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Title: The Project Gutenberg FAQ 2002
Author: Jim Tinsley
Release Date: October, 2005 [EBook #9109]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on September 7, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PROJECT GUTENBERG FAQ 2002 ***
The Project Gutenberg FAQ 2002
by Jim Tinsley
Important: This file is posted to the Project Gutenberg archives
not as a current guide, more as a historical reference. I hope
that future FAQs will be posted, as the project evolves, but
this one is of its time.
If you want the most up-to-date information from PG, please
see the current version of the FAQ, from the Project Gutenberg
site, or, at the time of posting, at:
http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/faq/gutfaq.txt
or
http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/faq/gutfaq.htm
Acknowledgements
Writing a FAQ for an organization of fanatical proofreaders has
its ups and downs! I'd like to thank all those who corrected
my facts and my typos, and especially the people who pointed out
the lack of clarity in certain answers. The remaining errors and
opacity are all mine.
Preface to the archive edition
Ironically, Project Gutenberg, which preserves the writings of
others, doesn't have much written history itself. There are
scraps of e-mails and guidelines, but many newsletters and other
internal writings before 1996 have gone to the great bit-bucket
in the sky.
The later half of the '90s marked a graceful blooming of Project
Gutenberg's growth. Three related technical factors contributed: the
explosion in home PCs brought standardization, which made it easy
for non-techies to install scanners, which, in response to the new
demand, became plentiful and cheap. And, of course, these years saw
the rise in popularity of the Internet, which has always been PG's
main channel of communication and distribution.
However, while PG's production expanded geometrically, at Moore's
Law rates, there were barriers to participation. Most volunteers had
to find an eligible book, scan or type it, and proof the resulting
text all by themselves. This was and is a fairly significant amount
of work: 40 painstaking hours would be a typical commitment for one
book.
Beyond that, simply learning the mechanics of producing e-texts
could be a serious challenge for newcomers. Nearly all internal
PG communication, except for the Newsletter, was by private e-mail,
and instructions had to be repeated many times to individual new
volunteers, all of whom showed up with great good will, but most of
whom vanished after a week or two.
Michael Hart was unstinting in his editing of incoming texts and
handling questions by e-mail, but any one person has only so many
hours.
The Directors of Production at the time -- Sue Asscher, Dianne Bean,
John Bickers and David Price -- served as contact points for advice
and help, made enormous efforts of production themselves, and tried
to share the scanned texts among new volunteers for proofing. They
made a huge contribution to building community in PG.
Pietro Di Miceli set up a web site for the project in 1996, and with
the popularization of the Web (as opposed to the Internet), this became
a beacon for readers and new volunteers.
All of these people reached out to willing volunteers, drew them in,
helped them, encouraged them. The Project and all of the readers of
the books, now and in the future, owe these people a great debt.
Without them, Project Gutenberg could not have achieved what it has.
But still, for the most part, each volunteer worked alone.
In 1999, I wrote, in response to an offer to volunteer:
I think I can best answer your offer, and many others like it,
by giving an extended description of what actually happens in
the making of PG texts, and why it's often not easy to get
started.
There is no agenda, no master list of tasks ready to be given to
volunteers. This is often the hardest thing to get across to new
volunteers. I know I waited quite a while after volunteering for
someone to give me a job to do before I realized it.
Exactly five steps are normally performed in the publishing of
an e-text.
1. Someone, somewhere gets a public-domain copy of a text they
want to contribute.
2. That volunteer confirms its PD status by sending TP&V to
Michael, and getting copyright clearance.
3. Someone, usually the same volunteer, scans and corrects the
text, or, if skilled in typing, types the book into an e-text.
4. Someone, often a different volunteer, second-proofs the
e-text, removing the smaller errors.
5. The e-text is sent to Michael for posting.
There are three barriers which make it difficult for most people
to contribute:
1. Getting a PD book.
2. People without scanners and typing skills have no way of
turning a book into an e-text.
3. Even with a scanner, turning a book into an e-text is not
easy or quick.
Since, generally, people who have a PD book don't just want to
send it off to a stranger for scanning, the people who produce
e-texts have to get over all three of these barriers. This is
the bottleneck in production. It's relatively easy to get an
e-text second-proofed; making it in the first place is the
hardest part. You need to have a book, the means to turn it into
an e-text and the time and will to do it.
After that comes second proofing. There are two problems here.
One is that there may not be enough texts for all the people who
want to second-proof; the other is that a lot of beginners just
abandon texts given to them for second-proofing, which holds up
the process and is discouraging for others. So a lot of
volunteers do their own second-proofing or send their texts to
established contacts with a track record of finishing the job,
rather than making them available to newbies. The Directors of
Production do serve as contact points, and at any given moment
may have some texts for proofing, but they can only distribute
the texts that have already been made.
With that explanation out of the way, I can better address your
question of what you can do.
Second-proofing is an easy way to start, but material isn't just
waiting for you. If you want to look for some, post your offer
here and wait a week or so. If no takers by then, e-mail Michael
and ask if there are any texts available; he may be able to
refer you to a Director of Production who has something current.
You may not get an e-text immediately, but you will get one. Of
course, you can also look here for offers of e-texts ready to
proof.
Your other option is to take on a book yourself. In your case,
you already have a scanner, so you are equipped to become a
producer. You need to find a PD book.
Getting PD books means finding and borrowing or buying them. You
can do this through used bookshops, libraries or book sites on
the Internet. I mention a few net sites in the FAQ in the link
below. I get all my books through them, since they make it easy
for me to find the books I want. Prices range from $5 up to (in
my case) about $30.
The best advice I can offer here is: pick a book that you _want_
to contribute, and a book you'll enjoy working with--you'll be
living with it up close and personal for quite a while.
In March and April of 1999, Pietro created the PG Volunteers'
WWWBoard and Greg Newby set up the mailing list gutvol-d, and, for
the first time, volunteers who hadn't been introduced to each other
by Michael or the Directors could meet online and communicate
directly. A few FAQs and HOWTOs were written, covering the basics,
the nitty-gritty of producing books. All of this activity made it
much easier for people to get involved, and the Project experienced
a new influx of interested volunteers. Improved OCR software was
also a factor at this time: in response to the commoditization of
scanners, there was rapid improvement in the quality of OCR, and
better OCR made for easier production of e-texts. More work was
shared out in co-operative proofing experiments.
It was in this new, expansive atmosphere, with ideas flooding in
from enthusiasts newly energized by the project, that Charles Franks
(Charlz) came up with the idea of a web site that would serve to
distribute the work of proofing a book among many volunteers. But
not only did he think of the concept; he went ahead and did it!
In April 2000, Charlz first requested comments on his idea in
a post on the Volunteers' WWWBoard, and by the end of September,
the first e-texts were queueing up on the production line.
On October 9th, Charlz wrote:
Number of pages proofed by date:
2nd 6
3rd 6
4th 20 <-- Newsletter
5th 27
6th 25
7th 29
8th 30
9th 45!! (and the day ain't over yet)
(The "Newsletter" is a reference to the site being mentioned in
the PG Newsletter on October 4th, 2000).
Distributed Proofreaders, or DP, simply kept growing from there, as
Charlz kept scanning and adding more books and features and
proofers, and its simple organic growth produced 600 e-texts in two
years, but when Charlz asked for more help on Slashdot, a popular
technical news site, on November 8th, 2002, the response blew the
roof off! The pages per day figure jumped from 1,000 to about 10,000
for a while, then settled down at its current 4,000. 4,000 pages,
even given that each page is proofed twice, is a lot of pages. 2,000
produced pages per day is about five full books per day. DP has
formed the backbone of PG's production ever since. Whatever the
future of DP's production, its effect on shared knowledge and
resources, and the communication and community it has built, ensures
that Project Gutenberg will never be the same again.
I began writing this FAQ in March 2002, and was essentially finished
around December 2002. It sat around, with a few tweaks here and
there in response to comments, until the start of September 2003.
Today, it is a useful guide to Project Gutenberg norms and practices.
By the time you read it, it may be ancient history ("Hey, Grandad,
did you REALLY scan things from paper? Why didn't you use your
brain implant?" :-) But it is one record of How Things Were in
Project Gutenberg during this time of change.
jim
September 7th, 2003.
Project Gutenberg FAQ 2002
I have a question not answered in this FAQ. How do I ask it?
If it's about how to produce a text, the Volunteers' Board at
for joining it.
For other questions, you should check our Contact Information page at
and e-mail the appropriate
person.
About Project Gutenberg:
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About the Files:
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R.36. What is the difference within PG between an "edition" and a "version"?
R.37. What is the difference between an "etext" and an "eBook"?
R.38. What are the "Etext/Ebook numbers" on the texts?
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Copyright FAQ
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C.8. How does a book enter the public domain?
C.9. How does a copyright lapse?
C.10. What books are in the public domain?
C.11. My book says that it's "Copyright 1894". Is it in the public domain?
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C.16. How come my paper book of Shakespeare says it's "Copyright 1988"?
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C.18. I have a 1990 book that I know was originally written in 1840,
but the publisher is claiming a new copyright. What should I do?
C.19. I have a 1990 reprint of an 1831 original. Is it eligible?
C.20. I have a text that I know was based on a pre-1923 book, but I
don't have the title page. Can I submit it to PG?
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chapter) that should go into an existing PG text. Do I have to
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C.25. What are "non-renewed" books?
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Volunteers' FAQ
About the Basics:
V.1. How do I get started as a Project Gutenberg volunteer?
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V.3. How do I produce a text?
V.4. Do I need any special equipment?
V.5. Do I need to be able to program?
V.6. I am a programmer, and I would like to help by programming.
V.7. What does a Gutenberg volunteer actually do?
V.8. Can I produce a book in my own language?
V.9. Does it have to be a book? Can I produce pieces from a magazine
or other periodical?
V.10. Do I _have_ to produce in plain ASCII text?
V.11. Where do I sign up as a volunteer?
V.12. How do PG volunteers communicate, keep in touch, or co-ordinate work?
V.13. Where can I find a list of books that need proofing?
V.14. Is there a list of books that Project Gutenberg wants?
V.15. I have one book I'd like to contribute. Can I do just that without
signing up?
About production:
V.16. How does a text get produced?
V.17. How long must a text be to qualify for PG?
V.18. What books are eligible?
V.19. Are reprints or facsimiles eligible?
V.20. What is the difference between a reprint and a facsimile?
V.21. What is the difference between a reprint and a "new edition"?
V.22. What book should I work on?
V.23. I have a book in mind, but I don't have an eligible copy.
V.24. Where can I find an eligible book?
V.25. What is "TP&V"?
V.26. What is "Posting"?
V.27. I think I've found an eligible book that I'd like to work on.
What do I do next?
V.28. What books are currently being worked on?
V.29. How do I find out if my book is already on-line somewhere?
V.30. My book is not on the In-Progress list, and I can't find it on-line.
V.31. My book is on-line, but not in Project Gutenberg. What should I do?
V.32. My book is already on-line in Project Gutenberg, but my printed book
is different from the version already archived. Can I add my version?
V.33. I see a book that was being worked on three years ago. Is anyone still
working on it?
V.34. I've decided which book to produce. How do I tell PG
I'm working on it?
V.35. I have a two- or three-volume set. Should I submit them as one text,
or one text for each volume?
V.36. I have one physical book, with multiple works in it (like a
collection of plays). Should I submit each text separately?
V.37. How do I get copyright clearance?
V.38. I have a two- or three-volume set. Do I have to get a separate
clearance on each physical book?
V.39. I have one physical book, with multiple works in it (like a
collection of plays). Do I have to get a separate clearance
for each work?
V.40. Who will check up on my progress? When?
V.41. How long should it take me to complete a book?
V.42. I want/don't want my name published on my e-text
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Gutenberg text, on my own web page.
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to second-proof it?
V.45. I've gone over and over my text. I can't find any more errors,
and I'm sick of looking at it. What should I do now?
V.46. Where and how can I send my text for posting?
V.47. What is the "Credits Line"?
V.48. How soon after I send it will my text be posted?
V.49. I found a problem with my posted text. What do I do?
V.50. Someone has e-mailed me about my posted text, pointing out errors.
V.51. Someone has e-mailed me about my posted text, thanking me.
About Proofing:
V.52. What role does proofing play in Project Gutenberg?
V.53. What is Distributed Proofing?
V.54. What do I need to proof an e-text?
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V.56. What's the difference between "first proof" and "second proof"?
V.57. What do I do with an e-text sent to me for proofing?
V.58. What kinds of errors will I have to correct?
V.59. How long does it take to proof an e-text?
V.60. Are there any special techniques for proofing?
V.61. What actually happens during a proof?
About Net searching:
V.62. I've found an eligible text elsewhere on the Net, but it's not
in the PG archives. Can I just submit it to PG?
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V.64. I have already scanned or typed a book; it's on my web site.
How can I get it included in the Gutenberg archives?
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The world can already access it. Why should I add it to the
Gutenberg archives?
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format. Can I submit it to PG?
About author-submitted eBooks:
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Will PG publish my translation?
V.69. OK, this is one of the cases where PG will publish it.
What do I do next?
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About what goes into the texts:
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About the characters you use:
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V.75. What is ASCII?
V.76. So what is ISO-8859? What is Codepage 437? What is Codepage 1252?
What is MacRoman?
V.77. What is Unicode?
V.78. What is Big-5?
V.79. What are "8-bit" and "7-bit" texts?
V.80. I have an English text with some quotations from a language that
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V.82. I want to produce a book in a language like Spanish or French
with accented characters. What should I do?
About the formatting of a text file:
V.83. How long should I make my lines of text?
V.84. Why should I break lines at all? Why not make the text as one
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V.85. Why use a CR/LF at end of line?
V.86. One space or two at the end of a sentence?
V.87. How do I indicate paragraphs?
V.88. Should I indent the start of every paragraph?
V.89. Are there any places where I should indent text?
V.90. Can I use tabs (the TAB key) to indent?
V.91. How should I treat dashes (hyphens) between words?
V.92. How should I treat dashes replacing letters?
V.93. What about hyphens at end of line?
V.94. What should I do with italics?
V.95. Yes, but I have a long passage of my book in italics! I can't
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V.96. Should I capitalize the first word in each chapter?
V.97. What is a Transcriber's Note? When should I add one?
V.98. Should I keep page numbers in the e-text?
V.99. In the exceptional cases where I keep page numbers, how should
I format them?
V.100. Should I keep Tables of Contents?
V.101. Should I keep Indexes and Glossaries?
V.102. How do I handle a break from one scene to another, where the
book uses blank lines, or a row of asterisks?
V.103. How should I treat footnotes?
V.104. My book leaves a space before punctuation like semicolons,
question marks, exclamation marks and quotes. Should I do
the same?
V.105. My book leaves a space in the middle of contracted words like
"do n't", "we 'll" and "he 's". Should I do the same?
V.106. How should I handle tables?
V.107. How should I format letters or journal entries?
V.108. What can I do with the British pound sign?
V.109. What can I do with the degree symbol?
V.110. How should I handle . . . ellipses?
V.111. How should I handle chapter and section headings?
V.112. My book has advertisements at the end. Should I keep them?
V.113. Can I keep Lists of Illustrations, even when producing a
plain text file?
V.114. Can I include the captions of Illustrations, even when producing
a plain text file?
V.115. Can I include images with my text file?
About formatting poetry:
V.116. I'm producing a book of poetry. How should I format it?
V.117. I'm producing a novel with some short quotations from poems.
About formatting plays:
V.118. How should I format Act and Scene headings?
V.119. How should I format stage directions?
V.120. How should I format blank verse?
About some typical formatting issues:
V.121. Sample 1: Typical formatting issues of a novel.
V.122. Sample 2: Typical formatting issues of non-fiction
V.123. Sample 3: Typical formatting issues of poetry
V.124. Sample 4: Typical formatting issues of plays
About problems with the printed books:
V.125. I found some distasteful or offensive passages in a book I'm
producing. Should I omit them?
V.126. Some paragraphs in my book, where a character is speaking,
have quotes at the start, but not at the end. Should I close
those quotes?
V.127. The spelling in my book is British English (colour, centre).
Should I change these to American spellings?
V.128. I'm nearly sure that some words in my printed book are typos.
Should I change them?
V.129. Having investigated what looks like a typo, I find it isn't.
Do I need to do anything?
V.130. Aarrgh! Some pages are missing! Do I have to abandon the book?
V.131. Some words are spelled inconsistently in my book (e.g. sometimes
"surprise", sometimes "surprize"). Should I make them consistent?
Word Processing FAQ
W.1. What's the difference between an editor and a word processor?
W.2. Should I use an editor or a word processor?
W.3. Which editor or word processor should I use?
W.4. How can I make my word processor easier to work with for plain text?
W.5. What is the difference between proportional and non-proportional
fonts?
W.6. I can't get words in a table or poem to line up under each other.
About using MS-Word:
W.7. I've edited my book in Word - how do I save it as plain text?
W.8. Quotes look wrong when I save a Word document as plain text.
W.9. Dashes look wrong when I save a Word document as plain text.
W.10. I saved my Word document as HTML, but the HTML looks terrible.
Scanning FAQ
S.1. What is a scanner?
S.2. What types of scanners are there?
S.3. Which scanner should I get?
S.4. What is ADF?
S.5. Should I get ADF?
S.6. What's a "TWAIN driver" and why do I need one?
S.7. How do I scan a book?
S.8. My book won't open flat enough for a good scan, and I don't
want to cut the pages.
S.9. How long does it take to scan a book?
S.10. What scanner settings are best?
S.11. Can I use a digital camera in place of a scanner?
S.12. What is OCR?
S.13. What differences are there between OCR packages?
S.14. How accurate should OCR be?
S.15. Which OCR package should I get?
S.16. What types of mistakes do OCR packages typically make?
S.17. Why am I getting a lot of mistakes in my OCRed text?
S.18. I got an OCR package bundled with my scanner. Is it good enough
to use?
S.19. I want to include some images with a HTML version. How should I
scan them?
S.20. I want to include some images with a HTML version. What type of
image should I use?
S.21. Will PG store scanned page images of my book?
HTML FAQ
H.1. Can I submit a HTML version of my text?
H.2. Why should I make a HTML version?
H.3. Can I submit a HTML version without a plain ASCII version?
H.4. What are the PG rules for HTML texts?
H.5. Can I use Javascript or other scripting languages in my HTML?
H.6. Should I make my HTML edition all on one page, or split it into
multiple linked pages?
H.7. How can I check that I haven't made mistakes in coding my HTML?
H.8. Can I submit a HTML or other format of somebody else's text?
H.9. How big can the images be in a HTML file?
H.10. The images I've scanned are too big for inclusion in HTML.
What can I do about it?
H.11. Can I include decorative images I've made or found?
H.12. How can I make a plain text version from a HTML file?
H.13. How can I make a HTML version from my plain text file?
Programs and Programming FAQ
P.1. What useful programs are available for Project Gutenberg work?
P.2. What programs could I write to help with PG work?
Formats FAQ
F.1. What formats does Project Gutenberg publish?
F.2. What is, and how do I make or use various formats?
Volunteers' Voices - Volunteers talk about PG
Amy Zelmer
Ben Crowder
Col Choat
Dagny
Gardner Buchanan
Jim Tinsley
John Mamoun
Ken Reeder
Lynn Hill
Sandra Laythorpe
Tony Adam
Tonya Allen
Walter Debeuf
Bookmarks - web pages commonly referred to in the FAQ
B.1. Project Gutenberg
B.2. Distributed Proofing Sites
B.3. Other On-Line eBook Pages
B.4. Lists of Suggested Books to Transcribe
B.5. Finding Paper Books On-Line
About Project Gutenberg:
G.1. What is Project Gutenberg?
Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize, archive, and
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G.2. Where did Project Gutenberg come from?
In 1971, Michael Hart was given $100,000,000 worth of computer time on
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His idea was that everybody who had access to a computer could have a
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During the 70s, he added some more classic American texts, and through
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That edition of Shakespeare was never released, due to copyright law
changes, but others followed.
Starting in 1991, Project Gutenberg began to take its current form,
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Today, we have a target of 200 books a month.
G.3. What has Project Gutenberg achieved?
Project Gutenberg is the original, and oldest, etext project on the
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In mid-2002, we are not only still going, we have made over 5,000
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We have many mirrors (copies) of our archives on all five continents.
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The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a 501(c)(3)
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In terms of the day-to-day production of eBooks, our volunteers run
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Our Production Directors help with general volunteer issues. The
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You can find current contact information for these people on the
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Subscribe to one of the Newsletters--weekly or monthly!
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Project Gutenberg also publishes other cultural works like movies and
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G.11. What books does Project Gutenberg publish?
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We cannot publish any texts still in copyright without permission.
This generally means that our texts are taken from books published
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So you won't find the latest bestsellers or modern computer books
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thousands of others.
These books are chosen by our volunteers. Simply, a volunteer decides
that a certain book should be in the archives, obtains the book and
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G.12. What other things does Project Gutenberg publish?
We have published some music files, in MIDI and MUS formats. We have
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Project Gutenberg, as such, does not choose books to publish. There is
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G.15. Why don't you have any / many books about history, geography,
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Why aren't there any / more PG books available in French, Spanish,
German, etc.?
If we can legally publish a book, and it isn't in the archives, it's
because no volunteer has produced it yet. At the moment, we have a
predominance of English language novels because that is what most
people have chosen to work on.
We're always looking for new languages and topics, and always
delighted to see people producing them. If we don't have enough of the
types of books you would like to see, why don't you help us out by
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G.16. Why don't you have any books by Steven King, Tom Clancy,
Tolkien, etc.?
Project Gutenberg can publish only books that are in the public
domain [C.10] unless we have the permission of the copyright holder.
Current bestsellers have not yet entered the public domain, and we're
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G.17. Why is Project Gutenberg so set on using Plain Vanilla ASCII?
Don't misrepresent us--we support and publish many open formats, but,
yes, we do want to have a plain text version of everything possible.
We're looking at our history, and we're planning for the long
term--the _very_ long term.
Today, Plain Vanilla ASCII can be read, written, copied and printed
by just about every simple text editor on every computer in the world.
This has been so for over thirty years, and is likely to be so for the
foreseeable future. We've seen formats and extended character sets
come and go; plain text stays with us. We can still read Shakespeare's
First Folios, the original Gutenberg Bible, the Domesday Book, and
even the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Rosetta Stone (though we may have
trouble with the language!), but we can't read many files made in
various formats on computer media just 20 years ago.
We're trying to build an archive that will last not only decades,
but _centuries_.
The point of putting works in the PG archive is that they are copied
to many, many public sites and individual computers all over the
world. No single disaster can destroy them; no single government can
suppress them. Long after we're all dead and gone, when the very
concept of an ISP is as quaint as gas streetlamps, when HTML reads
like Middle English, those texts will still be safe, copied, and
available to our descendants.
The PG archive is so valuable, yet free and easily portable, that even
if every current PG volunteer vanished overnight, people around the
world would copy and preserve it.
If the ZIP format loses popularity, and is replaced by better
compression, it will be easy to convert the zip formats automatically
(and we post all plain-text files in unzipped format as well). If hard
drives are replaced by optical memory, it will be easy to copy the
files onto that. If even ASCII is superseded by Unicode or one of its
descendants, it will be possible for our grandchildren to convert it
automatically (and ASCII is included in Unicode anyway).
By contrast, many of us have files saved in proprietary formats from
word-processors only 5 or 10 years old that are already impractical
for us to read. Some of our files produced just a few years ago using
non-ASCII character sets like Codepage 850 are already giving problems
for some readers. Some eBook reader formats launched within the last
few years are already obsolete. We have learned from that experience.
We also encourage other open formats based on plain text, like HTML
and XML, and even occasionally not-so-open ones when simple formatting
isn't enough, but plain text and ASCII is the only format and
character set we're sure of in a rapidly-changing technological
landscape.
Please see also the FAQ [F.1] "What formats does Project Gutenberg
publish?" for more detailed discussion of formats.
Readers' FAQ
About Finding eBooks:
R.1. How can I find an eBook I'm looking for?
For PG books, the simplest way is to go to the home page at
, type the Author or Title into the
search form, press the "Search" button, and follow the choices.
As of late 2002, there is a full-text search available at
where you can search not only for titles and authors, but any
words or phrases you want to look up. For example, entering
"Ample make this bed" and running an "entire books" search for
all words leads you to Poems Of Emily Dickinson, Series Two.
R.2. Can I get a complete list of Project Gutenberg eBooks?
Yes. There are two main options:
GUTINDEX.ALL is the raw list of files posted. You will find it at:
PGWHOLE.TXT is the list of files cataloged. A Zipped version is:
When we post a book, the posting information contains title and
author, eBook number, base filename and schedule year and month.
This raw information goes into GUTINDEX.ALL.
After posting, our catalogers get to work and add more information
--things like full title, subtitle, author birth and death dates,
Library of Congress Classification, full filenames and sizes. When
a book has been cataloged, it is entered onto the website database
so that you can search for it. PGWHOLE.TXT is a summary of the
books in the website database.
People who want to bypass the search on the website and find books
themselves will probably want to use GUTINDEX.ALL, since it doesn't
wait for the cataloging.
R.3. How can I download a PG text that hasn't been cataloged yet?
In short, just browse to:
.
If you find an eBook in many different places, the odds are good that
it came from one original source, and was copied around.
It does sometimes happen that people duplicate the transcription of
books already made into text. Sometimes it's because they didn't find
the version already made. Sometimes they have a different edition, and
want to transcribe that. Mostly, though, we all try not to do more
work than we have to.
About Using the Web Site:
R.7. Why couldn't I reach your site? (or: Why is your site slow?)
This isn't common, but it happens. Project Gutenberg is a very busy
site, probably one of the busiest non-commercial sites on the Web, and
sometimes the amount of traffic causes a slowdown.
There may also be a bottleneck somewhere else between you and the
site. If at first you don't succeed, _don't tell us_, just try, try
again. The correct address is either:
http://promo.net/pg/
or
https://www.gutenberg.org/
R.8. I get an error when I try to download a book.
We do not keep e-text files on this site. Instead, many FTP sites
throughout the world hold the whole Project Gutenberg archive of
texts. An FTP site is just a computer on the Internet that specializes
in holding files for download and sending them to people on request.
You can find a list of FTP sites that hold Gutenberg texts at
.
When you're searching or browsing for titles and authors, you're on
this Project Gutenberg site, but when you click on the book to
download it, you are connected to an FTP site. At the time you click
on the filename, your browser contacts an FTP site and tries to
download the file from there. If you get an error, it could be because
the FTP site is busy, or because there's a network traffic bottleneck
between you and that FTP site, or because the text you're looking for
is missing from that FTP site.
Usually, the easiest solution is to choose another FTP site to
download your text from. Go to the Search page, choose a different FTP
site, and search again for your text.
Tip: You should always try to choose the FTP site closest to you. Not
only are you helping to minimize Net traffic by choosing a nearby
site, but your file will download faster!
If all else fails, note the year and the filename of the book you
want, choose an FTP site from this list and click on one of them. Then
browse your way through the listings to the file you want.
For example, if you find "Lady Susan" by Jane Austen, you will see
that it was published by Gutenberg in 1997, and its filename is
lsusn10.txt, so browse to one of the FTP sites, choose the directory
called etext97 and click (or right-click and Save, depending on your
browser) on the file lsusn10.txt.
R.9. I searched for a book I know is in Project Gutenberg, but got no
results.
First go to the Advanced Search page. Sometimes you may miss in
searching because of alternative spellings, so try searching
separately using just one word in Author or Title. Read the Search
Tips.
If that fails, you can Browse through the site catalog. Let's say
you're looking for "The Wandering Jew" by Eugene Sue.
Go to the PG Home page: , and if you have no luck with
that, you might be able to find it listed as being In Progress
somewhere on their Books In Progress and Requested page at
.
R.10. Can I copy your website, or your website materials?
No.
Keeping the PG site updated with the latest e-text releases is an
ongoing job, and our experience is that people, however
well-intentioned, do not keep copies up to date. We want there to be
one clear source for people seeking the latest Project Gutenberg
information, and we think that having a lot of out-of-date copies and
partial copies scattered around the net would be a bad thing.
We welcome mirrors and copies of our e-texts, in new FTP sites [R.14],
but the main web site itself is copyrighted and may not be copied.
R.11. Your site doesn't look right in my browser.
I clicked on a button, and nothing happened.
We take a lot of trouble to ensure that our website uses only valid,
standard HTML, and we're not even slightly tempted to use glitzy
features that look good in one browser but don't work in another, so
we can promise you that our site is not the problem.
The site uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a W3C standard since 1996.
Some older browsers have a buggy implementation of CSS, and this can
cause some things to appear off-kilter. If your browser is even older,
or doesn't know about CSS at all (as in the case of Lynx, for
example) it should have no problem.
If you actually clicked on a button, like the Search button or the
Post button on the Volunteers' Web Board page, and nothing happened,
you might be behind a proxy or web filter that doesn't like you making
POST requests. If you have a web filter switched on, turn it off,
reload the page and try again.
R.12. What does that thing about "Select FTP Site" mean?
Our texts are not actually held on the website. The website just holds
an index; the files themselves are held on many sites throughout the
world, called FTP sites. When you have found the book you're looking
for, and you make that final click to get it, you're not actually
talking to our website any more--you are transferred to the FTP site
you selected. Some FTP sites are near you; some are far away. Some may
be faster than others, even if they are about the same distance; some
may have temporary technical problems.
You should usually select the FTP site nearest you. If you find you're
having problems with that one, you can select another.
R.13. What exactly is an FTP site anyway?
FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, one of the oldest and most
reliable protocols of the internet. This is the method by which a file
can be copied from one computer to another.
An FTP site, or FTP server, is a computer that holds files that people
can upload and download. In the case of PG, the Posting Team upload
our texts when they're ready to two main FTP servers,
and , which serve as
our master copies.
Other FTP sites around the world automatically download the files from
these master sites, so they have a full set of PG publications for you
to download. Because they only check for updates and new files at
intervals, some FTP sites may be a day or two behind. Some FTP sites
don't have space available for everything, so they may hold only the
zipped versions of the files. But most FTP sites will have the
entire PG collection. These are called FTP "mirrors", since they are a
copy of the original.
Many FTP sites exist that offer a full PG mirror but are not on our
FTP sites list. Commonly, these are in schools, where they serve the
local students, but don't have enough bandwidth to offer downloads to
worldwide users.
R.14. Can I become an FTP mirror?
Yes! We're always looking for more FTP mirrors.
If you manage an FTP site with a few GB of space, please check our
Contact Information page
and contact the appropriate person, who will make the arrangements for
you. If space is a problem, you can consider holding only zipped
copies of the texts. We can move you up or down the FTP site list as
you want more or less traffic.
R.15. Can I make a private FTP mirror for my school, library or
organization?
Yes.
We like all FTP mirrors to be open to as many people as possible, but
we know that not all schools have the resources to be a public mirror,
so we welcome all mirrors.
And anyway, you don't even have to ask, because we don't control
what happens to our texts once we post them!
R.16. When I clicked on the file I want, nothing happened.
When you select a file for download, your request goes to the FTP site
you selected, not to our website. If the FTP site you selected is
having problems, or if there is the Net version of a traffic jam
between you and it, you may have problems downloading.
Select a different FTP site [R.12] and try again.
R.17. How many texts are downloaded through the web site?
We don't really do statistics, but in one particular month for which
we did, we had a figure of about 800,000 searches completed. Since the
final request for download goes to the FTP site selected and not to our
website, we can't confirm that all of these were actually downloaded,
but we expect that most people who have gone all the way through the
search will finish the job.
In another month, we had about 1,000,000 downloads of files from
ftp.ibiblio.org, our main FTP site. This does not count downloads from
other FTP sites, of course. Why are there more downloads than
searches? Because people who are already familiar with getting PG
texts can skip the website search and download straight from the FTP
sites.
R.18. What are the most popular books?
We very rarely do statistics, but on one occasion in late 1999 when we
did, we found the top author searches to be:
1 shakespeare
2 poe
3 doyle
4 melville
5 dante
6 joyce
7 shaw
8 christie
9 conrad
10 porter
11 verne
12 hemingway
13 darwin
14 miller
15 woolf
16 zola
17 king
18 eliot
19 churchill
20 smith
21 twain
and the top individual books searched for to the point of downloading
were:
1. Lady Susan, by Jane Austen
2. 1st PG Collection of Edgar Allan Poe
3. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
4. Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
5. A Christmas Carol, by Dickens
6. The King James Bible
7. Twelve Stories and a Dream, by H.G. Wells
8. Stories by Modern American Authors
9. Lock and Key Library, Magic & Real Detectives
10. [Hans Christian] Andersen's Fairy Tales
11. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving
These numbers vary a lot. When a movie based on a classic is released,
downloads of that eBook go through the roof!
About Downloading and Using Project Gutenberg eBooks:
R.19. Should I download a ZIP or a TXT file?
If you know how to unzip a file, then downloading the zip is faster.
For some non-text eBooks that contain multiple files, like HTML with
included images, only a zip file may be available. For some other
formats, like MP3 or MPEG, there may not be a zipped version available
because the native format of the file is already compressed enough
that zipping it doesn't save much.
R.20. I've got a ZIP file. What do I do with it?
Unzip it.
If you want a free program, you could try the open source Info-Zip
software available at
and WinZip from are among many popular
shareware utilities that allow you to unzip files.
Mac-users using Stuffit Expander may like to set a preference (File /
Preferences / Cross Platform) to "Convert text files to Macintosh format
. . . When a file is known to contain text". This gets rid of strange
characters (linefeeds), which are not wanted on a Mac, at the beginnings
of lines. MacZip is another free program for Macs. Mac users can also
try ZipIt or other shareware programs available from the Info-Mac
archives, e.g. from
itself, but PalmOS-based devices from other
manufacturers, like:
the Franklin eBookman .
the Sony Clie and
Because of the number of makers of PalmOS-based devices, you can buy
them with lots of combinations of features--color screen, audio,
different memory sizes. Of course, Palms have other applications
besides eBook reading. Palms are the smallest and most portable of the
three classes, and tend to have the best battery life for travelling,
but they also have the smallest screen. Just about all reader software
will run on Palms, except the Microsoft Reader, which runs only on
Pocket PCs, but you don't need the Microsoft Reader for Project
Gutenberg eBooks.
