I agree with your last point, opportunities should be taken. Since Baen Books has chosen to use the ISBN of a print edition on their ebooks (and chosen is the right word since ISBNs are indeed a commercial tracking number that publishers use however they choose, some use different books for different editions, some use the same number for everything with the same title and author, some mix it up), until Baen chooses to make a wholesale transfer of files that can be easily be converted to bookshare, anyone ought to be able to submit one of their ebooks that has been converted to look like a scan of the paper edition would. Whether this is easier than just scanning the paper copy (since you'd have to have that as well as the ebook), would probably depend on the particular skills of the person involved.
Misha talmage@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Hey Guido,Once these discussions get started I frequently find out more about a topic than I really want to know. Case in point I was looking into the subject of ISBNs. While I knew that they've been around since the early 70's, I wasn't aware that they were primarily a commercial tracking tool like bar codes are. I guess I thought they were more along the lines of copyright protection and registration. One thing I ascertained however, is that while an e-text could have an ISBN, it probably wouldn't, as we are still in the early stages of electronic publishing, and bookstores etc. wouldn't have a need to order an e-text version by ISBN. Regarding Baen's e-text books, I would argue that as it is a commercially available copyrighted work presented by the publisher, it is its own unique edition and the ISBNs referenced are not for that version, but rather reflect those of the print edition. In many books you will see multiple ISBNs referring to books other than the one in hand. As for the soft page breaks, I'm not sure what the deal is with Kurzweil, as the 3 separate programs I loaded a Baen rtf file into all reflected the same number of pages in accordance with the page and margins as set forth in the RTF by Baen. I guess a couple of the reasons I am turning into such a strong advocate of pulling these RTF files into the collection are partly what you stated about the publishers and their typical source files. It certainly is unusual for a publisher to have RTF files available, and you're right most of their books are in a mark up language that if not proprietary, it at least is not a run of the mill one, making it annoying to figure out what the control codes indicate. Another reason I have is the same as one Jim mentioned the other day, that while something is available today, it may not be forever. What is that saying, something like, "opportunity missed is "opportunity lost.Dave At 01:46 PM 1/10/2008, you wrote:Thank you Dave. The problem is that soft breaks are induced by the word processing package and do not correspond to physical page breaks in the print copy matching the ISBN in the file. In particular, the book 1812 I have been examining has approx 250 pages on Kurzweil K1K, 450 pages on MS Word. Yet Amazon indicates the print copy to have 560 pages. I venture that Bookshare staff may source Baen book files directly from the publisher 'en masse' in the most suitable formats, and may process them uniformly. It is worth pointing out that publishers usually print from specialized files formats containing page breaks aligned to print copies, although these print-ready files are not consumer-friendly and are usually deemed to be a private/confidential intellectual property of the publisher and are as such not for sale or public distribution.G. Guido Dante Corona IBM Research, Human Ability & Accessibility Center, (HA&AC) Austin Tx. Phone: 512. 838. 9735. Email: guidoc@xxxxxxxxxxx Web: <http://www.ibm.com/able>http://www.ibm.com/able". . . Maybe it was only those who were most certain they were right who were guaranteed to be wrong. And that maybe, just maybe, those who questioned the most were in the end those who came closest to being wise."[David Poyer, The Command] talmage@xxxxxxxxxx Sent by: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 01/10/2008 11:10 AM Please respond to bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx To bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx cc Subject [bksvol-discuss] Re: BAEN BOOKS Pratik, You're not differing from my point, you're changing the issue altogether. My difficulty is not with page demarcations, but the decimal value 13 embedded in a file as a sacrosanct character. There are other indicators, and ways of knowing that you've moved from page 12 to page 13 without a decimal 13. Regarding the citation and discussion issue, if you are citing a source, you indicate copyright, edition, etc. So if you're citing an electronic version you so annotate, and indicate where it can be found. My concern here is that we are becoming slaves to minutia. The files we are perusing here aren't the database at The Center For Disease Control. No one is going to die because the font isn't quite right, or there is a page break only every 2 pages, and yes I should note I said page break not demarcation. As for adding the Baen books to the collection, I think it's a shame to schlep them off on the staff when all the e-text versions need, is for the soft breaks to be replaced by hard breaks. It would seem to me that the books from O'Reilly and Gutenberg would be a better focus for the staff, as neither of their's are already in RTF, rather than the Baen books which are. If the staff gathered all the Baen offerings, and placed them on the Step 1 page, it would be a simple matter for the volunteers to go through and put hard breaks where the soft breaks are. For that matter, as far as the gathering goes, I would be willing to collect them all and submit them on CD or DVD. Dave At 10:11 AM 1/10/2008, you wrote: >Dave, >>I beg to differ. Page breaks, or better yet, page demarcation, is used in>the academic area (or anywhere) for citation purposes. Page breaks (or>control characters thereof) weren't only invented for printing purposes.>They are there so that intelligent conversations can reference correct >pages. The emphasis on correct page breaks or pagination is absolutely >essential for books so long as the sighted world continues to use the>system. Whether or not this should be the case is an entirely different>question. > >As to the Baen books being scanned or added to the collection by>Bookshare.org automatically--I'll say this. I'm sure Bookshare has all the>intentions to process these books in a quick manner. But, until that>happens, I'll continue to advocate that volunteers continue to scan books>that they want to see in the collection immediately. > >Pratik To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxput the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition.Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.0/1218 - Release Date: 1/10/2008 1:32 PMTo unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxput the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.
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