[NatCh]

Originally Posted by bowerbird

besides, i think "criticizing" is a _lot_ better way to get to the bottom of a topic than blowing sunshine up someone's behind. don't you?

When the comment is little more than distilled sarcasm, with no actual content, it's not criticism, in my book, It comes closer to sniping.

But then, I don't regard discussing and exploring solutions in a respectful manner to be "blowing sunshine up someone's behind" either. I guess I gave up the personal illusion that I could give the Final, Infallible, and Only Answer on sweeping matters some time ago.

One of the side-effects of discussing things politely, and respectfully, even when the discussers disagree, is that people continue to consider what's being said, and don't skip, blow off, or otherwise Ignore comments by people who discuss things in such a fashion.

Having the best point in the world, or being absolutely right is pretty worthless if no one will listen. And if no one listens because they're tired of the tone the commenter takes with those who disagree with him is really rather sad.

Originally Posted by bowerbird

plus, as if it is the case that "the only thing" i am doing is "criticizing". i invite anyone to take a look at the 3 posts of mine that i linked to. you will find more meat in them than in this "new thread" combined...

You're referring to these, I believe:

Originally Posted by bowerbird

panurge, i feel where you're coming from. but let me run through a few thoughts.

so first, point #14 is about the embedding of pagenumbers inside of the text flow.
that's not a good idea, because they're a distraction that just needs to be removed
when we want to copy the text out for remixing. that's why point #14 is there.

my next comment -- which i say because it must be said -- is that it's not our job
to do your job. if the pagenumbers are valuable to you, it's your job to save them.
i'm sorry if that sounds cold, but that's the way it is.

having said that, however, let me move on to my next comment, which is that
i am in 100% agreement with you. even though pagenumbers are _irrelevant_,
in many senses, when we move a book to the digital sphere, i'm convinced that
we still need to retain pagenumber information, simply because so much of our
archival history uses pagenumbers as pointer-information. we cannot afford to
sacrifice that. indeed, i go one step further and argue that we should also be
retaining the _linebreak_information_ from all the paper-books that we digitize.
i won't go into all the arguments here, but in my mind, the answer is now clear.

furthermore, i put my money where my mouth is. in my digitization examples,
i maintain linebreaks and pagebreaks, and put the image-scan up next to the text,
so the end-user can verify the accuracy of my digitization if they want to do that.
i consider this checking by end-users to be the last fine line of the proofing process,
and i want them to feel like a part of the "march to perfection" that the text makes,
because i believe we need to make the public feel like "joint owners" of these books.
"the public domain belongs to _you_, the public, and you have responsibility for them,
so if there are errors here, you need to fill out an error-report so they are corrected."

to see some of my examples, check these out:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp001.html
> http://z-m-l.com/go/mabie/mabiep001.html
> http://z-m-l.com/go/sgfhb/sgfhbp001.html

you can thumb through these e-books just like they were the p-books,
and verify that the linebreaks and pagebreaks are exactly as they were.
and if you find an error, you can fill out an error-report right on the page.
and once someone has made a report, it's immediately visible to everyone,
even if it might take an administrator a little bit of time to fix the error...

now examine the plain-text versions of the files that created those books above:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myant.zml
> http://z-m-l.com/go/mabie/mabie.zml
> http://z-m-l.com/go/sgfhb/sgfhb.zml

you'll see how the pagebreak information was recorded in those plain-text files.
i think you'll also see how easily that pagebreak information can be eliminated,
for the situations where an end-user doesn't care about the original pagebreaks.

this is the kind of flexibility we want from our digitization efforts, so each group
gets the information they like, without inconveniencing what another group gets.

what is also useful about this format is that it's extremely close to what we get
_naturally_ when we scan a book, so it's not hard to go from scan output to final.