In Pocket PCs, the Compaq iPaq is by far the most common in mid-2002.
More expensive and bulkier than a Palm, it does have a bigger screen.
Like the Palms, it can perform many functions besides reading eBooks.
Only Pocket PCs can support the Microsoft Reader, but this is not
necessary for reading Project Gutenberg eBooks.
The RocketBook, and its successor the Gemstar REB1100,
are quite different from the others.
These were built specifically for reading eBooks, and do not have
additional functions. They are not, technically, PDAs. Their screens
are bigger, and excellent for reading, but do not offer color. They
also don't offer a choice of readers--the dedicated reader is built-in
to the device. Both of them require the eBooks you load to be
formatted for their reader, and files made for them usually have the
extension .rb for RocketBook. The REB1100 does not come with the
RocketLibrarian, which is the program you run on your PC to turn an
etext into a RocketBook file, but people are still making .rb files,
and the RocketLibrarian is still available and popular among an
enthusiastic group of Rocket users. (The REB1200 is entirely different
from the REB1100, and, as far as we know, PG etexts cannot easily be
transferred to it.)
In summary, the Rocket/REB1100 is a dedicated reader, with a good
screen, but limited to what it does.
Palms are relatively cheap and common, with a wide range of options,
and the capacity to function as PDAs as well. They can run all
common readers except the Microsoft one.
The iPaq has a good color screen, but is
bulkier than a Palm, and can run lots of readers, including the
Microsoft one, but not all Palm readers are available for Pocket PC.
Like Palms, the iPaq can do other jobs besides displaying eBooks.
Different people make different choices among these for reading their
eBooks, and they all work well; it's a matter of personal taste.
R.33. How can I read a PG eBook on my PDA (Palm, iPaq, Rocket . . .)
To read a book on your PDA, you need to get the file into a format
that your reader software understands. Each PDA reader program will
work only with a specific format of file. Some will read several
formats, but, in general, it's a jungle of competing options.
Unless you use a Rocket or REB1100, you will need to install at least
one reader program, and many veteran readers install two or three to
deal with different formats. There are many of them available. In a
recent internal poll of Gutenberg volunteers who use PDAs,
C Spot Run ,
Mobipocket ,
PalmReader
were our favored choices for reader programs.
Further, the process may be different depending on which reader
software you're using. Each format that a reader understands has one
or more converter programs that run on your PC, and turn the plain
text file into that format. So in general, you have to:
1. Download the PG text
2. Edit the text for the layout the converter wants (often HTML).
3. Use the converter to create a file of the format the reader wants.
4. Transfer the converted file to your PDA.
If all this sounds too complicated, remember that many people take and
convert PG texts into many formats, and offer them for download from
their sites. Of course, there is no guarantee that someone will have
converted the particular eBook you want, but there are lots of
options. Try Blackmask , which lists
thousands of texts already converted for Mobipocket, iSilo, RocketBook
and the Microsoft Reader.
There are many other sites that serve pre-converted PG texts.
MemoWare is also a useful resource for
converted eBooks, and has lots of information, including an excellent
map of the readers and formats jungle at
Tecriture hosts a service that downloads
and converts PG texts on the fly, and delivers them straight to you.
If you're "rolling your own", you'll probably need to convert our
plain texts to HTML at some point, because a lot of converters require
HTML as input, and this is a common theme in readers' explanations of
how they get texts onto their PDAs. Don't panic! You don't have to be
a HTML wizard to do this--in fact, you don't need to know anything
about HTML at all! Usually, it's just a matter of removing some line
ends and Saving As HTML. You won't get a lot of fancy markup, or
images out of thin air, but you will get the book.
One of the main things you usually have to do in making HTML is unwrap
the lines. If you're making your HTML manually, this is usually done
by replacing two paragraph marks with some nonsense marker like @@Z@@,
replacing all single paragraph marks with a space, and replacing the
nonsense marker with a paragraph mark. After unwrapping, the text can
just be Saved As HTML.
There are some applications that specifically assist with
auto-converting text into HTML:
GutenMark was specifically written
for the purpose, and knows enough about PG conventions to do a very
good job.
InterParse is a Windows-based generic text
parser that is very easy and intuitive to use.
The World Wide Web Consortium lists some other options at
If you're using a RocketBook or REB1100, you don't have either the
choices or the confusion to deal with. One of our volunteers who uses
a RocketBook offered this recipe for getting a PG text onto a
RocketBook:
On converting to Rocket:
1. Download text file.
2. Using your utility for showing formatting, enter your word
processing program's edit mode.
3. Replace all double paragraph marks with some nonsense sequence
that can't possibly actually be there, such as @@Z@@.
4. Replace all single paragraph marks with one single space
(enter).
5. Replace your nonsense sequence with one paragraph mark.
6. Convert all your double spaces to single spaces. Repeat this
until you get "0" for how many replacements were made.
7. Save in HTML.
8. Go into your Rocket Librarian. Use "import file using Rocket
Librarian." Go and pick up the file, which will be automatically
converted to .rb in this process.
This sounds long, but it usually takes me under three minutes except
for a very long text. I've never taken longer than five minutes. You
can just go in and pick up the text file with Rocket Librarian, but
what you get onscreen doing this looks very odd. Steps 2-7 are not
essential, and if I'm in a hurry to read something once I might skip
them, but if it's something I know I want to keep I use them.
This formula is not ideal for poetry or blank verse--if you want to
keep the lines unwrapped, you should avoid removing the paragraph
marks.
Another volunteer, who reads on Mobipocket
offered this suggestion:
I use the MobiPocket Publisher, available free from
www.mobipocket.com. It wants to take a HTML file as input, so the
first thing I have to do is convert my PG text to HTML.
I usually do this by running GutenMark, available at
. I can also do it in Microsoft
Word using the following sequence:
Edit / Replace / Special and choose Paragraph Mark twice (or, from
replace, you can type in ^p^p to get two Paragraph Marks) and replace
with @@@@. Replace All. This saves off real paragraph ends by marking
them with a nonsense sequence.
Now Replace _one_ Paragraph Mark (^p) with a space. Replace All. This
removes the line-ends.
Finally, replace @@@@ with _one_ Paragraph Mark. Replace All. This
brings back the Paragraph Ends.
Now I can Save As HTML.
GutenMark does a better job of converting to HTML than my simple Word
formula, since it recognizes standard PG features, and sometimes
Mobipocket doesn't like the HTML produced from Word--it complains of a
missing file, or doesn't recognize quotation marks.
Having got my HTML file, I open Mobipocket Publisher, choose "Project
Gutenberg", Add the File I created, and just Publish it to MobiPocket
.PRC format. Then I pick it up on my iPaq the next time I sync. The
whole process takes two or three minutes, and the results, since I
discovered GutenMark, are good.
I recently came across InterParse 4 at . It
doesn't have the built-in knowledge of GutenMark, so the results aren't
as good, but it's really easy to use, and you can see the effect of your
changes onscreen as you do it. For most PG books, all you have to do is
just Open the text file and choose Options / Remove all CRLFs (Except at
Paragraph End), then Convert / Text to HTML and Save As the HTML
filename you want. Quick and painless.
About the Files:
R.34. What types of files are there, and how do I read them?
The vast majority of our files are plain text. You can read these with
any editor or text viewer or browser. Some are HTML. You can read
these with any browser.
For a full listing of other file types as of mid-2002, and how to read
them, please see the Formats FAQ [F.2].
R.35. What do the filenames of the texts mean?
PG files are named for the text, the edition, and the format type.
As of February, 2002, all PG files are named in "8.3" format--that is,
up to eight characters, a dot, and three more characters.
The first five characters in the filename are simply a unique name for
that text, for example, "Ulysses" by Joyce begins with "ulyss".
If the text has been posted as both a 7-bit and 8-bit text, then the
first character of the filename will be a 7 or an 8, to indicate that.
For example, we have both 7crmp10 and 8crmp10 for Dostoevsky's
Crime and Punishment.
The 6th and 7th characters of the name are the edition number--01
through 99. We normally start at edition 10 (1.0); numbers lower than
that indicate that we think the text needs some more work; numbers
higher than that mean that someone has corrected the original edition
10.
The 8th character of the filename, if it exists, indicates either the
version or the format of the file. When we get a different version of
the text based on a different source, we give it an a, b, c, as for
example if the text is from a different translation. Where we have
posted a text in a different format, we also add an eighth
character--"h" for HTML, "x" for XML, "r" for RTF, "t" for TeX, "u"
for Unicode are established formats. There have been some experimental
postings with "l" for LIT, and "p" for either PRC or PDB.
So, for example:
7crmp10 is our first edition of Crime and Punishment in plain ASCII
8sidd10 is our first edition of Siddhartha, as an 8-bit text
dyssy10b is our first edition of our third translation of Homer's
Odyssey, in plain ASCII
jsbys11 is our second edition of Jo's Boys, in plain ASCII
vbgle10h is our HTML format of our first edition of Darwin's
Voyage of the Beagle
7ldv110 is our 7-bit ASCII version of the first volume of the
Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci
To make it worse, we don't always stick to these rules, for example:
1ddc810 is our first edition of the first book of Dante's
Divina Commedia in Italian, as an 8-bit text
80day10 is our first edition of Verne's Around the World in 80 days,
in plain 7-bit ASCII in English.
emma10 is our first edition of Jane Austen's "Emma"--with a
4-character basename instead of 5.
Some series have special, non-standard names. Shakespeare is named
with a digit representing the overall source (First Folio, etc), then
"ws", then a series number, so for example 0ws2610, 1ws2610 and
2ws2610 are all versions of "Hamlet". The Tom Swift series is named
with a two-digit prefix denoting the series number, then "tom", so for
example 01tom10 is "Tom Swift and his Motor-Cycle".
And what should we do with a text from a different source that is
formatted as HTML? For example, if dyssy10b is the name of the third
translation, what should the HTML version be named? dyssy10bh is
obvious, but it uses 9 characters.
The problem, of course, is that we are trying to fit a lot of
information into an 8-character filename, and as the collection grows,
and the number of formats and versions increases, we come across more
pressure on filenames, so while the filename is a good guide to the
contents, it's not definitive.
R.36. What is the difference within PG between an "edition" and a "version"?
We give the name "edition" to a corrected file made from an existing
PG text. For example, if someone points out some typos in our file of
"War and Peace", we will fix them, and, if enough are found to warrant
a "new edition", then instead of just replacing the file wrnpc10.txt,
we may make a new file wrnpc11.txt, and leave the original alone. A
new edition is always filed under the same year and etext number as
the original--it's just an update.
We give the name "version" to a completely independent e-text made
from the same original book, but a different source. For example,
Homer's Odyssey was translated by many different people, but they all
worked from the same book. The translations by Lang, Butler, Pope and
Chapman are very different, but they all come from the same root.
Thus, these are all "versions" of Homer's Odyssey. We give them all
the same basename--dyssy--and each gets a new number, but we keep the
original basename, and add a letter to the filename to indicate that
they are "versions" of the same original book:
dyssy10.txt Butler's Translation
dyssy10a.txt Butcher & Lang's Translation
dyssy10b.txt Pope's Translation
The differences don't have to be as extreme as this for us to create a
new version. "Clotelle"/"Clotel", for example, was a book published
multiple times in English by William Wells Brown, and each time, he
changed the text. We preserve three different texts of the same book
as different versions: clotl10 clotl10a and clotl10b.
R.37. What is the difference between an "etext" and an "eBook"?
If there is any, it seems to be in the eye of the Marketing
Department! Michael Hart started the whole thing, and coined the word
"Etext". The term "eBook" is gaining in popularity, even for texts
that are not full books, so we've started using that more now.
R.38. What are the "Etext/Ebook numbers" on the texts?
These are simply a series of numbers. We give one to each etext as it
is posted, so the earliest etexts have low numbers and later etexts
have higher numbers. Etext number 1 is the Declaration of
Independence, the first text that Michael Hart typed in to the
mainframe that he was using in 1971.
A few numbers are reserved for books that we hope to have in the PG
archive someday; for example, 1984 is reserved for Orwell's classic.
When we improve an text by making some corrections, we call it a new
EDITION, and it keeps the same etext number, but when we post a
different VERSION of the same text, from a different paper book--like
different translations of Homer's Odyssey--each new version gets a new
etext number.
R.39. What do the month and year on the text mean?
Project Gutenberg sets a production target for itself. The idea is
that we try to produce X texts in a month, and we date the texts
according to what month of our schedule they appear in. For example,
if our target for September 2000 was 50 texts, and we actually
produced 55, then the last five would be dated October 2000, and we'd
get a head-start on the month. At the time of writing, in July 2002,
that target is the publication of 200 books per month. However, our
actual production has far outpaced our targets, with the result that
the "head-start" has accumulated so much that we are currently
releasing books scheduled for March, 2004!
The fact that we're so far ahead of schedule makes this quite confusing
for newcomers. If it bothers you, just don't think about it! But at
least it's better than being _behind_ schedule. We didn't always produce
so many books. In the September 1994 newsletter, Michael Hart wrote:
As always, I am terrified of the prospect of
doubling our output to 16 Etexts per month for
next year, we really need your help!!!
That was when the Project's target was 8 Etexts per month. Today,
our target is heading towards 8 eBooks per _day_!
Copyright FAQ
C.1. What is copyright?
Copyright is a limited monopoly granted to the author of a work. It
gives the author the exclusive right, among other things, to make
copies of the work, hence the name.
C.2. Does copyright differ from country to country? From state to state?
Copyright laws are constantly changing all over the world. Each
country has its own copyright laws, some within the framework of
international treaties, some not. Within the U.S., copyright laws are
federal, and do not vary from state to state.
C.3. What are the copyright laws outside the U.S.?
Sorry, we can't advise on copyright law outside the U.S. We can point
you to resources like
which tries to summarize the various copyright regimes, but we can't
guarantee that these are accurate. Even when they are accurate, it is
very hard to express some of the subtleties of copyright law in a
summary--for example, the question of what constitutes "publication"
for copyright purposes is sometimes unclear.
C.4. Why does Project Gutenberg advise only on U.S. copyright issues?
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is registered in the
U.S. as a 501(c)(3) organization, and our two posting servers are
situated in the U.S., so we are subject to U.S. copyright law, and
only to U.S. copyright law.
Because copyright laws are so tangled and different between countries,
not only in the broad sweep but also in the detail, and because
Project Gutenberg is subject only to U.S. copyright law, we just don't
have the expertise, time or resources to research and advise on the
law in other countries.
C.5. I don't live in the U.S. Do these rules apply to me?
Your country's copyright laws are different from those in the U.S., and
understanding and dealing with them is up to you. If you have a book
that is in the public domain in your country, but not in the U.S., it
is perfectly legal for you to publish it personally there, but we
can't.
Similarly, it may be legal for us to publish it here, but not for you
to publish it, or perhaps even copy it, where you are.
There are organizations in other countries operating in more liberal
copyright regimes that may be able to publish texts that we cannot.
For example, Project Gutenberg of Australia at
can accept many works not eligible in
the U.S.
C.6. What is the public domain?
The public domain is the set of cultural works that are free of
copyright, and belong to everyone equally.
C.7. What can I do with a text that is in the public domain?
Anything you want! You can copy it, publish it, change its format,
distribute it for free or for money. You can translate it to other
languages (and claim a copyright on your translation), write a play
based on it (if it's a novel), or a novelization (if it's a play). You
can take one of the characters from the novel and write a comic strip
about him or her, or write a screenplay and sell that to make a movie.
You don't need to ask permission from anyone to do any of this. When a
text is in the public domain, it belongs as much to you as to anyone.
(However, when some character or part of the work is also trademarked,
as in the case of Tarzan, it may not be possible to release new works
with that trademark, since trademark does not expire in the same way
as copyright. If you propose to base new works on public domain
material, you should investigate possible trademark issues first.)
C.8. How does a book enter the public domain?
A book, or other copyrightable work, enters the public domain when its
copyright lapses or when the copyright owner releases it to the public
domain.
U.S. Government documents can never be copyrighted in the first place;
they are "born" into the public domain.
There are certain other exceptional cases: for example, if a substantial
number of copies were printed and distributed in the U.S. before March,
1989 without a copyright notice, and the work is of entirely American
authorship, or was first published in the United States, the work is in
the public domain in the U.S.
C.9. How does a copyright lapse?
Copyrights are issued for limited periods. When that period is up,
the book enters the public domain.
Copyrights can lapse in other ways. Some books published without a
copyright notice, for example, have fallen into the public domain.
C.10. What books are in the public domain?
Any book published anywhere before 1923 is in the public domain in
the U.S. This is the rule we use most.
U.S. Government publications are in the public domain. This is the
rule under which we have published, for example, presidential
inauguration speeches.
Books can be released into the public domain by the owners of their
copyrights.
Some books published without a copyright notice in the U.S. prior to
March 1st, 1989 are in the public domain.
Some books published before 1964, and whose copyright was not renewed,
are in the public domain.
If you want to rely on anything except the 1923 rule, things can get
complicated, and the rules do change with time. Please refer to our
Public Domain and Copyright How-To at
for more detailed information.
C.11. My book says that it's "Copyright 1894". Is it in the public domain?
Yes.
Its copyright date is 1894, which is before 1923, so its copyright has
lapsed.
C.12. How can a copyright owner release a work into the public domain?
A simple written statement, which may be placed into the work as
released, is sufficient. When a copyright holder places a book into
the public domain and wants PG to publish it, all we need is a
letter [V.70] saying that they are or were the holder of the copyright,
and that they have released it into the public domain.
C.13. When is an author not the owner of a copyright on his or her works?
An author may sell, assign, license, bequeath or otherwise transfer
his or her copyright to another party, such as a publisher or heir.
C.14. What does Project Gutenberg mean by "eligible"?
A book is eligible for inclusion in the archives if we can legally
publish it.
We can legally publish any material that is in the public domain in
the U.S. [C.10], or for which we have the permission of the copyright
holder.
C.15. I have a manuscript from 1900. Is it eligible?
Maybe not.
Works that were created but not "published" before 1978 will not enter
the public domain before the end of 2002. This gets complicated, and
it's not too common. If you have such a case, ask about it.
A borderline example is the classic "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by T. E.
Lawrence, which was actually printed and privately distributed, but
not "published", in 1922. We haven't been able to confirm any pre-1923
"publication" for this.
C.16. How come my paper book of Shakespeare says it's "Copyright 1988"?
Shakespeare was published long enough ago to be indisputably in the
public domain everywhere, so how can a Shakespeare text be
copyrighted?
There are two possibilities:
1. The author or publisher has changed or edited the text enough to
qualify as a "new edition", which gets a "new copyright".
2. The publisher has added extra material, such as an introduction,
critical essays, footnotes, or an index. This extra material is new,
and the publisher owns the copyright on it.
The problem with these practices is that a publisher, having added
this copyrighted material, or edited the text even in a minor way, may
simply put a copyright notice on the whole book, even though the main
part of it--the text itself--is in the public domain! And as time goes
on, the number of original surviving books that can be proved to be in
the public domain grows smaller and smaller; and meanwhile publishers
are cranking out more and more editions that have copyright notices.
Eventually it becomes harder and harder to prove that a particular
book _is_ in the public domain, since there are few pre-1923 copies
available as evidence.
Among the most important things PG does is preventing this creeping
perpetuation of copyright by proving, once and for all, that a
particular edition of a particular book _is_ in the public domain, so
that it can never be locked up again as the private property of some
publisher. We do this by filing a copy of the TP&V, the title page
where the copyright notice must be placed, so that if anyone ever
challenges the work's public domain status, we can point to a proven
public domain copy.
C.17. What makes a "new copyright"?
1. New edition
When a text is in the public domain, anyone--from you to the world's
biggest publisher--can edit it and republish the edited version. When
the edits are substantial enough, the edited work is deemed a "new
edition", and gets a new copyright, dating from the time the new
edition was created.
How substantial must the edits be to qualify as a "new edition"?
That is for a court to decide in any particular case. Changing some
punctuation or Americanizing British spelling would not qualify a work
for a new edition. Theorizing something about Shakespeare and
rewriting lots of lines in "Hamlet" to emphasize your point _would_
make a new edition. In between those extremes is a grey area, where
each new edition would have to be considered on a case-by-case basis.
A special case, that isn't quite a new edition, is when someone "marks
up" a public domain text in, for example, HTML. Where this happens,
the text is in the public domain, but the markup is copyrighted. We've
already seen that when an editor adds footnotes to a public domain
text, he owns copyright on the footnotes but not on the text:
similarly, when he adds markup to the text, he owns copyright on the
markup.
2. Translation
Translation is a common and justified special case of a new edition.
When someone translates a public domain work from one language to
another, they get a new copyright on the translation (but not on the
original, of course, which stays in the public domain so that lots
more people can use it.)
C.18. I have a 1990 book that I know was originally written in 1840,
but the publisher is claiming a new copyright. What should I do?
From a practical point of view, there's not much you can do about it.
It's a Catch-22 situation: in order to prove that the new printing
should be in the public domain, you need a provably public domain copy
to compare against the allegedly copyrighted edition, and if you have
that, you don't need the modern edition anyway.
C.19. I have a 1990 reprint of an 1831 original. Is it eligible?
Yes, as long as we can _show_ that it is a reprint, which usually
means that it has to _say_ that it's a reprint somewhere on the TP&V.
However, we need to be very careful in a case like this. Commonly, the
book itself is eligible, but introductions, indexes, footnotes,
glossaries, commentaries and other such extras may have been added
by the modern publisher, so you should not include them except where
you can prove that they are part of the reprinted material.
C.20. I have a text that I know was based on a pre-1923 book, but I
don't have the title page. Can I submit it to PG?
Unfortunately, no.
What you "know" isn't proof that we could take into court if we were
challenged about it in 20 years, and the whole problem of "new
copyright" [C.17] makes it effectively impossible to tell for sure
what is and isn't copyrighted anyway, without reliable evidence like
the title page.
You need to find a matching paper edition for proof. See the FAQ "I've
found an eligible text elsewhere on the Net, but it's not in the PG
archives. Can I just submit it to PG?" [V.62]
C.21. How does Project Gutenberg "clear" books for copyright?
Usually, we just look at the TP&V. If it was published before 1923, or
says it is a reprint of a pre-1923 edition, that's all we have to do.
In other cases, we may look up library publication data to prove, say,
that a book published in the U.S. without a copyright notice was
indeed published in the years when a copyright notice was required. Or
we may simply see that a particular text was published by the U.S.
Government.
The bottom line is the question: if someone comes to us claiming to
hold the copyright on a text, do we have proof to show that they're
wrong?
Whatever proof or search we have to do, we then file it, either on
paper or electronically, so that the proof will be available in 20 or
50 years' time, or whenever the challenge is made.
C.22. I want to produce a particular book. Will it be copyright cleared?
If it was published before 1923, you will have no problem with its
clearance. If you're relying on one of the other rules, it may just be
too much work to try and prove its public domain status.
C.23. I have some extra material (images, introduction, preface, missing
chapter) that should go into an existing PG text. Do I have to
copyright-clear my edition before submitting it?
Yes.
Otherwise we would have no proof that the extra material you're adding
isn't copyrighted by someone. It's quite common for modern publishers
to add introductions or illustrations to a public-domain novel, and we
need the same standard of proof for these additions that we do for the
main text.
This doesn't apply to an occasional word or two that was omitted by
mistake when the text was first typed. For example, you don't need
to clear another edition just to restore the words "thus perfected the"
and "eliminating all" to the sentence:
And while we Country, we were also sorts of tediums, disputable
possibilities, and deadlocks from the game.
while fixing typos.
C.24. I see some Project Gutenberg eBooks that are copyrighted. What's
up with that?
Authors or publishers may grant Project Gutenberg an unlimited license
to republish their works. In this kind of case, the copyright holders
still retain their rights, but grant permission for us to share these
eBooks with the world.
These copyrighted PG publications can still be copied, but the
permissions granted are spelled out in their headers, and usually
forbid anyone to republish them commercially.
C.25. What are "non-renewed" books?
Works published before 1964 needed to have their copyrights renewed in
their 28th year, or they'd enter into the public domain. Some books
originally published outside of the US by non-Americans are exempt
from this requirement, under GATT. Some works from before 1964 were
automatically renewed.
C.26. How can I get Project Gutenberg to clear a non-renewed book?
As of mid-2002, you probably can't. Because of all of the checks we
need to do to ensure that the book wasn't renewed, or wasn't one of
the exceptions that was automatically renewed, we just don't have the
time to do it. But we're working on it. Right now, we're processing
copyright renewal records with the aim of making them searchable.
Volunteers' FAQ
About the Basics:
V.1. How do I get started as a Project Gutenberg volunteer?
What you actually need to do to produce a PG text can be stated very
simply:
1. Borrow or buy an eligible book.
2. Send us a copy of the front and back of the title page.
3. Turn the book into electronic text.
4. Send it to us.
That's it! All the rest of the producing parts of the FAQ are about
the details of how different people approach these steps.
Different people find their own ways into PG work, and once in, find
their own niches. If you have your own ideas, don't let anything here
stop you from pursuing them.
Some people just read the FAQs, go up to their attic, pull an eligible
book off the shelf, send TP&V [V.25] in, and start typing or scanning.
Next time we hear from them is when they send in [V.46] the completed
eBook for posting. It can be as simple as that.
Some people just download existing PG texts, re-proof them very
carefully and send in corrections.
Some people find regular collaborators through gutvol-d or the
Volunteers' Board or the distributed proofing sites, earn a reputation
as reliable proofers, and continue working as proofers.
Most people start small, and after a little experience of distributed
proofreading or other proofing, begin their PG career as producers.
If you're a typist, cheer now, because you can ignore all the
complicated paraphernalia of computer interfaces, and scanners, and
the quality of OCR software and the mistakes it makes. You can just
sit down at the keyboard with your eligible [V.18] book.
If you're not a typist, start thinking about scanners. It may be a
while before you're ready to start scanning for yourself, but it's
never too early to find out about them.
As soon as you have a solid grasp of how to turn a book into an etext,
please start thinking about how you're going to become a producer.
While proofing work is valuable, PG can only add books when someone
makes the effort to actually make etexts from them, and the people who
run distributed and co-operative proofing projects have to do a lot of
work before and after the proofing step; we want to spread that around
as widely as possible. Project Gutenberg needs more producers!
Whatever you do, _don't_ just hang around expecting someone to offer
you a task to undertake. There is no "head office" where overworked
staff occasionally need interns to do filing and odd-jobs. There are
maybe 200 fairly regular contributors to PG, producers and significant
proofers. We almost never meet each other in person. We have jobs, and
families, and other interests. We work for PG when we can, and when we
want to. In many ways, you could look at us as 200 unrelated people,
each doing our own etext project, using Project Gutenberg as an
umbrella group that sets loose standards, files copyright proofs and
provides secure placement for the finished texts. Since we each have
our own self-assigned single-person tasks, there isn't too much room
to delegate some of that work to a beginner. By all means, volunteer
for some tasks--on the Volunteers' Board, or in gutvol-d--but you
should think in terms of defining your own tasks, and making your own
contribution.
Orientation.
Absolutely everyone--scanners, typists, proofers--should first spend
some time working on a distributed or co-operative proofing project.
This will allow you to get a feel for what happens in making an etext
from paper pages without committing you to more than a few hours'
work.
This is not in any way an institutional requirement, since we don't
have any institutional requirements, but it is very good advice. Many
volunteers start eagerly, wanting to do lots of PG work, and then drop
out because they took on too much, too fast, without understanding the
nature of the work. Don't let that happen to you. Take it in small
chunks.
Check out these distributed proofing sites:
Charles Franks:
Dewayne Cushman:
and spend a few hours over a couple of weeks just processing some
pages for real.
While you're doing that, you should also join a couple of PG mailing
lists [V.12]--gutvol-d and either the weekly or monthly Newsletter list.
Reading these will start to get you connected to what's going on.
Browse the Volunteers' Board--there may be some offers going, and
there's a lot of experience captured in some of those "back-issues",
so don't confine yourself to the front page.
Inform yourself on e-text issues generally, not just within Project
Gutenberg. Explore The On-Line Books Page and the IPL [R.5] and from
them find other eBooks available on-line.
Have a look at our In-Progress List and some lists of suggestions
from others [B.4].
Look at sites like Blackmask and
Pluckerbooks and Bookshare to
learn how our work is being used as a basis and copied and converted
and amplified in many other projects.
Above all, READ a few Project Gutenberg eBooks! You don't have to read
them in full; you don't need to spend weeks poring over Dostoyevsky or
studying Shakespeare. Just download a few and skim them--you'll absorb
what a PG text should be quite painlessly, and maybe you'll get caught
up in the story! If you're looking for light reading, and can't think
of something that you specifically want, how about these all-time
favorites:
The Gift of the Magi, by O. Henry.
The Lady, or the Tiger?, by Frank R. Stockton
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery
The Marvelous Land of Oz, by L. Frank Baum
A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Heidi, by Johanna Spyri
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, by Mark Twain
Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell
Tarzan of the Apes, by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Tom Swift and his Motor-Cycle, by Victor Appleton
Rebecca Of Sunnybrook Farm, by Kate Douglas Wiggin
Little Lord Fauntleroy, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Aesop's Fables
Grimms' Fairy Tales
The Art of War, by Sun Tzu
Dracula, by Bram Stoker
Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann David Wyss
The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
If you have a taste for detectives and mysteries, there's
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle
Monsieur Lecoq, by Emile Gaboriau
The Mysterious Affair at Styles, by Agatha Christie
Arsene Lupin, by Edgar Jepson & Maurice Leblanc
Edgar Allen Poe's "The Gold-Bug" and
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" in The Works of Edgar Allan Poe V. 1
For the excessive buckling of various swashes, see:
The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope
The Man in the Iron Mask, by Dumas, Pere
The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy
Effen youse got a hankerin' for a Western, there's:
Riders of the Purple Sage, by Zane Grey
The Virginian, Horseman Of The Plains, by Owen Wister
Back to God's Country, By James Oliver Curwood
Selected Stories by Bret Harte
Jean of the Lazy A, by B. M. Bower
Or if you prefer your fiction more domesticated, there's:
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
The Warden, by Anthony Trollope
The Heir of Redclyffe, by Charlotte M Yonge
Mother, by Kathleen Norris
For something to raise a smile, you can rely on:
The Devil's Dictionary, by Ambrose Bierce
The Wallet of Kai Lung, by Ernest Bramah
The Importance of Being Earnest, by Oscar Wilde
Three Men in a Boat, by Jerome K. Jerome
Piccadilly Jim, by P. G. Wodehouse
If poetry is your thing, you have lots to choose from:
Shakespeare's Sonnets
Project Gutenberg's Book of English Verse
The Home Book of Verse, edited by Burton Stevenson
The Complete Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman
Now, that's just a handful from our over 5,000 eBooks, so don't tell
me you can't find anything to read! If you do have ideas of your own,
download GUTINDEX.ALL or PGWHOLE.TXT and browse through the whole
list, or Browse by Author on the website at
.
Download a few. Read them on your PC, or reformat them and print them
out, or convert them for your PDA. Get used to working with and
formatting text. Look at the formatting decisions that earlier
volunteers have made--they're not entirely consistent; different
people make different choices, different books require different
methods, and PG conventions have shifted slightly over the last 10
years--but they're all perfectly readable and convertible today.
If you find typos [R.26] in any of them, tell us! That's also a part
of being a Gutenberg volunteer. Our eBooks _improve_ with time!
If you're thinking of making the best use of your time looking for
errors in posted texts, a good start would be to download 40 or 50
texts, and run a spelling checker and gutcheck [P.1] on them all,
spending only 5 or 10 minutes on each. Having had a quick look at all
of them, concentrate on the ones that seem to have most
problems--where automated checkers see 10 problems, a careful human
will usually be able to pick up 20.
Getting Productive
OK, so you've seen what etexts should look like, you know what we do,
and proofing hasn't scared you off. It's time to step up and become a
producer. If you're not a typist and you don't have a scanner, take a
detour down to the Scanning FAQ [S.1] now, and come back when your
scanner is set up. If you're a typist or you've already got a scanner,
read on . . .
Get a book. Just do it, OK?
Ya gotta start somewhere, right? And finding an eligible book is
definitely somewhere.
Finding an eligible book is a threshold for many beginning
volunteers--it's the first major step on the way to producing. For a
lot of people, it's also the toughest barrier they have to cross.
Fortunately, the barrier is only psychological, and can be crossed in
a few minutes.
It's an unfamiliar process, and one that a lot of beginners feel some
anxiety about. Don't. It's quite straightforward: it's just buying a
book--you've done that, haven't you? Don't over-think it, don't worry
about whether you're making the "right" choice, don't spend months
comparing lists and choosing. Just do it. Once you've got your first,
you'll wonder what all the fuss was about. Thanks to the wonders of
the internet, your book can be on its way to you in an hour if you
have $20 to spend.
Typists blessed with a good local library don't even have to buy their
books--they can just borrow one and type it up! (You may be able to
scan a library book, but get some experience with scanning first, and
avoid damage!)
Let's deal with the decisions and other issues of picking one.
_Copyright_
For your first book, don't try getting fancy with copyright issues.
Choose one that was published before 1923, and you're in the clear
for U.S. and PG copyright purposes. You can read the dates just as
well as we can--with books printed before 1923, there are no hidden
catches: "Pre-'23 is free". Just read the TP&V [V.25] of the book,
and see that it was printed before 1923, and you have no problems.
Of course, reprints [V.19] of books copyrighted pre-1923 (and various
other cases) are also clear, but if you have any concerns, just stick
to pre-'23 editions.
_Which book?_
The answer to this question is different for everyone, but see how
much you agree with the following statements:
"I have a favorite book, and I'd really like to produce that."
Well, hey, this is no problem! You already know what you want.
Go check out whether the book is already on-line [V.29].
"I'd like to work on an important book, but I don't know which."
Well, everybody's definition of "important" is different, but some
people have put their various ideas forward already; you can see
whether you agree with them! The InProg List contains some, with the
notation "Suggested book to transcribe" beside them. Steve Harris
keeps a list of unproduced possibles at Steveharris.net. John Mark
Ockerbloom's "Books Requested" page lists titles that people have
asked for. [B.4] Your problem if you fall into this category is that
other people probably wanted to produce "important" books too, and
lots are already done.
"I just want an easy, trouble-free book to start with."
