself. I thought many contributors can not afford modern OCR programs! Noisy scans can be avoided by adjusting the contrast and sensitivty. Cropping during the original scan is very easy and not very time consumming at least in the scanning programs I have used in the last ten years. regards Keith. Am 28.06.2007 um 21:00 schrieb Robert Cicconetti: > On 6/28/07, Ricardo F Diogo wrote: >> 2007/6/28, Bowerbird at aol.com : >>> but, as should be clear, manipulations [like cropping, >>> straightening and depeckling] _can_ be >>> done on the scans to improve their quality, _and_ >>> it _is_ still possible to scan the book yourself, _and_ >>> the decision _can_ be made that a particular scan-set >>> is simply not good enough to put in front of volunteers, >>> not if their continued volunteer participation is valued... >> >> Please do write a tutorial on that. Mind that content providers are >> not professional picture editors. You can get some inspiration by >> reading PG's and DP's Scanning FAQ's. > > 1) Despeckling has a distressing tendency to eat periods and other > punctuation. For noisy scans, I despeckle the scans sent to the OCR > engine, but leave the proofer's scans alone. > 2) Deskewing is automatic in most modern OCR programs. > 3) Cropping is encouraged, when it can be done in an expeditious > manner. A little whitespace doesn't hurt things, however. > 4) Scans can, and are, rejected as being inadequate. Where the line is > drawn depends on the CP/PM, and ultimately the proofers. If people > don't like the scans, they won't work on a project. > > Basically, BB's above comments show a regrettable lack of real world > experience. However, if Bowerbird choses to actually write a guide, I > will read it and comment upon it... documentation always lags behind > current practice and we welcome anyone willing to actually work. Note > that for documentation to be useful, however, it must be in a readable > format with standard punctuation, line breaks, capitalization, etc. > > R C > (Who sincerely doubts that we shall see any such thing...) > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d From ralf at ark.in-berlin.de Fri Jun 29 01:13:41 2007 From: ralf at ark.in-berlin.de (Ralf Stephan) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:13:41 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 In-Reply-To: <317841310.20070628140638@noring.name> References: <481733957.20070628134517@noring.name> <9c6138c50706281253n593f17e4s41d3e69686857679@mail.gmail.com> <317841310.20070628140638@noring.name> Message-ID: <20070629081341.GA31234@ark.in-berlin.de> > The important thing is that the scan sets be redundantly archived with > proper metadata. If the scan sets are of reasonably high archival > quality, I *know* Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive will gladly > take them and archive them in his system. This should be done whether > or not DP finalizes their archival and retrieval system for scan sets. Previously, when I heard such ivory tower talk, my eyes burned with evangelical fire. Now, after ten years of volunteering in the net and one year at PGDP, I can only repeat what was said, Please write a tutorial in the PGDP wiki. Please do some volunteering in PGDP to really grasp that it's not your kind of advice that's missing but people with love for books and engagement. And the reason for the latter is not missing things on our side/site, but simply the overall situation in society. Your (and bowerbirds) unwillingness to write a tutorial is the best example. ralf From schultzk at uni-trier.de Fri Jun 29 02:43:09 2007 From: schultzk at uni-trier.de (Schultz Keith J.) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 11:43:09 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency In-Reply-To: <20070629080758.235250@gmx.net> References: <6gs783p92it5ktqk89octcg682hfkfb2fe@4ax.com> <7A63F309-4242-463F-9A1F-71218A4CCDBA@uni-trier.de> <20070629080758.235250@gmx.net> Message-ID: <2A8BDE59-340E-4DD4-9B1C-B3025A87A0FF@uni-trier.de> Excuse me again, I quoting from a message by grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) on 26. Juni 2007 17:58:06 MESZ > I am a Project Manager over at DP, with over a hundred items posted to > PG, and Juliet has well over a thousand. While DP is indeed a separate > entity for money purposes, all of our clearances are handled by PGLAF, > and all of our output eventually makes it to PG's archive. DP is very > much a part of PG, as much as the independent ebook producers*, > librivox, or any of the other regular contributors. Call DP a partner, > major contributor, what have you, but what happens at DP affects PG > and vice versa. According to Robert BB is perfectly in line by posting here. I see absolutely no reason for your call for a ban of BB. regards Keith. Am 29.06.2007 um 10:07 schrieb Robert Marquardt: >> Excusssssseee MEEEEEE! >> >> What has BB said here that is against netiquette!! > > Simple. It is not the content, but the message itself. > Evading