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Standard Ebooks

standardebooks.org

51–60 of 158 posts

Re: Standard Ebooks

#51
post #9

Editor-in-Chief here, happy to answer any questions! Of interest might be my blog post on how SE runs on a small VPS using classic web tech: https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-ebooks-and-classic-web-... (This post is slightly out of date as there is a database now; but it's used for managing Patrons - and soon a cover art listing and approval system - not for serving the actual ebooks, which are still served as des…

I’m curious, why do you have a policy against hosting religious books?

Re: Standard Ebooks

#52
post #9

Editor-in-Chief here, happy to answer any questions! Of interest might be my blog post on how SE runs on a small VPS using classic web tech: https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-ebooks-and-classic-web-... (This post is slightly out of date as there is a database now; but it's used for managing Patrons - and soon a cover art listing and approval system - not for serving the actual ebooks, which are still served as des…

Hi and thanks for the great work! Have you considered offering .mobi or .azw file formats of the books? With the 2023 browser update, even old Kindles now have a fast and functional web browser. It is almost possible to find and download Standard Ebooks directly from the Kindle browser, but for the file format.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#53
post #9

Editor-in-Chief here, happy to answer any questions! Of interest might be my blog post on how SE runs on a small VPS using classic web tech: https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-ebooks-and-classic-web-... (This post is slightly out of date as there is a database now; but it's used for managing Patrons - and soon a cover art listing and approval system - not for serving the actual ebooks, which are still served as des…

I’m curious, why do you have a policy against hosting religious books?

I'd imagine that if they host one religions books, many more religions will come out of the wood work and demand their books also be included, leading the site to be largely religious texts.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#54
post #9

Editor-in-Chief here, happy to answer any questions! Of interest might be my blog post on how SE runs on a small VPS using classic web tech: https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-ebooks-and-classic-web-... (This post is slightly out of date as there is a database now; but it's used for managing Patrons - and soon a cover art listing and approval system - not for serving the actual ebooks, which are still served as des…

Hi and thanks for the great work! Have you considered offering .mobi or .azw file formats of the books? With the 2023 browser update, even old Kindles now have a fast and functional web browser. It is almost possible to find and download Standard Ebooks directly from the Kindle browser, but for the file format.

We do offer azw3 files for all of our books. https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-ebooks#kindle...

Re: Standard Ebooks

#55
post #9

Editor-in-Chief here, happy to answer any questions! Of interest might be my blog post on how SE runs on a small VPS using classic web tech: https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-ebooks-and-classic-web-... (This post is slightly out of date as there is a database now; but it's used for managing Patrons - and soon a cover art listing and approval system - not for serving the actual ebooks, which are still served as des…

Thank you so much for the work you and the whole team, and the contributing community, do! I've read a bunch of classics thanks to your editions, and have donated in the past. This post is a reminder for me to do so again!

Re: Standard Ebooks

#56
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody has offered as of yet, and if someone did I think the quality would have to be extremely high for me to consider it.

Do you happen to have a wishlist of artwork or a particular project that would benefit from custom artwork? I would like to contribute art to the project, whether it ends up used or not. I used to work as a digital artist professionally.

Sci-fi works are the hardest to find cover art for as naturally there is zero public domain sci-fi themed fine art. If you can paint in a fine art style, contact me via email and let's chat.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#57
post #9

Editor-in-Chief here, happy to answer any questions! Of interest might be my blog post on how SE runs on a small VPS using classic web tech: https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-ebooks-and-classic-web-... (This post is slightly out of date as there is a database now; but it's used for managing Patrons - and soon a cover art listing and approval system - not for serving the actual ebooks, which are still served as des…

Inevitably, like everyone who rejects PHP frameworks because "PHP is already a templating language", you just wound up reinventing the framework anyway.

I'm not complaining - It's just, there's a reason everyone goes for the existing frameworks and it isn't addiction to complexity. Raw PHP code is legendarily insecure and prone to XSS and other issues if you don't do things exactly right.

Nice site, though.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#58
post #47
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe our website does have some basic Kindle browser support. The problem, as you noted, is that Kindle's browser is terrible. I say the same thing in every ebook thread: On a purely technical level Kindle is a terrible ereader designed by people who seem to hate books. Buy almost anything else.

Recommendations?

Kobo, with either stock OS or KOReader (I use this, in part because the font size can be easily increased for my daughter who so far needs text larger than stock) or Plato.

Re: Standard Ebooks

#59
post #9

Editor-in-Chief here, happy to answer any questions! Of interest might be my blog post on how SE runs on a small VPS using classic web tech: https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-ebooks-and-classic-web-... (This post is slightly out of date as there is a database now; but it's used for managing Patrons - and soon a cover art listing and approval system - not for serving the actual ebooks, which are still served as des…

I’m curious, why do you have a policy against hosting religious books?

The site actually hosts several "religious books" (try filtering by the "Spirituality" tag -- I've even produced several books on religious topics myself for SE). What it doesn't host are "Religious texts from modern world religions" (what some might call "scriptures," e.g. the Bible or the Quran) which is a much narrower category than "religious books."

As a religious person myself, I actually think this policy is very sensible. Most (nearly all?) religious texts of major world religions were originally written in languages other than English, and so if SE were to try to host those texts the site would have to make an editorial call about which translations of those texts are the "best." That quickly enters very murky theological territory, where one side of a given religion might push for one particular translation, whereas another side would push for another translation.

To give the Bible as an example, Catholics and Orthodox Christians include the deuterocanonical books (e.g. Tobit, Judith, Sirach) in their canons whereas Protestants exclude these. Would the SE version of the Bible include these? Some American fundamentalist Christians claim that the King James Version is the only valid English translation of the Bible, whereas the Revised Version (also available in the public domain) is based on more reliable Greek manuscripts. But some conservative Christians reject the Revised Version and its descendants based on certain theological premises...

Do you catch my drift? IMHO it's very sensible for SE to avoid these sorts of debates entirely by sticking to books where you could argue (with some degree of handwaving) that there really is a "best version" :)

Re: Standard Ebooks

#60
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi and thanks for the great work! Have you considered offering .mobi or .azw file formats of the books? With the 2023 browser update, even old Kindles now have a fast and functional web browser. It is almost possible to find and download Standard Ebooks directly from the Kindle browser, but for the file format.

We do offer azw3 files for all of our books. https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-ebooks#kindle...

Yes, Amazon has changed the game and they only allow downloads in .AZW, .PRC, .MOBI or .TXT format now.

I understand that this is their fault and not yours, but maybe it could be interesting for you to offer one of these formats now that the Kindle browser is actually usable?

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