Your first book doesn't have to be War and Peace (we've already got
that anyway!). Here's a tip: try looking for children's or what we
would nowadays call "Young Adult" books. These are typically short,
and may have large print, which makes life much easier if you're
scanning. They age well: children's stories from a century or more ago
are still readable and interesting to children today. We have many
children's and YA eBooks: not just the classics like Grimm and
Andersen and Heidi and Oz and Peter Pan and William Tell, but
lesser-known but still enchanting stories like The Counterpane Fairy,
or Lang's Fairy books. There are series, like the Motor Girls, or the
(Country) Twins series, or the Bobbsey Twins. There is lots and lots
of material here for you to start with, and these books are relatively
plentiful, since they were made to take the kind of treatment children
dish out, and many of them have been in school libraries or attics for
years.
Whatever your choice, pick a book that you'll like; you'll be living
with it up close and personal for a while. Light reading, adventure
fiction, and books aimed at younger readers are safe first choices for
most people. If you admire 19th Century scientists or scholars, and
want to immortalize their work, great! But don't feel that you have to
dive in at the deep end just because someone else wants you to.
_Getting your book: a practical exercise_
The Search
At this point, you've got a list of books--maybe just one, maybe
several by an author or two, maybe just a genre like "Children's
Books" with some specific ideas. Maybe your mind is still wide-open.
Before used booksellers had the Net, finding a particular old book was
a daunting job. Booksellers had informal networks among themselves and
exchanged catalogs so that each would know something about what was
available elsewhere, but, for a buyer, finding a particular book was
still hit-and-miss. Now, however, a number of large sites provide a
service to booksellers, where they can list their inventories for
people to search from anywhere.
So now we go hunt for them on the Net. No, you don't have to buy them
on the Net--you can rummage in booksales and garage sales and used
bookstores, and that's its own kind of fun, though on a physical hunt,
what you need is to bring a long list of "already done" books with
you. But even if you never buy over the Net, it's a vast source of
information about what books are available, which are plentiful, and
which are cheap. It gives you some experience of what to expect when
you do your in-person browsing.
Here's a story of a typical Net-hunt. And you can follow along with it
at home. :-) Your results, and the sites you end up at, will be
different from mine, but even if you don't end up buying a book on this
hunt, you'll get some experience of what's involved. C'mon, do it with
me--see if you can find a better bargain!
I'm starting with two lists, and I'll follow up whatever seems
promising. I'd like to spend about $20--might go to $30. Definitely
not interested in $50 and up. I'm keeping in mind that I'll have to
add a bit for delivery--usually up to $10 within the U.S., but can get
expensive if you're in Perth, and ordering from a bookstore in Munich.
I'm also avoiding anything that might be tricky to clear on this
search, and confining myself to books printed before 1923.
Of course, by the time you read this, some of these books may already
have been produced, so if you're actually thinking of buying any,
check carefully first!
My first shortlist consists of books that caught my eye from David
Price's In-Progress List, Steve Harris's site, and The On-Line Books
Requested page [B.4], and it reads:
Louisa May Alcott: The Inheritance
E. W. Hornung: Irralie's Bushranger
E. W. Hornung: Stingaree
A. A. Milne: The Dover Road
A. A. Milne: Once on a Time
Samuel Richardson: Pamela
Oscar Wilde: The Critic as Artist
As well as following along with my list, you should try finding two or
three books of your own, from those sites or from your own
preferences, and search for them in the same ways that I do.
Everyone has their own searching technique and their own favorite
sites to search. For this session, I'm opening up three copies of my
browser--one for Alibris , one for Abebooks
, and one for the Catalog of the Library of
Congress . I'll do my initial searches on
Alibris and Abebooks, and keep the LoC site handy for reference.
In Alibris, I head straight for the Advanced Search page, since they
allow searching by date, and I immediately put "before 1923" into
every search, which avoids having to scan through modern reprints. In
Abebooks, I choose "Hardcover" in their advanced search, which is not
quite as good a filter, but does at least screen out recent paperback
editions.
In each of the sites, I just enter the author's surname and one word
from the title of each book, and look at the search results.
Louisa May Alcott's "Inheritance" looks like it's going to be tough. I
don't find it in either of my two bookstores. On doing a little
checking with modern bookstores, I find it was her first novel,
written when she was 17, and as far as I can see, not published during
her life: apparently only recently published--the LoC site has
nothing prior to 1997. A disappointing start to my search. I
understand why it's very desirable to get it online, but this one's
going to be very tough to clear, and I'm staying away from it.
E. W. Horning's "Irralee's Bushranger" is also elusive: it doesn't
show up at either of my sites, so I check out the LoC to confirm I
have the title right, and yes, there it is: "Irralee's Bushranger, a
story of Australian adventure, 1896." So I widen my search by visiting
and searching many of the sites
there. Still no luck. If I were particularly eager to get this book,
there are several things I might do at this point: I might register a
"want" with one of the sites, asking to be notified when a copy is
listed, I might use the OCLC WorldCat search (which Abebooks calls
"Find it at a local library") where I can locate libraries that have
copies, or I might even contact some individual booksellers and make a
request that they look for it. Some booksellers actually specialize in
looking for hard-to-find books; but of course I expect I'd have to pay
a bit more for it when they do find it, and given my success with the
rest of my list, and my price bracket, there seems no need to go that
far today.
Horning's "Stingaree", by contrast, seems to be everywhere, in several
editions, and cheap. It must have been a bestseller in its day--not
surprising, from the author of "Raffles". 1902, 1905, 1909 editions
abound. The cheapest are 1910 and 1907 editions for $4.95 and $5.00
from booksellers listed at Abebooks.
Milne's "Dover Road" is available from both sites. There seems to have
been a Putnam's printing in 1922 of "Three Plays: The Dover Road. The
Truth About Blayds. The Great Broxopp." of which lots of copies
survive. There also seem to be later printings which would qualify as
reprints if I were desperate, but the 1922 edition is priced from
$12.00 to $50.00, so I'll take the 1922 $12.00 copy from Abebooks. As
a bonus, I don't see the other two plays listed as being online
anywhere, so I'll get three texts (and short ones, too!--279 pages for
all three) for the price and effort of one.
Milne's "Once on a Time" is a bit less common, but once again a
Putnam's printing of 1922 keeps it in the race. There are a couple of
booksellers in England selling for 15 pounds (which just about makes
my $20 threshold) and 20 pounds, and an ex-library copy going for $25.
There are lots of eligible copies of "Pamela" available, ranging from
a fourth edition at a mere $4,999 (no, thanks!) to a 1921 printing at
$6.60 at Alibris. I'll take that one, please.
Wilde's "Critic as Artist" is fairly widely available. A 1905 edition
of "Intentions: the Decay of Lying; Pen Pencil and Poison; the Critic
as Artist; the Truth of Masks" is available at Alibris for $8.80, (and
other copies of the same edition there and on Abebooks in the $20-$30
range) and Abebooks lists a London 1919 edition at $12.50. There are
several copies listed in both places as "undated" and "reprints"--I'm
avoiding these, since while it's quite likely that they might be
clearable, I'm not taking risks on this search.
My second list isn't a list--just a vague category: children's books
that are easy to do.
I go to Alibris' Advanced Search, and enter "Child's" in the title,
and pre-1923 in the date, and, excluding titles already on-line,
immediately get:
A Child's History of France $13.20
A Child's Story of the Bible $5.50
First Lessons in Botany or The Child's Book of Flowers $13.20
The Child's Book of American Biography $11.00
The Child's First Bible $8.80
The Child's Music World $8.80
and so on through quite a list.
OK. That's a good start. But my choice so far is unimaginative. I need
better search terms. So I go to main search engines with the terms
"children's antiquarian books" and find a half-dozen or so sites that
specialize in them. I can browse around there, though it's slower
going without searches to focus my results. I find
, specializing in children's books. Wading
through the miles and miles of Alcotts and Barries and Burnetts, which
are mostly already online, I think, I find a couple of authors from
them who must have been popular, because they seem to have published
lots of books before 1923: Angela Brazil and Dorothy Canfield. (I only
got as far as the "C"s!)
I could of course stop here and buy some, but today I want to see what
else is out there.
Back at Alibris and Abebooks, armed with my authors to search by, I
turn up 4 pre-1923 books under $20 for Angela Brazil:
A Terrible Tomboy
The Youngest Girl in the Fifth
A Fourth Form Friendship
A Pair of Schoolgirls
and several between $20 and $30.
Dorothy Canfield immediately yields multiple copies of:
The Brimming Cup
Home Fires in France
Hillsboro People
Understood Betsy
Rough Hewn
The Real Motive
and others, and I haven't even got to $20 yet, nor to the letter "D".
A browse through the Ebay Collectible and Antiquarian Books section
also throws up a respectable list of eligibles. I won't even bother
counting that.
In 20 minutes, I have found five of the seven on my search list. In
less than hour after that, I found over 16 eligible children's books,
all under or around $20 and all available online.
Before committing to one, though, I would double-check that the book
hasn't been transcribed online, and isn't In Progress.
Double-checking your selection
If you're concerned that the book you have chosen duplicates another
that might be in progress, and want to double-check, you can e-mail
the Posting Team asking them to check whether any recent clearances
have come in for that title.
Duplications do happen--there's no way of avoiding them when different
people are making independent decisions--but they are rare.
Dealing with used booksellers
As a class, used booksellers are very pleasant people--remarkably
friendly, knowledgeable and helpful, even to people buying on a
typical Gutenberger's budget.
Some of them are not, however, models of ideal data organization when
it comes to Internet listings. There are lots of one- or two-person
operations dealing with an inventory of many thousands of books, and
having located your book online, you should check that it's still
available.
You can place an order through the site and wait for the confirmation,
or you can simply call the bookseller. Not all booksellers' contact
details are listed, so it's not always an option, but when you do
phone you're likely to be speaking immediately to someone who can tell
you for sure whether the book is still there, can pull the book off
the shelf and answer questions about it, and can take your credit card
details on the spot and dispatch the book immediately.
Copyright Clearance
As soon as your book arrives, send us the information needed for
Copyright Clearance first. Even if your book is a true-blue,
no-questions-asked pre-1923 edition, we should know about it as soon
as possible so that it can go onto the In-Progress list for others to
see that someone has started on it.
Wait for the confirmation e-mail before starting any serious work.
Some people have thought that "Copyright 1923" plus some wishful
thinking would be good enough, and, unfortunately, it isn't. Some
people have gone ahead and produced the whole book before sending
in the clearance, only to be disappointed, all their work wasted.
Books published in 1922 or earlier are clearable, but some people,
ever optimists, overlook that little "1927" in small print on the
verso. Sometimes there is no copyright date on the front, and other
optimists assume that these books are OK. They may be; they may not
be. Don't get caught in the copyright trap.
As soon as you have what you think might be an eligible book, do
not start on it. Do not ask another volunteer's opinion. Just send
in the TP&V and wait for the confirmation e-mail to find out for sure.
Even when your TP&V clearly says "Copyright 1901", send it in.
We need to get it into the clearance files so that we can register
it as being In-Progress.
Producing
If you're a typist, there's not much more you need to know from this
point: you can just get on with the job, with maybe a few tips from
the FAQ. In fact, if you're a typist, you might wonder why the rest of
us make such a fuss about scanners, and settings, and OCR. Take pity
on us! we just can't produce the way you can. Smile indulgently,
ignore all the scanner jargon, and submit your completed text while
we're still saying bad words about the guttering on a greyscale image
of page 372. :-)
If you are using a scanner to copy a book for the first time, be
patient with yourself. Some people start off with too high
expectations of what they can achieve. Believe it or not, scanning
does work effectively; it just doesn't work perfectly. And often, you
need a little practice before your scans work right with your OCR. The
Scanning FAQ [S.1] has lots of specific tips you can try. Start by
scanning a double-page about a third of the way through the book. Scan
in Black and White and in Greyscale, at 300dpi and 400dpi. Try 600 dpi
if it seems like a good idea. Put it through your OCR and see what
comes out. Move your scanner so that you can be comfortable while
placing the book and turning pages. Allow yourself an hour to
experiment with different settings, and different pages. Put the
sample images included with the Scanning FAQ through your OCR and
see how the output compares to the text produced by other packages.
That first hour finding out about how your setup works will be the
most valuable hour of scanning you will ever do.
Having figured out what settings you want to use for this book, make
sure you implement the best speed you can. Usually this means telling
the scanner to scan _only as much area as the book covers_. This is
quite important, since the scanner will by default scan its whole
area, and you don't need all that; it just wastes time and makes your
images bigger.
You may also be able to set your OCR or scanner software to auto-scan
pages with some preset delay, like 5 seconds. This also speeds things
up, because the scanner isn't waiting for you to hit the keyboard, and
you have both hands free at all times to turn the page and replace the
book. It takes a few pages to get into the rhythm; if you miss a
page-turn, don't worry--you can get it on the next scan.
Using a reasonably modern but quite ordinary home/office type flatbed
scanner, you should be able to scan 200 pages an hour [S.9] of a
typical book, at good quality. 400 pages an hour is not unheard-of.
Now, it may fairly be said that scanning offers all the fun of ironing,
without the sense of adventure :-), but if you have got your settings
right, you will probably be able to do the whole job in less than two
hours. And now you're really on the road!
V.2. What experience do I need to produce or proof a text?
None.
For producing, you will have to be able to type pretty well, or have
a scanner.
For proofing someone else's text, when you don't have a copy of the
book in front of you, you should be reasonably familiar with the
language used in the book, and the styles of the time--Chaucer's
English was quite different from ours, and even 19th Century novelists
write some phrases unfamiliar to us today.
That's it. You don't need experience in publishing, editing, or
computers.
V.3. How do I produce a text?
There are acres of words in this FAQ about that, but it all boils
down to 4 simple steps:
1. Get an eligible book--pre-1923, or one of the exceptions. Pull
it from your attic, borrow it from a library or a friend, buy it
in your local bookstore, in a flea-market or on-line. We don't
care which.
2. Send us a copy or the front and back of the title page so we
can file proof of copyright clearance.
3. Copy the text from the book into a computer text file. We don't
care whether you type it, scan it, voice-dictate it, or think of
some totally new way to do it. Just get it into a file.
4. Send us the computer text file.
That's all there is to it!
V.4. Do I need any special equipment?
You need the use of a computer of some kind, and Internet access is
usual, though we have had some volunteers contribute texts on floppy
disks.
If you intend to scan books, you will need a scanner, but if you're
just typing or proofing you won't.
V.5. Do I need to be able to program?
Absolutely not! Very little of Project Gutenberg's work involves
programming, and it is never necessary to any part of volunteering.
V.6. I am a programmer, and I would like to help by programming.
What can I do?
At the risk of sounding facetious, the very best thing you can do is
figure out ways that more programming can help Project Gutenberg!
A lot of programmers work on PG books, and anything easy has probably
already been done. The challenge for programmers who want to write
something that will help to produce etexts is not in writing the code;
it's in identifying ways that programs can help.
Please see the FAQ "What programs could I write to help with PG work?"
[P.2] for some ideas in this direction. Whatever you do, don't just
hang around waiting for someone to ask you to write something, because
that's not going to happen. Think up a project, ask volunteers if they
would use it, and dig in! Better still, produce a few etexts yourself,
using the existing tools, and get a feel for the kinds of problems
that new software could help with.
Apart from text production, we do develop some programs to help with
posting work, but as of mid-2002, we have nothing like an ongoing
programming project which people can join.
V.7. What does a Gutenberg volunteer actually do?
We buy or borrow eligible books, scan, type, and proofread. There are
a few other activities, but they consume only a very small fraction of
volunteer time.
V.8. Can I produce a book in my own language?
Yes! We want to encourage people to produce books in all languages,
and we cheer when we can add a new language to the list.
V.9. Does it have to be a book? Can I produce pieces from a magazine
or other periodical?
Magazines, newspapers, and other publications are just fine. For
copyright clearance, they work just the same way as a book.
You do need to check the length of your piece [V.17]; we don't want a
zillion separate one- or two-page files. If the piece you have in mind
isn't long enough, you can add other pieces to it, or even most or all
of the magazine. If the work was serialized over multiple issues, you
can join them together for your PG text, but you do have to copyright
clear every issue of the magazine from which you copy material.
If you have lots of old periodicals, you could even take one piece
from several, and make a new text which is a "theme" anthology of
those pieces. You can give it an appropriate title: "Civil War
Commentaries from X magazine 1892-1898."
V.10. Do I _have_ to produce in plain ASCII text?
Certainly not if it doesn't make sense. To take an extreme example, if
you're working in Japanese or Arabic, or creating audio files, there
is no point in trying to reproduce that in ASCII!
Where the text can largely be expressed in ASCII, we do want to post
an ASCII version, even if it is somewhat degraded compared to the
original. However, we will post your file in as many open formats as
you want to create, so that your original work is available for those
who have the software to read it.
V.11. Where do I sign up as a volunteer?
You don't. We have no formal sign-up process, no list of volunteers,
no roll-call. If you produce a PG eBook, or help to produce one, you
are a volunteer.
V.12. How do PG volunteers communicate, keep in touch, or co-ordinate work?
We are very scattered geographically: U.S., Australia, Brazil, Taiwan,
Germany, South Africa, Italy, India, England, and all over the world,
so we can't really meet for coffee on Thursdays. :-)
Most co-operation and co-ordination goes on by private e-mail. This is
efficient for volunteers who have worked with each other before, since
they know each other's interests and skills, but not so easy for
beginners to break in on, since they don't.
The Volunteers' Web Board at .
The Project Gutenberg Weekly and Monthly Newsletters, gweekly and
gmonthly, are one-way announcements, which allow PG to communicate with
non-volunteers who are interested in the eBooks we produce, but they
also contain notes and requests for assistance from volunteers.
The Volunteers' Discussion Mailing list, gutvol-d, is a an e-mail
discussion forum for subscribers about any Gutenberg topic.
The Volunteers' List, gutvol-l, is for private announcements for
active volunteers.
The Programmers' List, gutvol-p, is for discussion of programming
topics.
There are some other, specialized, closed lists for people who
do specific work within PG:
The "Posted" List, posted, is for people who perform indexing on our
texts. An e-mail is sent to this list every time we post a text (see
the FAQ "How does a text get produced?" [V.16] section 5: Notification)
and the members of the list use it to update their catalogs.
The Whitewashers' List, pgww, is for Posting Team internal messages.
The Heroic Helpers List, hhelpers, is for people who can devote some
fairly regular time to doing odd jobs.
V.13. Where can I find a list of books that need proofing?
There is no central list of this kind. There are distributed proofing
projects, currently at
Charles Franks:
Dewayne Cushman:
where you can proof parts of a book. This is advisable when you're
just starting out because it gives you some feel for what the work is
like.
You can also look up existing, posted texts from the archives and
proof them. Just as there always seems to be one more bug in any
given program, there always seems to be one more typo in any given
text! Download a few, and scan quickly for problems by doing a
spellcheck or other automated check; if you can find any problems
quickly, then there are likely others to be discovered by a careful
proofing.
V.14. Is there a list of books that Project Gutenberg wants?
No. Project Gutenberg, as such, does not "want" any specific books.
Individual volunteers choose what books to produce. Nobody gives
orders to volunteers about what they should work on. Nobody has an
official "hit-list" of books to add to the archives.
Of course, individual volunteers and non-volunteers have their
preferences, and may suggest books to transcribe, and such suggested
lists pop up every so often, and are often useful to people looking
for ideas.
There are usually some suggestions in David Price's InProgress list.
The On-Line Books Page has a section where people can list requests,
and Steve Harris has a site devoted to lists of books not yet in
Gutenberg or elsewhere. Treat all of these lists with some caution,
since someone may have started or even finished one of their
suggestions since they were last updated.
PG Books In Progress
On-Line Requested List
Steve Harris' "To-do"s
V.15. I have one book I'd like to contribute. Can I do just that without
signing up?
Well, since there is no formal sign-up, of course you can! A lot of
texts have been contributed by people who just wanted to immortalize
one favorite book. Many of them had already created the eBook before
they even heard of Project Gutenberg, and we're always delighted to
add these to the archive!
About production:
V.16. How does a text get produced?
As stated back in the Basics section, all you need to do is:
Borrow or buy an eligible book.
Send us a copy of the front and back of the title page.
Turn the book into electronic text.
Send it to us.
That's all you actually need to know in order to be a producer. But if
you're interested in the details of how other people actually do this,
and want to know what else happens behind the scenes, here's a full,
blow-by-blow account.
1. Finding an eligible book
Volunteers find eligible books [V.18] in all sorts of ways. Some lucky
people have them in their bookshelves, or their attic. A lot of people
have a good library nearby, where they can find books, or request them
on interlibrary loan. Some people are big eBay fans; others like to
hunt for bargains on specialist booksites. And of course lots of
volunteers enjoy rummaging through actual used bookstores, or local
markets, or yard sales.
Even if you're not going to take on a book yourself right now, search
for some on the Net and find out about how to get a copy. Next time
you pass an antiquarian bookstore, or a book market, drop in and
browse. Ask your local library about interlibrary loans. Eligible
books aren't hard to find once you know where to look.
2. Copyright Clearance
New volunteers sometimes find it hard to understand why this is so
important, and why, in particular, Project Gutenberg is so careful
about it. At base, it's simple: by keeping a filed copy of the TP&V
[V.25] of every book we produce, we can at any time protect our
publications against claims from publishers that they "own" the work,
and thus we can keep them available to the public.
The copyright laws can be difficult to understand, and sometimes it
may take serious research to prove that a particular edition is
actually in the public domain. If you're not legally-inclined, just
keep repeating "Pre-'23 is free" if you're in the U.S.A. and stick
to books published before 1923. If you do want to delve deeper, read
our Copyright Rules page at
and then go on to reading the Library of Congress Copyright Office
official papers at is
the official standard for valid HTML, but, for the average volunteer,
it's awkward to use. However, if you're submitting a HTML format,
please use Tidy, which you can get from ,
to check your text before sending it.
Header and Footer
We add the PG header and footer. If there is a header and footer
already there, we strip them off first, since recent changes in the
header mean that a lot of people send files with headers that are out
of date. We have written programs to help with this.
We get the number for the text from a program on beryl called "ticket"
that Brett Fishburne wrote, that dispenses the next number. That way, if
two or three of us are posting at the same time, we won't all grab the
same number. We create a 5-letter base filename, checking that it hasn't
been used before, and finally zip up the file.
Posting
We now transfer the .ZIP and .TXT files to two servers:
ftp.ibiblio.org and ftp.archive.org. (This is usually the point at
which we realize that we forgot to make a change we noticed while
checking. Aaaargh!)
5. Notification
At this point, the book is posted, but nobody knows about it! We need
to do something about that. . . .
We compose an e-mail to the "posted" e-mail list, cc: the producer,
with the line that is to go into GUTINDEX.ALL, the master list of PG
files.
The "posted" list has only a few subscribers. These are the people who
index and create links to PG texts, and include both PG volunteers and
the maintainers of other sites that link to PG texts.
They also commonly download the texts to get more information for
their indexes, and tell us if there is anything wrong with the files.
This e-mail is simply the official notification to all these people
and the producer that the file has been posted. Here's a sample of
such an e-mail:
To: "Posted Etexts for Project Gutenberg"
Subject: [posted] Posted (#5301, Duncan) !
From: "Jim Tinsley"
Date: Tue, 25 Jun 2002 06:21:27 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: [email protected]
Mar 2004 The Imperialist, by Sara Jeannette Duncan [SJD#4][mprlsxxx.xxx]5301
There may also be some remarks, if the text is in any way
non-standard, or if files other than plain text were posted with it.
From this e-mail, you can, if you want to see any corrections made,
immediately download the posted file and compare it to your version.
Since the notification is made _after_ the file has been copied to the
servers, it should be there waiting for you.
To find out how to download a book that has just been posted, see the
FAQ "How can I download a PG text that hasn't been cataloged yet?" [R.3]
6. Indexing
From the "posted" list, the posting line is added to GUTINDEX.ALL
and our indexers begin the cataloging process, which is much more
thorough, for the website. This includes work like finding author's
dates of birth & death, getting the Library of Congress
classification, and the other information that makes up the website
searchable index. That process takes extra time, which is why the
website searchable catalog must always lag behind the actual titles
posted.
7. Corrections
It's remarkable how many people who went over and over the text to the
point of hating it suddenly see problems with it when they download it
a couple of days after it's posted! Something psychological there, I
expect. Anyhow, if you do download your text and see problems with it,
don't worry, just e-mail whoever posted it, or any other member of the
Posting Team. No, you're not stupid, or if you are, you're in good
company, because we've all done it! There's no big deal about
replacing the posted file with a corrected copy immediately.
Over time, other readers may submit corrections. If you find an error
in a PG etext, see the FAQ "I've found some obvious typos in a Project
Gutenberg text. How should I report them?" [R.26]
When the corrections are small, as most are, we will just make the
change to the existing text. If there are a lot of changes, we may
post a new edition [R.35] with a new edition number; e.g. if the
file abcde10 was corrected, we may post abcde11. We never make a
new edition when we get corrections immediately after posting.
V.17. How long must a text be to qualify for PG?
The rule of thumb is that we try not to post texts shorter than 25K,
or about 350 lines of 70 characters. This rules out, for example, a
lot of individual short poems. If you are interested in contributing
this type of material, consider making a collection of similar
texts--poems by the same author, or magazine articles on the same
subject. We have made a few exceptions, like Martin Luther King's
"I have a dream" speech, but very few.
V.18. What books are eligible?
A book is "eligible" for posting if we can legally publish it. This is
the case if:
1. it is in the public domain in the U.S.A.,
OR,
2. the copyright holder has granted unlimited
non-exclusive distribution rights to PG.
V.19. Are reprints or facsimiles eligible?
A reprint or facsimile of a book that would be eligible is itself
eligible.
For example, if a book published in 1995 is a reprint of a book
published in 1900, then it is eligible. However, the onus is on us
to prove that it _is_ a reprint, and if it doesn't _say_ on the TP&V
that it is a reprint, confirming its eligibility may be impractical.
V.20. What is the difference between a reprint and a facsimile?
A facsimile retains the page layout and formatting of the original. A
reprint keeps the same words, but may lay the pages out differently.
For our copyright purposes, there is no difference--we can use either.
V.21. What is the difference between a reprint and a "new edition"?
A reprint contains only the words and pictures that were printed in
the original. A new edition is in some way changed; it has different
text, or pictures. It may be abridged, or expanded. It may have
material added or changed, using other versions of the book.
A new edition gets a new copyright, and has to be cleared based on its
own copyright date and status, not the date of the original printing
of the title. See also the FAQ "How come my paper book of Shakespeare
says it's 'Copyright 1988'?" [C.16] for an example.
Please note that we are talking here about a new edition of the
printed book, not a new (corrected) edition number for Project
Gutenberg naming purposes.
V.22. What book should I work on?
Nobody in Gutenberg is going to set assignments for you. You decide
what book to process. Just pick one that no-one else has already done,
or is working on. It's also sensible to pick one that you'll
like--you'll be living with it for a while. On a practical note, it's
probably better to start with a short book or even a short story,
since a long book can take quite a while to produce.
Start by thinking of books written before 1923. Pick a book you like,
and check it out. If it's already done or still in copyright, try
other books by the same author.
Visit the Project Gutenberg site and download a full list of Gutenberg
books in GUTINDEX.ALL. Have a look at the List of Books In Progress and
Complete [B.1]. Look for authors you like, and see what books by them
aren't yet available.
Check out your old books. Maybe you have an eligible edition that
would be of great help to the project.
Try your library. They may have some eligible editions--books we can
prove to be in the public domain--and you will certainly come away
with ideas. Ask your librarian. Librarians are keen to help on
projects like this.
Browse second-hand bookshops in your area. There are lots of treasures
to be picked up very cheaply.
Search for literature pages and bookshops on the Internet.
If all else fails, you can always ask on the Volunteers' Board or try
the gutvol-d mailing [V.12] list for ideas. Others may know of books
that people are especially looking for, or projects already started
where you could help out.
V.23. I have a book in mind, but I don't have an eligible copy.
First, determine whether there are any eligible copies of the book, by
finding out the date it was published, possibly from the Catalog of the
Library of Congress [B.5] and checking the Public Domain and Copyright
Rules [B.1]. If there is a public domain edition, the next problem is to
find one to work with.
V.24. Where can I find an eligible book?
The most commonly used outlets are used bookstores, garage sales,
library sales, charity shops and any other place that sells old books.
The Internet is a wonderful medium for finding used and antiquarian
books--used bookstores all over the world have found ways of
co-operating and listing their inventories on the Net, so that whether
you live in Los Angeles, Moscow or Perth, you can still find that book
you're looking for in a shop in a laneway of Amsterdam. Most on-line
listings will quote the publication year of the book, so you can check
that it's pre-1923.
Two such sites that allow second-hand booksellers to list their
inventory are:
Advanced Book Exchange
Alibris
The book search page at trussel.com [B.5] has a list of many such Net
bookshops, or you can simply visit any search engine and search for Used
or Antiquarian Bookshops. You can often buy eligible books through these
sites very cheaply.
If you still can't find the book you need, post a message on the
Volunteers' Board or to the gutvol-d mailing list; maybe someone else
can find it for you.
Sometimes, it may be possible for you to work from a later edition, so
long as somebody who has an eligible edition can check it to make sure
that no changes have been made. Sometimes, you may be able to find a
modern reprint; reprints may be eligible, as long as they say they are
reprints of an edition that would be eligible.
If you can type, or can scan without damaging the book, you can borrow
books long enough to produce them. Even if your local library doesn't
have the books you want, they may well be able to get them for you on
inter-library loan. Ask your librarian about it.
V.25. What is "TP&V"?
This is an abbreviation for "Title Page and Verso", and means a paper
or image copy of the front and back of the title page.
Even if the back is blank, we need to have an image of it for the
files, to show that it _is_ blank, so that if, in ten years' time,
somebody queries our right to publish, we can show that we haven't
just lost it.
Publishers print copyright information, like title, author, copyright
year and owner, and whether the book was a reprint, on the TP&V, and
by filing this, we can prove that the book we produced was in the
public domain.
Sending us the TP&V is the One True Way to getting PG copyright
clearance [V.37].
V.26. What is "Posting"?
Posting is the final stage in the production process, where the file
is given a number and official PG header, and copied onto our FTP
servers for distribution. See section 4 of the FAQ "How does a text
get produced?" [V.16] for a blow-by-blow account.
V.27. I think I've found an eligible book that I'd like to work on.
What do I do next?
Make sure nobody else is working on it, and that it's not already
online somewhere.
V.28. What books are currently being worked on?
Check out David Price's In Progress List (a.k.a. "the InProg List")
online at . David
gets the information from Copyright Clearances that have been done,
and organizes it into a list. It can never be 100% up to date, since
clearances come in all the time, but it's the best online facility we
have, and it's much more clearly presented than the original clearance
files.
V.29. How do I find out if my book is already on-line somewhere?
There's no foolproof method; some student somewhere could have scanned
it and put it on her college web page without announcing it anywhere.
However, there are some regular places to check.
It may sound obvious, but you should always look in the PG archives
first. Download GUTINDEX.ALL and keep it handy. Search the InProg
List [B.1].
The two other main places to search for your book are the Internet
Public Library and the On-Line Books Page
and follow the
instructions.
There are two other, older ways to submit a text for clearance.
To submit by paper mail, photocopy the front and back of the title
page, even if the back is blank, write your e-mail address on it, and
send the photocopies to:
MICHAEL STERN HART
405 WEST ELM STREET
URBANA, IL 61801-3231 USA
This is called Title Page & Verso, or TP&V for short, and is needed
for copyright research. A colored envelope is best, to make sure your
letter is easily recognized as TP&V.
E-mail Michael [email protected] when you send them, so he knows they're
on the way. It's a good idea to check back with him by e-mail after a
week or so if you haven't heard from him.
About this, Michael says: "Please include always your e-mail name and
address, and mark the envelope with some distinctive mark and or
color. Colored envelopes fine. Just something so I can find it easily,
the mail here is slow and deep, like snow. Please send a note to:
for more info."
To submit by e-mail, scan the front and back of the title page, even if
the back is blank, and e-mail the images to Greg Newby
as TIFF, JPEG or GIF in medium resolution. Make
sure that the print is legible before you send.
Whichever method you use, you should expect to get an e-mail back
after about a week, with one line containing the Author, Title, your
name and date with the word "OK" at the end. This means that your text
has been cleared.
A Clearance Line looks something like:
The Works Of Homer [Iliad/Odyssey] Tr. George Chapman Jim Tinsley 06/14/01 ok
If you don't get any response, e-mail to check that your TP&V was
received OK. If the word at the end of the line is not "OK", then
your text is not eligible, and a comment will probably be appended
explaining why it is not eligible.
Don't start work on your book until you get that OK! It's very
sickening to do all that work, and then find out that your text
can't legally be put on-line!
V.38. I have a two- or three-volume set. Do I have to get a separate
clearance on each physical book?
Yes.
Some multi-volume works, notably reference books and translations,
were published in a series, and it may be that the first volume is
1922, but the others are 1923 or later, so we have to clear each
individually.
V.39. I have one physical book, with multiple works in it (like a
collection of plays). Do I have to get a separate clearance
for each work?
No. Since they were all printed together, one TP&V will suffice for
all, but . . .
You should list each separate title included, if you intend to submit
each title separately (see the FAQ "I have one physical book, with
multiple works in it like a collection of plays. Should I submit
each work separately?" [V.36]). If, say, you clear a "Collected Plays
of Sheridan", and later submit an eBook of "The School for Scandal",
we will have trouble finding your clearance unless we have made a note
that "School for Scandal" is part of the contents of "Collected
Plays".
In a case like this, you should include, on your paper or e-mail,
something like:
George Bernard Shaw. Plays Unpleasant. 1905.
Contents:
Preface to Unpleasant Plays
Widower's Houses
The Philanderer
Mrs. Warren's Profession
You only need to do this when you are going to submit each part
separately, which is commonly the case with plays, and sometimes
essays, stories and novellas. Taking a different example, the
"Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson", we would not need to list the
contents, since we wouldn't publish each poem separately.
There is one exceptional case: if your book was printed after 1923,
but contains stories or plays some of which are stated to be reprints
of pre-1923 editions, you should give as much detail as possible about
what you intend to submit.
V.40. Who will check up on my progress? When?
