June 19, 2009
From DPCanadaWiki
Volume 2, Issue #40--June 19, 2009
(Full listing of previous issues is available at DPC Newsletters)
Need to keep up you DP "fix" this summer?
Summer is almost here; in fact, notwithstanding the cold and/or rainy weather some of us are still getting, the summer solstice occurs on Sunday, June 21, at 05:45 UTC (= GMT). Umm,… in the southern hemisphere, it's the winter solstice and I don't know if the kids are out of school or not for the next couple of months.
Are you travelling or just staying home with the kids or have family visiting? Need something to ease your DP "obsession"? … 'cause you can't really proof or foof or PP or CP or PM while you are travelling or have a bunch of other people around, can you?
Try Smooth Reading. Nothing like a book to while away the time. And you'll be DPing at the same time.
If you need more time than the PPer has set out, send them a PM and let them know. They are generally very flexible.
Editorial
Addition to last issue’s "Simon Says…"--Frequently "optional hyphens" (also called "soft" or "invisible") are shown as " ¬ " when you set your word processor or other application to show "hidden" marks or symbols; Windows Alt code: Alt+0172 = ¬.
Stats--We now have 691 members; at the rate we are growing, we should have member number 700 sometime in July. I think that's great.
We have posted 180 books to either (or both) PGC and PG-Int. So we've averaged 10 books per month posted to either of the PG entities. At that rate, we should have our 200th book posted in mid- to late August; or it might be September since some of our PPers will probably be on vacation. What do you think? Shall we celebrate in the Landmarks forum? And if we keep up the pace, we could hit 300 books by early next year which would be fantastic.
DP-Int Board of Trustees Election-- Congratulations to our colleagues at DP-INT, on the successful launch of their elections for the about-to-be-formalized Board of Trustees. JulietS has done yeoman work in re-designing the Foundation's By-laws, and arranging with an outside service to supervise the election process itself. Over 9,000 members are eligible to vote, and hopefully most will before the June 25th deadline. If you're a member of DP-INT and eligible to vote, don't forget to exercise your franchise. Of course, if you'd like to vote for Simon, that would be welcome...
Server and site problems--Simple Simon advises that any remaining problems on-site are set aside now until the "synch-up" (unless something really major rears its ugly head). If you see something that you believe requires handling before the summer, please send him a PM.
With respect to our "site code synch-up" which is supposed to take place this summer, there are the "usual" technical glitches and hiccups cropping up. [So what else is new?... :shaking head: ] However, Simon says: Never fear, all will proceed, and there will be no interruption in DPC operations.
Checklists--As promised several months ago, Simon has been producing basic checklists for DPers. He started with PPing basic checklists for simple projects: he has done checklists for startup, text version, HTML version, HTML Tables and "illustrations"--for PPers and CPers. This week Simon has provided a CSS checklist.
Simon has created a wikipage (linked to the main DPC Wiki) for the Checklists for New PPers. He has included the checklists that he has done so far. You can see from the Table of Contents what he plans for future checklists.
Any and all comments and/or questions from PPers are requested and welcome. Anyone else can comment as well. Send any questions or comments to Simple Simon.
Once the PPing checklists are done, he'll do some for CPing and PMing.
Synchronization of Guidelines--In a previous newsletter issue, Simple Simon discussed his ideas about synchronization of DP-Int/US and DPC proofing and formatting guidelines. He set up a discussion thread in the Documentation Suggestions Forum which includes those ideas. There have been a couple of responses … have you any comments, ideas, suggestions, …?
Proofing/Formatting combined guidelines--There will be a significant delay in publishing this combined guidelines document. Simon has been caught up in the site code project (as well as his campaign on DP-Int) … so he's been a bit busy. ;)
ÜberProjects--see the updates below. For those that are interested, Simon has decided that he's going to post periodicals to PG-Int as well since the ones we are doing are all pre-1923. It will also give DPC work greater coverage.
