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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

#111

Post by radicalbyte »

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.

Awesome work, I bought the book versions with my first paycheck, only to sell them on years later. I never read them :'(

Now I've just read the first two chapters online, and I have a question. Have the lectures been updated to 2013 physics, or should I read comments like this:

"We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task." (last sentence in chapter 2)

..as being the state in the 1970s?

If so, what has changed then in the "big picture"? String theory?

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#112

Post by educating »

I hope this is continued. I would have loved to have been a student in Feynman's physics classes. Unfortunately, I did not realize this until I had already taken a different path and now my mind has gone enough that it is probably good that I didn't try to attain even 1/10 of what Richard knew because I would have lost it all.

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#113

Post by mikevm »

mhartl wrote: post #100
mhartl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! I don't know what their plans are. There is PDF version, but I can't find it anywhere (well, not a legal one). I'll look into it.

It turns out the publisher still has authorized PDF sales. I'm not in line to get royalties, so it's not my problem, but I still hate to see a missed opportunity.

> It turns out the publisher still has authorized PDF sales.

Did you mean "has not authorized"? Otherwise, I would gladly pay for PDF editions of the 3 volumes. If they already went with producing a free online copy of the 1st volume, I don't see why they should be against selling official eBook PDF editions for people like me who prefer to read this offline.

Anyway, great job on the conversion, it looks marvelous!

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#114

Post by zodiac »

adamgravitis wrote: post #97
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.

This is outstanding. Thank you for the effort. Has there been any consideration of making a semantic version of the equations involved? The great thing about having this on the web, is I could easily see myself maintaining links in long calculations to various formulas as the authority. (Also: what's the font in the SVG images? It's great!)

If you're asking about the equations etc, the site uses MathJax to render LaTeX.

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#115

Post by mhartl »

mikevm wrote: post #113
mhartl wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out the publisher still has authorized PDF sales. I'm not in line to get royalties, so it's not my problem, but I still hate to see a missed opportunity.

> It turns out the publisher still has authorized PDF sales. Did you mean "has not authorized"? Otherwise, I would gladly pay for PDF editions of the 3 volumes. If they already went with producing a free online copy of the 1st volume, I don't see why they should be against selling official eBook PDF editions for people like me who prefer to read this offline. Anyway, great job on the conversion, it looks marvelous!

Sorry, I meant to say "still hasn't authorized".

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#116

Post by magottlieb »

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?

Hello, all. Many people seem to have gotten the impression from my letter that because we ran out of funds paying for the conversion of FLP Volume I from LaTeX to HTML we need additional funds to complete the conversion. However, that is not the case because some chapters of Vols. II & III were also converted for us (though imperfectly), and after comparing the Vol. I HTML to the original LaTeX, I found I could do the conversion myself quite easily using parametrized regular expression search and replace operations and a minimum of hand-editing. I am able to convert one chapter of FLP from the LaTeX to HTML in about 2 hours. I have been working on completing the remaining Vols. II & III chapters in my spare time, and they are very nearly done. Only a few chapters remain to be converted, and a few others only need some HTML tables. We are planning to make a second release when our two PDF editions (formatted for the desktop and for tablets) are available for sale online. In fact, the PDF editions have been ready for a long time, but the publisher is having some difficulties getting them into their retailers' sales queues. Today we have the first evidence of the publisher's success in resolving the difficulties:

https://www.cafescribe.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Product...

So, hopefully it will not be long before we add the completed Vols. II and III chapters to the published HTML edition, with the few remaining chapters to follow shortly.

   Michael A. Gottlieb
   Editor, The Feynman Lectures on Physics
   www.feynmanlectures.info

Re: The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I

#117

Post by fluxon »

danso wrote: post #51
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

Every single one of those old PDFs, especially OCRs, are full of errors, now corrected in this edition. There's a long history of errata, old and recent, and in which editions they were corrected, at feynmanlectures.info
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