Nobody. There are no schedules or timetables. You're welcome to
contact other volunteers [V.12] with comments or questions, though.
V.41. How long should it take me to complete a book?
Most books get done in between one and three months, but this varies
wildly. It depends on the amount of time you can afford to give it,
the length of the book and, if you're not typing, the quality of the
scan--if the book scans badly, you need to put more time into
proofing.
Some very productive volunteers manage to turn out an e-text a week;
some books can take a year or more.
Scanning itself doesn't take too long. Even if it takes you as much as
two minutes per page to scan, you will still complete a 300 page book
in 10 hours, and you will probably be scanning much faster than that [S.9].
The problem is that the text generated by the scanner and your OCR
package is usually faulty. There are many cute scanner errors,
mistaking b for h, or e for c, so that "heard" is scanned as "beard"
or "ear" as "car". Makes the story more interesting sometimes!
So now you need to do a first proof of the e-text. Read it carefully,
correct scanning mistakes, and make sure that you haven't left out
pages or got them in the wrong order. Unless your scan was
exceptionally good, this is the time-burner in the process.
When you've done the first proof, you can either do a second proof
yourself, or send it to another volunteer for second proofing.
If you're a typist, of course, you can skip right over the messy
scanning and scan-correction process. Yay typists!!
V.42. I want/don't want my name published on my e-text
No problem. When you send the e-text for posting, mention exactly
what, if anything, you want the Credits Line [V.47] to say.
V.43. I'd like to put a copy of my finished e-text, or another
Gutenberg text, on my own web page.
Great! PG encourages the widest possible distribution of e-texts. We
like to publish everything in plain text, which is the most accessible
format, since everybody can read plain text. But once it's available
in plain text, it's open to you or anyone else to convert it to other
formats like HTML for further distribution.
If you are reposting a text, though, please be careful to check that
your posting complies with the conditions spelled out in the header,
especially for copyrighted works.
V.44. I've scanned, edited and proofed my text. How do I find someone
to second-proof it?
You can post a request on the Volunteers' Board, or on the gutvol-d
Mailing List. You will probably get some offers there. In a difficult
case, you might ask Michael Hart to add it to the "Requests for
Assistance" section of the next Newsletter.
In general, the best way to handle it is to make a co-operative
proofing project out of it. This is like a miniature version of the
distributed proofreading sites, without the page images.
There are always people looking for proofing work, but many beginners
take on more than they can handle, and don't finish the job, and this
can be very disappointing if you give the whole thing to one volunteer
who then vanishes without trace. You can minimize the risk of this by
splitting the book into chunks of about 20-30 pages, or one chapter if
that's around the right size, each. Write explicit instructions about
what you want them to do when they spot a suspected error, like fix it
or mark it with an asterisk. (Marking is probably safer with beginners
who don't have the book or an image of the page to refer to.) Give the
first chapter to the first person who responds, the second to the
second, and so on. As you hand out the chapters, let the proofers know
that if they're not returned within three or five days, you'll assume
they've quit. Three days is more than plenty of time for 20 pages. If
someone returns a chapter, you can give them another. If someone
doesn't get back to you within the time set, assume they're not going
to, and recycle that chapter to someone else. No hard feelings, no
problem. This process of "co-operative proofing" ensures that
beginning proofers don't choke on the work, and that one vanishing
volunteer doesn't hold up the whole project.
V.45. I've gone over and over my text. I can't find any more errors,
and I'm sick of looking at it. What should I do now?
We all know that feeling! Particularly with your first book, you've
probably gone through a patch when you thought you'd never finish--and
when you do, you can't stand the idea of looking at it again. Heh.
Cheer up--the first twenty texts are the worst! :-) And you'll feel a
lot better when you see your text available for everyone to read.
You have three choices:
You can send it for posting as it is. [V.46]
You can put it aside for week or so, and come back to it with fresh
eyes.
You can ask in any of the standard ways [V.12] for someone else to
second-proof it for you. This has a lot to recommend it; it gets
other sets of eyes looking at the text, it relieves the pressure that
you may feel, it may rekindle your enthusiasm for the text, it allows
you to "meet" other volunteers, and possibly form partnerships for
future PG collaboration. Above all, it gives new proofers a chance to
get their feet wet, and this is good for them, and good for PG. You
are not only contributing a text, you're helping to train and
encourage the next generation of producers.
V.46. Where and how can I send my text for posting?
As of late 2002, we have a new automated upload procedure using a web
page. This has a lot of good things going for it, because we keep a
record of what's uploaded, you get an e-mailed copy of the notification,
you don't have to fiddle with FTP, and we can make up the header
automatically from the information you enter, which saves time and
prevents keying errors.
As always, it's better to ZIP your file first, because it'll take
less time to transfer.
Just go to , fill in the
form, specify the file to upload, and hit "Send" at the bottom.
And you're done!
If, for some reason, you can't use this page, there are two backup
options: you can e-mail it, or you can upload it by FTP. Whichever
you use, it is always best to ZIP the file first if you can.
If you are comfortable with sending files by FTP, this is better than
e-mail, First, you will need a username and password, which you can get
by e-mailing any of the Posting Team.
If you already know how to use command-line FTP, here's how to do it:
Log in to beryl.ils.unc.edu using the username and password supplied
and change to the work directory by typing "cd work". Change to binary
mode with the "bin" command and "put" your file.
Summary instructions:
ftp beryl.ils.unc.edu
login: yourlogin
password: yourpassword
cd work
bin
put yourfile.ext
quit
Here is a sample session:
>ftp beryl.ils.unc.edu
Connected to beryl.ils.unc.edu.
220-Access from [email protected] logged.
220 FTP Server
User (beryl.ils.unc.edu:(none)): xxxxxxxx
331 Password required for xxxxxxxx.
Password: xxxxxxxx
230 User xxxxxxxx logged in.
ftp> cd work
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> bin
200 Type set to I.
ftp> put MYFILE.ZIP
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for MYFILE.ZIP.
226 Transfer complete.
ftp: 172313 bytes sent in 17.34Seconds 9.94Kbytes/sec.
ftp> quit
When you are in the work directory, you will not be able to list
files, but they _do_ exist and they _are_ there.
When you have uploaded your file, e-mail a note to any or all of the
Posting Team, including your
1. filename
2. credits line as you want it on your text
3. clearance line you received [V.37]
An ideal note might be:
Subject: Beryl upload for posting: Hamlet
I have uploaded to beryl:
Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
File is: hamlet.zip
Credits line is:
Produced by John Doe
Clearance was given as:
Hamlet William Shakespeare John Doe 05/03/02 ok
If you'd rather send it by e-mail, send the e-mail, including the
Credits Line and Clearance Line as in the sample above, to any or all
of the Posting Team, with your text as an attachment. Again, ZIPped
is better, since it avoids certain damage that can happen to a plain
text e-mail along the way.
Do not add the Project Gutenberg header or footer to your file,
unless we specifically asked you to. If you do add it, we'll just
have to strip it off again, since we add headers automatically
when posting. There are times, perhaps when you're working in
an unusual non-editable format, when we may give you a header
and ask you to add it, but this is rare.
Please read section "4: Posting" of the FAQ "How does a text get
produced?" [V.16] for more detail about what happens in posting.
Especially, if you want to draw some peculiarities of this text
to the Posting Team's attention, or want feedback on any minor
edits done during posting, you should say so in the e-mail you send.
_Don't assume that we know anything_ when you send the e-mail. We
don't know what you want us to put on the Credits Line. We don't know
that this is an unusual text, and needs some kind of special
reformatting. We don't know that the text should be split into two
volumes before posting. We don't know that you would really like us to
check it closely before posting. You have to tell us, exactly and
precisely, what you want on the Credits Line. If the text needs some
specific work, you have to tell us exactly what that is. And please do
that in your e-mail, not in the text itself. Remember that we could be
dealing with five or ten other texts at the same time, and even if the
poster you discussed it with two weeks ago is the same one who posts
the book, he may not remember.
V.47. What is the "Credits Line"?
The Credits line is a line that the Posting Team can insert into
each PG text naming the producer or producers of a particular text.
You should decide what you want on the credits line of your text;
it's really not up to us.
Most credits lines are something like:
Produced by John Doe .
If you don't want to be mentioned by name at all, just say, in your
e-mail:
Please omit the Credits Line for this text. I want to contribute
it anonymously.
If you do want to be mentioned, please give the exact wording you want
us to use. Some people want their name only; they don't want us to
include their e-mail addresses. Others want to make their e-mail
addresses public so that readers can contact them with comments.
That is entirely up to you, but you do need to tell us. If you do
want to include your e-mail, remember that having it permanently
on the net is a spam-magnet, and we can't effectively remove or change
it later.
Occasionally, a Credits Line can spill onto more than one line,
for example:
This text was converted to HTML by Jane Roe
from an original ASCII text scanned by Jack Went
and proofed by Jill Hill
V.48. How soon after I send it will my text be posted?
First read the "Posting" section of the FAQ "How does a book get
produced?" [V.16] to understand the process.
You should expect some response within three or four days. We try to
get to all submissions within that time. In most cases, that response
will be simply the official notification that it has been posted. If
there is a query on your text, for example if we can't find the
copyright clearance or if we have trouble converting or correcting
your text, we will probably e-mail you back directly with questions.
If you don't hear from us within four days, send a follow-up e-mail;
it could be that your original note never got to us, or just fell
through the cracks.
If your file happens to arrive while one of us is logged in and
working, it could get posted within the hour. Some frequent
contributors who know our habits know just how to time their uploads!
V.49. I found a problem with my posted text. What do I do?
Most postings go smoothly, but problems can happen. Sometimes, one of
the servers is down. Sometimes a file gets corrupted for some unknown
reason. Sometimes, let's face it, we screw up.
Usually, one of the indexers will tell us about it, but if you catch
it first, e-mail whoever sent out your notification e-mail and explain
the problem. Don't worry; your original file will be quite safe, since
we keep these long after posting them.
V.50. Someone has e-mailed me about my posted text, pointing out errors.
Great!
Since you're the original producer, you're in the best position to
decide whether these are real errors. If they're right about it, tell
the Posting Team and we'll correct the text.
V.51. Someone has e-mailed me about my posted text, thanking me.
Nice feeling, isn't it? :-)
About Proofing
V.52. What role does proofing play in Project Gutenberg?
A very big one!
Typists' work doesn't usually need many corrections, but
unfortunately, scanners and OCR packages are far from perfect, and
scanned text varies from "almost-right" down to "maybe I should
consider typing instead of scanning". Proofing is the process that
turns a scan into a readable e-text.
Proofing a typist's work is straightforward; you just read it, and
keep an eye out for mistakes. Typists typically have few mistakes in
their texts, but the errors that they do make tend to be hard to spot.
Proofing OCRed text has its quirks, and you can expect many, many
errors to correct.
The only thing that all proofers agree on is to differ in their
methods. Some people scan and almost complete the proofing process
within their OCR package, others do no editing at all within their
OCR. Some spell-check first, others spell-check last. Some work
through in one pass, doggedly line by line, others make several light
passes. Some start at the end and work backwards! Some proofers mark
all queries with special characters like asterisks (*) in the text,
most just make all the obvious changes and mark only the dubious ones.
Some people always send their texts out for proofing, others prefer to
do it all themselves.
So this guide is not prescriptive; this is not the "only way" to do
it. The only rule is that, at the end of the process, your e-text
should be as error-free as you can make it, and should conform to
Gutenberg's editing standards, which are mostly just common sense
guidelines to make readable text.
The aim of this FAQ is to give you an understanding of what text looks
like when it comes fresh off the scanner, and an overview of the whole
process by which it becomes a publishable e-text.
V.53. What is Distributed Proofing?
It has always been common for volunteers to share proofing work among
themselves--you take the first five chapters, I'll take the next, and
so on.
When you're just starting as a PG volunteer, you should go to one of
the Distributed Proofing sites [B.4] and do some work there to get a
grounding in the basics and a feel for whether you would like to
continue working in PG. In distributed proofing, you get a very short
section, as little as a page of text at a time, and usually an image
file of the page as it scanned. You then make the text match the
image. This is a great start, since all you have to do is read,
compare and correct. However, other work also needs to be done, and
will normally be done by the project managers of these sites. The
samples below give you an idea of the whole process, and also some
ideas of what proofing a whole book from start to finish is like.
V.54. What do I need to proof an e-text?
You actually need only two things: the e-text itself and a text
editor or word-processor that can handle book-sized files and save
them as text.
Nearly all word processors and text editors in current use will work.
Volunteers use many common programs, including WordPerfect, Microsoft
Word, WordPad, DOS EDIT, vi, Brief, Crisp, EditPad, MetaPad, emacs,
AbiWord, and the word processors from Open Office abd AppleWorks. And
all of these are in actual use by volunteers today. Since all of them
contain the necessary basic functions, the best program is the one
you're most comfortable with.
Be cautious with recent, powerful word-processors that "auto-correct"
text, or use "smart quotes" or any other such automatic retyping or
formatting feature, since they can Do Bad Things to your e-text
without your consent! When using any such package, it is best to
switch off any feature that makes changes without asking you.
Two utilities which may come in useful are a spell-checker and a
version difference checker. These may be built into your word
processor, or you may have them as separate packages.
A spell-checker is like a chain-saw: a powerful tool, but one to be
used very carefully. It is very easy to say "Yes" to the wrong change,
and make a really bad mess of the text. Spell-checkers have problems
with proper names, foreign words, archaic usages, and dialects.
Incautious use can leave you with a text such as that immortalized
in the
Owed two a Spell in Chequer.
Eye half a spell in chequer,
It cane with my Pea Sea.
It plane lee marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye can knot sea.
Every e-text should pass through a spell-checker at some point, but
the human half of the partnership needs a very light hand on the
confirmations of change!
A difference checker, such as FC or COMP for MS-DOS, diff for Unix or
ExamDiff for
Windows, may also come in handy. A difference checker compares two
versions of the text, and points out the changes. This is important
when you've sent a text out for proofing, and you get it back with
changes. Rather than re-reading the whole text, you can use a
difference checker to highlight the changes so that you can verify
them against the printed text. As a proofer, you can use it to compare
the original text with what you're sending back to ensure that you've
only changed what you meant to change.
V.55. Do I need to have a paper copy of the book I'm proofing?
No.
Your job as proofer is to ensure that the e-text you're working on is
readable in itself, and contains no obvious errors. Where you think
there might be an error, but you're not sure, you mark the spot in the
e-text, and let the volunteer who has the paper book look it up.
V.56. What's the difference between "first proof" and "second proof"?
These are fuzzy terms used to indicate how accurate the e-text is, and
what type of work is needed to improve it. Quite commonly, the same
volunteer who scans the book proofs the whole thing in one or two
passes. Sometimes, given a good scan, the text can be sent out for
"first proof" with little or no preparatory fixing-up. Often, the
scanner makes quite a lot of corrections, then sends the text out for
"second proof".
A text is ready for first proofing when it's obvious that there are
plenty of errors, but it's possible to figure out, in almost every
case, what the correct text should be without needing to refer to the
book.
The objective of first proofing is to eliminate all the obvious
errors, so that if you speed-read quickly through the text, you
probably won't notice any.
Second proofing involves taking a text that has been first-proofed and
correcting all the remaining, more subtle errors. Often, some simple
errors such as incorrect spacing and quotes may be left for second
proofing. Texts that have been typed instead of scanned will always
be of at least second-proof quality.
V.57. What do I do with an e-text sent to me for proofing?
First, establish reasonable expectations. A typical book takes 10-15
hours of concentrated effort, and when you first start, you're
climbing a learning curve. For your first session, decide to mark out
a chapter or two--something like 500 to 1,000 lines--and work only on
that. If you get through 1,000 lines in your first sitting, you have
done extremely well! It's a good idea to send this first 1,000 lines
or so back immediately. The volunteer who sent you the e-text will
comment on it, and let you know about any style guidelines you may
have breached or common errors you may have missed. Most beginning
proofers do make mistakes, so don't worry about it--it's easier to
correct these in 1,000 lines than to go back over them in 15,000
lines!
You will usually receive the e-text as an attachment to your e-mail.
It's better to send e-texts as attachments than to paste them as text
into the body of the e-mail to make sure that the text isn't changed
by different e-mail clients. It's better to send e-mailed attachments
as ZIP files [R.20], since e-mails sent as text can be damaged along the
way. But whether you receive a TXT file or a ZIP file that you have to
open, you should save the .TXT file to your hard disk and open it with
your editor.
It may be that the text you see appears double-spaced--every second
line is blank--or that all the text is on one incredibly long line.
This is a familiar effect when moving between a DOS/Windows computer
and a Mac or Unix system, but it can happen between any two editors.
It is caused by the use of different characters to mark the end of a
line. If you have this problem, ask whoever sent you the text to
re-send it, telling them what kind of computer and editor you have.
Now you make any changes that obviously need to be made, and mark any
places where the text looks wrong, but you're not sure what the right
text should be. You can usually use asterisks (*) to mark these
dubious spots, but you might use other characters if the text already
contains asterisks. When in doubt, mark them all, and let the
volunteer with the text sort them out!
It is usually best not to make global changes to line lengths by
reformatting lots of paragraphs, since the person who sent you the
e-text may want to use a difference checker when you return it, and
changed line-lengths throughout mean that every line will be
different.
When working on a long text, or when making a lot of changes, it may
be wise to save several versions of the text with different filenames
at different stages so that if something goes badly wrong, you can
revert to the last good version. This applies especially to saving the
text just before performing a spell-check.
When you're finished with the e-text, make sure you save it as a plain
text file (.TXT) and send it back by zipping it if you can, and
attaching it to an e-mail.
V.58. What kinds of errors will I have to correct?
Each text has its own peculiarities, but there are a number of
well-known scanning errors you will be dealing with all the time.
Punctuation is always a problem. Periods, commas and semi-colons are
often confused, as are colons and semi-colons. There are also usually
a number of extra or missing spaces in the e-text.
The problem of quotes can assume nightmarish proportions in a text
which contains a lot of dialog, particularly when single and double
quotes are nested.
The numeral 1, the lower-case letter l, the exclamation mark ! and the
capital I are routinely confused, and often, single or double quotes
may be mistaken for one of these.
Lower-case m is often mistaken for rn or ni.
The letters h and b and e and c are commonly mis-read, and these are
probably the hardest of all to catch, since ear/car, eat/cat, he/be,
hear/bear, heard/beard are all common words which no spell-checker
will flag as problems.
For example:
" Hello1' caIled jirnmy breczily. 11Anyone home ? "
There seemed to he no-oneabout. Only tbe eat beard him."
should read:
"Hello!" called Jimmy breezily, "Anyone home?"
There seemed to be no-one about. Only the cat heard him.
As well as scanner errors, which affect one letter at a time, you have
to keep an eye out for editing mistakes by the volunteer who scanned
the text or by previous proofers. These are typically cases where a
whole line, paragraph or page has been omitted or misplaced. They show
up as sentences that don't make sense, or paragraphs that don't follow
from the previous one.
This means that you have to keep reading the flow of the text, so that
you can spot context errors as well as typos.
V.59. How long does it take to proof an e-text?
This depends on how long the e-text is, how clean the text is when you
start, and how thorough you're being, as well as how much time per day
you can give it and how fast you can proof.
On a first proof, it can take a very long time to get the e-text to a
readable condition if it scanned badly. As a beginner, you would be
unlikely to be given such a difficult text to work with. First proofs
are usually done by the same person who did the scanning, and are only
given out in the context of established scanning/proofing teams.
You might expect to proof anywhere between 500 and 2,000 lines per
hour during a second proof. A short novel or novella might have as few
as 6,000 or 7,000 lines; War and Peace weighs in at about 54,000
lines. Most novels run to 10,000 to 15,000 lines. So you might spend
anything between 5 and 30 hours second-proofing a standard book, with
10 to 15 hours being typical.
For an average novel, a week or two for second proofing is good going.
A month is reasonable.
Proofing an e-text is a significant amount of work, and you may find
it psychologically more comfortable to take on a chunk at a time--say
1,000 lines per session--and send that proofed section back, rather
than wait until the whole job is done before sending anything back.
This helps to avoid the fairly common case where you keep falling
behind where you expect to be until you dread the thought of getting
back to the text, and finally just abandon it.
If you find after a while that you just don't want to continue, please
tell the person who sent you the text that you're not going ahead with
it. It's very frustrating for the volunteer who scanned the book, and
who wants to get it posted, to wait for two or three months, only to
have to start all over again with another proofer.
V.60. Are there any special techniques for proofing?
The classic way to proof is to open the text in your editor or word
processor, and just start reading carefully.
This method has received a major boost since editors and word
processors have added a feature of showing squiggly red underlines
under words not in their dictionary. While this is very useful, you
still need to read carefully, since not all errors produce misspelled
words. The classic, and very common, example of this is scanning "he"
for "be". These visual spellchecks also commonly do not check words
beginning with capitals. Capitalized words are commonly names not in
the dictionary, and when checking of capitalized words is switched
off, they will not query "Tbe". Other errors that a spellchecker
doesn't look for include missing spaces, mismatched quotes and
misplaced punctuation. For these, you can try gutcheck [P.1]. And of
course, no automatic check will find omitted lines or words. Worse,
spellcheckers will query words not in their dictionary that might be
quite correct, and this can be quite troublesome when dealing with
older texts or dialect.
Still, if your concentration is up to the job, scrolling through a
text with non-dictionary words underlined in red is a fast and
effective way of giving a text the final once-over.
Volunteers have also used other techniques for proofing. Some people
can't sit at their screen and read for hours; many people don't want
to.
Some people just use the good old-fashioned method of printing out the
text to be proofed, and blue-pencilling the mistakes.
It is becoming fairly common now for people to load the text onto
their PDA, and read it from that. Mistakes found can be bookmarked or
jotted down and fixed when they go back to their PC.
Getting your computer to read the text aloud is a very effective way of
achieving high accuracy. Modern PCs have audio capabilities built in,
and it is possible to find free or cheap shareware "read-aloud"
text-to-speech packages for just about everything. Some PDAs are also
capable of doing text-to-speech.
The first time you try text-to-speech, it will probably sound and feel
a little strange, but you will quickly learn to _hear_ errors in
words. This can be very effective, but you should have given the text
at least a light proofing before you begin; it is hard to deal with a
high number of errors using a text-to-speech method.
When proofing by a speech program, you either set your text-to-speech
program to pronounce all punctuation, or, if that is not possible, you
make a special version of your text to feed it, first doing a global
replace of "," with " comma ", ";" with " semi-colon ", and so on.
Mark a block of 500 to 1,000 lines for reading aloud, and set the
reading speed to whatever is comfortable for you. Then you sit down
with the original book in front of you, and listen. When you hear an
error, mark the place in the text with a light pencil. Stopping the
reading at every error, editing the text and restarting is possible,
but it breaks the flow, and ends up taking longer. When the reading is
done, go to your keyboard and correct the errors found.
V.61. What actually happens during a proof?
Stage One--The original Scan
We start with a scanned e-text, in this case a paragraph from The
Odyssey. The paragraph used as an example here has been "enhanced"
with more errors than in the real scanned text, so that you can see
samples of many problems all in one place.
We begin by looking at the original OCRed text, of which our sample
section reads:
1There Periniedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but l
drew my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were
a cubit in length and breadth, and about it poured a drink-
offering to all the dead, first with mead and thereafter with
sweet wine, and for the third time with water, And 1 sprink-
BOOK XL
ODYSSEY X, 24-56.
173
ODYSS.EY XI, %4-56. 173
lef white incal thereon, and entreated with many prayers
strengthless beads of the dead, and prornised that on my
return to Ithaea 1 would offer in my halls a barren heifer,
the best 1 had, and fil the pyre with treasure, and apart unto
Teiresias alone sacrifice a black rarn without spot, the fairest
of my flock. But when 1 bad hesought the tribes of the
d with vows and prayers, 1 took the sheep and cut their
s over the trench. and the dark blood flowed forth,
he spirits of the dead that he departed gathered
from out of Erebus.
It's clear that we should tidy up the page headings and numbers that
have been scanned in with the main text, and that we should separate
the paragraphs and remove the spaces inserted by the scan at the start
of some lines. We also need to restore some of the text that got lost
in the scan. Since there isn't much of it, we just type it in. Having
done this, we get to . . .
Stage Two--First pass through the scanned text
At this point, we have a complete text. All of the words are actually
there, and we have eliminated page breaks and other extraneous
artifacts of proofing. Again, mileage varies: some people like to
preserve page breaks and numbering until much later, to make it easy
to refer back from the e-text to the book.
Our job in this phase is to fix all of the obvious scanning errors and
double-check that we really do have all the text. Our aim here is to
create an e-text that is ready for First Proof. In fact, since it's
fairly clear what all the words are, this text could be considered
ready for first proof.
1There Periniedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but l
drew my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were
a cubit in length and breadth, and about it poured a drink-
offering to all the dead, first with mead and there after with
sweet wine, and for the third time with water. And 1 sprink-
led white incal thereon, and entreated with many prayers the
strengthless beads of the dead, and prornised that on my
return to Ithaea 1 would offer in my halls a barren heifer,
the best 1 had, and fill the pyre with treasure, and apart unto
Teiresias alone sacrifice a black rarn without spot, the fairest
of my flock. But when 1 bad besought the tribes of the
dead with vows and prayers, 1 took the sheep and cut their
throats over the trench. and the dark blood flowed forth,
and lo, the spirits of the dead that he departed gathered
them from out of Erebus.
Now we convert those numeral 1s to capital Is and to quotes, where
appropriate, we straighten up the quotes and we deal with other
obvious scanning errors, which brings us to . . .
Stage Three--The First Proof
At this point, we could hand over the text to an experienced proofer
who doesn't have a copy of the book. This would be called a "first
proof". An e-text is at first proof stage when there are still plenty
of errors, but in each case it's pretty obvious what the correct word
is. The excerpt now looks like normal text.
Unfortunately, in stage two above, we accidentally deleted a line.
'There Periniedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but l
drew my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were
a cubit in length and breadth, and about it poured a drink-
offering to all the dead, first with mead and there after with
sweet wine, and for the third time with water. And I sprink-
led white incal thereon, and entreated with many prayers the
strengthless beads of the dead, and prornised that on my
return to Ithaea I would offer in my halls a barren heifer,
Teiresias alone sacrifice a black rarn without spot, the fairest
of my flock. But when I bad besought the tribes of the
dead with vows and prayers, I took the sheep and cut their
throats over the trench, and the dark blood flowed forth,
and lo, the spirits of the dead that he departed gathered
them from out of Erebus.
Stage Four--Corrections from First Proof
We receive the first proof back from the proofer, and find that it
has been mostly corrected.
The corrections made were "l/I", "there after/thereafter",
"prornised/promised", "bad/had", and "rarn/ram".
We have also wrapped the lines--at 60 characters in this case, but it
is commonly as much as 70 characters per line. Sentences which look
wrong, but where it isn't clear what the right text should be, have
been marked with asterisks (*).
'There Periniedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but I drew
my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it were a
cubit in length and breadth, and about it poured a
drink-offering to all the dead, first with mead and
thereafter with sweet wine, and for the third time with
water. And I sprinkled white incal * thereon, and entreated
with many prayers the strengthless beads of the dead, and
promised that on my return to Ithaea I would offer in my
halls a barren heifer, * Teiresias alone sacrifice a black
ram without spot, the fairest of my flock. But when I had
besought the tribes of the dead with vows and prayers, I
took the sheep and cut their throats over the trench, and
the dark blood flowed forth, and lo, the spirits of the
dead that he departed gathered them from out of Erebus.
We look up the text where the first proofer has asterisked it, and
make the corrections.
The text is now ready for second proofing. An e-text is ready for
second proofing when you can skim through the text without noticing
that there are errors.
We can either do a second proof ourselves, or send it out for second
proofing.
Second proofing involves a very careful reading of the text, looking
for small errors. In some ways, it's much harder than first proofing,
since it's very easy to let your eyes run on auto-pilot and in doing
so, miss subtle errors.
Having performed the second proof, which caught errors like
"beads/heads", "Ithaea/Ithaca", "Periniedes/Perimedes" and "he/be",
we now have our final e-text.
'There Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims, but I
drew my sharp sword from my thigh, and dug a pit, as it
were a cubit in length and breadth, and about it poured a
drink-offering to all the dead, first with mead and
thereafter with sweet wine, and for the third time with
water. And I sprinkled white meal thereon, and entreated
with many prayers the strengthless heads of the dead, and
promised that on my return to Ithaca I would offer in my
halls a barren heifer, the best I had, and fill the pyre
with treasure, and apart unto Teiresias alone sacrifice a
black ram without spot, the fairest of my flock. But when I
had besought the tribes of the dead with vows and prayers,
I took the sheep and cut their throats over the trench, and
the dark blood flowed forth, and lo, the spirits of the
dead that be departed gathered them from out of Erebus.
Hooray! At long last we have an e-text to post, which can be
downloaded, read and enjoyed by anyone in the world from now on.
About Net searching:
V.62. I've found an eligible text elsewhere on the Net, but it's not
in the PG archives. Can I just submit it to PG?
You can submit it, but you can't "just" submit it.
We wish we could give a permanent home to all the etexts that people
have produced and placed on the Net, but without proof of their
public domain [C.10] status, we can't.
We need to be able to prove that the eBooks we publish are in the
public domain, so, in order to use one of the many texts that are
just floating around the Net, you need to find a matching paper
edition that we can prove is eligible [V.18].
(By the way, please be sure that it isn't already in the PG archive. A
lot of texts circulating on the Net originated at PG, and people quite
often submit them back to us.)
Before you get into this, you should check whether the text you have
found is likely to be in the public domain in the U.S. A quick way to
verify this is to hit the Library of Congress Catalog site at
and search for the title or author. If you
find no publications before 1923, then you should probably move on;
the Library of Congress doesn't list every book, and in particular
doesn't list all books published outside the U.S., but, if there isn't
a pre-1923 copy there, it may be difficult to follow up on. If you're
not dissuaded, do a search on the Net for used book shops that might
have pre-1923 copies.
Sometimes, with a text on the Net, you know who typed it; it's on
someone's website, or the transcriber is named in the text. Sometimes,
the text has just been floating around Usenet or old gopher sites for
years, with no attribution.
The first thing to remember is that we would like to give credit to
the original transcriber if they want it, and if we can identify them.
The next thing to consider is that the original transcriber may well
have an eligible copy of the book, and may be able to provide TP&V
[V.25] for it.
So, if you can locate the original transcriber, it makes sense to
e-mail them, explain what you propose to do, and ask them whether they
can help with copyright clearance and whether they would like to be
credited in the PG edition. Often, you will get no response, or a
response but no prospect of material that will help with clearance,
but sometimes you will get lucky.
If the transcriber can't help with TP&V, it's up to you to find a
matching paper edition of the same book. This may not be as hard
as it sounds. Libraries can help, and may get editions for you on
interlibrary loan.
This is an ideal way for students, academics and librarians to
contribute texts to PG, since you probably have access to a good
library with stocks of old books to find matching paper editions.
If you find a matching paper edition, you then need to compare the
etext you found with the book. Legally, what we're trying to prove
here is that we have done "due diligence"--that we have done our best
to prove that the etext is indeed a copy of a public domain work.
The minimum "due diligence" we can perform is to compare the first and
last pages of each chapter, (or every 20 pages where the book is not
neatly divided into chapters of about that size). You should list all
of the differences between the book and the etext that you find on
those pages. It is to be expected that there will be some minor
differences of punctuation, spacing and spelling, and even perhaps of
wording. Minor differences are OK, but we do need to list them, to
prove that we did the comparison. When you have your lists, you can
send in the TP&V as normal, accompanied by your lists, for clearance.
Many texts floating round without attribution, and indeed many with
attribution, could do with a thorough checking, and another option you
have is "comparative retyping", where you go through the whole etext,
proofing it carefully against the cleared paper book, and changing
everything that is different in the etext to match the paper edition.
If you do this, you don't need to produce a list of differences, since
there won't be any by the time you've finished; you can just submit it
as a normal text--_and_ it may well be a lot cleaner! However, if you
do take this path, please do a very thorough job on the proofing and
comparison.
If the etext you find has been marked up, in HTML for example, you
should remove all HTML for the PG edition, because, even though the
text itself has been proved to be in the public domain, the original
transcribers may hold copyright on the HTML markup, even if you can't
find them. If you do want to make a HTML edition of it for PG, strip out
all of the original markup and then re-add your own markup.
If you do find the producer and he or she wants to be identified, you
may submit a double credits line like:
Transcribed by Sally Wright
Produced for PG by You
V.63. I've found an eligible text elsewhere on the Net, but it's not
in the PG archives. Why should I submit it to PG?
The first reason is file safety.
Yes, we accept that the file is already available to everyone today,
but it may not be safe in the long term. We've seen college students
who put books on their personal site, and then lose that site when
they graduate. We've seen individuals who transcribe several books,
and later lose interest, or move, or die, and the work they've done is
lost. We've seen small projects with a few volunteers who produce and
post books for a few years, but then break up or run out of funds to
maintain their site. We've seen large institutions drop their
collections as part of a cost-cutting exercise. We've even seen
organizations lock public domain works up behind licenses, requiring
users to commit to registration and a "no copying" agreement before
downloading them.
Whenever a set of etexts is published and distributed by only one
person or organization, there is a danger that their etexts will
disappear from the Net sometime. We want _all_ etexts to be spread as
widely as possible, copied as much as possible, so that no one event
or loss, or whim of a sponsor, can obliterate them.
We think that the PG collection is, for that reason, the safest place
to put a text for its long-term survival. There are copies of the PG
archives all over the world, on public servers and private CDs. PG
publications are widely converted, collected and read on PDAs. Other
text projects copy works from PG.
The PG archive is so valuable, yet free and easily portable, that even
if every current PG volunteer vanished overnight, people around the
world would copy and preserve it. Even if PG itself decided to
withdraw all our texts, we couldn't do it, because so many people have
made copies.
The second reason is legal safety.
Unlike some other projects and individual efforts, PG retains
documentary proof of the public domain status of its texts. This is
more valuable than it might appear at first glance.
Publishers often claim a new copyright [C.17] on works that they
republish, and as time goes on, it becomes harder and harder to prove
that a particular book is in the public domain. Walk into your local
bookstore and check out how many works by Shakespeare, Poe, Dickens,
and Twain have copyright notices on them! People who want to translate
these, or create derivative works like screenplays or lyrics or films
must first prove that they are basing their work on a public domain
edition, but the creeping copyright practices of commercial publishers
make that difficult.