Check out the list of "possible future articles" at the end of the newsletter--are you interested in contributing or do you know of someone who could, or would like to, contribute, we'd love to have your article and/or thoughts. And you can do so anonymouslyAnd you can do so anonymously if you choose. It doesn't have to be long: a sentence or two, a short paragraph or two, 500 words or more if you really like to "talk"; send a PM to Quill.
Simon Says...
This issue's checklist is about CSS--the little file at the top of your HTML version that helps control and format the lines of code in your project file. CSS stands for "Cascading Style Sheet", and the technique will save you a great deal of time--you don't have to repeat the same HTML tags and codes every time you use the same styling in a line of code.
I'm going to explain the purpose of each "block" of code in the CSS file, with example CSS code for each block, then put it all together into a "standard" CSS file you can use for most simple projects. But you can elaborate this approach as you learn more about CSS, to produce your own CSS file, reflecting your preferences and styling decisions. And, of course, you can modify the file for different types of books.
File specification block sets the file up, selects the type of HTML you will use, specifies the character encoding, and names the file.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />
<title>
The Project Gutenberg Canada eBook of "Title", by Author.
</title>
<style type="text/css">
[edited to remove 2 lines that can cause validation problems--thanks jjz]
Of course, you need to insert the actual Title and Author name. This makes the file XHTML Transitional 1.0, which I recommend for beginner PPers, since it is not so demanding as Strict, and I think a bit easier to 'read" than HTML 4.0, which some veteran PPers prefer.
Text Control block selects the styling for various types of text material throughout your file.
p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; margin-bottom: .75em; }
p.main {font-style: normal; font-size: 100%; text-indent: 0em;}
h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;}
hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; margin-left: auto;
margin-right: auto; clear: both;}
body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: serif}
.cen {text-align: center; text-indent: 0em;}
.smcap {font-variant: small-caps; font-size: 95%;}
.right {text-align: right; padding-right: 2em;}
.blockquot {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; font-size: 90%;}
These stylings can, naturally, be adjusted to suit your own preferences. This set will produce a fairly standard HTML file.
Special Features block provide styling for page numbers, illos, tables, poems and footnotes.
.pagenum {position: absolute; left: 2em; font-size: 70%; text-align: right; color: #A9A9A9 }
.figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;}
.figleft {float: left; width: auto; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 0em; margin-top: -0.5em; margin-right: 0.2em; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
.figright {float: right; width: auto; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;}
table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}
.tdr {text-align: right; vertical-align: bottom;}
.tdl {text-align: left; padding-left: .25em;}
.tdc {text-align: center; vertical-align: bottom;}
.poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
.poem br {display: none;}
.poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
.poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
.poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
.poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
.poem span.i3 {display: block; margin-left: 3em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
.poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
.poem span.i10 {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
.linenum {position: absolute; left: 5%; right: 91%; }
.footnotes {border: dashed 1px; margin-top: 1em; clear: both;}
.footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;}
.footnote .label {float:left; width: auto; text-align: left;}
.fnanchor {font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;}
Remember to remove any block of lines that cover features you do not have in your project. This is called "trimming" the CSS code.
Closing block just what it says--signals the beginning of the "regular" HTML code lines
[edited to remove 2 lines that can cause validation problems--thanks jjz]
</style>
</head>
<body>
If you want to learn more about CSS (you can control just about every aspect and characteristic of the content of your file) check with ones of these resources:
The DP-INT CSS Cookbook Wiki pages-- http://www.pgdp.net/wiki/CSS_Cookbook
The W3 CSS tutorial http://www.w3schools.com/css/default.asp
...and don't forget, if you're stuck, ask one of our expert PPers.
Revisions to Guidelines, FAQs and the DPC site code
Guideline Differences--See article at beginning of the April 10th issue. There is also a discussion thread--see Editorial comments above.
