RIP. Project Gutenberg and IMSLP are two of my favourite websites. Every January, when new works enter the public domain, I go and download a bunch of books and sheet music. HN readers, let's not forget to donate to these websites that keep the Internet worth surfing.
You just opened my eyes to IMSLP and I would like to thank you for that. For years I have been chasing music scores that were just the right level for my kids.
Just to clarify, Greg Newby was not the CEO of Project Gutenberg, which was founded in 01971, but of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, which he founded in 02000 or 02001. It has contributed immensely to Project Gutenberg, but they are not the same thing. Newby would never have attempted to take credit for PG.
Every year, Project Gutenberg becomes a little closer to giving us access to every book worth reading, often in multiple editions and languages. It’s a treasure.
I'm shocked and saddened to hear this. Greg was a deep source of knowledge and support as I started and shepherded Standard Ebooks. He was generous with his time and experience, and unbelievably patient with me, some guy he had never heard of or met before who was just another cold-email in what must have been an endless stream in his inbox. We should all aspire to his high spirit of camaraderie, charity, and kindness. The world has lost a champion of both literature and the free web.
Why are there no unique numbers assigned to Standard Ebook's ebooks? I understand that there is a cost associated with ISBNs, but it's very irritating to not have something that identifies them uniquely. Most (all?) aren't even in Worldcat, so I can't use OCLC numbers for that purpose either.
This suggests a misunderstanding of the Standard Ebooks process, which allows continual incremental corrections to the authoritative source of individual books (in XHTML, on GitHub). So, a truly unique identifier would only be valid to the production output(s) from a particular state of the Git-repo sources.
Asynchronous to the correction process, Standard Ebooks updates its own production tools. So if an individual book's content requires correction, should the "respin" be done with TOT tools, or with the versions available at time of first publication? Disclaimer: I don't actually know which is current practice -- but using the TOT tool suite is obviously vastly easier.
For most practical purposes, I'd suggest the git-commit date, along with short substrings of author name and title, would suffice.
>This suggests a misunderstanding of the Standard Ebooks process, which allows continual incremental corrections to the authoritative source of individual books (in XHTML, on GitHub). So, a truly unique identifier would only be valid to the production output(s) from a particular state of the Git-repo sources.
Well, one of us has a misunderstanding. Just because the printer strikes off the printing number from the colophon for each subsequent printing, they don't actually issue a new ISBN. That stays the same. If they wanted to also include a version number too, I wouldn't mind that as well, but it's not nearly as necessary as this. I use the year as a rough version number in the file names as well.
>Recall also that final user content is made available in multiple formats, currently at least six. Example:
I don't need them to issue a number per file format, but if they want to... that doesn't bother me. That's sort of self-evident which of the formats it is, after all.
>I'd suggest the git-commit date, along with short substrings of author name and title, would suffice.
It doesn't. A number of authors have at one time or another have released books with similar or identical titles that are not the same book. This is the trouble... someone who uses or would use the books is asking for something that is missing but easy to supply, and instead of a "well gee, we never considered that, let us think about it" I have a dozen assholes crawling out of the woodwork to say "no, you're doing it wrong".
I need unique identifiers that are human readable. I just do. The world discovered this need for books before you were born. They invented a global standard, even. There is an entire field of science out there about this, that you seem to be ignorant of even existing. I've been doing this for years, and I keep bumping up against it. But you think it can be solved because you used git and know about hashes or whatever, and it's just like what you deal with in your software development job!
I am very sad to hear this. Greg was my mentor during my first internship at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center in Fairbanks Alaska back in the very early 2000s.
Greg Newby was also very actively involved in the production of the HOPE Conference. If there's a broadcast tonight, Off The Hook (AKA The Hacker Radio Show) show on WBAI (99.5 FM in NY) and wbai.org will almost certainly be in his honor.
Genuinely saddened by this. I had Dr. Newby for a Linux admin class in college in the late 90s and it was one of the courses that got me interested in systems administration. I remember him as patient, kind, and enthusiastic about open-source and the possibilities Linux represented for changing the Internet.
I will cherish his email response to me when I emailed PG about a donation issue a few years ago and he helped resolve the situation. I remain grateful to PG for their amazing work. RIP Greg.
I meet Greg when I was an undergraduate at Syracuse University and he was earning his PhD. I helped out a bit with some of the graphics programming for his thesis. Greg was a class act, always patient and kind. It was super helpful to me when I went to UIUC for graduate schools and he showed up as a faculty member there; he knew how to get access to campus resources and was more willing to help me than faculty in my own department. He was a model RIP.
I never met the guy but I love Gutenberg. Back before I had any money it was always this constant force that would be guaranteed to provide something entertaining.
We need to open up all .pdf files. Free the world. I believe information is a human right. (I am not at all against payment for original work, mind you. My point is that information at the end of the day has to be accessible to every human being, without exception. Wikipedia ALL the things.)
29 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 53.0 ms ] threadEdit: the post title has been fixed now.
There are new tests coming that will catch cancer early so hopefully it’s not late stage, increasing one’s survival rates.
https://www.barrons.com/articles/grail-stock-price-cancer-st...
I’m about Greg’s age and I had colon cancer last year. Now I can’t unsee cancer in the media.
https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2011/Sep/michael-hart-has-passe...
This suggests a misunderstanding of the Standard Ebooks process, which allows continual incremental corrections to the authoritative source of individual books (in XHTML, on GitHub). So, a truly unique identifier would only be valid to the production output(s) from a particular state of the Git-repo sources.
https://standardebooks.org/contribute/report-errors
Recall also that final user content is made available in multiple formats, currently at least six. Example:
https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/geronimo/geronimos-story-o...
Asynchronous to the correction process, Standard Ebooks updates its own production tools. So if an individual book's content requires correction, should the "respin" be done with TOT tools, or with the versions available at time of first publication? Disclaimer: I don't actually know which is current practice -- but using the TOT tool suite is obviously vastly easier.
For most practical purposes, I'd suggest the git-commit date, along with short substrings of author name and title, would suffice.
Well, one of us has a misunderstanding. Just because the printer strikes off the printing number from the colophon for each subsequent printing, they don't actually issue a new ISBN. That stays the same. If they wanted to also include a version number too, I wouldn't mind that as well, but it's not nearly as necessary as this. I use the year as a rough version number in the file names as well.
>Recall also that final user content is made available in multiple formats, currently at least six. Example:
I don't need them to issue a number per file format, but if they want to... that doesn't bother me. That's sort of self-evident which of the formats it is, after all.
>I'd suggest the git-commit date, along with short substrings of author name and title, would suffice.
It doesn't. A number of authors have at one time or another have released books with similar or identical titles that are not the same book. This is the trouble... someone who uses or would use the books is asking for something that is missing but easy to supply, and instead of a "well gee, we never considered that, let us think about it" I have a dozen assholes crawling out of the woodwork to say "no, you're doing it wrong".
I need unique identifiers that are human readable. I just do. The world discovered this need for books before you were born. They invented a global standard, even. There is an entire field of science out there about this, that you seem to be ignorant of even existing. I've been doing this for years, and I keep bumping up against it. But you think it can be solved because you used git and know about hashes or whatever, and it's just like what you deal with in your software development job!
RIP
I will watch that inbox personally - please do be in touch as soon as possible.
Please also accept my condolences and best wishes - I've known Greg since the earliest HOPE conventions.
I never met the guy but I love Gutenberg. Back before I had any money it was always this constant force that would be guaranteed to provide something entertaining.