The Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter 12th November 2003
eBooks Readable By Both Humans and Computers For Since 1971
Part 2
In this week's Project Gutenberg Weekly Newsletter:
1) Editorial
2) News
Distributed Proofreaders Update
3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
4) Mailing list information
Editorial
Hello,
Maths. Not a subject you might expect from a newsletter concerned with
literature I suppose, well, Gali takes a look at both maths and poetry
this week. I am planning an article on some of the mathematical texts
we have here at Project Gutenberg in the near future. A useful website
also comes out of the shadows this week at authorama.
Talking of websites, moves are afoot with the main Project Gutenberg
website. Expect to find yourself quoting the super snappy
www.gutenberg.net at people very soon. What! I hear you cry, but that
was the old address where you couldn't get any up to date
information. Well, ladies and gentlemen while you have been distracted
by the perfectly fomed vision of the newsletter these last few weeks,
many of our hard working troops have been out the back, dragging in
the scenery and some of the more useful props to improve your website
reading pleasure. I can't name them all as I don't know them all, and
some of them wouldn't want to be mentioned anyway - but if you would
please, a round of applause for the new website.
Happy reading,
Alice
send email to the newsletter editor at: news@pglaf.org
Founding editor: Michael Hart hart@beryl.ils.edu
Newsletter editor: Alice Wood news@pglaf.org
Project Gutenberg CEO: Greg Newby gbnewby@pglaf.org
Project Gutenberg website: http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/
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Newsletter and mailing list subscriptions: http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/subs.html
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2) News and Comment
UPI Article
United Press International is this week running a two part story on
the future of etexts and online reference looking at most of the major
players in the field including Project Gutenberg.
You can find out more at http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20031110-121313-6810r
Part 2 of the article is at
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20031111-112843-9065r
Look out for an article on Project Gutenberg shortly too.
You can find out much more about digital content at http://samvak.tripod.com/busiweb.html
Many thanks to Sam Vaknin.
-------------------
Authorama Public Domain Books
I would like to let you know about my site, Authorama Public Domain
Books: http://www.authorama.com
The idea of this site is to bring the "Plain Vanilla ASCII" etexts
from Project Gutenberg into easily readable and searchable (X)HTML. So
I spend quite an amount of my spare-time to do the conversions, and
I've written server-side software to split up the larger HTMLs into
sub-chapters.
One of my main aims is to make the site accessible to the visitor, as
well as tools like search-engines. In fact I get 1,000s of visitors
per day coming from Google! They look for different words, and find my
site. I didn't know that would happen but that alone is a reward! When
a Google-user arrives on my Authorama-site, I also try to highlight
the keywords dynamically. Also, I then provide another book-restricted
search-facility, by utilizing the Google Web API (a SOAP/ Web Service
kinda thingie). I then also try to merge it with the Amazon Services
to display related books.
Finally, I still keep a plain-HTML-one-page version of every book on
my page, so that when people want to download or print it, they have
something to go along with.
As a technical detail I deliver the documents as HTML, not XML,
because that causes some browser-problems. I then add CSS to do the
styling, and otherwise separate layout from content. That should do
best on a variety of exotic devices I believe.
Philipp Lenssen
-------------------
Other news items this week
Newsletter website
Every single newsletter we could find is now available should you wish
to catch up on any history.
----------------------------
PG/DP Shop
That's all I'm saying, watch this space for more details and start
saving those monetary units.
-------------------
Distributed Proofreaders Update
Traditionally with creative projects development tends to slow down as
the year draws to a close. This year at PG/DP just the opposite seems
to be true. As we enter the final fifty days of 2003 we can look
around us and see vibrant activity in just about every sector of
production. This is not simply busy work, but solid, quantifiable
output and significant innovation.
At DP attendance remains steady, while the pages proofed continue to
follow their upward trend of previous weeks and months. One of the
recent innovations to the proofing process is the implementation of
theme based releases. This is an initiative which began with the
commemoration of authors' birthdays. The idea proved so popular that
with broad support an organized system is coming together that will
help DP plan and prepare well in advance for significant international
events and holidays.
The first significant test of this new release method was
yesterday. In honor of Armistice, Remembrance and Veterans' Day, DP
ceased the normal release of projects and turned primary proofing
attention to works associated with the First World War. While the
services and ceremonies of November 11th have expanded over the
decades to recognize participants in other conflicts, the origin of
this memorial day are bound to the ceasing of hostilities in 1918 of
the initial World War.
