May 22, 2009
From DPCanadaWiki
Volume 2, Issue #38--May 22, 2009
(Full listing of previous issues is available at DPC Newsletters)
Team Smoothy
By Warmheart
The smooth reading project has created great interest. Already there are several other PPers who use the pool and have met with success, meaning that they've had their projects checked out and smooth-read.
We've also recruited a couple of smooth readers from our sister site DP-INT; they are avid readers and have jumped at the chance to provide a helping hand. Thank you, Smoothies!!
Are you a "closet" Smooth Reader?--Do you enjoy reading the material that you are proofing and/or formatting so much that you sometimes forget to proof or foof? Then you should become a Smooth Reader.
"Smoothies," as Smooth Readers are affectionally called, download the PP'd e-book to do a final, very careful reading before the PPer sends the book to the PPVer. Not only do you get a chance to read the complete e-book, without interruption, before it gets posted to Project Gutenberg Canada, but you can also help the PPer find those final inconsistencies or possible odd errors that were missed in the rounds. Some times the tiny little annoying errors can only be found by a Smooth Reader because they are "Reading" the book, and not just the words... or a page at a time.
The PPers who use the Smooth Reading pool really appreciate the responses they get from Smooth Readers. Even if all you have to say is: no errors found.… :D
Do you know someone who isn't a regular DPCer but who likes to read and might like to become a Smoothy? Non-DPC members can smooth read without registering; however, if they want to upload any comments, they must register as a DPC member. One does not need to proof or format to smooth read, just have an interest to read the text very carefully to check for possible errors.
The Smooth Reading FAQs wiki page has the answers to many questions. If you have any other questions, you can leave them in the Team Smoothy forum thread. You don't have to join the team to Smooth Read or to leave questions. The forum thread is also a spot to let the PM and/or PPer know that you'd like Smooth Read a particular book.
Announcement
by Simple Simon
Please check out the "DP Humour" page on our wiki at http://www.pgdpcanada.net/wiki/index.php/DP_Humour --I have collected a few cartoons or comic strips about proofing life, seen from the funny side (or at least they tickled my funny-bone). The latest one added deals with the problems we may encounter in that future day when we start to mount projects in Middle Eastern or Far Eastern languages that use right-to-left reading.
Of course, if you have access to such material (cartoons, comic strips or jokes, or just humorous anecdotes about proofing or formatting in general) feel free to add them to the page (or contact Warmheart or Simple Simon for help in posting them, if you're not comfortable with wiki-speak).
Editorial
Message to PMs from De2164--DAvid wants to remind people who become newbie PMs that their first project always gets pushed into P1: Available--basically jumping the queue. :wink: He also tries to have a least one project per PM in P1: Available. So if you are a PM who doesn't have anything in the P1 queue and you do have something ready to go, DAvid would really like to see it.
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.
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 and HTML Tables. The checklist for this issue is about Illustrations. He also promises a CSS checklist for Issue #40 (that's next month).
This issue's checklist is aimed at CPers as well since it starts from the original scanned "raw" files, but is applicable for PPers who may receive partially prepped illustration scans from the PM.
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.
Attention CPers: Simple Simon's checklist on Illustrations starts from the original scans so you will find it of interest.
Sychronization of Guidelines--In the last 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.
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...
As you probably know by now, DP-INT is about to hold an election for an expanded Board of Directors. There have been some technical issues with setting up the election (to be conducted by an independent not-for-profit organization), and the By-laws have needed to be completely re-worked.
These two tasks have kept JulietS, the SA of DP-INT, very busy for a number of weeks, but it appears that the election will go ahead soon now, perhaps as early as next week.
I am among the five candidates standing for election to the DP-INT Board--all are, in my opinion well-qualified (ahem), so the result will be a powerful Board of Directors that can steer DP-INT through some challenges that lie ahead, and draft a strategic plan for the next few years. The Board's first task will be to identify, recruit, and "hire" a General Manager to replace Juliet, who has worked long and hard, but wants to move on to other challenges.
As always, this GM will be a volunteer, and will also become a non-voting member of the Board. Juliet will remain on the Board, to ensure continuity, as will Greg Newby of PG-INT. Other Board members will, in general, serve 3 year terms, and be replaced on a staggered basis, one each year. Board members will only be allowed to serve two terms in a row, to ensure representativeness.
Although, of course, DPC would remain my first priority, if I am elected, I think I could do a very good job for DP-INT. And my membership on their Board would ensure the likelihood of the two DPs working closely together, which I believe is essential for both organizations.
I hope that I can count on your vote, if you are a member of DP-INT.
Checklist for Illustrations:
Whether you are a Content provider, who wants to harvest scans from a book archive, or scan a book from scratch, or whether you're a PPer who needs to "tweak" some of the illos for a book you're working on, you need to know how to manipulate images.
For this you need a piece of software that will make this job easy--I recommend IrfanView. It's powerful, easy to use, and free.
Download it from the manufacturer's website http://www.irfanview.com/. Installing it is easy, but if you get stuck, there is lots of help at the same website.
The basic principle I suggest is "keep as much resolution as you can, as long as you can"--that way, you'll have lots of detail (pixels) to work with at each stage of the process.