a ban by changing the forum is against netiquette > (especially if it is off topic in that forum). This makes the > message offending no matter what the content really is. > -- > Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org From grythumn at gmail.com Fri Jun 29 03:37:46 2007 From: grythumn at gmail.com (Robert Cicconetti) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 06:37:46 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #1 In-Reply-To: References: <9c6138c50706281141s2ddbfbaal1bc1c0bcf3e72ff6@mail.gmail.com> <15cfa2a50706281200o7f207573odac2206d528b862c@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <15cfa2a50706290337q44f763fetbc74fdc1881fa01f@mail.gmail.com> On 6/29/07, Schultz Keith J. wrote: > QED! BB seems to me to know very well what he is talking about and > you are saying so! > > You are also, contradicting yourself. I thought many contributors can > not > afford modern OCR programs! 1) I didn't say that. Juliet did. Do not put words into my mouth. She also said that most of us use one version or another of Abbyy Finereader, which does deskew. Older versions of finereader are often quite cheap on ebay. 2) Even if you have very old OCR software that does not deskew, there is plenty of free software that will deskew. Unpaper, deskew, etc. > Noisy scans can be avoided by adjusting the contrast and sensitivty. Not if you're working from noisy or low contrast sources (microfilm, highly foxed material, damaged material, tight gutter, etc) or if you are working with previously scanned material. Don't overgeneralize. > Cropping during the original scan is very easy and not very time > consumming at least > in the scanning programs I have used in the last ten years. Again, it depends upon your source material. Cropping microfilm scans is often like playing follow the bouncing ball. R C (This isn't worth my time; plunk. I'd rather be prepping that OED test volume that I keep putting off.) From prosfilaes at gmail.com Fri Jun 29 05:58:02 2007 From: prosfilaes at gmail.com (David Starner) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 07:58:02 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency, item #2 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6d99d1fd0706290558i314ffb8fy98a05a74d6f3211@mail.gmail.com> On 6/28/07, Bowerbird at aol.com wrote: > nonetheless, d.p. routinely uses bad scans. it's a waste of time... > > you'll remember i pointed to this scan: > > http://www.z-m-l.com/go/ortenmc/123.png Quite likely, that's a perfect scan of the original material, which probably was a modern reprint of old material and looked exactly like that. The reason the modern reprint looks like that is because 18th century books aren't particularly well-printed by modern standards, and despite selling the books at $200 a volume (I'm sure we can all find something to droll over at http://www.pickeringchatto.com/, but the prices are a touch steep, and many of their books do like this), the reprinters can't afford to clean them up better. I will do the best I can to get good scans, but if it's valuable material and all I can do is decipherable, I will put it before the proofers that way. From ricardofdiogo at gmail.com Fri Jun 29 06:01:09 2007 From: ricardofdiogo at gmail.com (Ricardo F Diogo) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:01:09 +0100 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency In-Reply-To: <2A8BDE59-340E-4DD4-9B1C-B3025A87A0FF@uni-trier.de> References: <6gs783p92it5ktqk89octcg682hfkfb2fe@4ax.com> <7A63F309-4242-463F-9A1F-71218A4CCDBA@uni-trier.de> <20070629080758.235250@gmx.net> <2A8BDE59-340E-4DD4-9B1C-B3025A87A0FF@uni-trier.de> Message-ID: <9c6138c50706290601v4d463e9fq45c172a5c5274dbc@mail.gmail.com> 2007/6/29, Schultz Keith J. : > I see > absolutely no reason for your call for a ban of BB. > > regards > Keith. Actually Bowebird is one of our most prolific critics. And I value that. I do think, however, that given the amount and lenght of his messages he'd better think of creating a blog of his own dedicated to criticise PG and DP, allowing people to comment his posts. I'd definitively give him a link at PG website. From marcello at perathoner.de Fri Jun 29 06:35:12 2007 From: marcello at perathoner.de (Marcello Perathoner) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 15:35:12 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency In-Reply-To: <9c6138c50706290601v4d463e9fq45c172a5c5274dbc@mail.gmail.com> References: <6gs783p92it5ktqk89octcg682hfkfb2fe@4ax.com> <7A63F309-4242-463F-9A1F-71218A4CCDBA@uni-trier.de> <20070629080758.235250@gmx.net> <2A8BDE59-340E-4DD4-9B1C-B3025A87A0FF@uni-trier.de> <9c6138c50706290601v4d463e9fq45c172a5c5274dbc@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <46850A90.6030804@perathoner.de> Ricardo F Diogo wrote: > Actually Bowebird is one of our most prolific critics. And I value > that. I do think, however, that given the amount and lenght of his > messages he'd better think of creating a blog of his own dedicated to > criticise PG and DP, allowing people to comment his posts. I'd > definitively give him a link at PG website. He is a "prolific" critic all right. His output is "An army of words escorting a corporal of thought." (Bierce) He already has a blog. He repeatedly promised to haul his ass off this list and dedicate himself exclusively to that blog. That blog flopped horribly, because: Who wants to read the raving rants of an ageing diva? And I'm surely not giving him a link from the PG website. