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Standard Ebooks: Free public-domain ebooks, carefully produced

standardebooks.org

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Re: Standard Ebooks: Free public-domain ebooks, carefully produced

#46

Post by jolmg »

ngold wrote: post #26
toomuchtodo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking open source/free/non-profits here. No reply rate should be enforced unless by project owners (their time, their project, their rules). Some issues should be ignored until they go away. I myself ignore issues from some folks who engage me in my role as an open source tooling maintainer, after I have exhausted my patience working with them and they are not receptive to polite discussion. > Mailing lists o…

Fascinating subject. It seems like the difference between slack/discord and email, is the difference between a water cooler conversation and an actual sit down meeting.

There's also IRC for water cooler conversations in an open protocol.

Re: Standard Ebooks: Free public-domain ebooks, carefully produced

#47

Post by matt4077 »

souterrain wrote: post #3
kevinh wrote: post #2

It's great that these are in a consistent formatting style. When trying to extract some contents programmatically from some Gutenberg texts, I kept running into different formatting styles. That combined with being able to check out the entire repository makes it much simpler to do data processing on the works. And, of course, fixing more errors is of course a noble goal. Are these corrections going to make it upstre…

> Standard Ebooks puts significant work into designing, formatting, marking up, and hosting our ebooks. While some think we could, or even should, release our work with some kind of copyright notice, instead Standard Ebooks dedicates the entirety of each of our ebook files, including markup, cover art, and everything in between, to the public domain. https://standardebooks.org/about/

Public Domain projects that subtly argue for an extensive view of copyright in ambiguous (in the best case) situations make me somewhat suspicious.

Editing is a lot work, and their efforts are appreciated. But most of that involves the application of existing rules (curly quotes etc.) and therefore doesn't meet the creativity standard of copyright.

I guess the texts are out there anyway, and it doesn't make much of a difference. But I'm reminded of the art world, where many a painting is long out of copyright, yet only the Museums have access and the insist setting up a lightbox and taking a photo is a creative endeavour worthy of protection from the prying eyes of the non-paying public.

Re: Standard Ebooks: Free public-domain ebooks, carefully produced

#48

Post by eigenvalue »

Unfortunately none of the formats given work with Amazon's "email to kindle" system, which is the most convenient way to load books-- it allows you to download a PDF on your phone and send it to a special email address associated with your Kindle device. Considering all the work this site has already done preparing the book files, it seems like they might as well ought to generate PDF files using a page size roughly equal to that of the most common Kindle readers.

Re: Standard Ebooks: Free public-domain ebooks, carefully produced

#49

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

buzzdenver wrote: post #44

Any chance to provide mobi format? The azw3 files do not work on my Kindle Paperwhite.

How are you sending the file to your Kindle? AZW3 should work if you're connected to your computer via USB and dragging over manually or sending over via Calibre, but I've seen it not work if you're trying to send it to the email addy associated with the kindle. For that, you are correct, MOBI is usually the preferred option.

Re: Standard Ebooks: Free public-domain ebooks, carefully produced

#50

Post by zucker42 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #13
kkarakk wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint: Old mailing list conversations are difficult to parse and encourage a "ignore it until the issue goes away" mentality if no one is enforcing a reply rate. Mailing lists only really work for corporations imo

We're talking open source/free/non-profits here. No reply rate should be enforced unless by project owners (their time, their project, their rules). Some issues should be ignored until they go away. I myself ignore issues from some folks who engage me in my role as an open source tooling maintainer, after I have exhausted my patience working with them and they are not receptive to polite discussion. > Mailing lists o…

> Feel free to email me if you want to chat further on the topic.

Is there any way we can contact you on slack or discord instead?

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