Standard Ebooks: Free public-domain ebooks, carefully produced • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by austhrow743 » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:09 AM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #52

BTW does Kindle let you load your own DRM-free ebook files instead of buying books on Amazon? I use a PocketBook (pocketbook-int.com) which emulates a mass storage device and lets me read everything. I once considered buying a Kindle but heard it won't let me load bare files this way. Is this true?

Absolutely. I've been using Kindles for a decade and have never bought any ebooks from Amazon.

The only functionality issue I run in to is that as far as I can tell, Amazon has a feature where if you buy the book from them then they keep your progress synced between your kindle and their phone apps. Can't use that with books from other sources.

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

#92

Post by andrepd » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

mhxion wrote: post #4

> Other free ebooks don’t put much effort into professional-quality typography: they use "straight" quotes instead of “curly” quotes, they ignore details like em- and en-dashes, and they look more like early-90’s web pages instead of actual books. True. I hope you guys get proper funding and keep this project on. Contribute: https://standardebooks.org/contribute/ (I was thinking a Slack or Discord would be better tha…

Why would you force people to use nonfree proprietary software in order to contribute to an open project?

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

#93

Post by PorterDuff » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 1:38 AM UTC

This is a great idea.

Another ebook non-profit I'd like to see is one that shepherds books through the copyright maze. No doubt there are scads of books in the public domain that no one has proven are actually there. Perhaps this exists already but it strikes me as a good separate, and highly targeted, kind of effort.

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

#94

Post by iamnotacrook » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 2:36 AM UTC

lone_haxx0r wrote: post #77

I got really excited, but then I noticed that there was no PDF option. I hate epubs with a passion, because all epub programs suck.

I convert epubs to mobi and read on my Kindle. PDFs are horrific on a Kindle.

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

#95

Post by chronogram » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 3:53 AM UTC

andrepd wrote: post #92

mhxion wrote: post #4

> Other free ebooks don’t put much effort into professional-quality typography: they use "straight" quotes instead of “curly” quotes, they ignore details like em- and en-dashes, and they look more like early-90’s web pages instead of actual books. True. I hope you guys get proper funding and keep this project on. Contribute: https://standardebooks.org/contribute/ (I was thinking a Slack or Discord would be better tha…

Why would you force people to use nonfree proprietary software in order to contribute to an open project?

Help! Help! I’m being forced to use non free proprietary software!

Can just have both.

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

#96

Post by oraknabo » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 4:39 AM UTC

Not only is this an excellent project, I think this is also an incredible collection of books you've chosen to feature. I also really appreciate the art choices that have been made for the covers.

I have many of these in epub from Gutenberg, but plan to replace them with your versions when I have some time.

I know others have already asked about bulk download--have you considered offering a torrent of the full library or possibly one for each file format?

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

#97

Post by StevePerkins » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 4:49 AM UTC

For the Amazon-compatible "azw3" files that I'm seeing, I'm curious why the book cover thumbnail images are a separate download from the ebook file itself?

Unless I'm missing a trick, it seems like you have to use Calibre (or some other application) to re-build the "azw3" file with the cover thumbnail properly embedded. Why not just ship the ebook files like that to begin with?

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

#98

Post by sdrothrock » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 5:26 AM UTC

mhxion wrote: post #4

> Other free ebooks don’t put much effort into professional-quality typography: they use "straight" quotes instead of “curly” quotes, they ignore details like em- and en-dashes, and they look more like early-90’s web pages instead of actual books. True. I hope you guys get proper funding and keep this project on. Contribute: https://standardebooks.org/contribute/ (I was thinking a Slack or Discord would be better tha…

I was hoping I could contribute financially, which could help fund any software or hosting costs they have, but it doesn't look like they're accepting donations (which is also fine, and completely their prerogative).

But! If someone from SE is reading this and it turns out that you just don't have a way to donate because it doesn't seem like people will donate, definitely put a paypal button or something out there. :)

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

#99

Post by robin_reala » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 6:00 AM UTC

sdrothrock wrote: post #98

mhxion wrote: post #4

> Other free ebooks don’t put much effort into professional-quality typography: they use "straight" quotes instead of “curly” quotes, they ignore details like em- and en-dashes, and they look more like early-90’s web pages instead of actual books. True. I hope you guys get proper funding and keep this project on. Contribute: https://standardebooks.org/contribute/ (I was thinking a Slack or Discord would be better tha…

I was hoping I could contribute financially, which could help fund any software or hosting costs they have, but it doesn't look like they're accepting donations (which is also fine, and completely their prerogative). But! If someone from SE is reading this and it turns out that you just don't have a way to donate because it doesn't seem like people will donate, definitely put a paypal button or something out there. :…

We have minimal hosting costs (ebooks are small) and no software costs, so the rest is just down to time. Luckily, the majority of the process is proof reading, which it turns out people quite enjoy doing regardless, and is easily parallelisable our across multiple contributors.

So so far not need for contributions, and it makes things simpler to not need them.

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

#100

Post by interfixus » Sat, Aug 03, 2019, 6:15 AM UTC

mfsch wrote: post #25

hombre_fatal wrote: post #19

Are there any plans to support languages beyond English?

It looks like they’ve decided not to publish any non-English books [1]. It’s a pity – I much prefer reading books in their original language if I’m able to understand it, and I was even considering contributing some German books to their collection. Maybe it would complicate the publishing process a bit though since different languages have different practices for things like punctuation. [1]: https://standardebooks.…

> I much prefer reading books in their original language if I’m able to understand it

Absolutely. To the extent that I have trouble focusing on texts I know to be translations, unless there are inescapably good reasons for them to be, i.e. they come from a language I have no chance of understanding.

Currently battling to resurrect my highschool German. Getting there, but cursing myself for not starting out with something a wee bit more accessible than Thomas Mann...