Here's a practical example: we were approached by a film student who
wanted to make a short piece based on characters from James Joyce's
"Ulysses". But before he could do that, he needed to confirm that the
material on which he was basing his movie was in the public domain,
and all the editions he could find were copyrighted. However, because
PG had already established the public domain status of Ulysses, we
could point him to our established PD version, and even tell him where
to find a paper copy published in 1922. Without that evidence, he
could not have made his project.
V.64. I have already scanned or typed a book; it's on my web site.
How can I get it included in the Gutenberg archives?
Great! We get these a lot, but it's always nice to see another!
You need to send us the TP&V [V.25] so that we can prove that your
edition is in the public domain. If you don't have the TP&V, you will
need to find a matching paper book with eligible TP&V for us to be able
to use it.
V.65. I have already scanned or typed a book; it's on my web site.
The world can already access it. Why should I add it to the
Gutenberg archives?
The Project Gutenberg archives are widely copied and searched, and
much safer and more permanent that any individual website can possibly
be. We aim to keep this collection together over not just years, but
centuries. You took the trouble to transcribe this book. We can
relate; that's what _we_ do, as well. We know you want this work to
survive you and your ISP, and we believe we can do that. And it's not
as if you have to take it off your website when we make a copy; you're
just using your candle to light another!
If you want to let readers know that your site has other related
material, you can put that information in the Credits Line [V.47].
Taking a real-world example, you could ask us to add this to the
Credits line for a C. M. Yonge text:
A web page for Charlotte M. Yonge will be found at www.menorot.com/cmyonge.htm
V.66. I have already scanned or typed a book, but it's not in plain text
format. Can I submit it to PG?
Yes, of course. We'll be happy to discuss format options with you, and
we're quite experienced in converting between multiple formats and
deciding which formats work best and will have the longest life. All
you need is to get us a copy of your TP&V [V.25].
About author-submitted eBooks:
V.67. I've written a book. Will PG publish it?
Maybe.
PG gets submissions from young people, for example, who just want to
get a story they wrote published in PG. We wish them well with their
writing, but that's not really why we're here.
If you are a published author, or perhaps an academic who wants to put
a textbook into the archives, it's quite likely that we will publish
it.
V.68. I have translated a classic book from one language to another.
Will PG publish my translation?
Yes, if we can.
The book that you translated needs to be in the public domain, and we
will need the same proof of eligibility that we would use if you were
contributing the book in its original language.
For example, if you were translating Hesse's Siddhartha (published
pre-1923 in German, but no pre-1923 English translation available), we
would need to copyright clear [V.25] the original German edition from
which you worked--it needs to be a pre-1923 or otherwise public domain
edition. (We actually did this one, thanks to the hard work and
scholarship of some volunteers.)
V.69. OK, this is one of the cases where PG will publish it.
What do I do next?
You need to decide about copyright issues. Do you want to release your
work to the public domain, or do you want to retain copyright? If you
want to retain copyright, what terms do you want to release it under?
The next few questions deal with those issues.
Having decided that you want PG to publish it, and decided what
restrictions (if any) you want to place on further distribution, you
just need to write the appropriate letter and send the text to us.
[V.46]
V.70. I hold the copyright on a book. Can I release it to the public domain?
You can. All you need to do is put a statement into the released
version of the text saying that you have.
If you want to release it into the public domain and distribute it
through Project Gutenberg, you should send us a letter to that effect.
To: Michael S. Hart
Founder, Project Gutenberg
405 West Elm Street
Urbana IL, 61801-3231, USA
Dear Project Gutenberg:
I am the sole copyright holder for the book, "Wallaby Happiness." It
gives me pleasure to release this work into the public domain, and I
invite Project Gutenberg to publish this public domain edition.
Sincerely,
Gregory B. Newby
Once you have released it into the public domain, neither we nor
anyone else needs your permission to publish it, but for us to be sure
that it _is_ a public domain version, we do need a signed letter.
V.71. I hold the copyright on a book. Do I have to release the book
into the public domain for Project Gutenberg to publish it?
Absolutely not! For example, many contributors of copyrighted material
want to share it with the world, but do not want it commercially
republished by other companies.
You can grant Project Gutenberg perpetual, non-exclusive, world-wide
rights to distribute your book on a royalty-free basis by sending a
letter to Michael Hart. Your letter may be brief, but must be signed,
and must include the name of the book and the assertion that you are
the copyright holder or the agent for the copyright holder.
If you want some related information, like a link to your website,
included in the text, we will be happy to oblige.
Once we have posted a text, many people will copy it. We have no
effective mechanism for "recalling" texts that we have posted, so
please be sure, before you commit to this, that you intend to follow
through with it, because there is no way to change your mind later.
Here is a sample letter, including the address to send it to:
To: Michael S. Hart
Founder, Project Gutenberg
405 West Elm Street
Urbana IL, 61801-3231, USA
Dear Project Gutenberg:
I am the sole copyright holder for the book, "Wallaby Happiness." It
gives me pleasure to grant Project Gutenberg perpetual, worldwide,
non-exclusive rights to distribute this book in electronic form
through Project Gutenberg Web sites, CDs or other current and future
formats. No royalties are due for these rights.
Sincerely,
Gregory B. Newby
V.72. I hold the copyright on a book, and would like Project Gutenberg
to publish it. Can I choose what rights to assign?
For PG to be in a position to copy it, we do need perpetual,
worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free rights to distribute the book
in electronic form. What rights you choose to assign to readers after
that is a decision for you to make.
The Creative Commons site may give
you some ideas of what practical use you can make of your copyright to
see that the work is used in the ways you intended.
About what goes into the texts:
V.73. Why does PG format texts the way it does?
PG texts are formatted as plain ASCII, with 60-70 characters per line,
with a hard return [CR/LF] at end of line, and some people ask "Why do
it _this_ way? You could omit the hard returns and let the reader's word
processor or Reader software wrap the lines. You could use "8-bit"
accented characters for non-English characters." "You could use ' - '
instead of '--' for an em-dash." And so on, through a different choice
we could make for every formatting feature. And the answer, of course,
is that we _could_ do it differently, and sometimes we do, but mostly we
keep to one consistent style.
We'll be discussing each of the formatting decisions below, not only
giving the summary PG answer, but also discussing the plusses and
minuses of each, and the possible options.
Like any question beginning "Why does/doesn't PG . . . ?", the answer
is "Because that's what the volunteers and readers want!". These
conventions have been worked out over the years, largely by Michael
Hart, our founder and chief volunteer, in conjunction with all of us
volunteers, as the result of feedback from readers.
We are guided throughout by the principle that we want to produce
texts in the simplest format that will adequately express the content.
Quoting Michael Hart (1994):
Etext as developed and distributed by Project Gutenberg since 1971 was
never intended to be a copy of a paper or a parchment [remember, first
Project Gutenberg Etext was typed in from parchment replicas of the US
Declaration of Independence].
The major purposes of Project Gutenberg have always been:
1. to encourage the creation and distribution of electronic texts for
the general audience.
2. to provide these Etexts in a manner available to everyone in terms
of price and accessibility [i.e. no special hardware or software],
and no price tag attached to the Etexts themselves.
3. to make the Etexts as readily usable as possible, with no forms or
other paperwork required, and as easily readable to the human eyes
as to computer programs, and in fact, more readable than paper.
There is sometimes a conflict between "simplest format" and
"adequately express the content"; further, different people have
different views on what is "simple" or "adequate". You, the producer
of the text, have spent the time and effort to make the eBook
available to the world, you have thought more about it than anyone
else, and we respect your informed judgment. However, please make
sure that your judgment _has_ been informed, by studying the
precedents and reasons behind our guidelines.
Where a simple, standard PG-ASCII layout does not, in your view,
"adequately express the content", you should think of making your text
in another open format, perhaps HTML or XML or TeX, that allows you to
use more characters, more formatting options, and images. We are
always happy to accept these kinds of files. In these cases, you
should also provide a standard PG-ASCII version, even if you feel it
is unacceptably degraded, for those who cannot use your preferred
format.
Just ten years ago, presentation as plain ASCII was not only a
universal standard, it was effectively the only way that most people
could view the books. The first version of the HTML specification had
been drafted, but was unknown among the general public. XML did not
exist. SGML was (as it still is) the province of specialists.
Specialized eBook readers and PDAs had not yet appeared.
In 2002, plain vanilla ASCII is still readable everywhere, but people
also want to convert our texts into other formats for more convenient
loading on readers and web sites. We therefore have to keep in mind that
our works will be processed by automatic conversion programs, none of
which is perfect, and we have evolved some "defensive formatting"
practices, which, while retaining the universality of plain text, also
supply clues to automatic converters about how they should treat the
layout. These do help to keep converters from making at least the worst
mistakes. The most significant "defensive formatting" practices are
indenting unwrappable text like quotations, and using _underscores_
rather than CAPITALS for italics. Different volunteers have different
priorities: at one extreme, some people want to make the best plain text
they can, giving no weight to conversion issues; at the other, some
people emphasize the cues that will allow automatic reformatters to
convert the texts well, even if that causes some ugliness in the plain
text. Most of us operate somewhere between, making the choices we feel
are best depending on the context. Getting a text on-line is the
important thing; which choices you make in doing so is a matter of
detail.
About the characters you use:
V.74. What characters can I use?
a) You should use plain ASCII for straight English texts.
b) When producing a text partly or completely in a language that
requires accents, you should use the appropriate ISO-8859 character
set for the language, and specify which you are using, and also
provide a 7-bit plain ASCII version with the accents stripped.
c) When producing a text in a language that doesn't use one of the
ISO-8859 character sets, you should use the encoding most commonly
used for that language. [e.g. Chinese--Big 5]
d) When producing a text containing more characters than can be found
in any one of the ISO-8859 character sets, you should use Unicode.
You should use plain ASCII wherever possible--that is, the letters and
numbers and punctuation available on a standard U.S. keyboard, without
accented letters. The immediate and major exception to this is when you
are typing a text written in a language like French or German that
requires accents.
There is a problem with using non-ASCII characters. They do not
display consistently on all computers; in fact, they do not even
display consistently on the same computer! On my computer, for
example, what looks like an e-acute in this editor just shows as a
black box in another editor, or even using a different font in the
same editor. And this is by no means confined to some theoretical
minority; we have to deal with it all the time when posting texts.
Further, standards are changing: ten years ago, the character set
Codepage 850 [MS-DOS] was very common; now it's rare except in some
texts that have survived those ten years.
We want to preserve these texts over _centuries_, not just decades,
and at the moment there is no single clear standard that we can use
across all texts. Unicode may perhaps be a future standard, but, right
now, it's not something that people use every day, and it's not
supported by a lot of common software.
ASCII, while limited, is supported by almost all computers everywhere,
so we make a point of always supplying an ASCII version where
possible, even if the ASCII version is degraded when compared to the
8-bit original. When we get a text in, say, German, we post two
versions of it--one with accents and one without.
V.75. What is ASCII?
Don't get scared by the computer jargon; ASCII (pronounced ASS-key) is
just a name for the set of unaccented letters, numbers and other
symbols on a standard U.S. keyboard.
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a set of
common characters, including just about everything that you can type
in on an English-language keyboard. It includes the letters A-Z, a-z,
space, numbers, punctuation and some basic symbols. Every character in
this document is an ASCII character, and each character is identified
with a number from 0 through 127 internally in the computer.
Just about every computer in the world can show ASCII characters
correctly, which makes it ideal for PG's purpose of providing texts
that can be read by anyone, anywhere, but ASCII does not include
accented characters, Greek letters, Arabic script and other
non-English characters, which causes some problems when we produce
texts that need non-ASCII characters.
V.76. So what is ISO-8859? What is Codepage 437? What is Codepage 1252?
What is MacRoman?
Today's computers mostly work on the basis of dealing with one "byte" at
a time. A byte is a unit of storage than can contain any number from 0
through 255--256 values in all. It's very convenient for computers to
associate one character with each of these numbers, so that we can have
up to 256 "letters" viewable from the values stored in one byte. The
first 128 values, zero through 127, are defined by ASCII--so, for
example, in ASCII, the number 65 represents a capital "A", 97 represents
a lowercase "a", 49 stands for the digit "1", 45 for the hyphen "-",
and so on.
ASCII doesn't define characters for the values 128 through 255, and in
early days computer manufacturers used these values to hold non-ASCII
characters like accented letters and box-drawing lines. Of course, 128
wasn't nearly enough values to hold all of the characters that people
needed to use for different languages, so they made the character sets
switchable, so that a PC in France could use a different set of
accented letters from a PC in Poland. Microsoft's version of this was
called Codepages. Each Codepage held a different set of non-ASCII
characters. Codepage 437, and later Codepage 850, were commonly used
for English and some major Western European languages on MS-DOS.
MacRoman was Apple's first codepage, containing most of the accented
letters in Latin-derived languages, and MacRoman is still in common
use on Apple Macs today.
Later, the International Standards Organization ISO got around to
looking at the problem, and defined ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2 and so on,
as the standards for different language groups. These sets all define
the characters 160 through 255 as accented letters and other symbols,
and define the 32 characters from 128 through 159 as control characters.
Since Microsoft Windows has no use for the control characters 128
through 159, Windows fonts commonly use Codepage 1252, which has ASCII
in the first 128 characters, ISO-8859-1 in characters 160 through 255,
and other symbols in the characters 128 through 159. Just to make an
already chaotic system worse, all characters can be defined differently
in different fonts!
Of course, most of these codepages are incompatible with each other.
For example, the byte value 232 shows as a lower-case "e" with a grave
accent in ISO-8859-1 and CP1252, a capital letter "E" with diaeresis
in MacRoman, a Latin capital letter "Thorn" in CP850, a Cyrillic
lower-case "Sha" in ISO-8859-5, a Greek capital letter "Phi" in CP437,
and so on. So if you view a text intended for one of these character
sets with a program that assumes a different character set, you see
gibberish.
The good news, for mostly-English texts at least, is that ISO-8859-1,
Codepage 1252 and Unicode agree on the numerical values of the accented
characters and symbols to be represented by the values 160 through 255.
And everybody accepts ASCII--a pure ASCII file is valid ISO-8859-anything,
valid Codepage-anything, and valid Unicode UTF-8.
For more detail about the mappings between Unicode and other formats,
you can view Unicode<-->ISO-8859 mappings at
ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/ISO8859/
Unicode<-->Windows mappings at
ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/MICSFT/
and Unicode<-->Apple mappings at
ftp://ftp.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/VENDORS/APPLE/
If you're not confused enough by now, please read the excellent guide
to the whole "alphabet soup" problem at .
V.77. What is Unicode?
Recognizing that no single set of 256 characters can hold all of the
symbols necessary for true multi-lingual texts, ISO 10646 was created.
This defined the Universal Character Set (UCS) using 31 bits, which
has the potential for a staggering _2 billion_ characters.
The Unicode Consortium is a group of computer industry companies
who agree the Unicode standard. Unicode accepts the ISO 10646
standards, and adds some restrictions and implementation processes.
It plans for a modest million or so characters; however, this is
enough for all living and extinct languages, and imaginable future
ones too.
Using 4 bytes for each character is wasteful, though, when most
characters need only one or two, and there are programming problems
with implementing 4-byte characters, so Unicode provides Transformation
Formats (UTF) which allow the characters to be encoded using fewer
bytes where possible. UTF-8 and UTF-16 are common.
UTF-8, which is the most practical of these from the PG point of view,
allows ASCII to be encoded normally, and usually uses two or three bytes
for other non-ASCII characters.
Because of the extra work needed to support this extra space, and the
fact that most people work mostly in one or maybe two languages, Unicode
is being adopted only slowly, and most computer programs in 2002 do not
fully support it. But when you need to mix Arabic, Greek, Ogham and
Sanskrit in one text, it's the only possible answer!
For more about this, go straight to the source at .
V.78. What is Big-5?
Big 5 is an encoding of a set of 13,000+ traditional Chinese
characters.
V.79. What are "8-bit" and "7-bit" texts?
For practical purposes, 7-bit texts are plain ASCII; 8-bit texts
have accented letters.
This comes from computer jargon. You can represent the 128 characters
of ASCII using 7 bits--binary digits--but to represent the 256
characters needed for the various codepages and ISO-8859 standards,
like accented letters, you need 8 bits. Hence, we call a text that
uses non-ASCII characters in a character set like Codepage 850 or
ISO-8859-1 an "8-bit" text.
When we post a text as both 8-bit and 7-bit, as we do when ASCII is
not enough to render the text acceptably, we name the file with an
"8" or a "7" at the start. So, for example, Crime and Punishment by
Dostoevsky is named 8crmp10 for the 8-bit version with accents, and
7crmp10 for the 7-bit version without accents.
See also FAQ [R.35]: "What do the filenames of the texts mean?"
V.80. I have an English text with some quotations from a language that
needs accents--what should I do about the accents?
If stripping the accents would unacceptably degrade the book, then
submit two versions, one "8-bit" with the accents included and one
"7-bit" plain ASCII, and we will post both.
This is a hard choice. What constitutes "unacceptable degradation"?
Clearly this is a decision that all of us in PG have to make. It's a
very common problem, and different people have different views. For
that matter, different print publishers have different views; you will
see the words "debris", "facade" and "cafe" printed with and without
accents in different books, and even in different editions of the same
book.
We don't want to post two versions when we don't have to. It doubles
the posting work, doubles the disk space needed, potentially confuses
downloaders, doubles the maintenance when we need to correct the text.
On the other hand, we don't want to degrade the text.
There is no clear line, no definitive answer to what level of
degradation is acceptable. Most producers feel that there is no point
in making a separate version when dealing only with a few foreign
words thrown in among the English, but when, for example, some
significant dialog between the characters is in French or Spanish,
it's harder to say that stripping the accents is acceptable. You, the
producer, need to decide this on a case-by-case basis. If you're not
sure, discuss it with one of the Directors of Production or one of the
Posting Team.
If you have made the text with accents, you can choose to make your own
7-bit version and send it to us, or just send the 8-bit version and
we'll make the 7-bit version from it. Some people prefer to make their
own 7-bit editions; some don't. Whether you use a Microsoft Codepage,
one of the ISO standards or MacRoman doesn't matter--we can convert any
of them for you.
V.81. I have some Greek quotations in my book. How can I handle them?
There is no way to show Greek letters in ASCII. You have three
options:
You can just replace the Greek words with [Greek] to indicate to the
reader that you have omitted it.
You can "transliterate" the Greek to ASCII. Greek letters do have a
correspondence to plain "Latin" letters--for example, the Greek letter
"delta" can be represented by the letter "d". There is a simple PG
guide to transliteration at .
This practice has had a long and honorable history: words like
"amphora" and "hubris", for example, are straight transliteration from
the Greek. This is usually the best option.
If there is enough Greek to warrant it, and no other accented
characters, you may be able to use the ISO-8859-7 character set, and
submit both 7-bit and 8-bit versions [V.79]. ISO-8859-7 is for modern
rather than classical Greek, but, if necessary, you will surely be able
to express the Greek fully in Unicode. However accurate your Greek,
that still leaves the issue of what to do with the 7-bit ASCII
version, where transliteration is probably still your best bet.
V.82. I want to produce a book in a language like Spanish or French
with accented characters. What should I do?
Use the appropriate ISO-8859 Character set [V.76] for your
8-bit version.
About the formatting of a text file:
This section of the FAQ goes into great detail about all kinds of
formatting questions. However, looked at from a higher level, the only
real issue is that we want to render texts clearly, with formatting
that reflects the original, so that readers of the plain text format
can read them easily, and people converting them to other formats can
do so reliably. When you come across a case that is not covered by the
detailed guidelines below, keep this ultimate aim in mind, and make
the best decision you can. Don't get hung up for hours or days over a
question of formatting--if you want advice, look at how other people
have handled the same situation in previous texts, or ask other
volunteers for their ideas.
V.83. How long should I make my lines of text?
For normal prose, such as you find in a novel, your lines should
mostly be 60 to 70 characters long, not shorter than 55, not longer
than 75 except where it can't be helped. Never, ever longer than 80,
except where you're trying to render a non-text structure, like a
family tree.
For poetry, make the text look as much like the book as possible. This
also applies to some plays where the lines are clearly intended to be
broken at specific points, whether blank verse or not.
V.84. Why should I break lines at all? Why not make the text as one
line per paragraph, and let the reader wrap it?
We could either use 70-character lines and let readers unwrap them if
they want to, or use infinite-length lines and let readers wrap them
if they want to. We choose to wrap the lines so that they are readable
on even the simplest of text editors and viewers.
V.85. Why use a CR/LF at end of line?
CR/LF can lead to double-spacing, notably on Mac and Unix, but at
least there _is_ a CR in there for Mac users, and there _is_ an LF
for *nix users.
If you don't know or care what this is about, please skip blithely on.
There are three differing standards for how to represent the end of a
line of text. In brief, Apple Macs use the CR character. Unix and its
variants use the LF character. Microsoft systems, from MS-DOS through
Windows, use both together.
If you want the history behind these:
CR stands for Carriage Return, and comes from the old typewriter /
teletype idea of a command to move the print head from the right of
the page back to the left when it reaches the end;
LF stands for Line Feed, and comes from the old typewriter / teletype
idea of a command to move the print head down a line;
CR/LF together indicate moving down a line and back to the left of the
page.
The history is not relevant to today's computers in principle, but in
practice they all use one of these legacy conventions, and there's
nothing we can do about it but pick one.
V.86. One space or two at the end of a sentence?
Whichever you prefer, but if using two spaces, please use them only at
the end of a sentence, not after abbreviations like "Dr." and "per
cent.", and not after non-sentence-ending punctuation like the
question-mark in the sentence: "Must you go? when the night is yet so
black!"
Many people have strong views on either side of the "one space or
two?" question, and we're not about to try and argue with them. Use
whichever is most natural for you.
However, if using two, you take responsibility for deciding where the
sentence ends. You can't just place two spaces after every period,
question-mark and exclamation mark, since periods are also used for
abbreviations end ellipses, and question-marks and exclamation-marks
don't always end sentences.
V.87. How do I indicate paragraphs?
Just leave a blank line before each paragraph.
V.88. Should I indent the start of every paragraph?
No.
Printers do this when publishing paper books because they do not leave
blank lines in the text, but there is no need for indenting in our
eBooks.
V.89. Are there any places where I should indent text?
Yes. You should always make poetry look like the original, and that
may mean indenting some lines, for example:
I was a child and she was a child,
In a kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love--
I and my Annabel Lee;
Even when poetry doesn't have indented lines, it is a good idea to
indent quotations embedded in prose. Remember, others will be
converting your text later--to HTML, to PDA reader formats, to formats
that don't even exist yet--and much of this conversion will be done
automatically, by computer programs. It is very hard for a program to
know when it can and can't re-wrap lines to fit a screen size unless
it has a clear signal that _this_ line should not be wrapped. This is
one of the biggest problems with auto-converting PG texts.
Just about all formatting programs "know" that lines that are indented
shouldn't be wrapped, so by indenting lines just a space or two, you
can prevent
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
from turning into
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.
in some future reader's eBook.
You don't really need to do this in texts where the whole book is
poetry or blank verse, since these will probably be recognized as
whole books that shouldn't be rewrapped, but when there are a few
lines of quotation amid an acre of straight prose, a few spaces will
be a life-saver. Even in the original plain text version, the extra
spaces serve to set the quotation off from the main text.
You shouldn't get carried away and indent things 20 spaces for this
reason, though. Anything up to four spaces is reasonable; more is
excessive. If you're indenting many short verses in this way, keep
your number of spaces for indentation consistent throughout the book.
There are some other times when you may judge it best to indent, where
text is indented in the paper book, like newspaper headlines or
pictures of handwritten notes.
V.90. Can I use tabs (the TAB key) to indent?
No.
The problem with tab characters is that they act differently in
different applications. Typically a tab will move the text to the next
tab stop, which might be four spaces on your PC, but 20, or none, on
someone else's. The effects are unpredictable.
V.91. How should I treat dashes (hyphens) between words?
In typography, there are four standard types of dashes: the hyphen, the
en-dash, the em-dash, and the three-em-dash.
Originally, printers called these the "em-dash" because it was the
same width as the capital letter M in whichever font they were using,
the "en-dash" because it was the same width as the capital letter N,
and the "three-em-dash" because it was as long as three capital Ms.
The hyphen is used for hyphenated words, like "en-dash" itself, or
"to-day" or "drawing-room". For this, you just press the single dash
or hyphen key on your keyboard.
In typography, the en-dash is a little longer than the hyphen, and is
typically used for duration, where you could substitute the word "to".
For example, if you were printing "1830-1874", or "9:00-5:30", you would
use an en-dash instead of a hyphen. The en-dash is also sometimes used
as hyphenation between words that are already hyphenated, for example,
"bed-room-sitting-room" might use an en-dash as its central dash to
emphasize that it is a different type of separator from the plain hyphens
before "room". However, there is no ASCII character for an en-dash, and
we use the hyphen in these cases. (HTML and some character sets do provide
separate entities for en-dash and em-dash.)
The em-dash is shown in print as a longer dash, and for PG purposes, you
should render it as two hyphens with no spaces around them.
You use the em-dash as a kind of parenthesis--as I am doing here--or
to indicate a break in thought or subject within a sentence. There is
no ASCII equivalent of the em-dash; there is no key on your keyboard
that you can press to get one. For PG texts, we represent the em-dash
as two dashes with no space between or around them--like this.
The em-dash can also be used at the end of a sentence or speech to
indicate that the speaker stopped or trailed off. For example:
"When I saw you with Emily, I thought you were-- I thought she was--"
In a case like this, there may be a space following the em-dash, and
the context may demand that there _should_ be a space following the
em-dash, not because of the em-dash as such, but to make the break
between the statements or sentences clear.
These two hyphens represent _one_ character, so you should never break
them at line end, with one hyphen at the end of the first line and the
other at the start of the second. If you have an em-dash near line
end, you can break the line either before or after the em-dash, but
never in the middle.
The fourth type of dash, the three-em-dash, is used to represent a
missing word, or an undetermined number of missing letters. You
will often see it in a sentence like:
Dr. P------ was known for his honesty.
or
Dr. ------ was known for his honesty.
where there is a convention that the character's name has been
redacted. Logically, we should represent the three-em-dash as six
dashes, but you may reduce that to four. Whichever you choose, do use
it consistently in the text you're producing.
Unlike the em-dash, you should leave a space in such cases wherever a
space would have been before the letters were replaced by dashes.
Here's a summary table of the dashes:
Name ASCII Used for
Hyphen - Hyphenated Words
En-dash - Durations, like "3:00-5:30"
Em-dash -- Break in sentence or parenthetical comment
Three-em-dash ------ Indicating a word that was edited out.
V.92. How should I treat dashes replacing letters?
If the dashes obviously represent individual letters, use the same
number of hyphens. Otherwise, you can use a three-em-dash (see above:
6 or 4 hyphens) in such places.
A common convention when a character in a novel is using bad language,
or when reference is given to a character whose full name is not being
used, is to replace the letters with dashes. For example,
"That D---l, Mr. C------s will regret his hasty actions!"
In this case, it is clear that "D---l" is meant to represent "Devil"
and that there is a character whose name begins with "C" and ends in
"s" whose name is not spelled out in full. Where the book makes it
clear how many letters are represented by hyphens, just use that number
of hyphens.
Where the number of letters omitted is not clear, you can decide how
long you want to make your extended dash. Typographers often use the
"three-em-dash" for this, so called because it is as wide as three
capital Ms. Logically, since we represent an em-dash by two hyphens, we
might represent a three-em-dash as six, but if you feel that six
hyphens is too long, you can choose a shorter length, like four, but if
you do, keep it consistent within your text:
It was in the town of S----, walking on M---- Street, that
Sowerby came upon Dr. T---- taking the morning air.
V.93. What about hyphens at end of line?
Remove the hyphens from single words that were wrapped by the printer
at line-end on the paper copy. Where two words are joined with a
hyphen, you can leave the hyphen at end of the text line.
Books are usually printed with words broken at end of line to make the
right side of the text perfectly even. You should remove all such
hyphens. For example, in the sentence:
Mary's mouth tightened as she saw the marks on the car-
pet, and her hands balled into fists.
you should remove the hyphen from "carpet".
Words which are strung together and hyphenated by the author pose a
different question. It is perfectly OK from the point of view of a
reader of the plain text version for such a hyphen to occur at end of
line, for example:
Now that the guns were silent, convoys brought badly-
needed medical supplies and food.
However, be aware that if somebody later rewraps the text for use in a
different format like HTML, it is possible that they will introduce a
space where it should not be:
Now that the guns were silent, convoys brought badly- needed
medical supplies and food.
so there is still a small disadvantage to having a hyphen at line-end.
Sometimes it's not entirely clear whether the hyphen is there because
it has to be, or just because it happens to fall at the end of the
line:
Daisy rushed to the door, but there were no letters for her to-
day, and she retreated sadly.
Sometimes "today" is written as "to-day", especially in older works.
So which is this? Should we remove the hyphen or not? In this case,
the best thing to do is search the rest of the text for the same word,
and see whether it is consistently hyphenated or not in other places.
V.94. What should I do with italics?
There are three different ways volunteers currently render italics:
like THIS, like _this_ and like /this/. Pick one, and use it
consistently in your text.
There are really two questions here: "How should I render italics?"
and "When should I render italics?"
The original PG standard for italics was to render emphasis italics as
CAPITALS, using underscores for an italicized _I_, and do nothing for
non-emphasis italics like foreign words and names of ships, and this
is still the most common usage. For reading a plain-text file in a
plain text editor, it is still arguably the most reader-friendly usage
as well.
It has two drawbacks:
1. if you do want to preserve italics for non-emphasis words, you may
end up with a very ugly text where there are too many capitals.
2. it is impossible to convert CAPITALS reliably back into italics,
since the original text might have had a capital letter, or even been
all capitals in the first place. This is especially true of automatic
conversion for people who want to read PG texts on eBook readers.
To overcome these problems, many volunteers now use _underscores_ or
/slants/ to render italics. These allow you to preserve all italics
without creating an ugly plain-text, and to remove the ambiguity of
CAPITALS. Underscores are more popular than slants, but some people
feel that underscores should properly be reserved for underlined text.
Since printers tend to avoid underlines, however, there aren't many
books where this causes a real conflict.
V.95. Yes, but I have a long passage of my book in italics! I can't
really CAPITALIZE or _otherwise_ /mark/ all that text, can I?
No, you really can't. On the other hand, if the author intended that
section to stand out, you don't want to ignore that information and
withhold it from future readers.
What you _can_ do is format it differently from the rest of the text.
For example, if you're averaging a 68-character line throughout normal
paragraphs, you could reasonably use shorter lines, like 58
characters, for the italicized section. Going a step further, you
could shorten the lines and indent them a space or two as well. This
will give a clear signal to future readers and converters that this
section is to be treated specially.
V.96. Should I capitalize the first word in each chapter?
No.
Capitalization of the first word is often used in printed material to
emphasize the break at the start of a section or chapter on the paper,
but it is not necessary in an eBook, and leads to the same kind of
ambiguity as does the capitalization of italics, and for far less
reason.
If you feel you really _must_ capitalize the first word, we probably
won't stop you, but if so, please do it consistently throughout the
book, not just in one or two places, so that a future reader can be
certain that these capitalized words were a chapter-head convention,
and not otherwise intended for emphasis.
V.97. What is a Transcriber's Note? When should I add one?
A Transcriber's Note is a small section you can add to a text you
produce to give the reader some information about changes you made to
the book when rendering it into text.
A Transcriber's Note is not the same as a footnote--a footnote is part
of the text you have transcribed; a Transcriber's Note is a note that
_you_ add to the text, explaining something _you_ have done or
omitted. If there is a Transcriber's Note, it may be at the top or the
end of the text, and it should be clearly marked so that a reader
cannot confuse it with the main text or an introduction.
The main thing is to ensure that a reader cannot confuse text that you
have added with text that was in the original book.
Transcriber's Notes are rarely needed, but if, for example, you found
misprints in the text, or things that might look like misprints even
though they're not, you may note them here, if it seems relevant. If
there is an image in the book that is important to the content, you
may describe it in a note. If there was unusual typography that you
had to represent in some uncommon way, you might well explain that
here.
You don't need to add a Transcriber's Note just for common conversions
like italics, and you should not use such a note to add your own
comments or views about the text or the author. It's just there to let
the reader know what decision you have made about rendering the text.
Here are some examples of Transcribers' Notes:
Transcriber's Note:
The irregular inclusion or omission of commas between repeated words
("well, well"; "there there", etc.) in this etext is reproduced
faithfully from the 1914 edition . . .
Transcriber's Note:
Inserted music notation is represented like [MUSIC--2 bars, melody] or
[MUSIC--4-part, 8 bars]
[Transcriber's Note: This letter was handwritten in the original.]
Transcriber's Note:
The spelling "Freindship" is thus in the original book.
Transcriber's Note: Some words which appear to be typos are printed
thus in the original book. A list of these possible misprints follows:
If there is an image that is important to the content you may describe
it at the point in the text where it appears, for example:
[Transcriber's Note: Here there is a map of three islands just West of
and parallel to a coastline running SW to NE, with a big X marked on
the North of the middle island. A spur of land extends from the
mainland, sheltering the islands from the north-east.]
Transcriber's Notes that apply to the whole text should be placed at
the start or end of the text--your choice. Notes that pertain to a
specific point in the text, like the map example above, should be
placed at the point where in the text where they are relevant, but not
interrupting a paragraph except where it cannot be avoided.
V.98. Should I keep page numbers in the e-text?
No. But there are exceptional cases . . .
In general, the page numbers of the original book are irrelevant when
making a reader's edition for PG; they are annoying and intrusive for
anyone trying to read it, and if you did keep them, they would
probably be removed by anyone converting it. Get rid of them!
But there are a few books where page numbers are appropriate.
Non-fiction books that use page numbers as internal cross-references
are the prime example; if, on page 204, the text reads
"Our studies of plants (see pp. 141-145) show that this is true."
and this kind of cross-reference is frequent throughout the text,
then it is probably best to keep the page numbers, since it is
otherwise very difficult to honor the author's intent.