Some forty books were provided for proofing yesterday and released in
a manner that would allow for a world spanning participation across
all time zones. This extended time of recognition will be continued
for future days of significance. The support for yesterday's day of
observance was far beyond anyone's expectations. With no special
advance notice beyond a one day headline in the DP site news, and no
stated rally in the forums, yesterday finished proofing as the third
most productive day in DP's history. That follows only the original
Slashdot wave of 2002, and the 'Big Climb' of October 31st. At days
end, over 13,000 pages had been completed.
If you were not able to participate yesterday, but would still like to
offer your own gesture, there are several titles remaining to be
proofed. You will find these indicated with red backgrounds to
symbolize the poppy which has long been associated with Armistice
Day. These projects will remain distinctive in the rounds until they
complete proofing.
There are several other events and holidays which will be recognized
between now and the end of the year. These include the a wide range of
faith based days, beginning this week and stretching all the way into
the new year. Also this month are extended recognitions of Native
American history and culture and Childrens' literature. The latter
begins with National Children's Book Week, which is November 17-23 in
the US and November 20, which is Universal Children's Day. We may
also look forward to several more author birthdays this month.
If you have ideas for theme based days, would like to provide content
or find some way to participate, go to the Content Providers forum at
DP. You will see several threads established for collaboration.
In past weeks we have talked about picking up the ongoing exploration
through the various production phases of DP. The pace and import of
recent newsworthy events have kept us off the path of our course,
although we have never strayed too far. While this week's news is also
abundant we will try to take a closer look at the next stage in our
journey, that will, time-willing, resume fully next week. A while back
we took an peek into the Post-production process, and will work our
way back in the DP family tree to the Pre-production process.
For those readers just tuning into the column, or new to DP, there is
a decent amount of work involved in getting projects fully prepared
for the proofreading rounds. When a text appears in the first round of
proofing it has already been advanced through several steps in the
development process of being available on Project Gutenberg. To reach
the stage of proofing readiness a text must first be located in a
condition that would still be readable off-line. The body of the book
could be in horrible shape, the cover could be long gone, but the
pages need to be intact and all present. Most importantly, before any
other step, it must be ascertained that the book is in fact within the
public domain. This requires that the title page, preferably with an
edition number, is scannable accompanied by the verso page, which
should, but does not always, contain the publishing date and/or
copyright statement(s).
Once a content provider has viewable images of these two pages, the
book must be given 'OK' approval for contribution to Project
Gutenberg. This process does not concern itself with the merit of a
book's value, only with verifying that the text is legally within the
public domain by United States laws. There is a form submission tool
provided by PG which makes the clearance process easy enough for first
time users. It is located at the following address:
http://beryl.ils.unc.edu/copy.html There is further information about
providing content at the top of this week's newsletter.
Depending upon the number of submissions a clearance should take no
more than a fewdays to be processed. Before submitting, it is a sound
practice to check that a book is not already within PG or presently
under development. The best place to do this is the wondrous golden
book of PG known affectionately as 'David's List.' This is a regularly
updated labor of dedication maintained by David Price and is the first
place to check before submitting a book for clearance. It lives at
this address on the 'Net: http://www.dprice48.freeserve.co.uk/GutIP.html
If a submission proves to be legal to reproduce, there should be no
trouble with receiving an 'OK' to proceed. Once a provider has a
clearance for a book, the real fun begins. In order to generate the
text required for proofing, a book must first be scanned and the scans
must be processed with OCR software which produces the raw, first
draft text of an e-book.
Once this has been completed, the text and images must be processed
and readied for the DP development system. This stage of production
has come a long way since DP's first book was produced. Akin to all
growth and innovations throughout DP, the advances in pre-production
have made content providing easier to approach, swifter to complete
and more efficient overall. As with post-production, the contribution
which has made a profound difference in the quality and speed of
preparation is the set of text checking and modifying tools which have
been constructed by members of the DP community.
A full history of the evolution of the tools which are involved in the
DP process is simply not possible in the space we have. To recognize
this contribution to Project Gutenberg and to promote the use of these
tools for independent content developers, the newsletter will be
adding an evolving feature to the archive. Every week or so there will
be a profile of one of the tools and a background with useful
suggestions provided by the developers. A full history of the tools of
PG/DP will supplement the profiles. It will also be possible to
download each tool directly from the newsletter archive.
So that's an introduction to the pre-production process which is about
what we have time and space for this week. More and more, what you
will be seeing is an expansion of topics and features from the DP
column covered in-depth on the newsletter's archive site. At present,
all previous issues of the PG Newsletter are now available for
viewing, going all the way back to 1989. You can also find a distinct
section set aside for all editions of the DP column to date. It's
beginning to look like a new on-line destination to me.
