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Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

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Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#131

Post by lucb1e »

JSeiko wrote: post #2

Hi! I'm one of the programmers at Gutenberg. We've been improving the site a lot over the past few months (and more is coming!). If you haven't visited the page recently, it's worth checking out again: https://www.gutenberg.org/

Huh that's interesting: 4.5 seconds for the TCP handshake and an additional 9.2 seconds for the TLS handshake. Is this some kind of captcha, since most bots would disconnect before that, so if you complete it once then it knows you're good? (Until the bots catch on of course, but so long as it works it's relatively unintrusive and not discriminatory against uncommon client software (that is, non-Chrome/ium).) The rest of the requests were lightning fast

Edit: welcome to your first comment after 9 years on HN btw, nice to have you here!

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#132

Post by codys »

lucb1e wrote: post #131
JSeiko wrote: post #2

Hi! I'm one of the programmers at Gutenberg. We've been improving the site a lot over the past few months (and more is coming!). If you haven't visited the page recently, it's worth checking out again: https://www.gutenberg.org/

Huh that's interesting: 4.5 seconds for the TCP handshake and an additional 9.2 seconds for the TLS handshake. Is this some kind of captcha, since most bots would disconnect before that, so if you complete it once then it knows you're good? (Until the bots catch on of course, but so long as it works it's relatively unintrusive and not discriminatory against uncommon client software (that is, non-Chrome/ium).) The res…

I think their site is just slow, potentially because more people than they are used to are trying to view it.

I was unable to load it initially (got an error from firefox) and had to re-attempt. Still slow if one forces a reload (shift-r, etc, to not use local cache).

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#133

Post by svat »

JSeiko wrote: post #2

Hi! I'm one of the programmers at Gutenberg. We've been improving the site a lot over the past few months (and more is coming!). If you haven't visited the page recently, it's worth checking out again: https://www.gutenberg.org/

Have you considered having a detailed version history for each book (etext)? The process of submitting fixes to typos etc in books involves sending an email (https://www.gutenberg.org/help/errata.html) and although the last time I did this (2011) the fixes did get applied reasonably quickly (couple of days), it all felt a bit opaque. The version history could also include the project (usually PGDP correct?) the etext originated from; that way one would be able to compare against the actual page scans.

I have very mixed feelings about Standard Ebooks and would much prefer being able to use Project Gutenberg directly, but one good thing Standard Ebooks does is that every book has an associated git repository (on GitHub), so it's (in principle) possible to see a history of fixes to the text over time.

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#134

Post by JKCalhoun »

JSeiko wrote: post #42
JKCalhoun wrote: post #30

Project Gutenberg had (has?) a tendency toward plaintext that always put me off. (And it has been over a decade I'm sure since I explored the site—so I am no doubt now misinformed.) I like a styled formatted book—would prefer PDFs. (I know, not a popular format apparently.) I like the idea of Project Gutenberg but guess I found book scans on archive.org my preference. My go-to example is Lewis Carroll's "Through the…

We're supporting EPUB3 for the vast majority of books! At the same time we also have a "Plain Text" version for each as in a sense it's the most robust. PdFs are in the works!

That's cool. I'll have to read up on EPUB3—I'm not familiar with it.

(I worked on iBooks for the Mac like 15 years ago—it's where I got to dive into the ePub format. A lot has changed in the standard since I am sure.)

EDIT: looks like EPUB3 has a "paginated" mode as well as more sophisticated layout tags.

Also appears to have support for ruby and vertical writing modes. This was not yet supported in WebKit when I worked on iBooks. Somehow, this white guy from Kansas (who knows no language other than English) got tapped to implement the vertical TOC for Asian languages. Also tasked with annotating the ePUB pages to display (also vertical) ruby text…

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#135

Post by cosmos0072 »

From Italy, https://www.gutenberg.org/ gives a 404 error and https://gutenberg.org/ opens a very official-looking page stating "police notice. This site is under judicial seizure" and references a sentence number: "criminal proceedings 52127/20 R.N.R.I. tribunal of Rome"

Any idea what's happening? I thought PG published public domain books...

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#136

Post by JSeiko »

lucb1e wrote: post #131
JSeiko wrote: post #2

Hi! I'm one of the programmers at Gutenberg. We've been improving the site a lot over the past few months (and more is coming!). If you haven't visited the page recently, it's worth checking out again: https://www.gutenberg.org/

Huh that's interesting: 4.5 seconds for the TCP handshake and an additional 9.2 seconds for the TLS handshake. Is this some kind of captcha, since most bots would disconnect before that, so if you complete it once then it knows you're good? (Until the bots catch on of course, but so long as it works it's relatively unintrusive and not discriminatory against uncommon client software (that is, non-Chrome/ium).) The res…

we are having occasional lows in page speed performance due to LARGE amounts of bot traffic. full disclosure - we've not really been able to resolve this fully/well. Let us know if you have a good idea for how to deal with it

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#137

Post by cosmos0072 »

cosmos0072 wrote: post #135

From Italy, https://www.gutenberg.org/ gives a 404 error and https://gutenberg.org/ opens a very official-looking page stating "police notice. This site is under judicial seizure" and references a sentence number: "criminal proceedings 52127/20 R.N.R.I. tribunal of Rome" Any idea what's happening? I thought PG published public domain books...

Found: it's a sentence from 2020, and PG decided not to appeal (!?)

Full story (in Italian) at https://www.wired.it/internet/web/2020/06/30/progetto-gutenb...

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#138

Post by JSeiko »

svat wrote: post #133
JSeiko wrote: post #2

Hi! I'm one of the programmers at Gutenberg. We've been improving the site a lot over the past few months (and more is coming!). If you haven't visited the page recently, it's worth checking out again: https://www.gutenberg.org/

Have you considered having a detailed version history for each book (etext)? The process of submitting fixes to typos etc in books involves sending an email ( https://www.gutenberg.org/help/errata.html ) and although the last time I did this (2011) the fixes did get applied reasonably quickly (couple of days), it all felt a bit opaque. The version history could also include the project (usually PGDP correct?) the ete…

That's an interesting idea. not a small feat to accomplish though ...

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#139

Post by JSeiko »

cosmos0072 wrote: post #135

From Italy, https://www.gutenberg.org/ gives a 404 error and https://gutenberg.org/ opens a very official-looking page stating "police notice. This site is under judicial seizure" and references a sentence number: "criminal proceedings 52127/20 R.N.R.I. tribunal of Rome" Any idea what's happening? I thought PG published public domain books...

I asked Claude to research the background story: "In May 2020, the Court of Rome ordered Italian ISPs to seize/block a list of domains as part of a criminal case (the 52127/20 R.N.R. you're seeing) targeting sites and Telegram channels distributing pirated newspapers and magazines. 28 domains were on the list, and Project Gutenberg got thrown in alongside the actual pirate sites."

apparently this situation hasn't been resolved yet

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#140

Post by JSeiko »

zamadatix wrote: post #125
JSeiko wrote: post #2

Hi! I'm one of the programmers at Gutenberg. We've been improving the site a lot over the past few months (and more is coming!). If you haven't visited the page recently, it's worth checking out again: https://www.gutenberg.org/

Thanks for the free work! Project Gutenberg is nice to have :). On the site I noticed the library boxes have roughly a single extra line causing a scrollbar to appear and the last line to be chopped off https://i.imgur.com/PQ8T0qc.png is there an issues/bug portal to properly submit these kinds of things?

you can open an Issue at https://github.com/gutenbergtools/gutenbergsite
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