In the more common case where cross-references exist, but are not
frequent, and not essential to the text, you have several choices:
leave the cross-references in, meaningless though the page numbers
are, remove the cross-references, change the cross-references to
something relevant (like "Start of Chapter 12" instead of "pages
141-145"), or, if you can make it work in context, insert references
in the text for the cross-references to point to, like [Reference:
Plants] and then reformat the cross-reference like "Our studies of
plants (see [Reference: Plants]) show that this is true."
There are a few other cases, where the text you create is likely to be
the subject of study or reference, in which it may also be desirable
to retain page numbering.
When there are pages at the end of the book with notes referring to page
numbers, the simplest answer is to change the page number references to
chapter numbers, and add a quote from the page referred to if it's not
already in the book's end-notes. That way, a reader can search for the
phrase.
V.99. In the exceptional cases where I keep page numbers, how should
I format them?
Within brackets of your choice, with one space either side, simply
added to the text at the exact point of the page break. Unless there
is some [142] special reason, you shouldn't insert a line break or new
paragraph when indicating a page number; just insert it in the text,
as I did with "142" above.
You should use whichever of round brackets, (143) square brackets,
[144] or curly brackets {145} is not used (or least used) within the
main text itself, and then use it consistently. Try to make sure that
your page numbers cannot be confused with anything else.
Don't run your[146]page[147]numbers right up against words with spaces
omitted; this just makes the text hard to read. Use spaces before and
after.
Where the page break is at the start of a chapter or headed section,
you can put it on a line of its own, for example:
[148]
CHAPTER XI. PLANTS
Where a paragraph begins on a new page, you should put the page number
at the start of the paragraph, as:
[149] With the extinction of the dinosaurs . . .
V.100. Should I keep Tables of Contents?
Yes, but just keep the contents themselves, and not the page numbers
for each chapter or section, except where you have kept the page
numbers in the whole text. When you have removed the page numbers from
the book, it doesn't make much sense to leave them in the TOC.
Here, for example, is a typical TOC. In the original text, each chapter
had a page number beside it:
THE DUKE'S CHILDREN
CONTENTS
1 When the Duchess was Dead
2 Lady Mary Palliser
3 Francis Oliphant Tregear
4 It is Impossible
5 Major Tifto
6 Conservative Convictions
8 He is a Gentleman
9 'In Media Res'
10 Why not like Romeo if I Feel like Romeo?
11 Cruel
12 At Richmond
Note that I have indented the lines here, to give a sign to automatic
converters that these lines should not be wrapped into one paragraph.
V.101. Should I keep Indexes and Glossaries?
If you are working from a pre-1923 publication, then yes.
If you are working from a modern reprint, you must be careful not to
take any of the text that might have been added by the modern
publisher. If you have any doubt about whether the index or glossary
was part of the original printing, you should leave it out. Often with
reprints, under your Clearance Line [V.37], you may see an instruction
not to use indexes. In such cases, or if there is any doubt at all,
don't.
V.102. How do I handle a break from one scene to another, where the
book uses blank lines, or a row of asterisks?
Use a blank line, followed by a line of 3 or 5 spaced asterisks or
dashes, followed by another blank line.
In a printed book, where the point of view switches from one character
to another, or some other break in the narrative is made without a new
chapter or headed section, the publisher will often denote the break
just by a couple of blank lines. This gives the reader a cue to notice
that the point of view has switched, and avoids confusion.
However, a printed book cannot be edited or changed, while an eBook
will be edited and converted over its lifetime, and it is likely that
if you denote this break just by a couple of blank lines, as in the
book, your break may be lost. For example, in automated conversion to
a PDA reader format, it is common to merge multiple blank lines into
one.
In making a PG e-text, you _may_ indicate this break by a couple of
additional blank lines, but, if your text is later converted into
another format such as HTML, the extra blank lines may get lost in the
editing or rendering. Or the person doing the conversion may simply
think that the extra blank line was a mistake, and remove it. To guard
against this, you should add an unambiguous visual break such as a
line of spaced asterisks:
* * * * *
The exact layout of your break is not really important, and you can
use whatever format you prefer. Blank line followed by five spaced
asterisks followed by another blank. Or you could use two blank lines,
and dashes instead of asterisks. Just make sure that future readers
can be in no doubt that you intended to indicate a break that was
really in the original printed text.
V.103. How should I treat footnotes?
In a printed text, the most common treatment for footnotes is to put
them at the end of the page to which they refer. Sometimes, editors
gather them all at the end of the book. Footnotes are a real
formatting problem for an eBook without defined physical pages; there
is no agreement between readers about which is the best way to render
them.
There are three basic ways of rendering footnotes in an e-text:
You can insert them right into the text, in brackets, at the point in
the paragraph where they occur, with or without an indication that
they were originally footnotes. This is only reasonable in a text with
very short footnotes.
You can insert them after the paragraph to which they refer, either
contiguous with the paragraph or as a new "paragraph" of their own, as
I am doing with this one. If the text contains any footnotes longer
than a line, [1] you should not try to just append them to the
paragraph; you should make a new "paragraph" of them, with a blank
line before and after.
[1] Some footnotes can go on not only for several lines, but for
several pages!
You can gather all footnotes at the end of the e-text, or to the end
of the chapter to which they refer.
Of these three, gathering all footnotes to the end of the chapter or
the end of the whole text is probably the friendliest option, since it
preserves the original intention of allowing the reader to continue
reading the main text without interruption. However, it may involve
some renumbering and general note-keeping on your part, and may not be
needed where there are only a few short footnotes. You can see an
ideal example of this kind of footnote marking in our edition of
Darwin's "The Voyage of the Beagle", file vbgle10.txt from 1997, Etext
number 944, which you can get from:
V.104. My book leaves a space before punctuation like semicolons,
question marks, exclamation marks and quotes. Should I do
the same?
No.
If you look closely at these "spaces", you will see that they are not
as wide as a normal space--they tend to be half to three-quarters as
wide. These don't actually represent spaces as such; they were just a
convention used by typesetters to make the text feel less cramped, and
they did not express any specific intent on the part of the author.
OCR software tends to see them as full spaces, and one of the jobs you
typically have to do when editing a text that has been OCRed is to
remove them.
In some texts, this also happens following an opening quote, so your
OCR might read a sentence as:
" Hello ! How are you to-day ? "
which you should correct to:
"Hello! How are you to-day?"
Samples of this can be seen in the images used for the FAQ
"Why am I getting a lot of mistakes in my OCRed text?" [S.17]
V.105. My book leaves a space in the middle of contracted words like
"do n't", "we 'll" and "he 's". Should I do the same?
Unlike the pseudo-spaces before punctuation, these really were
intended as spaces indicating the break between words--that is, where
we would nowadays contract two words into one, the author or editor
has made the contraction, but left them as two separate words.
Since this effect was intended, it is usual to leave the spaces in.
Some people who really do n't like this style of spelling do remove
them, but generally volunteers want to preserve the text as printed.
V.106. How should I handle tables?
Just line up the information neatly in columns. If you use a
non-proportional font [W.5] you will be able to do this reliably. You
can also use the dash character "-" , the underscore "_" and the pipe
character "|" to make borders if you really need to, but it's usually
better to omit them. It is, though, often good to indent your table a
little, to set it off from the main text, and to avoid the danger of
having it automatically wrapped by some converter later. For example,
from "The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile" by Sir Samuel White
Baker:
TABLE No. 1.
Table for Increased Reading of Thermometer, using 0 degrees 80 as the
Result of Observations for its Error.
Month. 1861. 1862. 1863. 1864. 1865.
January. . . -- 0'143 0'314 0'487 0'659
February . . -- '157 '328 '501 '673
March . . . 0'000 '172 '344 '516 '688
April . . . '014 '186 '358 '530 '702
May . . . . '028 '200 '372 '544 '716
June . . . . '043 '214 '387 '559 '730
July . . . . '057 '228 '401 '573 '744
August . . . '071 '243 '415 '587 '758
September. . '086 '257 '430 '602 '772
October . . '100 '271 '444 '616 '786
November . . '114 '285 '458 '630 0'800
December . . 0'129 0'300 0'473 0'645 --
V.107. How should I format letters or journal entries?
Make them look like they are in the printed book. If the signature is
indented in the book, indent it in the letter. For example:
"Sir,
No consideration would induce me to
change my resolve in this matter, but I am
willing to engage your services as my agent
for a fee of 100 pounds.
"H. Middleton"
When a letter appears in the middle of lots of prose, using shorter
lines for the letter is an effective way of making the letter stand
out, without resorting to indenting the whole thing.
When the book is largely composed of letters or entries, as happens in
an epistolary novel or the publication of somebody's letters or
journal, you might reasonably leave two or three (but whichever you
choose, keep it consistent throughout the book!) blank lines between
entries to give the reader a visual cue that the next is not just a
new paragraph, but a new entry, for example:
10 pm.--I have visited him again and found him sitting in a corner
brooding. When I came in he threw himself on his knees before me and
implored me to let him have a cat, that his salvation depended upon
it.
I was firm, however, and told him that he could not have it, whereupon
he went without a word, and sat down, gnawing his fingers, in the
corner where I had found him. I shall see him in the morning early.
20 July.--Visited Renfield very early, before attendant went his
rounds. Found him up and humming a tune. He was spreading out his
sugar, which he had saved, in the window, and was manifestly beginning
his fly catching again, and beginning it cheerfully and with a good
grace.
I looked around for his birds, and not seeing them, asked him where
they were. He replied, without turning round, that they had all flown
away. There were a few feathers about the room and on his pillow a
drop of blood. I said nothing, but went and told the keeper to report
to me if there were anything odd about him during the day.
11 am.--The attendant has just been to see me to say that Renfield has
been very sick and has disgorged a whole lot of feathers. "My belief
is, doctor," he said, "that he has eaten his birds, and that he just
took and ate them raw!"
11 pm.--I gave Renfield a strong opiate tonight, enough to make even
him sleep, and took away his pocketbook to look at it. The thought
that has been buzzing about my brain lately is complete, and the
theory proved.
This is different from the case mentioned in the FAQ [V.102] "How do I
handle a break from one scene to another, where the book uses blank
lines, or a row of asterisks?". In that case, we added a row of
asterisks because future reformatting or conversion could cause
confusion about the scene break that was explicitly signalled by the
blank lines on paper. In this case, each new letter or journal entry
cannot be mistaken by a careful reader, so we don't need asterisks or
dashes to signal that; we're just adding a bit of extra space to make
it more readable.
V.108. What can I do with the British pound sign?
The British pound sign cannot be expressed in ASCII, but is very
common in the works of English novelists. It evolved as a stylized
version of the letter L (from the Latin "Librii"), and it's entirely
appropriate to represent it as such, either like:
The horse cost L8 12s. 6d.
or
The horse cost 8l. 12s. 6d.
This works particularly well where an amount is expressed in pounds,
shillings and pence (Librii, soldarii, denarii).
Where there is a simple number of pounds, you may prefer just to use
the word:
She was a handsome widow with 500 pounds a year.
V.109. What can I do with the degree symbol?
Just type out the word "degrees" or the abbreviation "deg."--for
example:
By the time we reached Cairo it was 115 degrees in the shade.
Geographical degrees are more awkward, but should be handled the same
way:
It was at 30 deg. 15' E, 14 deg. 45' N.
In general, any symbol can be represented in words.
V.110. How should I handle . . . ellipses?
Just as I did above . . . and here! Leave one space before and after
each dot. Do not break an ellipsis over the end of a line. In
principle, an ellipsis is one symbol, like an em-dash, and should not
be broken at line end.
A special case arises when an ellipsis follows a sentence instead of
being in the middle. . . . In this case, put the period after the last
letter of the sentence, as you normally would, then follow the usual
format for ellipses. You end up with four dots, with spaces everywhere
except before the first.
V.111. How should I handle chapter and section headings?
For a standard novel, you can choose either four blank lines before
the chapter heading and two lines after, or three lines before and one
line after, but whichever you use, do try to keep it consistent
throughout.
Normally, you should move chapter headings to the left rather than try
to imitate the centering that is used in some books.
V.112. My book has advertisements at the end. Should I keep them?
Most people seem to think "no", and "no" is the safe choice, but
opinions vary.
The typical arguments are: "The ads are not part of the author's
intent, so you should remove them." vs. "They give a flavor of the
original book, so you should keep them". This latter is particularly
cogent when the ads are for other books by the same author.
Decide which of these statements best fits your own views in the case
you're looking at; after that, it's up to you!
V.113. Can I keep Lists of Illustrations, even when producing a
plain text file?
Yes. As in the case of the Table of Contents, there is no point in
including page numbers when your text doesn't have them, but the list
of illustrations itself may go in.
V.114. Can I include the captions of Illustrations, even when producing
a plain text file?
Yes.
You can format them as short paragraphs of their own, in brackets,
with the word Illustration: followed by the caption, something like:
[Frontispiece: A Flash of Light]
or
[Illustration: Goldsmith at Trinity College]
Don't interrupt a paragraph to insert one, unless the reader really
needs to know that the original illustration was in the middle of the
paragraph; place the note between paragraphs instead.
V.115. Can I include images with my text file?
Yes, as I have done with the zipped version of the plain-text format
of this FAQ, but in general it makes much more sense, if you want to
include images, to make a HTML version of the book and include them
there, where they are anchored into the text in a predictable way, and
leave them out of the text version. But there are exceptional cases,
such as this--I included images with this plain-text FAQ because I
wanted you to be able to experiment with them using your own OCR
package.
If you do include images with plain text, they will be included with
the ZIP file, but not downloadable separately with the plain text
file; for example, if your file gets named abcde10.txt, and you
include images pic1.gif, pic2.gif and pic3.gif, then abcde10.zip will
include all four files, but only abcde10.zip and abcde10.txt will be
posted, so the images will be available only within the zip file, so,
even if you are including images, don't assume that the reader will be
able to see them.
If you do include images with plain text, be sure to mention them by
filename in a note at the appropriate places in the text file;
otherwise readers may not even realize they're there. For example:
[Illustration: Goldsmith at Trinity College--see goldtrin.gif]
If you do include images with a text file, don't make them too big.
Readers downloading zip files of plain text expect them to be
relatively small; don't burden them with huge downloads they don't
want. Use the same kind of rules and processing that you would for
a HTML file, or better still, include the images only with the HTML
version.
About formatting poetry:
V.116. I'm producing a book of poetry. How should I format it?
Make it look like the original.
The only formatting change that you might consider is to limit the
amount of centering. Often, in a poetry book, the title of a poem may
be centered, when the body of the verse isn't. This can work on paper,
particularly when the page is narrow, but "centering" the title on a
70-column line can mean that the title ends up far to the right of the
body of the poem, which looks untidy. And even if you center the title
correctly over the body of _this_ poem, the next poem may have longer
lines, and so _its_ title may not have the same center as the first
poem, and the title of one will be off-center with the title of the
next!
If you have this kind of formatting in your book, you should consider
moving all of the poem titles to the left margin rather than try to
keep compensating for different line centers. It's more consistent,
and easier to read, if you just left-align all titles. To see a
not-quite-successful attempt at centering the titles over the poems,
take a look at the Poems of Emily Dickinson, available from
In that case, it would have been better to left-align the numbers and
titles. Centering isn't really an effective formatting choice in etexts.
V.117. I'm producing a novel with some short quotations from poems.
How should I format them?
As nearly as possible like they look in the book, with the exception
that you should indent the whole verse anywhere between 1 and 4 spaces
from the left. This is to give a signal to automatic conversion
programs that these lines should not be wrapped.
For an example of a novel with many differently formatted quotations
embedded, see the "a" version of Clotel, file clotl10a.txt, Etext
number 2046, from the year 2000, which you can find at
Some of these quotations touch the left-hand column; today, we would
think it better to insert at least one space before every line.
About formatting plays:
V.118. How should I format Act and Scene headings?
Pretty much like chapter headings. You can use 4 blank lines between
acts, and 3 blank likes between scenes, or 3 between acts and 2
between scenes. If your book has "END OF ACT/SCENE" footers, leave
them in the etext.
You may center act/scene headers and footers if they are centered in
the book, but it's usually best to left-align them, for the same
reasons it's usually best to left-align poem titles in poetry.
V.119. How should I format stage directions?
Generally, in brackets.
In printed texts, it is common to show stage directions as italics
inside brackets. You don't have the option of italics in plain text,
and you shouldn't need to use _underscores_ or /slants/, and certainly
not CAPITALS, to indicate italics for stage directions. Normal text
within the brackets is all you need. It will be immediately clear to a
reader that bracketed text consists of stage directions.
[Square brackets] are most common for stage directions, but (round) or
{curly} brackets will work too, if there's a reason why they are
preferable in the case of your text. Just make sure that you use the
same kind of brackets consistently and only for stage
directions--don't use round brackets for stage directions if
characters' speeches also contain text in round brackets.
Some printed plays follow the convention of not closing brackets when
the direction is at the end of a speech or scene. For example:
[Exeunt.
Where the book doesn't close the bracket in a case like this, you
shouldn't either.
V.120. How should I format blank verse?
Just like normal verse in poetry. Make it look like the printed book.
Left-align it, and make one line of etext the same length as one line
of print.
Sometimes in blank verse, a speech may start mid-line, and the print
reflects that by leaving a space on the left, and starting mid-way. In
a case like that, do the same in the etext.
About some typical formatting issues:
V.121. Sample 1: Typical formatting issues of a novel.
Look at the image novel.tif. It shows a page of a novel, with several
typical formatting decisions to be made.
We note that there is no end-quote on the first paragraph, but that's
OK, since the second paragraph is a continuation by the same speaker,
so the first paragraph doesn't need a closequote. There is also an
italicized "I", which will end up with underscores, but there is
nothing else to give us any difficulty.
In the second paragraph, we have an ellipsis, an italicized French
word with an accented letter, the British pound symbol, and an
italicized "Here".
The ellipsis is simple.
Let's assume we're making this into a 7-bit text, so we're going to
convert the non-ASCII character a-circumflex and the pound sign. The
a-circumflex just goes to an "a", but we have several choices we can
make about the pound sign.
The italicized "Here" is clearly for emphasis, so we will mark that
up. The word "flaneur" is italicized because it is not English, but
possibly also for emphasis . . . if the sentence had read "The Major
is a _fool_", with the word "fool" italicized, it would clearly be
emphasis. As it stands, we don't know whether emphasis is intended.
This doesn't matter if we are just using _underscores_ or /slants/ to
render italics, but if we use CAPITALS, we're going to have to impose
our best guess on one side or the other.
The third paragraph shows some vaguely familiar squiggles--Greek
letters! We hit the PG transliteration guide at
and spell it out . . .
rough-breathing upsilon = hu; beta = b; rho = r; iota = i; final
sigma = s. So the Greek word transliterates as "hubris". Since
hubris is a familiar word, we don't need to make a fuss about it,
though we may _italicize_ it.
We then have a note, which we will format a little differently from
the main text to help it stand out, and a new chapter heading.
We should certainly indent the second line of the Byron quotation to
preserve its original form, but we have the option whether or not to
indent the first line a little to signal to any future automatic
converter that this is not to be rewrapped.
In the first paragraph of the new chapter, we need to get rid of the
hyphenation of "Wentworth" at line-end and fix the two em-dashes.
In the second paragraph of the new chapter, we have a long dash
between "d" and "l", clearly meant to denote "devil", so we will fill
it in with three dashes, and we see a three-em-dash after "Lord H", so
we can use six, or possibly four, dashes for that.
Finally, we have a table, a list of money values against names.
Depending on the standards we've chosen to use throughout the book, we
could render these details in a variety of ways. For illustration,
here are two acceptable possibilities:
"I shall go down to Wokingham", said Middleton, "a few days
before the election, and the Major will stay here. I
understand that there will be no other candidate, and _I_
shall take the seat.
"The Major is a . . . _flaneur_. He has no interest beyond
his own advancement. I can buy him for a hundred pounds.
_Here_ is his answer."
Wallace wondered at the _hubris_ of his friend, and
examined the note Middleton thrust upon him.
"Sir,
No consideration would induce me to
change my resolve in this matter, but I am
willing to engage your services as my agent
for a fee of 100 pounds.
H. Middleton"
CHAPTER XV
THE ELECTION
Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
---- BYRON
On hearing of Middleton's visit, Mr. Wentworth began his
preparations. Meeting with Thomas Lake and Riley at the
back of the tap-room of The Bull--where the landlord saw
to it that they remained undisturbed--he laid out their
plan of campaign.
"That d---l Middleton shall not have the seat," he raved,
"not for Lord H------; no, nor for a hundred Lords! We
shall see to it that every man's hand is turned against
him when he arrives."
Lake unfolded a paper from his vest-pocket and smoothed it
on the table. "Here are the expenses we should undertake."
Doran L13 10s.
Titwell L 8 7s. 6d.
St. Charles L25
* * * * *
"I shall go down to Wokingham", said Middleton, "a few days
before the election, and the Major will stay here. I
understand that there will be no other candidate, and _I_
shall take the seat.
"The Major is a . . . flaneur. He has no interest beyond
his own advancement. I can buy him for L100. HERE is his
answer."
Wallace wondered at the hubris of his friend, and examined
the note Middleton thrust upon him.
"Sir,
No consideration would induce me to change my resolve
in this matter, but I am willing to engage your services as
my agent for a fee of L100.
H. Middleton"
CHAPTER XV
THE ELECTION
Now hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
Men love in haste, but they detest at leisure.
---- Byron
On hearing of Middleton's visit, Mr. Wentworth began his
preparations. Meeting with Thomas Lake and Riley at the
back of the tap-room of The Bull--where the landlord saw
to it that they remained undisturbed--he laid out their
plan of campaign.
"That d---l Middleton shall not have the seat," he raved,
"not for Lord H----; no, nor for a hundred Lords! We
shall see to it that every man's hand is turned against
him when he arrives."
Lake unfolded a paper from his vest-pocket and smoothed it
on the table. "Here are the expenses we should undertake."
Doran 13l. 10s.
Titwell 8l. 7s. 6d.
St. Charles 25l.
V.122. Sample 2: Typical formatting issues of non-fiction
While non-fiction is not in principle any more difficult to format
than fiction, many non-fiction books have lots of features like
illustrations, tables, section sub-headings and footnotes, that
require some extra work on the part of the producer. If the
illustrations are essential, you should consider adding a HTML format
file to allow you to present them.
See the page image nonfic.tif. This presents many formatting changes:
the centered title will go to the left; the italicized chapter
contents will become regular text, and the em-dashes will become "--";
the degree symbol needs to be replaced with ASCII "deg.", and of
course we need to render the table readably. After all that, we have
to deal with the footnote.
Here is a reasonable rendering of this page:
CHAPTER XI
STRAIT OF MAGELLAN.--CLIMATE OF THE SOUTHERN COASTS
Strait of Magellan--Port Famine--Ascent of Mount Tarn--
Forests--Edible Fungus--Zoology--Great Sea-weed--
Leave Tierra del Fuego--Climate--Fruit-trees and
Productions of the Southern Coasts--Height of Snow-line
on the Cordillera--Descent of Glaciers to the Sea--
Icebergs formed--Transportal of Boulders--Climate
and Productions of the Antarctic Islands--Preservation
of Frozen Carcasses--Recapitulation.
An equable climate, evidently due to the large area of sea compared
with the land, seems to extend over the greater part of the
southern hemisphere; and, as a consequence, the vegetation partakes
of a semi-tropical character. Tree-ferns thrive luxuriantly in Van
Diemen's Land (lat. 45 degrees), and I measured one trunk no less
than six feet in circumference. An arborescent fern was found by
Forster in New Zealand in 46 degrees, where orchideous plants are
parasitical on the trees. In the Auckland Islands, ferns, according
to Dr. Dieffenbach [82] have trunks so thick and high that they may
be almost called tree-ferns; and in these islands, and even as far
south as lat. 55 degrees. in the Macquarrie Islands, parrots
abound.
On the Height of the Snow-line, and on the Descent of
the Glaciers in South America.
[For the detailed authorities for the following table,
I must refer to the former edition:]
Height in feet
Latitude of Snow-line Observer
----------------------------------------------------------------
Equatorial region; mean result 15,748 Humboldt.
Bolivia, lat. 16 to 18 deg. S. 17,000 Pentland.
Central Chile, lat. 33 deg. S. 14,500 - 15,000 Gillies, and
the Author.
Chiloe, lat. 41 to 43 deg. S. 6,000 Officers of the
Beagle and the
Author.
Tierra del Fuego, 54 deg. S. 3,500 - 4,000 King.
In Eyre's Sound, in the latitude of Paris, there are immense
glaciers, and yet the loftiest neighbouring mountain is only 6200
feet high. Some of the icebergs were loaded with blocks of no
inconsiderable size, of granite and other rocks, different from the
clay-slate of the surrounding mountains. The glacier furthest from
the pole, surveyed during the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle,
is in lat. 46 degrees 50 minutes, in the Gulf of Penas. It is 15
miles long, and in one part 7 broad and descends to the sea-coast.
But even a few miles northward of this glacier, in Laguna de San
Rafael, some Spanish missionaries encountered "many icebergs, some
great, some small, and others middle-sized," in a narrow arm of the
sea, on the 22nd of the month corresponding with our June, and in a
latitude corresponding with that of the Lake of Geneva!
In this case, I made some decisions. I made the lines in the contents
at the top a bit shorter than usual, to help them stand out. I decided
to use the full word "degrees" rather than "deg." where I could, but
not in the table, where I shortened the entries as much as possible
while preserving the sense. Since I was using the full word "degrees",
I decided to go the whole hog and use the word "minutes" for the
minutes symbol as well, (though the minutes symbol, a single quote, is
in the ASCII set) since it seemed to make the text more readable than
using the word degrees with the minutes symbol. I also made a choice
about the table layout.
You might prefer different choices in some of these cases, and, as in
our example of fiction above, there was more than one way to do it.
However, this is a reasonable rendering.
What happened to the footnote? and how did it become [82] rather than
the [1] of the original? In this case, I decided to put all footnotes
at the end of the whole text, and renumber them accordingly. So the
footnote on this page became number 82 in the overall text, and down
at the end of the whole text, I would put:
[82] See the German Translation of this Journal; and for
the other facts, Mr. Brown's Appendix to Flinders's Voyage.
I could also have transcribed this as:
. . .
Forster in New Zealand in 46 degrees, where orchideous plants are
parasitical on the trees. In the Auckland Islands, ferns, according
to Dr. Dieffenbach [*] have trunks so thick and high that they may
be almost called tree-ferns; and in these islands, and even as far
south as lat. 55 degrees. in the Macquarrie Islands, parrots
abound.
[*] See the German Translation of this Journal; and for
the other facts, Mr. Brown's Appendix to Flinders's Voyage.
if I chose to put each footnote with its own paragraph.
V.123. Sample 3: Typical formatting issues of poetry
Poetry is easy to format: just be sure to use a non-proportional font,
and make it look as much like the text as possible. To avoid
ragged-looking centering, left-align titles.
In a whole book of poetry, there is no need to leave an indentation
before every line; unlike a verse lost in fields of prose, there is
little danger that someone will wrap it by mistake.
Look at the image poetry.tif. On this page, we have an enlarged first
letter to start each poem, and capitals following--we can remove all
that. The titles are centered, so we will move them left.
There are line-numbers at every fifth line, and these are common in
poetry, especially where footnotes reference lines. We will keep these
out on the right-hand margin.
The third poem obviously intends the centering of its last lines
in each verse as a feature, so we will keep that as best we can.
The resulting etext looks like:
Mistress Mary
Mistress Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With cockle-shells, and silver bells,
And pretty maids all in a row.
Ozymandias.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, 5
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: 10
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
NOTE:
9 these words appear: in some editions : this legend clear.
The Rosary.
The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me;
I count them over, every one apart,
My rosary.
Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, 5
To still a heart in absence wrung;
I tell each bead unto the end--and there
A cross is hung.
Oh, memories that bless--and burn!
Oh, barren gain--and bitter loss! 10
I kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn
To kiss the cross,
Sweetheart,
To kiss the cross.
V.124. Sample 4: Typical formatting issues of plays
Look at the image play.tif. Stage directions are indicated by italics
and square brackets. We don't have to do much special work with
this--lose the italics, but keep the square brackets. The setting for
scene I, act II is also italicized, but without square brackets. If we
wanted to emphasize this, we could use shorter lines or add square
brackets, but it probably isn't necessary here. We're using 4 blank
lines between acts and 3 between scenes, so we mark these accordingly.
We leave one blank line between speeches. And following these simple
conventions, we get:
JACK. There's a sensible, intellectual girl! the only girl I ever
cared for in my life. [ALGERNON is laughing immoderately.] What on
earth are you so amused at?
ALGERNON. Oh, I'm a little anxious about poor Bunbury, that is all.
JACK. If you don't take care, your friend Bunbury will get you into
a serious scrape some day.
ALGERNON. I love scrapes. They are the only things that are never
serious.
JACK. Oh, that's nonsense, Algy. You never talk anything but
nonsense.
ALGERNON. Nobody ever does.
[JACK looks indignantly at him, and leaves the room. ALGERNON lights
a cigarette, reads his shirt-cuff, and smiles.]
END OF THE FIRST ACT
SECOND ACT
SCENE I
Garden at the Manor House. A flight of grey stone steps leads up to
the house. The garden, an old-fashioned one, full of roses. Time of
year, July. Basket chairs, and a table covered with books, are set
under a large yew-tree.
[MISS PRISM discovered seated at the table. CECILY is at the back
watering flowers.]
MISS PRISM. [Calling.] Cecily, Cecily! Surely such a utilitarian
occupation as the watering of flowers is rather Moulton's duty than
yours? Especially at a moment when intellectual pleasures await you.
Your German grammar is on the table. Pray open it at page fifteen.
We will repeat yesterday's lesson.
About problems with the printed books:
V.125. I found some distasteful or offensive passages in a book I'm
producing. Should I omit them?
Please don't. Readers understand that books are works of their time
and place, reflecting the opinions and prejudices of the people who
wrote them, and the people they observed. We shouldn't try to pretend
those prejudices out of existence. It may be, in a century or two,
that our descendants are repulsed by _our_ prejudices.
It is perfectly normal, for all kinds of reasons, not to want to
produce a particular book, but producing one while deliberately
removing passages is censorship, and is unfair to our readers.
If you find it too disturbing to handle the content, you can of course
abandon the book, or pass it along to some other volunteer.
V.126. Some paragraphs in my book, where a character is speaking,
have quotes at the start, but not at the end. Should I close
those quotes?
Probably not.
When one character is making a speech that spans more than one
paragraph, it is usual _not_ to close the quotes until the
speech is finished. This avoids confusion about whether the next
paragraph is the same speaker or another--once a character has
started speaking, there are no closequotes until the speech is
finished. However, there are openquotes at the _start_ of each
new paragraph during the speech. This makes the quotes unbalanced,
but it isn't a misprint; it's deliberate.
If this is not the case, if the same character is not continuing
the speech in the next paragraph, then you may have found a typo
in the book. [R.26]
V.127. The spelling in my book is British English (colour, centre).
Should I change these to American spellings?
No.
Stay true to the edition you have. And this applies the other way, as
well: if you have an American edition of a work by an English author,
please leave the spelling as it is.
V.128. I'm nearly sure that some words in my printed book are typos.
Should I change them?
The first thing to be aware of is that typos in books are not as rare
as most people think. You may never have noticed typos in your normal
reading, but under the kind of scrutiny that a book gets while being
produced for PG, they often do become noticeable. It's quite common to
find anything up to ten typos in a book.
Before you decide it's a typo, though, check that the same word
doesn't occur elsewhere in the book with the same spelling. Often, the
words or spelling used by pre-20th Century authors may just not be
familiar to you.
When you find something that you believe to be a typo, you have four
options: pretend you didn't see it :-), change the typo and add a
transcriber's note [V.97], change the typo without a transcriber's
note, or leave the typo as it is and add a transcriber's note. If you
are adding a note, do it at the top or bottom of the file; don't try
to work it into the text, and don't use the [sic] convention, since
the reader won't know whether the [sic] was added by you or an earlier
publisher.
In general, it's safest to leave the typo in place and add a note at
the end of the file, listing the words you believe to be typos; that
is the least contaminating and intrusive method. When adding the note,
you don't need to leave a mark in the main text. You can just say
something like:
[Transcriber's Note: "haw" near the end of chapter 15 appears to be a
misprint for "hawk".]
The danger in making changes is that you may be wrong, and we really
don't want to corrupt the text. This is particularly so in some old
books where archaic usages, now obsolete, may look downright wrong to
modern eyes. Sometimes, though, a typo is just so blindingly obvious
that it warrants immediate replacement. Even in these cases,
conscientious people will sometimes add a note, something like:
[Transcriber's Note: in chapter 12, I have changed "he stood on the
tock", to "he stood on the rock".]
V.129. Having investigated what looks like a typo, I find it isn't.
Do I need to do anything?
Often in PG work, you come across an odd word or usage. Might be a
typo; might not. You check it out, and find that it is
deliberate--perhaps a word from local dialect that just happens to
resemble a different word, perhaps the author is using an odd word or
spelling to make a point with the language. Especially if it's an
isolated incident, and especially if it's not obvious, you can add a
transcriber's note to the end noting that the word is thus in your
edition, and that it is probably right. This may prevent some
well-intentioned converter from changing it.
It's rare that you will need to do this; you may encounter such a case
only once in a hundred PG books, but it is an option.
V.130. Aarrgh! Some pages are missing! Do I have to abandon the book?
No. It happens more often than you might think, and we're quite used
to dealing with it.
Finish the book, and ask other volunteers to help by finding another
copy of the book to fill in the missing section. For something like
this, you can try asking on [V.12] the WebBoard, or gutvol-d, or ask
Michael Hart to put a note in the Newsletter asking for assistance. We
can post the book incomplete, and put a Transcriber's Note [V.97] in
the header asking any future reader who has a copy to fill in the gap.
V.131. Some words are spelled inconsistently in my book (e.g. sometimes
"surprise", sometimes "surprize"). Should I make them consistent?
No.
English spelling didn't really standardize until the start of the
20th Century (and even then it fractured; e.g. "standardize" vs.
"standardise") and the further back you go, the more inconsistent it
becomes. Shakespeare, for example, signed his own name with several
different spellings.
Where your printed edition genuinely uses alternate spellings of the
same word, you should preserve them.
