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The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

feynmanlectures.caltech.edu

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Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#51

Post by danso »

trevyn wrote: post #14

Original email from this morning to give some color: Dear Feynman Lectures Forum Members, Have you ever wished there was a high-quality up-to-date version of The Feynman Lectures on Physics available online? One that could be read with a browser so you could study FLP on your smartphone, tablet, notebook or desktop computer, whenever you felt like it? For free? Well, now there is, and you are among the first to hear…

ThIs is wonderful...I have PDF copies of this from some forgotten torrent long ago and had consider trying to make them parseable but never got around to it. I can understand why they still want to make book sales from it...hopefully this will actually spur people to buy the books after they are able to sample them online

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#52

Post by lvryc »

mhartl wrote: post #47

I was the project lead on this, which involved converting the Feynman Lectures from LaTeX to HTML. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Update : Most of the questions center on cost. I've answered in more detail below, but the short version is simple: no off-the-shelf converter was remotely sufficient for our needs, so we had to write lots of custom software, and writing custom software is hard.

Trevyn, above, mentioned,

> The conversion from LaTeX to HTML was expensive: we raised considerable funds, but ran out before finishing Volumes II and III, so we are only posting Volume I initially.

I don't know too much about digitalisation, but why does it cost so much?

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#54

Post by mhartl »

lvryc wrote: post #52
mhartl wrote: post #47

I was the project lead on this, which involved converting the Feynman Lectures from LaTeX to HTML. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Update : Most of the questions center on cost. I've answered in more detail below, but the short version is simple: no off-the-shelf converter was remotely sufficient for our needs, so we had to write lots of custom software, and writing custom software is hard.

Trevyn, above, mentioned, > The conversion from LaTeX to HTML was expensive: we raised considerable funds, but ran out before finishing Volumes II and III, so we are only posting Volume I initially. I don't know too much about digitalisation, but why does it cost so much?

The LaTeX source of the Lectures is long and heavily formatted, so the conversion to HTML involved writing a large amount of custom software, including lots of tests to catch regressions. In other words, this was a speculative software project; as anyone who has experience with such projects can tell you, it is virtually impossible to anticipate all the problems you'll run into. (The costs would have been even higher had I not worked for a reduced rate, often pro bono, because I wanted to help make the Feynman Lectures accessible to a wider audience.)

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#55

Post by npsimons »

lvryc wrote: post #52
mhartl wrote: post #47

I was the project lead on this, which involved converting the Feynman Lectures from LaTeX to HTML. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Update : Most of the questions center on cost. I've answered in more detail below, but the short version is simple: no off-the-shelf converter was remotely sufficient for our needs, so we had to write lots of custom software, and writing custom software is hard.

Trevyn, above, mentioned, > The conversion from LaTeX to HTML was expensive: we raised considerable funds, but ran out before finishing Volumes II and III, so we are only posting Volume I initially. I don't know too much about digitalisation, but why does it cost so much?

This was one of my first thoughts; I know it's oversimplifying it by a wide margin, but there is a latex2html program in existence.

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#56

Post by solarmist »

rexreed wrote: post #13

Are the audio files available as well? I know there's the Silverlight version, but looking for audio I can play while I drive.

Audible has all the lectures available for download in good quality format. http://www.audible.com/search/ref=sr_1_18_asrch?searchAuthor...

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#58

Post by mhartl »

npsimons wrote: post #55
lvryc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trevyn, above, mentioned, > The conversion from LaTeX to HTML was expensive: we raised considerable funds, but ran out before finishing Volumes II and III, so we are only posting Volume I initially. I don't know too much about digitalisation, but why does it cost so much?

This was one of my first thoughts; I know it's oversimplifying it by a wide margin, but there is a latex2html program in existence.

Unfortunately, there's no general mapping from LaTeX to HTML, so for any realistic pre-written source you have to write many custom modifications to complete the conversion. This is a time-consuming and error-prone process, involving a large amount of custom software.

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#60

Post by mhartl »

3327 wrote: post #4

Gates is the man seriously for doing this. Feynman is such a great person I am so sad I missed seeing and learning from him. And Carl Sagan of course.

I know how you feel. I "miss" Feynman, and it's weird to miss someone you never met. (N.B. Gates wasn't involved in this project.)
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