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What Michael Hart likes best and least about ebooks
December 6, 2009 | 9:23 am
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By Paul Biba
Project Gutenberg News has an article by Michael Hart with this title today. I’ll quote from the section about what Hart likes least about ebooks because I think it’s important for him to get is message out there. Meanwhile, in a short note at the end, David will provide another perspective.
The thing I perhaps like least about eBooks is how many people in the world think it is my job to make eBooks come out exactly that way they think is the best in the world, and constantly harass me to change to this format or that one as the only, or primary, one of all the formats in the world.
Sorry, CONTENT is what Project Gutenberg provides but not FORMAT, FORM, FORMALITY, etc.
Let’s face it, but when even the plainest of plain text eBooks is created, 99% of the work of re-creating it into another format is already done, all YOU have to do is change 1% and you can have it any other way you want it. On top of this, there are many format conversion programs out there that will do most of this for you.
It’s funny how something that has already done 99% of the labor’s time and effort can be so vilified for not doing the other 1%.
…
Yes, there are those who insist that we vacillate between formats as quickly as a new set of them come out: insisting that we join with some new effort by The Billionaire Boys club, then dropping, like a hot potato, that format in favor of another one. Some are even insisting that we do ALL formats.
Sorry again, but what we provide is CONTENT not FORM.
Anyone is welcome to impose their own FORM on our CONTENT, and we will even help them in the process by publicizing their wish, and asking for volunteers to help them.
(Ediitor’s note: Michael is all wet about formats. PG urgently needs to make its books more easily usable on Kindles and similar machines. I am rooting for PG to thrive, but in this case it’s far, far too smug. It took years, but eventually PG offered the ePub format. In the Kindle’s case, PG does provide Mobipocket files, which the Kindle can read; but Kindle users find the PG site to be a challenge to navigate with the machine’s puny browser. Meanwhile here’s a reminder that Paul’s note at the top is simply passing on his personal opinions. – D.R.)
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Comments:
Perhaps the problem is Kindle having a different way of putting ebooks on it than other ereaders. I have a sony 505 and have no complaints about formats and PG. I have used PG for years with just a computer and found the site great.
Kindle users – waah, waah, waah.
The difficulty of navigating the PG site is because of the Kindle’s lousy *browser*, not PG’s fault.
PG has endured for 30 years. Let’s see how long Kindles do.
PG is right – until the format wars are over, and maybe even after, plain text is still the best way to see that *everyone* has access to our literary heritage.
Kindle users need to have some perspective.
Of course, this is one more example of Teleread’s “Amazon good, everyone else bad” attitude, but when you attack PG, the ONE project that has kept the flame for three decades, that *really* gets my ire up.
Thanks for your thoughts, Kate. The Kindle has a horrid proprietary format and Amazon encourages DRM. I’m pro-ePub—that’s what major publishers and important tech-savvy houses like O’Reilly have settled on. So it bothers me mightily that the Kindle doesn’t do ePub. You’re not alone in griping about the Kindle.
BUT despite my reservations about the Kindle, I don’t want to see Kindle owners caught on the crossfire in the format war, and similarly I don’t want them to to suffer because PG doesn’t accommodate the puny browser. The Kindle is like many other mobile devices. PG badly needs to have either an auxiliary site or mobile-friendly pages on the current site.
What’s more, far from trying to harm PG, I’ve been running items to encourage the project to keep up with users’ needs. By helping Kindle users, PG will also help users of mobile phones. Same basic infrastructure can be used.
Thanks,
David
(who owns a Kindle 2 and loves the text to speech and dictionary even if he’s grumpy about some other stuff)
Indeed. Why should the best-known public domain e-book site be accessible to the most popular e-book reader? E-books arent supposed to be easy to access. They’re supposed to take some effort!
I certainly wouldn’t call myself “pro-Amazon” as such. I certainly don’t like some of the things Amazon has done. But websites should try to be as universally accessible as possible.
What some people overlook is the plain vanilla text of Project Gutenberg may be just a little too plain: italics are missing from most of the classic works, so any authorial nuance is also missing. Project Gutenberg texts should probably be considered corrupt. Italics may not be important to all readers, but if I’m, going to read the classics, I want as an authoritative text as possible, not the the free plain vanilla.
If the Kindle browser can’t handle the PG site, it seems like it’s not much of a browser at all. Maybe the problem lies with Amazon’s inferior software.
And maybe some enterprising soul can come up with an agreeable portal to the PG site that’s Kindle-friendly.
Amazon isn’t actively pushing PG to conform–after all, they’d much rather have people *buy* those classics from them rather than have everyone download from PG–but the efforts to force PG to conform remind me of when Microsoft expected everyone to just roll over and adopt the Windows Media format…and Real before them…while Flash devoured video content because it was so much more accessible.
Ditto, the re-emergence of MP3 as the dominant format for audio despite Apple’s best efforts. Yes, ITunes sells more than anyone else…but MP3 is used much more often (by a wide margin) when one considers MP3 downloads, podcasts and other audio media.
There is one fundamental truth in the PG position: plain text and HTML will endure. EPub *may* endure…but it may also die a horrible death as publishers deceptively promote Epub as an “open standard” while using DRM to lock up books. I understand the difference between the EPub content and the DRM wrapper, but I doubt many readers will. And I think a great many readers will be very inconvenienced once they encounter the limitations imposed on them by DRM.
Bill Smith
http://www.BillSmithBooks.com
Michael Hart is pontificating about ebooks as if he, and he alone, is responsible for PG, but he is NOT. Most of PG’s books now come from Distributed Proofreaders, which over the years has learned to ignore MH and do the right thing anyway — such as producing HTML versions, thus keeping italics, bold, and non-ASCII characters, and facilitating conversion to various ebook formats.
I ardently wish that MH would let go of his PERSONAL copyright on the PG name, turn everything over to a functional board of directors, and retire on his laurels. He had a good idea in the beginning, but he has let his personal fears, limitations, and overweening ego stifle the potential usefulness of PG.
That’s why, after making the ebooks at DP, I usually get my finished eReader versions from Manybooks, not PG. That’s why I never send any ebook newbies to PG.
PG is primarily a volunteer organization. If you want the books out in a specific format, volunteer to do them yourself.
With so many books available at PG that should, at least, shut you up about new formats for a few hundred years. (evil grin)
Greg, I agree that plain text is too plain vanilla, though it is useful to converting books to MP3 audiobooks.
I prefer converting HTML to my favorite format (Mobipocket) when I can. Luckily, PG has done a great job including italics and PICTURES in its HTML versions.
For example:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20417/20417-h/20417-h.htm
I like what Steve Thomas does with his eBooks@Adelaide at the U. of Adelaide.
http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/
Project Gutenberg Australia is excellent, with more authors, since Australian copyrights apply for 1955 up, instead of the U.S.’s 1923 up.
http://gutenberg.net.au/
In November, Michael Hart did stress the need to make PG more accessible to cell phones and other mobile devices. He asked readers to all help him out:
http://www.gutenbergnews.org/20091107/the-net-has-gone-mobile/#more-811
Raymond: Many thanks. Great reminder! I’m disappointed that Michael is not consistent—in the right way—on those matters. Meanwhile I hope people will support Marcello’s efforts: see my separate post today about his appeal for donated hardware so he can better understand how owners of different mobile devices use the site. David