Word Processor FAQ
W.1. What's the difference between an editor and a word processor?
An editor shows you the characters you type, exactly as you type them.
It puts new-line characters in when you hit the Enter key, and only
when you hit the Enter key. Its ultimate aim is to give you exact
control of plain text. EDIT in DOS, Notepad in Windows, vi and
emacs in *nix, Tex-Edit Plus and BBEdit Lite in Mac, are all editors.
A word processor, in addition to entering the characters, also lets
you change the font, the size of individual words, and whether they
are italic or bold. It doesn't generally want individual line-ends put
in on each line; it just rewraps the text as you change it. Its
ultimate aim is to print your document on paper with full formatting
facilities. WordPerfect for MS-DOS and Windows, MS-Word for Windows
and Mac, AbiWord for Windows and Linux, and Nisus Writer for Mac are
all word processors.
W.2. Should I use an editor or a word processor?
For dealing with plain text, which is what PG is about, you might expect
a text editor to have the edge, since the formatting features of word
processors can get in the way of making a clean text.
However, if you use a word processor, and you ignore all of the layout
and formatting that have to do with fonts and paper, it will work
equally well. There are a few common problems associated with Word
Processors mentioned below.
W.3. Which editor or word processor should I use?
The one you like best!
Any of them will do the job. Even the most primitive editors of 1971
will do the job. The most feature-bloated word processor of tomorrow
will do the job. No editor or word processor affects in the slightest
the "quality" of the text produced.
For PG purposes, therefore, the only difference between them all is
how easy you find them to use, and what facilities they have for
helping you--and those are decisions that only you can make.
If you already have a favorite editor or word processor, stick to it.
If you don't, there's a huge selection available for you to consider,
on any type of computer.
Sometimes, using a word processor, you may encounter some problems
in saving your book as plain text. You have to figure out how to get
it right just once, and then use that same method thereafter. If
you have problems with this, ask other volunteers or one of the
Posting Team for help.
W.4. How can I make my word processor easier to work with for plain text?
First, switch off _everything_ called "Smart ------" or "Automatic".
Modern word processors commonly offer lots of typical typing
support features--"Smart Quotes", "Auto Correct", automatically
capitalizing the first word in each sentence, anything like that. By
all means, leave on any informative highlighting of misspelled words
or other errors that it offers, but switch off any feature that
changes what you type without asking you. Older books contain text
that doesn't sit comfortably with modern rules, and we don't want your
word processor deciding what Chaucer really wrote!
Now, choose a non-proportional font, and apply it to the whole
document. It's important to work in a non-proportional font, because
you may have to line words up underneath each other and it is not
possible to do this consistently in non-proportional fonts like Times
or Arial.
If you work in Courier, size 10, 11 or 12, and your word processor is
set for a normal page size, about 7 inches across excluding margins,
then what you see in your WP is a pretty good approximation to how the
text will look in PG plain text format. One formula, suggested by John
Mamoun in the Volunteers' Voices section, is to Select All the text,
choose Courier New font, 10 point size, and set the margins at 5.5
inches, then Save As "Text with layout".
W.5. What is the difference between proportional and non-proportional
fonts?
A non-proportional, or "monospaced", or "typewriter" font, is one where
all of the letters take up exactly the same amount of space on screen:
a capital "W", a lower-case "i" and a space are all equally wide. The
Courier family of fonts is commonly used for this.
A proportional font is one where each letter takes up just the amount
of space it needs, so that a capital "W" is much wider than a small
"i".
Unfortunately, the different sizes of the letters in different
proportional fonts means that it's not possible to line up letters
consistently: a "W" may be equivalent to three "i"s in one
proportional font, and to four "i"s in another. This means, for
example, that it is not possible to use a proportional font to format
plain text tables or poetry correctly--lining up the spaces and words
using one proportional font will cause it to look skewed using
another.
You should always look at PG texts in a non-proportional font, even if
you prefer to work mostly using a proportional font, because readers
and automatic converter programs will assume that you meant to your
text to be viewed using a non-proportional font.
W.6. I can't get words in a table or poem to line up under each other.
You are using a proportional font. You should always use a
non-proportional font like Courier for PG work. Change the font
of the entire document to Courier and try again.
About using Microsoft Word:
PG volunteers use many different word-processors, but Microsoft Word
is the one we hear most queries and problems about.
W.7. I've edited my book in Word--how do I save it as plain text?
First, make sure that all text is using Courier or Courier New
and is at the same point size (usually 10-12). Move your right
margin so that you see roughly the right number of characters
per line (usually 65-70). Then choose File / Save As and then
choose the format "Text Only with Line Breaks". Save your file with
the extension ".txt" to distinguish it from your Word format file.
After saving, open your text file using Notepad or some other simple
text editor and look at the results. You should see a typical PG
layout of the text--lines up to 70 characters long, a blank line
between paragraphs and no indentation at the start of each paragraph.
If so, you're done.
W.8. Quotes look wrong when I save a Word document as plain text.
You may have left "Smart Quotes" on in Word options. This tells Word
to use left- and right-slanted quote marks at the beginning and end of
a quote instead of the plain ASCII straight quotes. When you save a
document that contains these angled quotes as plain text, they come
out as non-ASCII characters that look wrong on most editors and
viewers. The solution is to turn off Smart Quotes in Word and/or
replace the ones it has already created.
W.9. Dashes look wrong when I save a Word document as plain text.
When Word recognizes an em-dash as such, it may try to use a special
character for it. This may appear as a black square, an empty box,
or a funny accented letter when you Save As text and look at it in
a different editor.
You can usually do a Find and Replace on this character either in Word
or in another editor after Saving As text to change it to two dashes.
For those interested, the "funny character" is character 151 (97H),
and is specific to Codepage 1252 [V.76].
W.10. I saved my Word document as HTML, but the HTML looks terrible.
Yes. Word is not unique in having this problem, but HTML saved from
Word is the case we hear most about. Microsoft themselves offer a free
plug-in to Word that saves the file in "Compact HTML", which is a bit
better. You can fix it by hand, or you can use Tidy
, a handy utility, which will do some
clean-up on the HTML. If you're working with HTML, you really need a
copy of Tidy anyway, because it's such a great way to do a check on
the correctness of your HTML.
Tidy is also embedded in some Windows GUI tools, like Tidy-GUI,
HTML-Kit and NoteTab.
Scanning FAQ
S.1. What is a scanner?
A scanner is a machine that makes an image, a picture of the page that
is fed to it, and sends that image to your computer. It only makes an
image, like a camera does; it doesn't turn that image into text.
S.2. What types of scanners are there?
The most common type of scanner, the kind you're likely to find in
your local computer store, is a flatbed scanner. It has a glass bed
usually a bit bigger than Letter paper size (or A4 if you live in
Europe! :-) and most of the common models are optimized for typical
office correspondence. One of these may cost anything from under $100
to $400, depending on its features, or you can pick them up cheaper
second-hand. You use this by placing the paper or book face-down flat
onto the glass, and scanning from there. This is the kind of scanner
most commonly used by PG volunteers.
Some stores will call sheetfed scanners a different category. These are
flatbed scanners with Automatic Document Feed (ADF), but they are
fundamentally the same machine, and the ADF sheetfeeder unit may often
be bought as an accessory to the flatbed scanner. Recently, a few
sheetfed scanners have appeared that are very small, without a full
flatbed, just a narrow strip that the paper rolls through. Avoid these
for PG work; you often need to be able to scan the book flat.
Hand scanners, as their name implies, are much smaller, and typically
very cheap, or even thrown in free. You use these by holding them in
your hand and running them along the text like a brush. These are
really not intended for PG work; you need a very steady hand movement
to get them to scan a page of text into a readable image, and they
shouldn't be considered as an option for a 400-page book--scanning and
OCR is tough enough without that!
You can think of production scanners as industrial-strength flatbed
scanners. The basic mechanisms are the same, but a production scanner
will certainly have ADF (sheetfeeder), more features and speed, and be
rated for very high volume scanning. Production scanners are used by
publishers, businesses with high-volume paper processing needs, and
print shops. This last is useful, because you may be able to get some
scanning done by a print shop. It can't hurt to ask. If you're thinking
about buying one of these babies (and who among us hasn't? :-), be sure
you have $2000 or more to spend.
Drum scanners are mostly used by publishers for professional,
high-quality artwork. The paper is placed on the surface of a drum
that rotates past a fixed scanning head. The drum can be very large.
Because the sensors don't have to move, the electronics and optics can
be of higher quality, and produce very accurate, high-definition
images. They are exactly what you would want for making professional
quality scans of old movie posters, but they're expensive, and not
very useful for scanning War and Peace to OCR.
Planetary scanners are a different breed to all the others. They are
really not scanners at all, but a very high-end digital camera on a
stand. You place the book face-up with the pages open, with the camera
looking straight down on it. It takes a picture, and passes it on to
the connected computer. Planetary scanners are ideal for old, fragile,
valuable books that can't be exposed to the stress of normal scanning.
They typically come supplied with specialized software, sometimes even
their own dedicated computer, and they are very, very
expensive--$20,000+.
S.3. Which scanner should I get?
For most people, the answer is simple. Unless you have a lot of money
and are sure you will be scanning a lot of books, you should get a
normal, consumer-or-office type flatbed scanner, with or without an
ADF sheetfeeder.
Having decided that, you're faced with the question of which scanner
to buy. More good news! The market in scanners is very competitive,
and there are many top-line vendors all watching each others' features
like hawks, eager to deliver the highest-spec machine they can. There
are only a couple of critical factors in this decision--most of it is
about getting the best buy.
For PG work, you really _need_ an optical resolution no less than 300
by 300 dpi (dots per inch), and 600 by 600 is very desirable.
Obviously, more is better, but it would be very rare to need more than
600 dpi for PG work. Pay no attention to the "interpolated" or
"enhanced" resolution, where the software "guesses" what dots should
fill in the gaps--you're only interested in the optical resolution.
The good news is that it's very difficult to find modern scanners with
a maximum optical resolution of less than 600 dpi, but if you're
buying second-hand, you should check this out first.
You will also _need_ a scanning surface on the glass big enough to
place your book with two facing pages flat. Again, the good news is
that it's very hard to find a flatbed whose scanning surface is too
small for PG work, since these scanners tend to be designed to handle
office paper, which is about the right size. Most flatbed scanners
have scanning surfaces of about 8.5" by 11.5", and this is standard
for PG work. If you're working on books with very large pages, you may
need to resign yourself to scanning one page at a time, but buying a
scanner with a big flatbed for these rare occasions will be much more
expensive.
You must make sure that you get a scanner that will connect correctly
to your computer. There are currently (mid-2002) three main types of
connections commonly available: SCSI, USB, and parallel.
SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) is the highest-quality option,
but it means that you need a SCSI card in your computer, and be
willing to figure out how to install it. If you're already a SCSI
enthusiast, you don't need to read further; if you're not, I suggest
you avoid it unless you enjoy tinkering. Production scanners mostly
require SCSI.
Parallel-port connections used to be common, as a cheaper, easier
alternative to SCSI. Since the introduction of USB they have become
rarer, but you will still see them for sale second-hand. These plug
into your printer port, and don't require any further engineering skills.
Most new scanners hook up using a USB (Universal Serial Bus)
interface, which is a no-muss, no-fuss "plug-in and go" option, but be
sure, if you have an old PC, that it actually has a USB port and that
your operating system supports it; some older Windows PCs and Macs may
not. If your PC doesn't support USB, you should probably look at
Parallel-port scanners.
By the time you read this FAQ, FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces may
also be common. For your purposes, these are like more advanced
versions of USB. Just make sure that your computer has the right
support to match the scanner.
If you're buying second-hand--and used scanners can be very
cheap--make absolutely sure that you're getting the original software
that came with the scanner, and that that software will work with your
current operating system on your PC.
Having ensured that your choice of scanners passes these tests, you're
now free to indulge your tastes for any extras you like. Color is
nice, but rarely used, since we mostly transcribe older books that
have no color printing. Higher resolutions are comforting to have,
both since you may occasionally find them useful and because it shows
that the optics are of higher quality than you actually need for your
PG scans.
If you are nervous about your choice of scanner, or how easy it is to
get one working, feel free to contact other PG volunteers for their
opinions, as described in the FAQ "How do PG volunteers communicate?"
[V.12].
S.4. What is ADF?
ADF stands for Automatic Document Feed, and it's just a jargon term
for a sheetfeeder, where you put in a stack of pages to be scanned and
go away while that's happening instead of putting in each page
manually.
S.5. Should I get ADF?
That depends. Yes, ADF is a great idea, and can be a huge work-saver,
and if you have the cash to spend, it may well be worth it. But ADF
has a dirty little secret: like any other gizmo with moving parts, it
occasionally jams. The sheetfeeders built into these low-cost machines
are aimed at handling typical office paper straight from the laser
printer--large, smooth, good quality, with perfectly-cut,
perfectly-aligned edges. In your PG work, you will be dealing with
hundred-year-old pages of various thicknesses and textures, usually
much smaller than the sheetfeeder was designed to work with. And you
will have to have cut the pages, and may leave ragged edges in doing
so.
Under these conditions, you may find that paper often jams in your
sheetfeeder, and it defeats the purpose if you have to stand over the
scanner while it works, or if you end up having to lift the cover and
use your scanner as an ordinary flatbed, or, worse, if your paper gets
scrunched up as if a dog had been playing with it.
And of course, in order to feed the pages through, you will have to
cut them out of the book, destroying it. (It may be possible, with the
help of a bookbinder, to have the pages professionally cut, and later
re-bound.)
With ADF, you probably won't actually scan much faster than scanning
flat, but you won't have to keep turning over the pages during that
time.
So when you're making that choice, think carefully. If money isn't a
problem, or you do expect to be working with cut sheets, then go ahead
and get a sheetfeeder--it's great when it works! But don't be
disappointed when it doesn't work all the time.
S.6. What's a "TWAIN driver" and why do I need one?
A TWAIN driver (see ) is a piece of software
that installs onto your Windows PC or Mac and controls your scanner
from there. With any modern scanner, there will be a TWAIN driver
included in its software package. Once installed, you shouldn't have
to think about it again, or even know it's there.
A modern OCR package will usually find your TWAIN driver and use it to
control the scanner. This is very handy. There may also be a small
scanning package with your TWAIN driver, which will provide a screen
where you can make fine adjustments to scanner settings, and start
scans. You probably won't _need_ this, since your OCR package will
probably do it for you, but it may be useful for semi-manual control
of the scanner.
Unix-based systems like Linux use SANE , which not only points out any
messiness in your HTML code, but also has some neat modes to clean it
up and standardize the formatting.
After that, we have some requirements and recommendations. Compliance
with the requirements might be waived if there is a really good reason
to make an exception in this case.
2. Requirement: File names and extensions
If you want your text to work within 8.3 filename conventions, you may
use .htm as the extension for your HTML files; otherwise, use .html as
the extension. If you are working to 8.3 conventions, all of your
images as well as your HTML files should have 8.3-compliant filenames.
All file names and extensions should be in lower-case throughout. Yes,
we know this is not strictly necessary, but we don't want to have to
correct every file that comes with "image.gif" referenced in the HTML
accompanied by a file IMAGE.GIF.
3. Requirement: HTML and plain-text
Project Gutenberg does publish well-formatted, standards compliant
HTML. However, we insist that a plain text version be available for
all HTML documents we publish (even if images or formatting are
absent), except when ASCII can't reasonably be used at all, for
example with Arabic, or mathematical texts.
4. Requirement: Archive format for posting
If the HTML book contains more than one file (including images), create
a ZIP (preferable) or TAR archive containing all of the files in the
book. The ZIP file may, if you wish, unzip to a subdirectory named for
the book. For example, a book called 'The Humour of Mark Twain' might
unzip in a directory called 'mthumor'. Make sure directory names
contain only alphabetic and numeric characters, no spaces, and are 8
characters or less, even if you're not sticking to 8.3 conventions for
filenames.
5. Recommendation: Simplicity
Make your HTML as simple as possible. HTML is an evolving standard,
and one that may be completely obsolete in the long term. Use of
advanced features may just mean that your version will be obsolete or
unreadable that much faster.
6. Recommendation: Images
Images included with your HTML should be in a format that Web browsers
can read: GIF, JPEG or PNG. Images should be edited for high quality
in a reasonably small file size. Make the best decision you can
concerning the image size and placement in the text. Every image
included must be linked into (referenced by) the HTML.
7. Recommendation: Line lengths
If it is reasonable to do so, try to wrap paragraphs of text at around
the normal PG margin of 70 characters. Ideally, your HTML should be as
near as possible identical to your text version except for the HTML
tags and entities. People who open your HTML won't all be using
browsers, people will need to make corrections, not all editors can
handle very long lines, and even with editors that can handle long
lines, it's easier to work with short lines.
Apart from these rules and recommendations, we also have a rule about
the PG header, but that will normally be handled by the Posting
Team. Where your HTML is all in one file, the header text will be
inserted within PRE tags in that file. Where the HTML is split into
multiple pages, the header will be put into a separate file named
index.htm or index.html, and will link to the first page of your HTML.
H.5. Can I use Javascript or other scripting languages in my HTML?
No.
We don't want our readers to have to worry about any potential for
malicious or just plain buggy code.
H.6. Should I make my HTML edition all on one page, or split it into
multiple linked pages?
For a typical novel, one page or HTML file is appropriate, but when
that single HTML file gets up around 2 megabytes in size, it may be
worth considering a split because of the difficulty of loading it in
some browsers.
In some other cases, where the content requires different styles on
different pages, or different pages need different character sets, or
the page, with images, just gets too heavy, you may need to split the
HTML even if the HTML itself isn't technically too big.
When we post a HTML eBook containing multiple files, whether they
contain text or images, we post them only in zipped format, so if you
don't have images, and want your text to be directly accessible, you
should stick to one file where possible.
H.7. How can I check that I haven't made mistakes in coding my HTML?
There are two kinds of mistakes you can make in coding HTML:
you can produce invalid HTML, or you can produce HTML that
doesn't do what you want.
Checking for invalid HTML is straightforward. The W3C site
will formally validate your file
and point out any mistakes, and this is the official standard.
However, it is not always convenient to use, especially when
you're in a cycle of fix-and-retest. For this, you should try
the program Tidy , which runs
on your computer, tells you about errors, and has other useful
functions as well. Tidy is available for just about every
operating system, and there are several Windows utilities that
include Tidy. The links on the main Tidy page will lead you
to the right version for you. Tidy is fast and friendly,
compared to validation over the web, but it is not the last
word. The W3C Validator may find formal errors, such as
DOCTYPE mismatches with HTML tags or entitles, that Tidy
may not. The best solution is to complete your HTML tests
using Tidy, and then, when Tidy finds nothing further to
gripe about, submit it to for the
official seal of approval. Please run these checks before
submitting your HTML; we can generally fix it for you, but
it may take us a lot of work.
Producing HTML that actually does what you want is equally
important. If you've converted the eBook from text, you may
have created inconsistencies, or closed an italics tag in the
wrong place, or used the wrong tag at some points. The only way
to check this is by reading through the HTML in a browser.
H.8. Can I submit a HTML or other format of somebody else's text?
Maybe.
This question has several complications. First, you must
understand that it is quite possible, even likely, that your
HTML file will eventually be overwritten by better information.
The value of a HTML file, as opposed to a plain text file,
lies in its ability to capture elements of the original that
have been lost in the plain text. A plain text file, using
extended character sets like ISO-8859 [V.76] or Unicode [V.77]
and _underscores_ for italics, can capture all of the author's
intent in almost all cases. Sometimes, images and other important
features of the original cannot be captured in plain text alone,
but can be captured in HTML, or other markup.
When Michael Hart stopped posting books, in September 2001, we
had HTML formats of about 1.6% of all our eBooks. At the end of
2002, that has risen to nearly 11% of all our eBooks. If you
have a clearable copy of an existing posted book, with extra
features not included in the original plain text, we would
encourage you to make a new edition, or version, or format,
correcting any errors in the original, and adding any new
information not included there.
If, on the other hand, you just want to make a "blind format
change"--making your best guess at what the HTML, or other format,
layout should be for a book you've never seen, based on the original
producer's work--your best bet is to get in touch with the original
producer, and ask whether they can supply more material for you to
work with. Otherwise, you are at best just rearranging information
rather than contributing something new.
A blind format conversion can be done in anything from 2 minutes
[R.33] to an hour. It just doesn't make sense for us to keep posting
these files when they contain nothing new, and especially when two
people may want to convert the same text. It is likely that, at some
time in the next couple of years, we will start on a large-scale
conversion project, to add some form of markup to all of the existing
text files for ease of serving, and having a mish-mash of existing
markup styles to deal with at that point won't help either.
H.9. How big can the images be in a HTML file?
The images should be as big as necessary, and no bigger.
Sorry, but there is no clear number to give here. Web page designers
sweat blood to save an extra 20K on a page; so should you. If you're
an experienced HTML maker, you know this stuff; if you're not, take it
as a guideline that you should generally aim to keep your images in
the 30K to 50K size range, with occasional forays into 70-80K
territory. That's generally big enough for a clear picture, unless
you're reproducing fine artwork.
H.10. The images I've scanned are too big for inclusion in HTML.
What can I do about it?
This is a common problem, where images from the book occupy a full or
half page. Your images should be of an appropriate size for
downloading, and 2 megabytes of high-quality scan per image is not
really an appropriate size for most PG texts!
You should reduce the size, and maybe the quality, of the original
scan for simple viewing purposes. There is lots of image-manipulation
software to do this. For Windows, you might look at the freeware
Irfanview, and for both *nix and Windows there is ImageMagick [P.1].
Look for the words "resize" and "resample" in the Help.
Apart from simple converters, which do enough for this purpose, you
can also manipulate the images in full imaging creation and editing
packages like Paint Shop Pro, Adobe Photoshop and The Gimp [P.1].
Different image encoding methods can make a huge difference to the
filesize. Any of the packages mentioned above can encode images as
GIF, JPEG or PNG, and, particularly for black and white line drawings,
these can encode to very different sizes. So, for example, a 60K JPEG
may save as a 30K GIF, because the GIF encoding works better for that
particular image. Try your images out, and see what works.
When manipulating images, always work from your original. Don't
convert your original to a JPEG, and then shrink that and convert it
to a GIF. Depending on the format, images may lose definition as they
are converted (search for "lossy compression" in your favorite search
engine to find out more about this), and they certainly lose
definition as they are resized, and you end up with the "imperfect
copy of an imperfect copy of an . . ." effect. When you're
experimenting, take your original, resize and Save As GIF, then go
back to your original, resize and Save As JPG, and so on.
You can also use an image optimizer. These are specialist software
programs that try to make image files smaller without sacrificing
resolution or detail.
H.11. Can I include decorative images I've made or found?
No.
Please include only the images you got from the book. If you want to
make an edition of the book for your own web site, you can of course
use whatever you like there, but for PG purposes, we want the book,
the whole book, and nothing but the book.
H.12. How can I make a plain text version from a HTML file?
You can edit out the HTML by hand, of course, but there are several
easier ways to convert.
You can view the HTML in a browser, Select All text, and just Copy and
Paste into your editor. This is easiest, but doesn't handle formatting
like tables very well.
You can use the Lynx [P.1] browser to convert your text with the command
lynx -dump myfile.html > myfile.txt
Bruce Guthrie's HTMSTRIP for MS-DOS [P.1] is very configurable.
has a list of other HTML to
plain text converters.
H.13. How can I make a HTML version from my plain text file?
This is not a course in HTML, but, for most books, you don't really
need a course in HTML. Making a HTML format of most books is very
easy, and doesn't take long, once you have mastered basic HTML. Let's
assume you have your completed PG plain text file ready, and walk
through the steps commonly needed to make a HTML version. We'll do
this by successive approximation, doing the major things first, and
then dealing more and more with the detail.
There are lots of specialized HTML editors out there, but you don't
actually need any of them. The same editor that you used to create
your text will also create your HTML. HTML is just text, with two
types of special instructions added: tags and entities.
A _tag_ is an instruction to the browser, usually to display something
with specific rules. Tags are shown within angled brackets: for
example, is the instruction to start a new paragraph.
An _entity_ is a named special character that might not be available
in your character set. Entities are shown starting with an ampersand
"&" and ending with a semi-colon ";" : for example, — is the
representation of an em-dash.
I'm marking up a made-up short text as I write these steps, loosely
based on the sample page from question [V.121]. You can see the
changes made at each stage by looking at the files
htmstep0.txt (text before starting)
htmstep1.htm (after adding the HTML header and footer)
htmstep2.htm (after adding paragraph marks)
htmstep3.htm (after marking main headings)
htmstep4.htm (after adding special line breaks and indents)
htmstep5.htm (after adding italics and bold)
htmstep6.htm (after adding accents and non-ASCII characters)
htmstep7.htm (after adding an image)
htmstep8.htm (showing some extra techniques)
Before you start, make sure that you can see these files both
in your browser and in your editor. In your editor, you should
see the HTML codes; in your browser, you should see the text
as it is intended to be viewed.
Note for people who already know HTML: yes, this example omits
lots of possible ways to do things, and lots of refinements. You
already know how to do what you want to do--skip onwards, and
give the beginners room to learn in peace! :-)
Step 1. Add the HTML header and footer information
Add the following lines at the top of your text file:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Book, by A. N. Author
Let's explain these one by one:
says that your file is HTML 4.01 Transitional, which is the
latest version, allowing the widest range of tags and entities.
denotes the start of the HTML
denotes the start of the HTML header information.
says that the characters are text, using ISO-8859-1 encoding.
If you need to use a different character set, you should change
ISO-8859-1 to whatever you intend to use. ISO-8859-1 is good for
lots of PG books in English that use French or German words.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of My Book, by A. N. Author
You should obviously change this to the actual title and author
you're producing. The
denotes the end of the HTML header information and
denotes the start of the actual text itself - the body of the book.
At the very end of the file, you should append these two lines
these denote the end of the body of the book,
and the end of the HTML.
At this point, you actually have a valid HTML file! OK, if you view it
with a browser, it doesn't look anything like the way it's supposed to,
but it _is_ HTML. Save it with a name like MYFILE1.HTM or STEP1.HTM and
get a copy of Tidy for your DOS, Unix, Mac or Windows system from
. Run Tidy on your file, telling it just
to look for errors (tidy -e if running from a command-line; if you're
using a GUI version, there should me a menu option or tickbox for
showing errors only). Tidy should tell you that there are no errors.
Yay!
If it does say that there are errors, deal with them now, before you
continue. Make sure, at each step, that you have cleaned up any
errors; it's a lot easier now than later. Also, when you've finished
each step, save your file with a number in its name, so that if you
run into problems later and get confused, you can, at worst, drop
back to the correct version at the end of the previous step.
The most likely error you might have at this point relates to the
characters "<", ">", or "&". These are the characters used by HTML
to indicate tags and entities. If these characters are used in the
text of your file, (and ampersand is likely to be), you should
replace them with entities, so that HTML will know that they are
to be displayed as characters, not interpreted as commands.
Replace & with &
< with <
> with >
There is an example of this in the file htmstep1.htm
Step 2. Add paragraph marks.
For novels and general prose, paragraphs are the main logical and
display unit. Paragraphs are marked in HTML with the sign at
the start, and
at the end. You don't actually need the
at the end, but adding these is a good habit to get into. You do,
very much, need the at the start.
The line-lengths within a
pair are irrelevant; the browser
in which the text is viewed will ignore extra spaces and line-ends,
and will wrap text to fit the screen. This is bad for poetry and
tables, but we will discuss those later. For this step, all you
need to know is that you can leave your text exactly as it is,
and just add the paragraph marks.
Put a at the start of the line before the first letter of every
paragraph, and a
just after the last letter or punctuation of
every paragraph. If you can do macros in your editor, this will
just take a minute; otherwise, it may be rather boring, but at
least it is simple. For this step, put the paragraph marks around
_everything_ that has a blank line after it, even poetry or chapter
titles. We'll come back and change that later.
Now save your text as something like MYFILE2.HTM or STEP2.HTM.
Again, run Tidy to check for errors, and fix them before continuing.
If you now look at the file htmstep2.htm in your browser, you will
see that it is starting to take shape. Look at it in your editor,
and you will see the paragraph marks.
Step 3. Add marks for headings.
We want to indicate to the reader that certain lines are for chapter
or other headings. HTML provides the tags , , and so on for
this. is for the biggest heading, and usually, you will reserve
this for the title, and use for chapter headings. If you find
these too big, you could choose for main headings, and
for chapters. Whenever you use one of these header tags, you must
close it with its equivalent end tag. So a chapter heading might
look like:
Chapter XI
Since there won't be many headers, and most headers are only on one
line, this is usually not hard. Look at the file htmstep3.htm to
see how our sample is improving, and if you're working along with
me, don't forget to save your file under a new name and check it.
In our example, we have marked some lines with paragraph marks
where we now want to put headings, so we will change those
s
into
s, since we don't need or want to mark a line as both.
Step 4. Line up verse, tables of contents, and other lists.
The HTML tag
tells the browser to force a line break without
starting a new paragraph. We use this when we don't want text all
wrapped together, but not separated with blank lines either, for
example in verse and tables of contents.
In our sample, we add the
tag to the end of each line in the
table of contents and the end of each line of the verse. If we were
working on a whole book of poetry, the same principle would apply,
but we'd be using the
tag a lot more.
Where we want to indent a line of poetry, we can use " " at
the start of the line. Normally, however many spaces you leave
between words, HTML condenses them to one space, so normal
indentation doesn't work. But the "non-breaking space" entity will
cause the browser to show one space for each character, so that
you can indent as much as you need.
The file htmstep4.htm shows the effect: this is now an entirely
readable HTML text!
Step 5. Add back in italics and bold.
The HTML tag tells the browser to start displaying italics,
and the tells it to stop. Similarly, the tag tells it
to display bold, and marks the end of the bold text. See
htmstep5.htm for the changes.
Step 6. Restore accents and special characters.
Since we declared our HTML file to use ISO-8859-1 back at the start,
we can use any of the common accented characters for Western European
languages, but we may also use HTML entities. For example, for the
"a circumflex" in "flaneur", we can use either the ISO-8859 character
directly, or the HTML entity name "â" or number "â".
There is a trade-off between characters and entities: entities do not
limit you to any particular character set, but characters are directly
readable when looking at the HTML source.
Within entitles, there is also a trade-off between entity names and
numbers: older browsers may not recognize some of the entity names, but
the entities do make the text work in multiple character sets. Which you
choose is entirely up to you, but it's best to be consistent; if you
like entities, use them everywhere. Entities can be represented by their
names--for example, —--or by their number, derived from their
ISO-10646 (see Unicode) number--for example, —.
There are other special character entities you may choose, to replace
the ASCII equivalents in the main text. Here are some of the common
ones:
We've already seen
& & ampersand replaces "&"
< < less than replaces "<"
> > greater than replaces ">"
space replaces a space when you want to indent
and these are also very useful for many PG texts:
— — em-dash replaces "--"
° ° degree replaces "deg." or "degrees"
£ £ British pound replaces "L" or "l" or "pounds"
There are many others.
has a fuller list. Please note that you don't _have_ to use these
entities in your HTML; if you're happy with the text reading
"500 pounds", there is no need to make that "£500".
I've made a couple of entity changes in htmstep6.htm.
Step 7. Link Images into the text.
First, you need to have your image ready. You should already have
resized your image to the size you want it to be viewed at. You
should also have saved it as a GIF, JPG, or PNG image, since those
are the formats most supported by current browsers.
If your image is named front.gif, and it is a picture of the
frontispiece of the book, you should add the line
to your HTML at the place where you want it displayed.
The "alt" text gives a label to the image, and is displayed if
the image can't be shown, or in the case of a browser for
visually impaired people.
You don't _have_ to add images with your HTML file, unless you
want to. In many older books, there are no images at all to
be added.
My final HTML text is now in htmstep7.htm. You need to have
the image front.gif in the same directory in order to see it.
When your HTML text is posted, the images will be zipped with
it, so that future readers can see them.
Step 8. Over to you!
This is enough to make a reasonable HTML format of most PG
texts, but it doesn't begin to cover everything that can be
done in HTML. If you've gone this far, I recommend the W3C's
tutorials:
which cover the ground we've just crossed, and go a bit further.
Here are a few more things you might want to know, but don't go
nuts adding tags just because you can! Use them only when you
really need them. The file htmstep8.htm shows some of these
techniques. Personally, I think that this is a bit overdone,
and I prefer the effect of htmstep7, with left-aligned
chapter headings, but that's a matter of taste.
Once you're used to the basic HTML needed for most PG eBooks,
you'll probably be able to convert one in under an hour.
How do I force more space between specific paragraphs?
Insert a blank paragraph like this:
or
use an extra
tag.
How do I make text, or image, or headings centered?
Put the and tags around what you want centered,
like:
Chapter 12
and
tags.
These will cause whatever is within them to be displayed as
plain text, just as it was in the original, so that spaces
separate the entries just as they did in the text version.
You can also use this for poetry, though you usually won't
need to. It's not entirely satisfactory, but it will work.
Making a full HTML table requires you to use the ,
(table row), and (table detail) tags, among others,
and a full exposition of tables is beyond the scope of this FAQ.
Briefly, you start a table with the tag.
For each row you want in the table, you open and close a table
row tag, like:
and then for each cell within a row, you specify a tag and
the contents of that cell:
This is the Top Left cell
This is the Top Right cell
This is the Bottom Left cell
This is the Bottom Right cell
This only scratches the surface of tables. However, there are many
guides available on the Web, and they're easy to find, once you
know which tags you're looking for. A brief discussion of tables
is provided by the W3C as part of the HTML 4.01 spec at
and
the tutorial at
also shows how to make HTML tables.
Step 9. Some common problems
When you're just starting to code HTML, it may seem that errors are
coming at you from all sides. Tidy may spew out a stream of complaints
that you don't recognize or understand. If it's any consolation, this
is normal!
Just take the error list one line at a time, starting at the top.
Often, one actual mistake, like not closing a tag, may cause many
errors, since an unclosed tag can cause many subsequent tags to
be reported as errors.
Common errors include:
1. Simple typos in tags, like instead of
Chapter 3
2. Unclosed tags, like forgetting to add the in the
sample above, or forgetting the slash in the closing
tag so that you type italics instead of
italics.
