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Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

gutenberg.org

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Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#41

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…

I on the other hand prefer epubs for fiction. I mostly read on the phone.

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#42

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!

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#43
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/

Very cool! Do you have a recommended way for an agent to see an index of the books and epub links? (I can’t quite tell if that’s an egregious abuse of the site or you’re perfectly fine to share without human eye balls hitting your www?)

Thanks for the answers! Found it:

> All Project Gutenberg metadata are available digitally in the XML/RDF format. This is updated daily (other than the legacy format mentioned below). Please use one of these files as input to a database or other tools you may be developing, instead of crawling or roboting the website.

And strongly consider a donation! (My addition)

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/offline_catalogs.html#the-p...

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#44
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/

There's a minor bug with chrome in android where the menu will not close when you tap outside the menu or on the menu link/button

will open an "Issue" for it

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#45

I'm surprised no eBook Reader vendor has a Project Gutenberg "Store." Where you can just browse Gutenberg, find a book, and just grab it down to the reader. Instead, they either are actively hostile (Kindle), or require the use of Calibre (which itself is good, it is just the friction).

No money for them.

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#46

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…

I like plain text. You can always post process it into any other format you prefer.

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#47
post #39

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…

As others here have mentioned, https://standardebooks.org/ is excellent and my understanding is that they use Gutenberg books as a source for theirs but done up much nicer.

Source can be anything with the original text, but, more often than not, ends up being PG.

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#48
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 so much for the work you and your team do!

Re: Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better

#50
post #38

As a Kindle user, I still miss the old version of the site. The new one looks great on normal desktop, but the old one was simple enough to load and directly download books on the device's built-in browser.

That's interesting. What about the new design prevents you from doing it? Genuinely asking here. We may fix it if it's actionable

And now it's time to put my foot in my mouth. I haven't used it in a while because it was frustrating, but you guys seem to have already fixed it :)

The previous version of the site had two major flaws:

1. The search bar had been removed from the top of the page, and hidden behind a "Click here to search" (or similar) link partway down the page

2. Once you opened that page, the coloring of the site was so washed out on e-ink that the text input was hard to find.

Thanks for fixing it!

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