The quick and dirty sequence of steps is:
1. get your scans (harvest them from TIA, Google or elsewhere), or from your own scanner
2. immediately save a backup copy of the original scans
3. most of the scans will be text pages--sort out those that are illos into a separate folder
4. now you've got 3 folders: "originals", "illos", and "all pages"
5. process the "all pages" folder to get the images that will go into the project, to proof from
6. process the illos only separately to get the "hi-res" illos you'll provide to the PPer
7. if there are "special" illos, like maps or very large images, that require special treatment, set those aside in a "special" folder
8. send the processed "all pages" folder to OCR
Eventually, the "all pages" scans, and the OCR'd text files will go to dpscans for upload to the Project. You may also upload the "hi-res" files, or hold them back, ready to send to the PPer when needed.
Processing the "all pages" folder:
1. open IrfanView
2. open the set of pages you're going to work on ("originals"); note: you can use "View" Lock Zoom to prevent the image size varying
3. save them into a new "in progress" folder--then flip through them to see what kinds of problems you'll need to handle. You can use the left and right arrow buttons to scan through the file, and the + and - buttons to adjust the size
4. if they're harvested scans, they may have the following problems--several of these can cause the files to be too large
a. file type is wrong (should eventually be .pngs)
b. skewed
c. unwanted material around the edges (borders, white space etc)
d. physically too large
e. colour level too high
5. clean up the files for OCR. For each file, use the following commands from the menus:
- "Image" Rotate Left or Right to rotate the page until it's upright
- "Image" Custom/Fine Rotation to de-skew the page
- drag a frame with your mouse around the portion of the image you want, then "Edit" Crop selection to get rid of white space, borders...
- "File" Save as, to save the modified scan in the "ready for OCR" folder--select the file type as .png, and rename the file in sequence 001.png etc
Note that when you get more comfortable with IrfanView, some of these operations can be done in "batch" mode on all the files at once.
6. now do your OCR, to get the text files that will go to dpscans (these will normally be very small, < 50K bytes)
7. finally, process the scans further to reduce the file size for dpscans
- "Image" Resize/Resample to adjust the number of pixels (I usually reduce to 600 px longest side)
- "Image" Decrease Color Depth, probably to 256 colours or 16 colours (should reduce scan file to <100K bytes)
Processing the illos:
Because the PPer may wish to do further refining of the illos, try to maintain as much detail as possible.
Do make the scan upright, do a micro-rotate to remove skew, and reduce size to about 2000 px longest size. Let the PPer do any cropping and decide on the final image size.
If you have "special" illos (like maps) that are in multiple pieces, or that need repair due to damage to the page, I suggest referring such illos to the Illustrators forum group--who are experts at this type of work.
Finally, if there are "mid-page" illos, like decorative capital letters, in-line illos, or decorative rules or glyphs, ask for help from the Illustrators, or from an experienced PPer. The same tools can be used for these special cases, but previous experience is useful.
Revisions to Guidelines, FAQs and the DPC site code
Guideline Differences--See article at beginning of the April 10 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.
- Volume 32 is in P1: Waiting, Volume 9 is in P1: Available, Volume 6 is in P2: Available, Volumes 8, 11 and 21 are in Post-Processing; Vols. 3 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 five issues currently undergoing proofing or formatting with two in P1: Waiting. One issue is 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, one in P1: Available and three in P1: Waiting. Warmheart also has a bunch of them in prep as well. :wink:
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 F1: Available.
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 675 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 | |
|---|---|
| May 2009 | 11 |
| April 2009 | 22 |
| 2009 Q1 | 168 |
| 2008 total | 235 |
| 2007 total | 239 |
| Total to date | 675 |
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:
Completed 30,000 pages in a round:
- uwe-joachim in F2
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 NEW!!!
Completed 15,000 pages in a round:
Completed 10,000 pages in a round:
- Team Canada in P1 and P2
- Team German in F2
- Foofers' Corner in F1
Completed 5,000 pages in a round:
- Bibi in P3
- Daniel G in P1
- rcool in P1 and P2
- snowseraph in P2
- supo88 in P2
- De2164 in F1
- Warmheart in F1
- yajeulb in F1
- hugger1935 in F1 and F2
- Team USA in P2 and F2 NEW!!!
- Team Canada in F1
- DPing with Cats in P2 and F1
- LOTE Flotes my Bote in F2
After a look at the stats, I note that by next issue or two, there should be a number of people and teams changing levels. Can you guess who?
Great work, people!!!
Proofing & Formatting Stats
We're 70% through May with 9 days to go:
- P3 and F2 are both over 100% and F1 is almost there. Fantastic!!
- P1 and P2 should be able to make it if they keep up their pace.
| Round | P1 | P2 | P3 | F1 | F2 |
| May goal | 3,410 | 3,410 | 3,100 | 3,410 | 3,100 |
| *May to date | 2,978 | 2,610 | 4,409 | 3,370 | 3,275 |
| May to date % | 87.33% | 76.54% | 142.23% | 98.83% | 105.651% |
*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 172 Gold Star books posted to PGC or PG-Int (with 3 in PPV). Fantastic work, all.
There are currently 145 Silver Star projects in post processing and 125 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....