Combined Proofing and Formatting Guidelines--Simon has reiterated his promise that he will put together a combined Proofing/Foofing wiki page for those Formatters who like to have only one document open at a time but also want to be able to check on certain Proofing Guidelines. Unfortunately there has been a delay. Simon hopes to produce them sometime in the near future.
The "combined guidelines" will be a very summarized version, not a complete document--but it's a huge task, which is the reason for the delay in issuance. Even DP-INT has no such animal--so we can't copy theirs. Once it is drafted, Simon will ask for review by experienced proofers and foofers to ensure that it is understandable--that is, not confusing or missing some extremely important rule.
ÜberProject #1: Chronicles of Canada
There continue to be lots of spaces for volunteers to PM, PP and even CP. To see the current status of the volumes, check out the ÜberProject wiki page for The Chronicles of Canada here: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/The_Chronicles_of_Canada.
- De2164 and IonaV are doing the prep on the rest of the volumes. Sufficient PMs have volunteered--we just need PPers, but the volumes can be picked up from the PP pool when they have completed the rounds unless there is a volume that a PPer really wants to do--in that case let the PM know sooner rather than later.
- We've arranged to get "mint condition" copies of the full set and so will be able to get good scans of all the maps and illustrations as well as picking up missing pages (if any). Thank you to hugger1935 for the use of the books.
- Volumes 4 and 12 have been split into multiple parts and are being used for BEGIN projects. A number of parts of each volume are sitting in P1: Waiting (English BEGIN) until they are needed; several parts are currently in various rounds undergoing proofing or formatting; and several parts of each volume have made it through to PPing though they won't be finalized until all parts are done--that may take awhile depending on how many newbies we get.
- Volumes 14 and 32 are in P1: Available, Volumes 6 and 9 are in P2: Available, Volumes 11 and 21 are available for Post-Processing; Vols. 3, 8 and 18 have completed PPing. There are several in New Project being prepared for the P1: Waiting queue.
- PP standards have been set and the books do not have anything extremely difficult at all. Check the Chronicles wiki page for the PP standards. Some of the standards for PPing have been updated.
- Volumes 13, 17 and 24 are being done at DP-Int since the authors of these volumes are out of DPC's copyright purview. They will be posted to PG-Int in due time. For those that are interested, the books are all in the P3 waiting queue.
- Six volumes have been posted to PGC:
- Volume 1: The Dawn of Canadian History, A Chronicle of Aboriginal Canada,
- Volume 2: The Mariner of St Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier,
- Volume 5: The Seigneurs of old Canada: a Chronicle of New World Feudalism,
- Volume 20: Adventurers of the Far North, A Chronicle of the Arctic Seas,
- Volume 27: The Winning of Popular Government: A chronicle of the Union of 1841, and
- Volume 29: The Day of Sir John MacDonald, A Chronicle of the Early Years of the Dominion.
ÜberProject #2: Jesuit Relations
Vol. 65: Lower Canada, Mississippi Valley, 1696-1702, our first, is currently in F2: Available. Simple Simon is the PM and has decided that he will definitely PP this first volume, though he says that he will undoubtedly seek help from someone fluent in French to "look over his shoulder" on that side of things. He'll probably do the same for other languages as well.
Vol. 66: Illinois, Louisiana, Iroquois, Lower Canada, 1702-1712, our second, is in F1: Available. It is just like Vol. 65: strange characters, old style French spellings and accents, bits and pieces of other languages--lots of fun.
Simon advises that he's prepping Vol. 67: Lower Canada, Abenakis, Louisiana; 1716- 1727 as the third in our series.
A set of standards has been determined and added to the Project Comments. An ÜberProject wiki page for Jesuit Relations has been created. It includes the basic instructions for proofing and formatting.
ÜberProject #3: Governor General's Award Books
Warmheart has created an ÜberProject page for this uberproject. The page looks very good and has lots of links. You can see the details of what she has completed to date here: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Governor_General%27s_Literary_Awards Check it out, you might find something interesting there....