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster at gutenberg.org From f.fuchs at gmx.net Fri Jun 29 09:57:15 2007 From: f.fuchs at gmx.net (Franz Fuchs) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:57:15 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] ok, let's talk about d.p. efficiency In-Reply-To: <46850A90.6030804@perathoner.de> Message-ID: Marcello Perathoner asked (and I'm only paraphrasing the question): > Who wants to read [...] Bowerbird? This is a good opportunity for me to say that when Bowerbird is at his best he's an intriguing writer and I enjoy reading him very much. When he's not at his peak -- for example in his complicated relationship to the good people of the TeleRead blog -- I choose to pay less attention :-) So I'd like to thank Bowerbird for his writings which I've followed at TeleRead, GutVol-D (I omit the question whether all of his mails to this list pass the on-topic test) and the Book People List (where he posted the very nice "feedback to umichigan" series). Best regards FrF From richfield at telkomsa.net Fri Jun 29 12:39:13 2007 From: richfield at telkomsa.net (Jon Richfield) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 21:39:13 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Sorry folks, but I seem to have missed the obvious. Message-ID: <46855FE1.80107@telkomsa.net> Recently I submitted a few books, mainly from my own shelves, scanned, OCR'd and proofed by myself. (Guaranteed imperfect, but at least usable as is. Sorry to go on about the way I went about it, but some of the exchanges in this list rather unnerved me; if I took them seriously I would have to leave to avoid being tempted to join in, which I don't have the time for!) If I remember correctly, all my contributions are in Word 97 format (not because I like it, but because I have it and it is convenient, together with macros I wrote for some scanning and editing purposes. Someday real soon now, I will go on to Linux and Open Office, but W97 still works and I have other things to worry about for the present.) Those items that do not need graphics are also included in .TXT format. I think I also included TP&V scans. Now, I thought that I had seen something about how to enquire after the progress of a book in process, but if so, I have lost the reference (mea culpa, anno domini, RSVP and so on). Why, you ask (anyone who doesn't have better things to wonder about), am I so feverish about when his books have been done? Well, actually, I am not, not at all; I am sure that the PG people, whitewashers et al, are keen to get the books processed and on the list, and will publish whatever the sausage machine produces asap without my snifflings and whingeings. And that is soon enough for me. MY problem is that I now am uncertain what has been received into the sausage machine and when to proceed with more material (more completed books, that is; I am uncomfortable about half doing jobs, and leaving to others material that needs more than perhaps format or file conversion. After all, these are books of value, familiar to me, most of them, so I can work on them as well as anyone, possibly apart from the final proofing.) To illustrate why I am so self-depreciatory about this, I cannot confidently remember which books I tried to launch through the hoops from this end, and which got bounced. (Absent minded, minded absent, foncused, confused, heck, no one's perfect. No one else, anyway.) There was a "Bindle" by Herbert Jenkins, A "Just William" by Richmal Crompton, "Fragments of Science" by John Tyndall, "Child of the Deep" by Joan Lowell, and possibly more. And maybe a dictionary of entomology, or so. So, sobering up as I should be by now after so much typing, I am wondering about completing working on an "atlas of biology", Fowler's "The King's English", and starting work on Hogben's "Science for the Citizen", and so on. These are sizeable projects you see, and even I like to be confident that the work ultimately will not be wasted, even if the mills grind not too terribly fast. If anyone large of patience, and at least moderate of tolerance, could pat my curly little top and tell me that all is OK, or alternatively, that I should stop bothering the grown-ups, or that I did a beautiful picture, but should avoid colouring over the lines, or whatever is appropriate, I shall be condignly grateful, and in future try to assimilate even more of the FAQs, and leave everyone else to deal with the higher standards