now, having said all _that_, let me proceed to my final point, which is a variant
on the "don't expect us to do your job for you". and it is _not_ our job to make
"a faithful representation of the print copy". we don't even _want_ to do that --
even if we could -- and we _cannot_, because any time you move a document
from one medium to a completely different one, you're creating a new edition.
whether you mean to do it or not. and like i said, at least from my perspective,
i don't even think twice about things like the correcting of typos. heck, i'll even
rework headers -- or even the _body_ of the text -- if that is what it takes to
make this _digital_version_ a _good_ digital version. i'm a republisher, who is
moving this book into a new medium for a new world in a new century, and
i'm going to do justice to the new. it's simply not my job to snapshot the old.
if you want to see what the old pages looked like, you can look at the scans.

so, anyway, there's some feedback for you to think about... :+)

-bowerbird

Originally Posted by bowerbird

first, a few things i forgot to mention on pagenumbers.

one very important aspects of pagenumber references
is that we need to consider them in our u.r.l. naming,
and the links there must have maximal transparency...

up above, i pointed you to these references:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp001.html
> http://z-m-l.com/go/mabie/mabiep001.html
> http://z-m-l.com/go/sgfhb/sgfhbp001.html

take the top one, and eliminate the first part, to get:
> myant/myantp001.html

you can see that the first 5 letters are repeated, so
eliminate those as well, and strip off the suffix, for:
> myantp001

in my naming, the first 5 letters reference one book.
in this case, it's "my antonia", the book by willa cather.

the "p001" part of the u.r.l. indicates this is page 1...

and just so you know, this u.r.l.:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp001.html
is based on the page-scan with this name:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp001.png
which, once again, is the page-scan for page 1.

and i rigorously follow this convention throughout.

so this is the u.r.l. for page 123:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp123.html

and it's based on the page-scan with this name:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp123.png

thus, any competent fourth-grader is capable of
figuring out the u.r.l. for _any_ page in this book.

furthermore, this means that when i encounter
some other p-book in the historical archive that
makes references to this edition of "my antonia",
i can relate those references to my e-book easily.

for instance, let's say that a passage runs like this:
> on page 189 and 198, cather ascribes qualities
> to antonia which seem to be inconsistent with
> those which were ascribed on page 15 and 83,
> and are completely contradictory to what cather
> clearly states on page 111. however, this could
> be due to the revelation which antonia has, that
> is described in detail on pages 144 and 157.

so, based on my transparent and consistent naming,
it's a simple exercise to create links for this passage:
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp189.html
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp198.html
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp015.html
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp083.html
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp111.html
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp144.html
> http://z-m-l.com/go/myant/myantp157.html

you would be _astonished_ how many cyberlibraries
have messed up their naming-schemes, such that a
simple plug-in-the-numbers strategy doesn't work.

google gets it kind-of right, but almost everyone else
gets it wrong, wrong, utterly and completely _wrong_.

and because of their confusing naming conventions,
scholars will have to go back and muddle through
_each_and_every_ reference like this, to find out how
the exact link for each one is specified in the e-book.
this is nothing less than sheer and massive stupidity...

-bowerbird

p.s. and, for the record, notice how completely useless
a p.g. e-text -- which was stripped of pagenumbers --
will be for a person who encounters the above passage.

Originally Posted by bowerbird

in that x.m.l.-based version of "my antonia" i discussed above,
i forgot to provide an example of a link direct to a paragraph.

here's one:
> http://www.openreader.org/myantonia/...nia.html#p0251
you should read the paragraph directly after that one as well...

-bowerbird

Part of the reason those posts are not getting much exposure here may be this:

Originally Posted by bowerbird

i see no reason for a new thread, and won't repeat my posts here:

I find the sentiment expressed in that comment particularly ironic, knowing, as I do, that the thread you referenced is one created specifically for the purpose of pulling an interesting topic that you brought up in yet another thread out where it could get the exposure it seemed to deserve. I'd've done the same thing for Panurge's topic (even though it involves a bit of trouble to do), if he hadn't beaten me to the punch, so to speak.

In any case, now that the posts in question are here where the discussion is continuing, others may find in them points worth responding to.