Comments on: ePub files from Project Gutenberg: Tell PG how its test ePub works on your gizmo

By: Colin Harris

Colin Harris — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:42:37 +0000

I downloaded ‘Lamia’ a poem by John Keats as an EPUB file to my Sony Reader(with original UK firmware). Even at the smallest text size, some of the words were missing off the ends of lines. Maybe there’s a glitsch when formatting poetry lines as opposed to prose?

By: ondigo

ondigo — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:04:04 +0000

I downloaded the epub version of “Three Men in a Boat” to my Linux Eee PC. FBreader has had no problems with it so far.

By: cerement

cerement — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:58:54 +0000

Does this mean that they've abandoned PGTEI as their XML platform?

By: Joseph Gray

Joseph Gray — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:15:18 +0000

While I applaud them for providing epub, I think that at some point these files need to be proofed/fixed by a person. Their comment that the possible bad formatting is “good enough” for reading is a fallacy. Bad formatting makes an ebook harder to read and understand. It only serves to annoy the reader.

Yes, I know that epub is currently experimental with Gutenberg and yes the files are free. That doesn’t mean that a reasonable effort shouldn’t be made to make epub readable, as they have done with their other formats. I wonder if any of their auto-converted epubs will even validate?

Hopefully, after this experimental period, they will put the same effort and care into epub as they do the other formats.

By: ferridder

ferridder — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:56:04 +0000

Wow! Not that it is too hard to convert from HTML yourself, but it’s great to see institutional support for it!