of exchanges to which they are by now accustomed. But just to irritate certain partisans, before making a rude gesture and ducking out, I remark that I recently obtained a nice, cheap Canoscan 4400F that works well on most of my book sizes, and comes with a reasonably useful, if somewhat hobbled, Omnipage. I am sure that there is something far better, and am very willing to contemplate whatever alternative free software anyone would suggest, but I am mildly doubtful that I need anything else before the Linux tsunami strikes. Vista I have been immunised against, by massive cumulative doses of distrust of the Evil Empire, so don't even bother to mention anything that needs to run under Windows after 2K. Thanks for any attention, those of you who bided the stour all the way through to this paragraph, Go well, Jon From joshua at hutchinson.net Fri Jun 29 13:26:15 2007 From: joshua at hutchinson.net (joshua at hutchinson.net) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 20:26:15 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [gutvol-d] Sorry folks, but I seem to have missed the obvious. Message-ID: <15710170.1183148775167.JavaMail.?@fh1038.dia.cp.net> Well, let me see if I can narrow down where things may be stuck for you... 1st - Did you get a copyright clearance on the books before you started? 2nd - Word97 isn't a format we support. If it is a simple text, it is fairly simple to convert it to a standard text file, but you may want to do that in the future yourself so that you can make sure it "looks right" in its final form. Especially if you're going to be doing a lot of books (which it sounds like you are), you'll want to do that (as well as use tools like GutCheck) so that your text is as close to "finished" as possible when you upload it. 3rd - Where did you send the file? There are specific steps and locations to go to upload a new etext, but it's possible you got turned around and sent it somewhere that rarely (or even never) gets checked by anyone that could help things along. Normally, a "finished" etext usually gets posted within a couple days of uploading it, so it sounds like there is something else going on here. Finding out what exactly you've done so far ought to help us track down where the pipe got clogged! ;) Josh PS If the final cleaning steps to get it ready are more work than you want to do, you may want to see about just scanning the books, then running them through Distributed Proofreaders (www.pgdp.net). They've go lots of folks willing to help out at all stages. >----Original Message---- >From: richfield at telkomsa.net > >Recently I submitted a few books, mainly from my own shelves, scanned, >OCR'd and proofed by myself. (Guaranteed imperfect, but at least usable >as is. Sorry to go on about the way I went about it, but some of the >exchanges in this list rather unnerved me; if I took them seriously I >would have to leave to avoid being tempted to join in, which I don't >have the time for!) If I remember correctly, all my contributions are >in Word 97 format (not because I like it, but because I have it and it >is convenient, together with macros I wrote for some scanning and >editing purposes. Someday real soon now, I will go on to Linux and >Open Office, but W97 still works and I have other things to worry about >for the present.) Those items that do not need graphics are also >included in .TXT format. I think I also included TP&V scans. > >Now, I thought that I had seen something about how to enquire after the >progress of a book in process, but if so, I have lost the reference (mea >culpa, anno domini, RSVP and so on). Why, you ask (anyone who doesn't >have better things to wonder about), am I so feverish about when his >books have been done? Well, actually, I am not, not at all; I am sure >that the PG people, whitewashers et al, are keen to get the books >processed and on the list, and will publish whatever the sausage machine >produces asap without my snifflings and whingeings. And that is soon >enough for me. MY problem is that I now am uncertain what has been >received into the sausage machine and when to proceed with more >material (more completed books, that is; I am uncomfortable about half >doing jobs, and leaving to others material that needs more than perhaps >format or file conversion. After all, these are books of value, >familiar to me, most of them, so I can work on them as well as anyone, >possibly apart from the final proofing.) > >To illustrate why I am so self-depreciatory about this, I cannot >confidently remember which books I tried to launch through the hoops >from this end, and which got bounced. (Absent minded, minded absent, >foncused, confused, heck, no one's perfect. No one else, anyway.) There >was a "Bindle" by Herbert Jenkins, A "Just William" by Richmal >Crompton, "Fragments of Science" by John Tyndall, "Child of the Deep" by >Joan Lowell, and possibly more. And maybe a dictionary of entomology, >or so. > >So, sobering up as I should be by now after