The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

[Robotech_Master]

Available for free download in PDF form, or reading on-line in HTML form.

Released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike License. So, all you e-book reformatters out there, have at it.

[Robotech_Master]

Is anyone going to convert this to alternate formats? Maybe put it on Feedbooks? Just wondering.

[Hadrien]

It is on Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/book/3471
I just have to finish working on footnotes for Mobipocket and ePub, these sort of books are full of them. Hopefully, we already have proper markup for it on Feedbooks, once I'm done working on both formats all of our back catalog will be updated too.

[Robotech_Master]

Hmm.

I downloaded the epub version from Feedbooks, and the footnotes are incorporated into the text. (Also, the blockquoted section from the preface isn't blockquoted.) Alas, this makes it more than a little hard to read on a screen the size of my iPhone.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

Hmm.

I downloaded the epub version from Feedbooks, and the footnotes are incorporated into the text. (Also, the blockquoted section from the preface isn't blockquoted.) Alas, this makes it more than a little hard to read on a screen the size of my iPhone.

Blockquotes are based on the online version of the text. As for the footnotes, the work is done in Mobipocket (though not online yet) and not quite yet for ePub (it's more complicated on ePub, because you have to point to a specific flow for the back link. Footnotes are actually stored in a non-linear flow in ePub).

[Robotech_Master]

Done or not, Stanza is able to download something from Feedbooks…

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

Done or not, Stanza is able to download something from Feedbooks…

Sure, it's better to have them inline than having nothing at all. We only cache the files for a short period of time anyway, I'll simply delete the cache once I'm done implementing the whole thing (it's also frequently overwrited to update the recommendations in the books). And the rest of the catalogs on Stanza are basic conversions that won't be able to handle footnotes anyway...

[Robotech_Master]

When is the version of this with footnotes going to be complete?

I just tried re-downloading it from Feedbooks and it's still got the (NB: blah blah blah) in it that make it really hard to read (especially since the paragraphs are themselves only indented a single space—could you make the indents more noticeable while you're at it?).

I've been holding off reading it 'til I can do it on my iPod Touch or Nokia 770 in a readable format.

[tompe]

I am reading the html version from Manybooks (I got tired of waiting for a better version to appear and the mobi version did not work properly on my Cybook). I have obly read four chapters but the book is really good and should be read by everybody.

It is also depressing since we seem to be going to a world were the internet would never have been invented or were the iPod would have been illegal (with the same arguments as in the Grokster trial).

[Robotech_Master]

I looked at a couple of Manybooks options—the eReader, RTF, and HTML versions. Annoyingly, the eReader and HTML versions don't have footnotes linked, though it is within the capacity of both formats to do so. If I read an e-book, I want the ability to tap on a footnote, see the note, and then go back to the main body.

(Also, they all seem to have large sections of the footnotes in italics due to some sort of transcription error.)

[tompe]

I started to read the pdf version and there the footnotes were not useful either so the html version just made it more convenient to read it.

The pdf version kind of work on the Cybook. But it annoying to read it since when advancing the page it is hard to find the place were you where. You have to read it in landscape and use fit to width. And you have to scroll sidewise once for every second page.

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by tompe

I started to read the pdf version and there the footnotes were not useful either so the html version just made it more convenient to read it.

The pdf version kind of work on the Cybook. But it annoying to read it since when advancing the page it is hard to find the place were you where. You have to read it in landscape and use fit to width. And you have to scroll sidewise once for every second page.

The Feedbooks version got real footnotes in PDF and we can create customized PDF files.

[Robotech_Master]

That's nice. When's the epub version with real footnotes coming?

[Dr. Drib]

Creating ebooks is a labor of love combined with hard work and sometimes unavoidable sweat.

I would encourage every member here to try his or her hand at making Public domain/creative commons/legally licensed books available to the readers of MobileRead.

The beauty of assembling an ebook is that you (the assembler) can design and add to your heart's content, thus creating an ebook that is exactly the way you want it in terms of layout and perceived effectiveness.

Don

[Hadrien]

Originally Posted by Robotech_Master

That's nice. When's the epub version with real footnotes coming?

I'll try to finish working on proper footnotes for ePub/Mobipocket during the first week of January. Right now I'm still changing a few other things on the website/API (I simplified the navigation of public domain titles recently).

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Creating ebooks is a labor of love combined with hard work and sometimes unavoidable sweat.

I would encourage every memeber here to try his or her hand at making Public domain/creative commons/legally licensed books available to the readers of MobileRead.

The beauty of assembling an ebook is that you (the assembler) can design and add to your heart's content, thus creating an ebook that is exactly the way you want it in terms of layout and perceived effectiveness.

Don

Correct but I don't value the creation of an end-format version as much as a proper source. A TEI/DocBook/DTBook version is infinitely more valuable since you can pretty much create anything out of it. The reason why I can instantly turn inline footnotes to real footnotes in every ePub/Mobipocket file on Feedbooks the next time that I upgrade our system is because we properly mark them as such. A book produced with Book Designer on the other hand will probably have hyperlinks instead of a distinctive mark-up for footnotes.
The real value is in creating the structure of the book or using a proper mark-up for semantic elements such as footnotes (and in the case of the average public domain book, proper proofreading/typesetting).