|
> I meant when do you expect to be able to make the p.g. mirror available to the public,
> as in a date, or a length of time. If you dont have an estimate, that's fine too :-)
yeah, i know that's what you meant. and that's why i answered like i did...
i learned a long time not to make estimates. don't expect it until it actually arrives...
having said that, i'll also say "it depends". (which, yeah, isn't any more informative.)
the body of each e-text is pretty much already in z.m.l. format.
to the extent that it's not, the changes are pretty much automatic.
if that was all i was concerned about, i could do it in a week or two.
the problem area for each e-text is the front-matter: the title-page,
table of contents, dedication, list of illustrations, all that type of stuff.
what i _want_ to do is edit all of that to an extremely high standard...
but it's pretty slow going. even at 5 minutes per e-text, that's 12/hour,
or 100 for an 8-hour day. and slackers like me don't work 8-hour days.
so when you've got 15,000 of the suckers, even 5 minutes per adds up.
eventually, after enough time goes on and i keep avoiding this task,
i'll undoubtedly drop my desire to hit that high standard, and go with
something more quick-and-dirty. i've noticed that hadrien settles for
the title and the author on the title-page and then jumps into the book.
if i did that, i could pull the info from the catalog, and it'd be very quick.
if i decided to try and write some code to rework the front-matter that
is actually present in each e-text, then that might or might not be quick,
depending on how well the programming went. could even be very slow.
i can't even do an estimate on that until i've hand-edited enough e-texts
to get a handle on what the typical edits are, and how to automate 'em...
i've also considered building a wiki and asking the public to go at it...
so, depending on how all of this shakes out, it could be relatively soon,
or it could drag on for a little while, or it could drag on for a long while.
but i certainly don't advise that anyone hold their breath waiting for it...
indeed, don't even _expect_ it until it has actually arrived...
-bowerbird
|