so much typing, I am >wondering about completing working on an "atlas of biology", Fowler's >"The King's English", and starting work on Hogben's "Science for the >Citizen", and so on. These are sizeable projects you see, and even I >like to be confident that the work ultimately will not be wasted, even >if the mills grind not too terribly fast. > >If anyone large of patience, and at least moderate of tolerance, could >pat my curly little top and tell me that all is OK, or alternatively, >that I should stop bothering the grown-ups, or that I did a beautiful >picture, but should avoid colouring over the lines, or whatever is >appropriate, I shall be condignly grateful, and in future try to >assimilate even more of the FAQs, and leave everyone else to deal with >the higher standards of exchanges to which they are by now accustomed. >But just to irritate certain partisans, before making a rude gesture and >ducking out, I remark that I recently obtained a nice, cheap Canoscan >4400F that works well on most of my book sizes, and comes with a >reasonably useful, if somewhat hobbled, Omnipage. I am sure that there >is something far better, and am very willing to contemplate whatever >alternative free software anyone would suggest, but I am mildly >doubtful that I need anything else before the Linux tsunami strikes. >Vista I have been immunised against, by massive cumulative doses of >distrust of the Evil Empire, so don't even bother to mention anything >that needs to run under Windows after 2K. > >Thanks for any attention, those of you who bided the stour all the way >through to this paragraph, > >Go well, > >Jon > From Bowerbird at aol.com Fri Jun 29 16:07:58 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 19:07:58 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Sorry folks, but I seem to have missed the obvious. Message-ID: jon richfield said: > Thanks for any attention, those of you who > bided the stour all the way through to this paragraph you should e-mail a whitewasher. i'll backchannel you an e-address. -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070629/43b21295/attachment.htm From halsey1 at frontiernet.net Sat Jun 30 07:41:26 2007 From: halsey1 at frontiernet.net (Dick Halsey) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 10:41:26 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Next project Message-ID: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> ? I am thinking of making my next project an issue of "The Youth's Companion" from 1879. It is a newspaper with 8 pages and has one long story and a few shorter stories and poems. It should be larger than the PG minimum size. Could someone point me to a similar completed item so I can see what finished text and HTML files should look like? I think I will also include the ads as they are unique period ones including music, seeds, manure and a small home printing press. Dick? From sly at victoria.tc.ca Sat Jun 30 08:01:54 2007 From: sly at victoria.tc.ca (Andrew Sly) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 08:01:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Next project In-Reply-To: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> References: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> Message-ID: You could try taking a look at some of the items mentioned at: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Category:Periodicals_Bookshelf Andrew On Sat, 30 Jun 2007, Dick Halsey wrote: > ? I am thinking of making my next project an issue of "The Youth's > Companion" from 1879. It is a newspaper with 8 pages and has one long > story and a few shorter stories and poems. It should be larger than the > PG minimum size. Could someone point me to a similar completed item so I > can see what finished text and HTML files should look like? > I think I will also include the ads as they are unique period > ones including music, seeds, manure and a small home printing press. > > Dick? > From robert_marquardt at gmx.de Sat Jun 30 08:09:09 2007 From: robert_marquardt at gmx.de (Robert Marquardt) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 17:09:09 +0200 Subject: [gutvol-d] Next project In-Reply-To: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> References: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> Message-ID: On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 10:41:26 -0400, you wrote: >? I am thinking of making my next project an issue of "The Youth's >Companion" from 1879. It is a newspaper with 8 pages and has one long >story and a few shorter stories and poems. It should be larger than the >PG minimum size. Could someone point me to a similar completed item so I >can see what finished text and HTML files should look like? > I think I will also include the ads as they are unique period >ones including music, seeds, manure and a small home printing press. > >Dick? > >_______________________________________________ >gutvol-d mailing list >gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d The Periodicals Bookshelf should give some examples. