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Seems like I've missed out on all the fun here! I won't jump in on the argument regarding UID's, although I am tempted ;-)
I just want to discuss the reason for the poor quality Gutenberg EPUB/MOBI auto formatted books.
If we're truthful with ourselves, Marcello's work on these conversions is actually a waste time! That doesn't mean I don't think he nor PG are doing a great job, but I believe they are focusing their efforts on the wrong thing.
The current books are somewhat ugly because the source files they have don't use a standard format -- automation needs a standard source format - once you have that, Marcello's job of creating EPUB, MOBI or whatever other format they desire, will be so much easier.
Now it seems that for several/many years there has been discussions within the PG community for a 'Master Format', but the powers-that-be kept refusing. I guess they are now paying the consequences of that decision.
Once you have a standard source format, such as XML based (a 'very strict' ASCII formatting and layout would be okay (the current PG .TXT files are a real hodge-podge), but still not a good as XML), it is relatively easy to convert to most any other format, automatically and with all the correct markup that your new reading system needs.
You may loose out on some hand-coded 'uniqueness' between books, but all that hard work the proofreaders have done can really start to shine.
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