Project Gutenberg Made Accessible

scishop writes "Mazarin is an open-source interface to Project Gutenberg's library. Mazarin increases the accessibility of Gutenberg's 10,000+ books as it formats the books for HTML display -- providing paginations in addition to generating table of contents and other advanced markup features -- along with enabling users to carry out full-text searches on the entire library."

Comments

Re:unhuh-explanation

[rakjr]

A guess would be that the script is accessing the database remotely. Thus, if the server is getting slashdotted, there is no way it can talk to the remote database. Instead of die, they should have sent a small text message of "Remote database unreachable."

Hind sight is 20/20 ;)

Re:and then just think

[urmensch]

I think a lot of the unfortunate twists in European history are due to the Catholic church becoming so corrupt as to cause a reformation in the first place.

Anyone want to buy an indulgence?

Re:Best way to read online texts?

[werdnab]

I don't enjoy curling up on the sofa with my computer to read a novel. It isn't the warmest way to spend a few relaxing hours with a book.

It is however a great way to research the classics for info and reports.

I still like to hunt around old bookshops, and often I can find those works for a buck or two.

Re:Slashdotted?

[flimnap]

Well, this piddling 'interface' to Project Gutenberg may have died, but the real PG website is still going strong!

While you wait, you could do something worthwhile. (That is, instead of reading the 10,000 other "Its /.ed already" posts)

Re:and then just think

[bigchris]

Good grief. I think you should review your church history! At the time the Roman Catholic church was a massively corrupt bureaucracy that supressed ordinary people, was largely usurped by those who wanted power, and didn't teach about God's grace to mankind. In fact, much of the doctrine taught was contrary to the gospels. Papal bull, anyone?

I take a different view: just imagine all the problems that we'd still be dealing with if the Reformation had never happened!

Re:Gutenberg is totally inaccessible

[geoffspear]

They're meant to be accessible to people who want to read old texts, not specifically to people who want to do some sort of arcane text processing on them.

Now might be a good time to consider

[SolemnDragon]

...donating to the good cause. If you don't want to donate money, volunteer to proofread, or it might be worth it for writers out there to consider a notation in your will that will allow your works to pass either directly into the public domain, or, as i have been in contact with lawyers to discuss, simply passing the copyright of your own works on to project gutenberg. This allows them more work to publish, and if you're in a contract somewhere that allows for royalty collection, you can set it up so that those royalties switch to project gutenberg at the time of your death.

Now might also be a good time to contribute an hour a week to a literacy project, or to make a donation there. Adult literacy is a serious issue all over the world, and that includes right here in the states, where there really are bright people out there who could have better lives if they could read. I can't think of a more on-topic subject than project gutenberg to discuss adult literacy and the need for both literacy teaching and to support free literature for the masses such as this project provides.

Just my $0.02...

solemndragon

Funny definition of "accessible..."

[dpbsmith]

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, Michael Hart's decision to make the basic format of PG texts "plain vanilla ASCII" has resulted in texts that are highly accessible by any meaning I can think of for that word. They are also compact, platform-agnostic, and durable. Texts contributed in the 1980s are fully usable today.

While there have been constant complaints about PG using the "wrong" format, opinions on the "right" format have been the flavor-of-the-month (or at least several flavors per decade). Had PG decided to use a "better" format, all of their volunteer time would probably have been taken up converting (say) WordPerfect to RTF to HTML to SGML to XML, leaving relatively little time to digitize and proofread texts.

Re:Funny definition of "accessible..."

[bbc]

a converter could easily be written

I you checked the volunteer mailinglist of Project Gutenberg, you would see that every now and again somebody waltzes in and says: "Why don't you do such and so? It's easy! You guys must be idiots for not doing it my way."

Neglecting the fact that such people rarely have the decency to find out if this discussion has already been held, and what the arguments were, list members will then ask the question:

"If it's so easy, why don't you show us how its done?"

That will usually shut up the it's-easy-sayers.

There are of course those who act, rather than talk. Those people have built the PG website, the PG database, the Distributed Proofreaders environment, all the 'easy' little things that are required to keep PG's library double in size every 18 months.

Next time you say "it's easy", try to have a system in place that shows you know what you are talking about.

P.S. I realize you did not say PG are idiots. Quite the contrary. However, such emotional outbursts are often the next step in the mode of discussion of those who think others should fullfill their desires at no cost and immediately. That's why I put it in the example.