Should we post Sony Reader books to Gutenberg?

[ricdiogo]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Then Why does PG have Plucker formatted books?

We have not-so-open filetypes as you can see at PG's Advanced search. Although the main version _must_ be in plain ascii txt whenever possible, we do have some conversion tools for other formats (like plucker) and encodings.
I advise you to subscribe PG's gutvol-d mailing list and ask for help. Some volunteer may help you creating an online convertion tool for Sony format, eventually in PG's website itself. This may be better than converting the files manually and then posting them back to PG.
We don't like spending too much server space with proprietary filetypes. But, hey, if volunteers _really really_ think they should add those (e.g. because they are quite popular) I personally don't think we should prevent them.

[ricdiogo]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Then Why does PG have Plucker formatted books?

Sorry JSWolf, thought you were the original poster. Plucker is GPL.

[JSWolf]

Plucker may be GPL, but it's not really open enough (IMHO) to be on PG. Heck, FLAC is GPL, why not make all the audio books available in lossless FLAC format instead of just MP3? Same silly reasoning to be honest. Just because it's GPL does not make it the right took for the job. And for PG, I don't think Plucker is the right took. There no easy way to deal with it.

[solyanik]

I've put together a proxy that automatically does the conversion (browse through the site and there will be a SONY reader formal amongst other formats to download).

More information here:

http://1-800-magic.blogspot.com/2008...pre-alpha.html

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Plucker may be GPL, but it's not really open enough (IMHO) to be on PG. Heck, FLAC is GPL, why not make all the audio books available in lossless FLAC format instead of just MP3?

Possibly because the FLAC files are significantly larger, bandwidth is finite, the whole world doesn't have broadband, and the device user might have may not do FLAC?

the Same silly reasoning to be honest. Just because it's GPL does not make it the right took for the job. And for PG, I don't think Plucker is the right took. There no easy way to deal with it.

What's your problem with Plucker? The source is available, and the format is documented. PG provides Plucker files because they can do so in an automated fashion.

While I use Plucker as my default ebook viewer, I don't use the PG Plucker files. I prefer to roll my own, because I can include images and specify other attributes like compression, file names, and titles as shown by Plucker.

That would be problematic for PG, because you have the question of compression (None, Palm DOC, or Zlib), and image sizes and BW/Grey scale/color. Munseys and Manybooks, for example, don't include images even though the image files exist because they haven't found a good scripted way to do it.

What would you have PG do instead?
______
Dennis

[FangornUK]

solyanik, noticed you're only converting the text files instead of HTML. I guess this is because of the amount of traffic the HTML version will cause, i.e. lots of pictures. The results though from the HTML versions are far superior and most etexts are in HTML format now.

Take a look at my gutlrf.pl script, if you like, which gets the HTML version or falls back to text if HTML isn't available. It also does some cleaning of the Gutenberg HTML file to improve output. My script also uses libprs500 to convert the HTML as that handles the Gutenberg HTML very well now.