There are only a couple of books that are available since many of the authors are still alive--ah, well, we'll get them eventually. :)
ÜberProject #4: Periodicals
Graham's Magazine is the first part of our ongoing periodicals ÜberProject. All the first year's volumes are either in process or completed. There are six issues currently undergoing proofing or formatting. Two issues are in PP; two issues have completed PP; and two issues have been posted to PGC.
Year two will be coming in due course.
Simon also needs some volunteers for PPing these periodicals--if you are interested, send him a PM.
Our Young Folks, An illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls; Issued monthly; Publication Dates: January 1865 thru October 1873 when it merged with St. Nicholas.
Three issues are in PP with one completed, three issues are undergoing proofing or formatting. Warmheart also has a bunch of them in prep as well.
To those who have worked on this periodical: comments, anyone? Do you like it?
Warmheart's wikipage for the Periodical can be found through this link: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Our_Young_Folks.
Scientific American--these are very early issues, too--from 1846. The first issue is now in PP. That one sure went fast … I hope Simon has more being prepped. :wink:
We've started a wiki page for it: http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Periodicals/Scientific_American. I've also been told that Tizz has agreed to co-PM/PP it.
The Maple Leaf--This is a Canadian juvenile periodical published between 1852 and 1854. Susan and IonaV are going to share the duties of PMing. Iona is handling the prep, Susan has downloaded the scans and will do the PPing. They are hoping to get it into the rounds within the next couple of weeks.
Remember, these aren't the only periodicals that we can do--there are lots of others out there and some that are very different than "Graham's". Is there one that you'd like to do? Suggestions for favourite OLD periodicals are always welcome, but they must meet 3 criteria:
- published before 1860 to avoid the need for copyright checking
- good quality scans of a reasonable number of issues (preferably in whole volumes=a year)
- interesting content, out of the ordinary
ÜberProject #5: Works by Charles Dickens
Simple Simon and IonaV are Dickens fans. We know that there are many more out there. Although there are some of Dickens' works on the other PG sites, some of it is text only. We've got early editions of those books with illustrations as well as stories that have not yet been posted. As well, there are letters and essays and ...
- Bleak House, the original version illustrated by "Phiz", is in prep.
- The Mystery of Edwin Drood is currently in F2: Available.
- A Christmas Carol is in post processing.
- Two short stories for our anniversary blitz are posted to our wiki (http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/Dickens_%22First_Anniversary%22_project): The Christmas Tree and What Christmas is as we get older. They will be posted to PG Canada with other Dickens' short stories.
More details and an ÜberProject wiki page to come.
We Grow Every Day
We are now up to 691 members. Welcome to all new members; I hope you find some projects that you will enjoy doing. Many of our members are also members of DP-Int/US and/or DP Europe--we welcome them and thank them for all their continued support and interest in DPC. (Numbers are accurate up to "press" time.)
| New | |
|---|---|
| June 2009 | 8 |
| May 2009 | 19 |
| April 2009 | 22 |
| 2009 Q1 | 168 |
| 2008 total | 235 |
| 2007 total | 239 |
| Total to date | 691 |
Milestones
We are going to use this space to "celebrate" notable milestones achieved by a member, team, group or project. For example, we'll report when a member completes 5,000 pages in any one round; then we'll let you know when they've done 10,000 pages and so on.
The "team" numbers are the cumulative totals for each round for each member while they are members of a particular team. So that's why, the team pages go up whenever a team member's totals increase. Another reason to join a team or two....
Completed 35,000 pages in a round:
- uwe-joachim in F2
Completed 30,000 pages in a round:
Completed 25,000 pages in a round:
- rolands in P3
- Team USA in P3
Completed 20,000 pages in a round:
- Foofers' Corner in F2
Completed 15,000 pages in a round:
- Team Canada in P1 NEW!!!