As always, if you have an idea that seems like it may enrich the
newsletter archive or be of interest to the PG community at large,
please feel free to suggest it to Alice via the archive site. The same
holds for any topics that you would like to see explored in future
issues, feel welcome to suggest them.
To everyone who participated in yesterday's recognition of Armistice day
and particularly to the content providers who worked overtime to
prepare texts, a very sincere and earned Thank You!
Until next week...
Thierry Alberto
-------------------
Radio Gutenberg Update
http://www.radio-gutenberg.org
Two channels of broadcasting are available, but what for the subtle
change in the web address, that's org not com.
channel 1 - Sherlock Holmes "The Sign of Four"
channel 2 - Robert Sheckley's "Bad Medicine"
Both are high quality live readings from the collection.
Jon and I are working on a new service for Project Gutenberg
to create an audio book on demand from any of the 10,000+
books in the collection. This service will be available at
http://www.radio-gutenberg.org shortly.
Anyone needing an audio book of a gutenberg book will be able to
create it for themselves on the web, right when they have the need
for it.
We may ask for testers sometime in November.
Mike E
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Improved Service
In a bid to make the newsletter more helpful to readers who may be
using screen reading software. We are able to offer the booklisting in
a different format to make your life a little easier. If you would
like a weekly version of this list please email news@pglaf.org, and
state which version you require.
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3) Notes and Queries, Reviews and Features
Math and Poetry ? What a theme of plenty it is!
A wasteland for aimless wanderings and a huge space for speculation -
Science of emotions and harmony of numbers, mathematicians that wrote
poetry and poets that proved theorems. Besides a few interesting math
books were joining their poetic brothers on PG during the past few
weeks, and the thesis that math and poetry are at their best when
people are young and the their minds are still clean from the dust of
unnecessary information? So in order not to play the ambivalent donkey
of Buridan, I'll close my eyes and pick up a ticket from an old hat ?
Let me see what is written there:
The Moving Finger writes, and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
Ah, Homer K.M as large as life, though. This brilliant combination of
inspired mathematician and poetic genius is certainly a good start
that serves well the cause. The blur of romance and mystery wraps
round his life in the Near East on the border between 11th and 12th
centuries A.D and our knowledge about it is based on the legends and
indirect evidence quite similar to the one of the Bard. His date of
birth is known precisely from his horoscope, that was deciphered by
his Indian admirer Swami Govinda Tirtha in 20th century A.D. The
profession of his father supposed to be a tent maker because the
literate translation of his name means such.
His closest school friends were the two other famous Persians, the
politician and reformist Nizam-Al-Mulk and Hassan Sabah the founder of
the ill-famous Assassin sect, the grandfather of nowadays
terrorists. He is well known now mostly by his amazing four line
poems, is an author of fundamental mathematical works most of them we
written before he turned even 25, including Problems of Arithmetic and
Treatise on Demonstration of Problems of Algebra, the book of math and
philosophy, ornamented in words with an oriental splendor - 'By the
help of God and with His precious assistance, I say that Algebra is a
scientific art'. May we see the times when its red and gold volume
will get dusty on the long shelves of PG library!
Let me skip the theory that there were two people with the same name
living at the same time - one poet and one philosopher and
mathematicians, since a) it is highly improbable and b) it is not
suitable for the theme of this piece. It is better to open a new
browser window and put in the address line
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext95/rubai10.txt, to enjoy the
deep philosophical and extremely beautiful verses, born in the mind
that could structure the chaos in order to create the harmony. Liben
Damen und Herren, welcome great Ghiyath al-Din Abu'l-Fath Umar ibn Ibrahim Al-Nisaburi al-Khayyami -
And strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot
Some could articulate, while others not:
And suddenly one more impatient cried--
"Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"
P.S. There is another PG item with the Rubayat -
http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext04/rubwi10.txt , which claimed
to be written by Omar Khayyam's son - O.Kh. Junior. You should learn
probably the Persian and original Bornese in order to feel the
difference in the language, that the translator Wallace Irwin is
talking about.
Few internet pages for biography and work details
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Khayyam.html
or
http://www.okonlife.com/
Gali Sirkis
-------------------
No quiz this week, so time to do a little revising.
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Credits
Thanks this time go to Brett and George for the numbers and
booklists. Thierry, Gali, Greg, Michael, Mark and Larry
Wall. Entertainment for the workers provided by BBC 6Music.
Special hello to Steve Thomas, I hope you managed to read this far and
glad to know you're there.
---
pgweekly_2003_11_12_part_2.txt
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