3. Not nesting tags correctly. Get used to thinking of tags
as brackets; the first one opened should be the last one
closed. For example, you should type:
This is centered.
This is centered.
One option for making a HTML version is to use GutenMark
OmniPage
TextBridge
These are the three main commercial packages that volunteers bought
specifically for the purpose. In a few cases, people had got older
versions of these bundled with their scanners.
Clara OCR
These are Free Software packages. Some people who responded to the
survey had tried them, but nobody had actually used them to produce a
text.
DocMorph -- a free, web-based OCR
emacs
Microsoft Word
vi
Windows WordPad
Word Perfect
Other editors mentioned included:
Crisp for Windows
Editplus for Windows
Microsoft Word
Nisus Writer
TextSpresso .
Gutcheck was used for format checking,
and a few people had written some checking procedures of their own.
4. Working with HTML
In the survey, most volunteers preferred to handcraft their HTML using
their normal editor. Those using a word processor edited the HTML as
text, rather than composing a word processor file and then Saving As
HTML. There was remarkable unanimity on this.
Specific HTML editors that were mentioned for occasional use were:
Adobe PageMill (no longer available)
Mozilla Composer
HTMLKit has the original, and links to
versions of Tidy for Windows (Tidy-GUI) and just about all other
platforms.
GutenMark:
Converts Project Gutenberg texts to HTML and TeX.
Lynx (lynx --dump):
Converts HTML to text
Dave Raggett's HTML Tidy:
Checks HTML for correctness, reformats and fixes
W3C html2txt (web-based):
Converts HTML to plain text.
W3C Validator (web-based):
The Last Word on the correctness of HTML.
wget:
A very neat utility for getting web pages
Adobe Photoshop
For advanced image processing
ImageMagick for *nix, Mac and Windows
Resizing and format conversion
The Gimp
For advanced image processing
VuePrint Pro
For viewing images
should bring up information about the
codepage you're interested in, or you can read the excellent overview
at . For Unix users, iconv
and recode provide translation facilities from one character set to
another, and support many or all of the MS codepages.
DVI
DVI stands for DeVice Independent, and is commonly used to store text
and instructions for displaying it involving complex mathematical
symbols and expressions, though it can be used for any content. Given
a DVI file, you need a viewer to render it on the specific device
you're using. Specifically, DVI is used as the standard output format
for TeX, discussed below.
HTML/HTM (Format)
HyperText Markup Language defines the standard format of web pages.
You should be able to view these with any web browser, and edit them
with any text editor or a specialized HTML editor. is
the definitive reference.
ISO-8859/ISO-Latin (Character Sets)
ISO-8859 is a series of character sets used to represent the accented
characters most commonly used in European languages. There's
ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-2, and so on. ISO-Latin is just another name for
the same thing. You can read the overview at
LIT (Format for PDA-based eBooks)
This is a proprietary, closed format for files that can be displayed
only by the Microsoft Reader. Search for
more information. It is not possible to edit or correct files in this
format; it is not possible to export files from this format; they have
to be made in another format and converted.
MacRoman (Character Set)
MacRoman is an 8-bit Apple Mac-specific character set which allows the
display of accented characters and other symbols. To view a text that
uses MacRoman, you will have to use an application that supports it,
and there are few outside the Apple fold. However, iconv and recode
are programs that convert between many character sets, and MacRoman
is supported by both.
MID/MIDI (Format for music)
Musical Instrument Digital Interface is a music description language,
encompassing not only file formats but definitions of interfaces. A
MIDI file contains instructions for sending messages to a musical
instrument to recreate the sounds.
MPEG/MPG (Format for moving pictures)
The Moving Pictures Expert Group have released a series of formats for
encoding video and audio. MPEG (pronounced EM-peg) formats are
published and widely used. The official home page of the MPEG is
MUS (Format for music)
MUS from Coda Music
PDB (Format for PDA-based eBooks)
The Palm Data Base format can actually be used for purposes other
than eBooks, and there are many possible variants of formats for
Palm-based readers all using the extension PDB on PCs, and they're
not all entirely compatible. Some of them are proprietary, and it
may not be possible to edit them directly, or export files from
these formats; they have to be made in another format and converted.
Some can be converted back to text. The most common, though, is the
"Palm-DOC" format, which is an open format and can be edited on the
Palm itself.
PDF (Format for eBooks)
Portable Document Format is a format for storing texts, containing any
fonts or graphics. It is copyrighted by Adobe,
but is well and publicly documented. It is sometimes referred to as a
kind of compiled Postscript (see PS below). It is viewable using the
Adobe Acrobat Reader. It is not possible to edit files in this format.
PRC (Format for PDA-based eBooks)
This is a proprietary format for files that can be displayed only by
the MobiPocket Reader. See for more
information. It is not possible to edit or correct files in this
format; it is not possible to export files from this format; they have
to be made in another format and converted.
PS (Format for text and graphics)
Postscript is technically a programming language, not just a format.
It has conditional statements, procedures and program flow control.
However, it is commonly referred to as a format. Adobe
holds copyright on the Postscript specifications
(there have been three "levels" published) but Postscript is well and
publicly documented and has wide support, not only in printing, but in
screen display as well. Apart from Adobe's official version, you can
also render Postscript files with Ghostscript, a Free Software
package. Postscript can be edited directly, but any complex editing
may present difficulties.
RTF (Format for text)
Rich Text Format was originally a Microsoft specification, but it is
an open format that is used by many word processors to exchange text
and format information in an application-independent way. Nearly all
current word processors will read and edit an RTF file, and, like
HTML, it can also be edited as plain text.
TXT
TXT is a generic extension used for any plain text file, regardless of
the character set. Thus, while most of our .TXT files contain ASCII,
some contain ISO-8859 or Big-5 or Unicode.
TeX (Format for typesetting, printing and viewing)
TeX (pronounced "tech"--the "X" is actually the Greek letter chi) is a
public domain format created by Donald Knuth for typesetting, though
it can also be used for normal printing and viewing. TeX consists
mostly of the plain text, with instructions for how it is to be
displayed. This is compiled into DVI format (see above) which can be
rendered onto any device, like a printer or screen, by a program that
is aware of the device's capabilities. The Comprehensive TeX Archive
Network
for more.
XML (Format for . . . well, just about anything :-)
eXtensible Markup Language looks a bit like HTML, but whereas tags
such as have a standard meaning in HTML, XML allows anyone to
define their own set of tags and meanings using a Document Type
Definition (DTD) file. Add a CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) file to
that, and you have the ability to display the text according to
predefined rules. In principle, this seems to make it ideal for the
storage and processing of etexts, since a suitable DTD and CSS,
together with the right programs, should make it possible to produce
any format of eBook automatically from an XML original. Some PG
volunteers have looked at, and are looking at, ways to convert the
entire archive using a satisfactory DTD; however, meantime we aren't
actually producing much XML, since most volunteers aren't working with
it, and nobody wants to start producing many XML texts until we have
agreed on a DTD. , and held the key down while Vim
zipped through the rest of the file. It sped it up by a factor of
over a hundred.)
My university library is well-stocked and has lots of old books, so
I usually rely on it when I need to get TP&V's for texts I'm not
typing in myself. I still don't have a scanner, so I either find
already-existing texts on the Internet and reformat them for Project
Gutenberg (after getting permission, of course), or find page images
on the net and OCR them myself, or type the books in by hand.
Typing in by hand takes a long time and so I prefer the first two
methods.
Volunteering with Project Gutenberg has been extremely satisfying.
The people are wonderful to work with, the work is fun, and it feels
very good to know that one is making a difference in the world.
Col Choat
How I got started
People sometimes ask me how I got started in preparing etexts for
Project Gutenberg, and while they probably ARE interested in my story
often they are really more interested in finding out whether it is
something that they might want to get involved with. Jim Tinsley, a
colleague at PG, recently prepared a "questionnaire" as a way of
stimulating existing volunteers to document their PG experiences.
Answering the questionnaire seems as good a way as any to answer the
question, "how did you get started".
HOW DID YOU LEARN ABOUT PG?
I think it was probably from a newspaper or a computer magazine. I
can't really recall, now.
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CONTACT LIKE.
Initially, I visited the site to search for books I was interested in,
to see if they had been posted at PG. That was quite a straightforward
process. I downloaded a few texts and either read them at my computer
or, occasionally, printed them out to read later.
When I became interested in volunteering, I visited the site to get
some information about how to go about it. I found it a bit daunting,
really. There was a lot of information but it was difficult for me to
get it sorted out in my mind. There were copyright issues, editing
rules, and procedures for lodging etexts. There was a question and
answer page and some background and information for those wanting to
subscribe to the PG mailing lists. In the end, I just sent an e-mail to
Michael Hart, whose e-mail address was listed on the site, and said
"what can I do?" I notice that volunteers still sometimes do that.
WHAT WAS THE FIRST PG JOB YOU DID? HOW DID IT GO?
I decided to prepare an etext from a book I had in my home library,
titled "UNDER THE NORTHERN LIGHTS". It is a series of short stories
about the Canadian North by Alan Sullivan. I had a small "hand"
scanner at home, which I hadn't used much before. I didn't know any
better, so I would scan in about ten pages and save them as "tif"
files. Then I would use the OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
software supplied with the scanner to convert the image to text for
subsequent editing. I recently purchased an A4 scanner with
state-of-the-art OCR software and I can't believe how I persevered
with that hand scanner for so long.
I tried to apply the editing rules outlined on the PG site, though
they weren't as prescriptive as I would have liked. I wanted
certainty, as I felt that I didn't know enough to apply own editing
rules. I didn't have a good text editor, either, so I probably made
the job more difficult than it needed to be. More about the "tools of
the trade" later, though.
When I submitted the title pages of the book to PG for copyright
clearance it was rejected because the book was published in 1926. I
don't know what I was thinking about when I chose it. It must have
just LOOKED old enough. I had scanned and proofed about half of it, so
I just abandoned it and looked for something else. Interestingly,
Australians and residents in other countries with similar copyright
laws, can now read it as it is in the public domain in Australia and
is now on the Project Gutenberg of Australia site. I was able to
finish it and post it at PG, after all.
HOW DID YOU DEVELOP YOUR PG EXPERIENCE FROM THERE?
I think that one of the most valuable things I did was to join the
volunteer discussion group. I found that I didn't need to take part,
but could just take note of all the different issues raised by other
volunteers. Some days there was no activity by the group, but then a
hot topic would be raised (e.g. whether some books, such as Mein Kampf
by Adolf Hitler, should not be accepted by PG, even if eligible) and
there would be plenty of comments. I realised also that I could ask
for help on specific questions regarding preparation of texts and
receive prompt informative answers. Once, when I thought that I was
sending to ONE of the members of the group an e-mail with a large
attachment, I was quickly made aware that EVERYONE had received it.
Some weren't amused, but I am a quick learner--I didn't do it again.
Subscribing to the weekly newsletter is also worthwhile. There is a
link on the main page of the PG web site to allow people to subscribe
to the mailing list and discussion group. I also found a few people
who I began to e-mail privately, outside the discussion group. That
helped a lot, too. Perhaps there is merit in instigating a mentor
scheme, whereby a new volunteer can refer to another more experienced
one for help, guidance and encouragement. I would be interested in
taking part in that.
CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THE FIRST TEXT YOU PRODUCED.
As I mentioned earlier, my first attempt was abortive (initially, at
least). However, as I had realised that there was not much Australian
content on PG, I decided to go in that direction. Then I found that
there were many eligible Australian titles already on the internet,
mostly in HTML format. These can only be read using a web browser, so
I decided that it would be worthwhile to download them, convert them
to text files, compare them with a book of the same title which was
eligible for PG copyright approval, and then have them posted at PG. I
had learned my lesson, so from then on I always got the approval
BEFORE I started work on the conversion.
I prepared a number of etexts using this method and quickly increased
the amount of Australian content at PG. However, I still wanted to
create an etext from a book. My sister had given me, as a gift,
"Australia's Greatest Books" by Geoffrey Dutton, which reviewed
approximately one hundred books and I decided to work my way through
them. I had already converted a number from HTML, as outlined above,
so the first on the list to be scanned turned out to be the journal of
Charles Sturt who explored south-eastern Australia between 1828 and
1831. I was quite pleased with myself when the two volumes were
finally posted at PG.
WHY DO YOU SPEND YOUR HOURS CONTRIBUTING TO PG?
The simple answer is "because it is FUN". It is easy to make up
justifications, but since there is no necessity to do it, it must be
because I enjoy it. I get a sense of achievement that the work I do
will be "out there" for a long time. We haven't begun to realise where
technology will lead us. The books I prepare will be able to be read
by people anywhere on earth, and even beyond, by astronauts travelling
to Mars. "Send up THE ODYSSEY will you Scottie, I have always meant to
read it."
I have had some unexpected pleasures, too. I have "met" some
wonderfully generous and interesting people and I have read some
wonderful books that I would not have taken the trouble to read if I
weren't preparing them for PG.
DO YOU SPECIALISE IN ANY PARTICULAR KIND OF WORK, OR TEXTS?
I started out thinking that I would stick to books with an Australian
flavour. But I can't help myself. If I see something that I am
interested in, and it is already on the internet, but not at PG, I
have to do it. I have submitted etexts of James Joyce's "Ulysses", and
works by D. H. Lawrence, and Norman Douglas. I also have a long list
of books I would like to scan in myself, not all of which are about
Australia--one day.
WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT MAKING A PG ETEXT?
I think I have covered that already. I like the sense of achievement,
the fun of reading the book, and the thought that it will be available
to many people who would not otherwise have access to it, possibly in
a form which has not yet been invented.
WHAT DO YOU DISLIKE ABOUT MAKING A PG ETEXT?
Sometimes the going is not easy. Occasionally I get impatient with the
length of time it is taking and sometimes I get bored with the subject
matter. I recently purchased a new scanner with excellent OCR
software, which converts the page image to text, and that has given me
a new lease of life because less proofing is required. I sometimes
remind myself that I don't have to do it, then I find that I want to
anyway.
WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR ELIGIBLE BOOKS
Local libraries have a surprising amount of eligible material. The
main difficulty is finding books with a publication date of 1922 or
earlier, for PG in the US anyway. I have found a number of "facsimile"
editions which are direct reprints of the original, and these are
acceptable. I also look around second-hand bookshops. I recently found
a battered copy of "A short history of Australia" published in about
1910, and bought it for $A1.50. For books eligible for posting at the
PG Australian site, cheap paperbacks are readily available. I am
working on one now, and have ripped all the pages out of it to make it
easier to scan. It only cost a few dollars. There are also a number of
sites on the internet which list second-hand books for sale.
DO YOU TYPE OR SCAN? WHAT SCANNER/OCR/EDITOR/WORD PROCESSOR DO YOU
PREFER?
This section might as well cover all of the "tools of the trade". I
have noticed that volunteers have many favourite tools, and from what
I can make out most will do the job. The list below covers what _I_
have settled on. I should note that I work in the Windows environment,
and tools are readily available for all the things I need to do.
Scanner
I recently purchased a Canon A4 flatbed scanner without a document
feeder for under $A200. It has a hinged lid for scanning books and
comes bundled with image enhancing software and OCR software for
converting image to text.
OCR (Optical Character Recognition) Software
'Omnipage Version 9' came bundled with the scanner. I find that I
don't need any of the other software which came with the
scanner--Omnipage does it all for me. I can scan, proof, spellcheck
and save the output to a text file with very little effort.
Editor
I use Editplus which is available as shareware on the internet. It
enables me to read in the file produced by the Omnipage OCR software
and reformat it to a line length suitable for PG texts (about 70
characters). It also allows one to display guide lines vertically on
the page to help with checking for "long" lines. I have loaded James
Joyce's "Ulysses" into Editplus and it handled it, so I presume that
it will handle files of any size. As with everything one wants to do
at PG, there is always someone more than willing to help with problems
encountered, just by posing questions to the volunteer discussion.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Software
Some volunteers e-mail their submissions to PG as an attachment to an
e-mail. However, it is also possible to place them at the PG site for
processing, using FTP. Microsoft Windows Explorer has an FTP facility
which can handle this and that suits me. I know that there are many
others and SmartFTP is an excellent freeware product for those who
need Windows-based FTP software.
Other Tools
I use Microsoft Word to convert HTML files to text files. Firstly, I
cut and paste the html document into word, then I convert any italics
to upper case, since italics are not supported in plain text files;
then I save the document as a text file. Then I use Editplus,
mentioned above, to reformat the line length. Sometimes it is
necessary to add an extra "carriage return" at the end of each
paragraph, to comply with the preferred style for PG texts. This can
be done from within Word or Editplus by replacing characters. New
volunteers may need to ask for information about this process.
HOW DO YOU CHECK YOUR TEXT? ANY SPECIAL TOOLS? SPELLCHECKER? DO YOU
PRINT IT OUT AND READ IT? PUT IT ON YOUR PDA AND READ IT? HAVE A VOICE
SYNTHESIS PROGRAM READ IT ALOUD TO YOUR FROM YOUR PC?
I have tried a few different methods. I don't have a notebook computer
or etext reader so I must either read it on a PC or print it out.
There is a spellchecker with Editplus, which allows one to add new
words, so I use that to begin with. I also use GUTCHECK, a program
developed by Jim Tinsley, which picks up many errors. One would need
to contact him via PG, if one wanted a copy. I travel by train to
work, so I often make a printout and read that for the final proof, or
co-opt my wife if it is something I can interest her in. I have a
checklist, which I have developed over time, that I use to ensure that
I have covered all that I need to--but then I AM one for lists.
DO YOU HAVE ANY TIPS 'N' TRICKS OR SPECIAL ROUTINES YOU GO THROUGH
WHEN PREPARING A TEXT?
I think I have covered most of my methods already. I sometimes find
that "dashes" within sentences need attention. I like to show them as
"--" so I try to be consistent and not let them slip through as " - ".
I think we at PG could get together a more or less prescriptive list
of editing rules for new volunteers to follow. Once they gained
experience they could change them if they wanted to. I do like to
place an end marker ("THE END") at the end of my progressing work, so
that I don't inadvertently lose any of it and I make several rotating
backups of the file I am working on. I have "lost" computer files once
or twice over the years and don't want to get that sick feeling in my
stomach EVER again.
As I said earlier, I do have a checklist, and it could help if PG
(that includes me, as PG is "us") provided a downloadable list of
things which need to be done to get an etext posted e.g. copyright
approval, scanning, editing, proofing, placing relevant information at
the beginning of the etext, etc. All the information is there already,
it just needs bringing together into one document.
HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE YOU TO MAKE A TEXT?
Obviously it depends on the number of pages, efficiency of the scanner
and the number of hours one puts in. The two volumes of Sturt
mentioned above probably took me six months, but I was doing many
other things in the meantime. To scan in and edit, say, "The Prophet"
by Kahlil Gibran would only take a fraction of that time as it is
quite thin and easy to read. If one were concerned about getting an
idea of the time it would take to complete an etext, I would suggest
that he/she do a little casual proofing at the "Distributed
Proofreaders" site first, to get an idea of what is involved.
DO YOU WORK ALONE, OR DO YOU SHARE THE WORK OF EACH TEXT? DOES ANYONE
REGULARLY HELP YOU PROOF THE TEXT?
I generally work alone, however my wife will proof sometimes. She has
become interested in the book that I am working on at present and is
waiting for me to supply her with more pages. When I was getting
started, a new volunteer agreed to proof something for me (she
approached me) but then she never did any of it and didn't even e-mail
me to advise that she had changed her mind. Editing and proofing is
not for everybody and one needs to find out if one likes doing it.
However, courtesy costs nothing.
DO YOU DO SOME PG WORK REGULARLY, OR DRIFT IN AND OUT AS OPPORTUNITY
PERMITS, OR WHEN YOU FEEL LIKE IT.
All of the above at different times. I am not an avid television
watcher and would rather do some "work" (or should I say "pleasure")
for PG much of the time.
HOW MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF WORK, OR DIFFERENT BOOKS, HAVE YOU DONE?
Because I have converted many books from work already on the internet,
I have covered quite a range, though I haven't actually scanned and
proofed too many books. Those that I have done have been Australian
historical works. But I have rounded up books on philosophy,
aboriginal legends, and several novels. Since many internet sites come
and go, I am interested in "grabbing" etexts and posting them at PG in
case the site disappears from the internet. It has become a pastime in
itself. I recently discovered "South Wind" by Norman Douglas, a book
which caused quite a sensation when it was first published because it
portrayed a bohemian lifestyle. Ironically, I used to have the book in
my home library, but dispensed with it when I needed space. Now it is
at PG and I can get it whenever I want it.
WHAT DO YOU LIKE ABOUT THE PG PROCESS?
The democratic, helpful, friendly approach of all the people involved
is one of the things I like best. I have "met" so many wonderful
people, without having to "live" with them, if you know what I mean.
Not long after I started associating with PG, Michael Hart posted an
e-mail to the volunteer discussion group, advising of the death of a
long-time volunteer. It seemed like she had been one of the "family".
One really needs to be indifferent to praise and the prospect of
reward to start volunteering for PG. There is certainly no money in
it. However, one quickly finds that there is a community of people out
there with a common interest, and with the same outlook and the same
interest in doing a job well, without tangible reward. There is no
lack of praise though, and one soon finds that one is not indifferent
to it.
WHAT DO YOU DISLIKE ABOUT THE PG PROCESS?
There isn't much that I don't like. Nothing worth mentioning, anyway.
IS THERE ANYTHING YOU'D LIKE TO SEE PG DOING DIFFERENTLY?
There are a few things, however since I don't know all the reasons for
some things being done the way they are, and because everything is
done by volunteers anyway, I wouldn't like to canvass them here. To
have produced nearly 5,000 etexts over more than 30 years is testament
to the fact that most things are being done "right".
IF ONE OF YOUR FRIENDS APPROACHED YOU TO ASK ADVICE ABOUT HOW TO GET
STARTED CONTRIBUTING TO PG, WHAT WOULD YOU TELL THEM?
I would spend some time with him/her and work through some of the
issues. I know that I would have benefited from that approach. I would
gradually introduce her(him) to the different issues which need to be
addressed and find out exactly what her expectations were, and try to
help her in fulfilling them.
WHAT WOULD YOU EXPECT PG TO BE LIKE IN FIVE YEARS? TEN YEARS?
Much the same as it is now, I hope. After all, the goal will continue
to be to provide "fine literature digitally re-published". Though I
expect that, like other organisations, it will continue to evolve in
response to new challenges and opportunities. Ten years ago, who would
have thought that there would be 5,000 etexts posted; that there would
be volunteers operating an online proofreading site; and that there
would be a volunteer writing free software to read PG etexts? The
rapid growth of PG over the last few years will present many
challenges for the future.
Writing of etext readers, I am reminded that I recently joked to a
volunteer that I wanted him to write software for reading etexts,
whereby a hologram would appear on the inside of my eyelids so that I
could read etexts with my eyes closed. Who knows, it might be
possible. However, whatever advances in technology occur over the next
ten years, one thing is certain: the work of all the volunteers to
date will ensure that there is an amazing library of ebooks available
covering creative works by some of the greatest minds who have ever
lived. Future readers of PG ebooks will have been given a wonderful
gift by the many volunteers who have contributed to PG over the
decades.
Project Gutenberg of Australia
On the wall in a colleague's office was pinned a piece of paper on
which was written a quotation. I don't recall now what it was and the
colleague has been gone for some time and has taken the paper with
him. However under the quotation the author was acknowledged as
"Prince Machiavelli". I had a vague idea that the quote actually came
from "The Prince" by Nicolo Machiavelli, and wondered how I could
satisfy my curiosity. Then I remembered reading about Project
Gutenberg and decided to see if the book was posted on the PG site,
though I didn't really expect that it would be. Needless to say, the
etext WAS there and I was able to download it and read it in its
entirety, due to the time spent by John Bickers and Bonnie Sala (their
names appear at the beginning of the etext) in preparing it for PG.
Interestingly, there were other works by Machiavelli there, which I
hope to get back to one day.
Later, when I e-mailed PG and expressed an interest in volunteering I
was, because I said that I was Australian, referred to Sue Asscher,
the Australian Production Director for PG. Sue asked me to proofread
"A Vindication of the Rights of Women" by Mary Wollstonecraft. Also,
about this time, a journalist had contacted Sue with regard to a story
being prepared for PG. He wanted to contact some volunteers to ask why
they were interested in PG. Sue referred the journalist to me, with my
permission of course, and one of his first questions was "Is there
much Australian content on PG?" After I had checked the PG etext list
I could only reply "not much".
So I decided to start creating etexts by Australian authors, for PG.
Sue Asscher pointed out that there were many eligible Australian works
already in the public domain as etexts, so I started rounding up
etexts and matching them with books which had been published before
1923, so that they could be posted at PG. Then I started creating
etexts myself, for works I could not find already on the internet. My
sister had given me, many years ago, a book by Geoffrey Dutton titled
"Australia's Greatest Books", so I decided to start working my way
through the eligible titles from the list of about one hundred books
reviewed by Dutton. I had already found a number of them on the
internet and some were already at PG. But there were still a "few" to
be done. There still ARE a few to be done, if anyone is interested in
helping.
Then Sue Asscher again had a hand in setting the direction I would
take by asking me to proof an etext of "Animal Farm" by George Orwell,
whose work had recently entered the public domain in Australia. We
didn't know where we would post it, as it is not in the public domain
in the US, but I agreed to proof it as I had read it many years ago
and enjoyed it.
About this time, I also decided to make up a personal web site. Being
a software developer, people were always asking me about the internet
and web sites, in the mistaken belief that I knew ALL about computers.
I decided to get an idea of how web page design and web site
management worked by creating a site that listed all of the
"Australian" content at PG. When I couldn't find anywhere to put the
Orwell, which I had recently proofed, I decided to create a page on my
site for etexts in the public domain in Australia, so that Australians
and internet users in other countries with similar copyright laws,
could read and/or download them.
Michael Hart, the founder of PG, was quick to interest me in creating
an "official" PG site in Australia. After registering a business
name, getting a domain name and finding a sponsor to host the site,
Project Gutenberg of Australia was up and running.
It all happened very quickly, and as with many things which happen in
one's life, it all seems to have come about by serendipity. Even the
site's motto "A treasure-trove of literature" was stumbled upon by
chance when I looked up, in connection with another unrelated matter,
the word "treasure-trove" in a dictionary, to ascertain if the word
was hyphenated. Imagine my surprise to find treasure-trove defined as
"treasure found hidden with no evidence of ownership". That EXACTLY
defined the literature found on PG.
My own association with PG resulted from the culmination of a
life-long interest in books and literature and an equally strong
interest in computers. Every volunteer brings his/her own particular
interests and skills to PG and that, together with the democratic
approach taken by the small executive team, is what makes PG the
strong, co-operative organisation that it is. My interests and skills,
and a generous dose of serendipity, led to the creation of Project
Gutenberg of Australia.
Dagny
I discovered Project Gutenberg in 1996 and immediately wanted to help
because I love books and wanted everyone to have access to all the
wonderful books that, even today with Internet searching, are
difficult to find or very expensive when you do locate them.
I began by proofing a few works but what I really wanted to do was
share my Balzac collection with other fans. I discovered Balzac in the
1970s and recall my frustrations in trying to find more than a dozen
stories of the over one hundred Balzac wrote. It was over a decade
before my husband discovered a complete set at a used bookstore while
on vacation. Unfortunately, not everyone is so lucky.
With the first few stories I typed for Project Gutenberg I worried
about everything: should I correct a type-setting error, leave it,
footnote it, etc. This took a long time and involved a lot of
correspondence. Now, my idea is to make the text as readable as
possible. For me that means correcting type-setting errors I notice.
Others prefer to leave them intact. In the end, I don't believe the
readers care. I have found them generally to be very grateful to have
found some treasure they had been seeking. In some cases of an
author's more obscure works, they didn't even know the book existed,
a rare find indeed for them.
It is so satisfying to receive an e-mail from someone thanking you for
all your hard work. Most readers don't take the time to write but true
fans often do and they make it all worthwhile. I have even met people
in this way that went on to become a Project Gutenberg volunteer
themselves because they wanted to give something back to the Project
from which they had received so many pleasurable hours.
Gardner Buchanan
SOURCE MATERIAL
First of all, there is the issue of what texts I choose to do. For me,
this is fairly simple. I'm a bit of a small-time book collector
already, and have a personal theme: "Canadian English Literature" and
"Canadian English-Language History". I have no trouble whatsoever in
coming up with submissible editions of works that fit this theme
somehow. Nevertheless there are specific authors and works that I'm
not having luck with, so I'm still making the rounds of the used book
shops regularly and picking up all sorts of stuff.
Eligible volumes have typically cost me $10.00-$150.00 for a
collectable edition, or $0.50-$15.00 for a recent paperback edition or
garage-sale item. I paid $0.50 for a eligible, but not very
collectible copy of Glengary School Days by Ralph Connor at a garage
sale. As it turns out someone has beaten me to it--it has been in the
collection since 2001. Sometimes if I'm contemplating picking up a
more expensive book that I don't already have a personal interest in,
I'll go back and double-check The Online Books page to see if someone
has already submitted the book.
Another way I obtain texts is from the Early Canadiana Online archive.
They host page images of quite a large collection of old books written
in or about Canada, or written by Canadians. The page images are
reasonably well suited to OCR.
I tend to produce E-texts two different ways. One way is to submit
page images to Charles Franks who runs Distributed Proofers and let
him worry about bulk-OCR'ing. I then manage the distributed proofing,
which is a fairly low-effort business. The other way is to scan, OCR
and proof all by myself. I'm currently averaging two of my own
projects to every Distributed Proofer one.
SCANNING AND OCR
I have an very slow parallel-port scanner, a UMAX Astra 2000P. It
sucks mightily. I'd rate it a 2 out of 5, if it wasn't acting
up--creating a black bar across the page, part way along--so I have to
scan books a certain way around to avoid having the bar land in the
text. As it sits now, it's in 0.5-1 territory. It is glacially slow at
the best of times, and due to being a parallel port model, locks up my
whole computer during the scan.
Nevertheless, it is completely adequate to my needs for PG work. I've
scanned more than a dozen books on it, and it's done yeoman
service--despite its warts. Scanners like this one can be picked up
used for $30, and are worth the money.
The way I work when I'm producing a book myself, is scanning and
proofing page by page. I do the scans two-pages-up, then OCR, proof
and copy the pages to a working document, before going on to scan the
next pair of pages.
My scanner came with two OCR "packages": Omnipage something-or-other
which I was never able to install, and Recognita Standard 3.2.7. I use
Recognita, and for 300dpi scans I do, it is adequately fast and
accurate. It is a no-frills package, and DOES make many mistakes, but
it is entirely useable for my purposes. I rate it 2 of 5.
I've used the Abbyy FineReader 5.0 try & buy. This is a magnificent
OCR system. It handles huge batches and is fast and astoundingly
accurate. I rate it 5 out of 5. Unfortunately it costs about $million
to patriate a web-bought item into Canada, and while priced at a very
reasonable US$100.00, would cost me about CAN$600 after exchange-rate,
brokerage fees, shipping, more fees, taxes,
service charges and more taxes (on the fees).
I could buy Omnipage off-the-shelf here, but frankly if I can't get
Abbyy, I'll stick with Recognita.
As I scan each page, I paste it into Windows-95 Wordpad. Sometimes I
also do some proofing in Wordpad, but mainly I proof, fix quotes,
M-dashes and paragraph breaks in the OCR program before copying to
Wordpad. I like to keep the page boundaries intact, and I mark them in
my Wordpad document like this:
:
:
kjdk ldjd ll;llkj dklj dklj
kjdk ljd llllkj klj dklj
page 354
kjdk ldjd lll;;llkj dklj dklj
kjdk ldd lll;;llkj dklj dklj
kjdk ldjd ll;llkj dklj dklj
kjdk ljd llllkj klj dklj
page 355
kjdk ldd lll;;llkj dklj dklj
kjdk ldjd ll;llkj dklj dklj
kjdk ldd lll;;llkj dklj dklj
kjdk ljd llllkj klj dklj
:
:
At this point I also fix-up hyphenated words that straddle
page-boundaries. I note paragraphs that start in a new page and mark
them with , and I note indented or block-quoted sections and mark
these with .. . This helps when I go back to format it since I
can easily see where the special cases are.
Wordpad handles large documents reasonably well and will grok UNIX
files (ie: only, not ). For this it rates 3.
PROOFING AND FORMATTING
When the whole text is assembled, whether by myself or by Distributed
Proofers, I use about the same process for formatting and final
proofing.
I use MS-Word 95 to do a spellcheck. This I rate 3 out of 5. I do a
select-all, and language appropriately - for me, usually UK rather
than American English. I wish I had a Canadian English dictionary for
Word 95, but have not needed one badly enough to actually look. Word
has a pretty good spell checker and the custom dictionaries are easy
to muck around with. I use a custom dictionary for any big project - I
have one for Chronicles of Canada, and different one for all the John
Richardson books I've done.
At this point in my personal process, I abandon Windows and go over to
FreeBSD.
I use vi (rated 9 out of 5) to do a number of hacks. I search for and
fix up hyphenations that were broken (peer- less) and such like. I
also search for and fix some OCR special case errors like 'you'->'yon'
and 'be'->'he'. This latter sometimes requires a while, just to step
through all the be and he's to see if they're right.
Still in vi, I next use some incantations to run the UNIX 'fmt'
command on each paragraph to get it reformatted. I use:
fmt -55 60
Fmt gets a 3 out-of 5 for what I need it for. It double spaces after
sentences, which--although it is probably the right thing to do--is
not the PG convention (for me at least). It also adds a space when
joining lines with an M-dash. I go back and fix both of these using
vi. I take into account the
Donations
List of FTP sites
Web Browse to texts
Volunteers' Board
Books In Progress
(The InProg List)
Greek Transliteration
Music
GUTINDEX.ALL
(Complete list of posted eBooks)
B.2. Distributed Proofing Sites:
Charles Franks
Dewayne Cushman
B.3. Other On-Line eBook Pages:
The On-Line Books Page
Internet Public Library
On-Line Requested List
Steve Harris' "To-do"s
B.5. Finding Paper Books On-Line:
Advanced Book Exchange
Alibris
Trussel BookSearch
Library of Congress Catalog
B.6. Character Sets
Overviews
ISO-8859
Microsoft & Other Codepages
Unicode
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