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Category:Periodicals_Bookshelf I think the "Bulletin de Lille" may be what you look for. BTW ads are still sh-- eh manure. -- Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org From sankarrukku at gmail.com Sat Jun 30 08:07:11 2007 From: sankarrukku at gmail.com (Sankar Viswanathan) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 20:37:11 +0530 Subject: [gutvol-d] Sorry folks, but I seem to have missed the obvious. In-Reply-To: <15710170.1183148775167.JavaMail.?@fh1038.dia.cp.net> References: <15710170.1183148775167.JavaMail.?@fh1038.dia.cp.net> Message-ID: Jon, You may remember that I had advised you the steps for uploading a book. Later on Joe and myself had advised you about the clearance line. I do not see any of your books being uploaded or posted. -- Sankar Service to Humanity is Service to God On 6/30/07, joshua at hutchinson.net wrote: > > Well, let me see if I can narrow down where things may be stuck for > you... > > 1st - Did you get a copyright clearance on the books before you > started? > > 2nd - Word97 isn't a format we support. If it is a simple text, it is > fairly simple to convert it to a standard text file, but you may want > to do that in the future yourself so that you can make sure it "looks > right" in its final form. Especially if you're going to be doing a lot > of books (which it sounds like you are), you'll want to do that (as > well as use tools like GutCheck) so that your text is as close to > "finished" as possible when you upload it. > > 3rd - Where did you send the file? There are specific steps and > locations to go to upload a new etext, but it's possible you got turned > around and sent it somewhere that rarely (or even never) gets checked > by anyone that could help things along. > > Normally, a "finished" etext usually gets posted within a couple days > of uploading it, so it sounds like there is something else going on > here. Finding out what exactly you've done so far ought to help us > track down where the pipe got clogged! ;) > > Josh > > PS If the final cleaning steps to get it ready are more work than you > want to do, you may want to see about just scanning the books, then > running them through Distributed Proofreaders (www.pgdp.net). They've > go lots of folks willing to help out at all stages. > > >----Original Message---- > >From: richfield at telkomsa.net > > > >Recently I submitted a few books, mainly from my own shelves, > scanned, > >OCR'd and proofed by myself. (Guaranteed imperfect, but at least > usable > >as is. Sorry to go on about the way I went about it, but some of > the > >exchanges in this list rather unnerved me; if I took them seriously > I > >would have to leave to avoid being tempted to join in, which I don't > >have the time for!) If I remember correctly, all my contributions > are > >in Word 97 format (not because I like it, but because I have it and > it > >is convenient, together with macros I wrote for some scanning and > >editing purposes. Someday real soon now, I will go on to Linux and > >Open Office, but W97 still works and I have other things to worry > about > >for the present.) Those items that do not need graphics are also > >included in .TXT format. I think I also included TP&V scans. > > > >Now, I thought that I had seen something about how to enquire after > the > >progress of a book in process, but if so, I have lost the reference > (mea > >culpa, anno domini, RSVP and so on). Why, you ask (anyone who > doesn't > >have better things to wonder about), am I so feverish about when his > >books have been done? Well, actually, I am not, not at all; I am > sure > >that the PG people, whitewashers et al, are keen to get the books > >processed and on the list, and will publish whatever the sausage > machine > >produces asap without my snifflings and whingeings. And that is > soon > >enough for me. MY problem is that I now am uncertain what has been > >received into the sausage machine and when to proceed with more > >material (more completed books, that is; I am uncomfortable about > half > >doing jobs, and leaving to others material that needs more than > perhaps > >format or file conversion. After all, these are books of value, > >familiar to me, most of them, so I can work on them as well as > anyone, > >possibly apart from the final proofing.) > > > >To illustrate why I am so self-depreciatory about this, I cannot > >confidently remember which books I tried to launch through the hoops > >from this end, and which got bounced. (Absent minded, minded > absent, > >foncused, confused, heck, no one's perfect. No one else, anyway.) > There > >was a "Bindle" by Herbert Jenkins, A "Just William" by Richmal > >Crompton, "Fragments of Science" by John Tyndall, "Child of the Deep" > by > >Joan Lowell, and possibly more. And maybe a dictionary of > entomology, > >or so. > > > >So, sobering up as I should be by now after so much