Completed 10,000 pages in a round:
- Bibi in P3 NEW!!!
- De2164 in F1
- Team Canada in P2
- Team German in F2
- Foofers' Corner in F1
- LOTE Flotes my Bote in F2
Completed 5,000 pages in a round:
- Daniel G in P1
- rcool in P1 and P2
- snowseraph in P2
- supo88 in P2
- Warmheart in F1
- yajeulb in F1
- hugger1935 in F1 and F2
- Team USA in P2 and F2
- Team Canada in F1
- Team German in P3 NEW!!!
- DPing with Cats in P2 and F1
And how many pages have been done in each of the rounds? Naturally, F2 will be at the bottom since they are the last round that gets the projects before PPing and P1 will be on top since they get to start all the projects. :grin: Another consideration is that P3 or F2 stats may be slightly smaller if the PM/PPer has skipped his/her/their project through either one or both of those rounds. So let's see where each round was at the end of May:
- P1 completed over 87,000 pages
- P2 completed over 80,000 pages
- P3 completed over 71,000 pages
- F1 completed over 69,000 pages
- F2 completed over 57,000 pages
Great work, people!!!
Proofing & Formatting Stats
Okay, we are just over 60% the way through June and ... P1 is in the lead this month with over 125%!! P1 has already made their page goal this month. F1 (at almost 95%) should not have any problems either since we have still 11 days to go. The other rounds will have to increase their pace.
| Round | P1 | P2 | P3 | F1 | F2 |
| June goal | 3,300 | 3,300 | 3,000 | 3,300 | 3,000 |
| *June to date | 4,133 | 2,355 | 2,261 | 3,132 | 1,491 |
| June to date % | 125.24% | 71.36% | 75.37% | 94.91% | 49.70% |
*Numbers accurate to "press" time.
For more statistics and related links go to: Statistics Central.
Books In Process And/or Posted To PG Canada or PG-International
At press time, we had 180 Gold Star books posted to PGC or PG-Int (with 4 in PPV). Fantastic work, all.
There are currently 158 Silver Star projects in post processing and 134 Bronze Star projects which are currently undergoing proofing or formatting. For more details about these projects, please see the listings on the bottom of the DP Welcome page.
User Team Talk
Have you checked out our user teams? To check out the teams or to join one go to: User Teams. The Team threads are located under Proofing Team Talk. Is there a team that you'd like to see? You can create a team from the link on the User Teams page--you might be surprised by who shows up to join you.
We currently have 23 teams; more are always welcome.
Possible Future Articles
This is YOUR newsletter: yes, there are forum posts and user team posts, but is there something that you want to tell the whole DPC community? You are allowed to brag here. You can also be anonymous if you choose ... we won't tell.
- Tips or Hints: for those people who do/did a lot of proofing and/or formatting on DP-Int/US &/or DP-Eur, do you have any tips or "rules" that you follow to help yourself while you proof or format? Even a re-wording of a guideline that helps you remember how to do something specific.
- Tell us why you joined DPC.
- Quotable Quotes: have you seen a thought-provoking quote that is relevant to the DP Community while you were doing your proofing that you just had to pass on?...
- The most interesting, outrageous, or strangest line you proofed: before it was proofed (if that was the outrageous or strange part) and what it was after proofing (please do not submit obscene language, it will not be published).
- New projects: PMs is there a series of books or books by a very prolific author that you'd like to do?--let us know so that we can help pass the word to the proofers so they'll be there to jump in and work on them.
- Kudos, Bouquets & Compliments: are there any DPers that you would like to give special thanks and/or recognition to: a mentor who gave you lots of guidance, a PPer that made your project into a very wonderful looking book for posting to PG, a CPer or image/text preparer who went the extra little bit to provide you with clean scans, well OCR'd text, or good illustrations for your project, another DPer who made you feel really welcome or provided you with some good advice or....
- "Guest articles" by anyone and everyone who wishes to....