typing, I am > >wondering about completing working on an "atlas of biology", > Fowler's > >"The King's English", and starting work on Hogben's "Science for the > >Citizen", and so on. These are sizeable projects you see, and even > I > >like to be confident that the work ultimately will not be wasted, > even > >if the mills grind not too terribly fast. > > > >If anyone large of patience, and at least moderate of tolerance, > could > >pat my curly little top and tell me that all is OK, or > alternatively, > >that I should stop bothering the grown-ups, or that I did a > beautiful > >picture, but should avoid colouring over the lines, or whatever is > >appropriate, I shall be condignly grateful, and in future try to > >assimilate even more of the FAQs, and leave everyone else to deal > with > >the higher standards of exchanges to which they are by now > accustomed. > >But just to irritate certain partisans, before making a rude gesture > and > >ducking out, I remark that I recently obtained a nice, cheap > Canoscan > >4400F that works well on most of my book sizes, and comes with a > >reasonably useful, if somewhat hobbled, Omnipage. I am sure that > there > >is something far better, and am very willing to contemplate > whatever > >alternative free software anyone would suggest, but I am mildly > >doubtful that I need anything else before the Linux tsunami > strikes. > >Vista I have been immunised against, by massive cumulative doses of > >distrust of the Evil Empire, so don't even bother to mention > anything > >that needs to run under Windows after 2K. > > > >Thanks for any attention, those of you who bided the stour all the > way > >through to this paragraph, > > > >Go well, > > > >Jon > > > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070630/ec4fd058/attachment-0001.htm From vze3rknp at verizon.net Sat Jun 30 08:17:29 2007 From: vze3rknp at verizon.net (Juliet Sutherland) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 11:17:29 -0400 Subject: [gutvol-d] Next project In-Reply-To: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> References: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> Message-ID: <46867409.2000609@verizon.net> Dick Halsey wrote: > I am thinking of making my next project an issue of "The Youth's >Companion" from 1879. It is a newspaper with 8 pages and has one long >story and a few shorter stories and poems. It should be larger than the >PG minimum size. Could someone point me to a similar completed item so I >can see what finished text and HTML files should look like? > I think I will also include the ads as they are unique period >ones including music, seeds, manure and a small home printing press. > > I have quite a lot of Youth's Companion waiting to be scanned, so I know what they are and look like. Large, newspaper-like, with 3-4 columns per page. We've done several periodicals like that. In order of likely relevance to you, following are some of them: Golden Days for Boys and Girls http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16638 http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17199 Prairie Farmer http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17512 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17683 Scientific American Supplement http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Scientific_American_%28Bookshelf%29 JulietS From hart at pglaf.org Sat Jun 30 09:02:18 2007 From: hart at pglaf.org (Michael Hart) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 09:02:18 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [gutvol-d] Next project In-Reply-To: References: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> Message-ID: Personally, I _LIKE_ to see that ads from a hundred years ago, I think it gives a greater perspective on the life of the time with the first ads for rentable rooms in NYC with kitchenettes and the various ship names, travel arrangements, etc. . . . Ship names? Yep. . .just look through these old items and you'll see names like "Titanic" were pretty much the norm of a period when such ships truly thought of themselves as "Master of the Ocean." Michael S. Hart Founder Project Gutenberg On Sat, 30 Jun 2007, Robert Marquardt wrote: > On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 10:41:26 -0400, you wrote: > >> ? I am thinking of making my next project an issue of "The Youth's >> Companion" from 1879. It is a newspaper with 8 pages and has one long >> story and a few shorter stories and poems. It should be larger than the >> PG minimum size. Could someone point me to a similar completed item so I >> can see what finished text and HTML files should look like? >> I think I will also include the ads as they are unique period >> ones including music, seeds, manure and a small home printing press. >> >> Dick? >> >> _______________________________________________ >> gutvol-d mailing list >> gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org >> http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > > The Periodicals Bookshelf should give some examples. > http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Category:Periodicals_Bookshelf > I think the "Bulletin de Lille" may be what you look for. > > BTW ads are still sh-- eh manure. > -- > Robert Marquardt (Team JEDI) http://delphi-jedi.org > _______________________________________________ > gutvol-d mailing list > gutvol-d at lists.pglaf.org > http://lists.pglaf.org/listinfo.cgi/gutvol-d > From vlsimpson at gmail.com Sat Jun 30 11:03:14 2007 From: vlsimpson at gmail.com (V. L. Simpson) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 13:03:14 -0500 Subject: [gutvol-d] Next project In-Reply-To: References: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> Message-ID: I've found that the ads are sometimes much more entertaining than the main content. 8) From Bowerbird at aol.com Sat Jun 30 12:36:20 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 15:36:20 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] Next project Message-ID: let me encourage you to submit the scans as well! :+) lots of people -- i'm not sayin' i'm one of 'em, mind you -- just _love_ to look at the original old typography... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070630/9ae558bf/attachment.htm From Bowerbird at aol.com Sat Jun 30 13:02:40 2007 From: Bowerbird at aol.com (Bowerbird at aol.com) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 16:02:40 EDT Subject: [gutvol-d] o.l.p.c. freezes features for next trial Message-ID: the o.l.p.c. project has frozen its features in anticipation of its next in-country trial, set to kick off on july 23rd... this "trial2" is aimed at 2000 students and teachers, and the software -- while still quite far from "maturity" -- is starting to resemble something one can call "workable". a long way to go, yes, but making good steady progress. of special notice is the fact that the machine is not just a "green" computer, but is _so_ clean that it has applied for "gold" status from a computer environmental organization. and of course it uses _significantly_ less energy than other laptops, so is clearly leading the way in this important field. which just goes to show how much progress can be realized if an organization simply makes a commitment to achieve it, something the slash-and-burn corporations need to learn... -bowerbird ************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.pglaf.org/private.cgi/gutvol-d/attachments/20070630/3ef7bbec/attachment.htm From gbnewby at pglaf.org Sat Jun 30 21:09:12 2007 From: gbnewby at pglaf.org (Greg Newby) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 21:09:12 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Next project In-Reply-To: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> References: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> Message-ID: <20070701040912.GA13986@mail.pglaf.org> On Sat, Jun 30, 2007 at 10:41:26AM -0400, Dick Halsey wrote: > ? I am thinking of making my next project an issue of "The Youth's > Companion" from 1879. It is a newspaper with 8 pages and has one long > story and a few shorter stories and poems. It should be larger than the > PG minimum size. Could someone point me to a similar completed item so I > can see what finished text and HTML files should look like? I edited the FAQ item concerning minimum size. (Those who know what it was, probably know where it was.) 'Tis no more. > I think I will also include the ads as they are unique period > ones including music, seeds, manure and a small home printing press. That's fine, and consistent with other works we've done. -- Greg From shabam.dp at gmail.com Sat Jun 30 22:16:08 2007 From: shabam.dp at gmail.com (shabam) Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2007 22:16:08 -0700 Subject: [gutvol-d] Next project In-Reply-To: <20070701040912.GA13986@mail.pglaf.org> References: <000a01c7bb24$c062b6a0$f2226546@Lydia> <20070701040912.GA13986@mail.pglaf.org> Message-ID: <1ac896090706302216i57df93fbl60ab61be9250f7df@mail.gmail.com> Greg, Glad to see the minimum size suggestion gone. I've never had a problem with it (and I've posted a couple small ones) but I have had to reassure a few people "yes it is ok that the final file is only 15k. It is complete, so they will take it." (I've PM'd a few government bulletins that are only a few pages long, and have many more that I have not yet prepped) Dick, Please, please, please keep the ads, and everything else. I love to see these! I even include them in books. I love them, and even if they are just a list of books by the publisher, these make great harvesting lists! You know they are in the PD, and if you liked that book, they are probably similar topics. As Michael pointed out, from a historical point of view, they are great also. Seeing how things were advertised, seeing what things cost, where they were located, lists of books by publishers, all these things and more can be very helpful to historians. Thanks! Jason