-=-=-=- README file for project Libellus -=-=-=-
          (This is not a list of files: see 00index for that.)

The texts and commentaries stored in this directory tree have been
scanned into ASCII form, edited by hand and converted into TeX
format---from documents FREE OF COPYRIGHT.  This usually means texts
that are sufficiently old that their copyright has run out (see
README.copyright); so you are not likely to find recent scholarship
here.  What you will find, however, is material from the last century.
This does not affect the quality of the texts so much as the quality of
the commentaries; the texts are, after all, several hundred years old at
best.

Purpose:

The idea behind this project is that everyone ought to be able to have a
library of classical works at their fingertips, that they can use at
their will, as a basis for a commentary, as a teaching tool, for
research, or indeed for whatever purpose they deem worthy.  Current
offerings, as is to be expected from commercial products, are extremely
limited in the manner in which they may be used; the works published
here have no such restrictions.

Contributing:

Please, PLEASE contribute to this library.  Find a text or commentary
whose copyright has run out, scan it in (or type, if you prefer), and
send it to me (perseant@u.washington.edu) by e-mail.  The more people
contribute, the larger a library this can be.  Please be sure to send a
copy of the title and verso pages from the volume you're taking it from
so that we can demonstrate the fact that the text is PD, should anyone
ask.

TeX:

TeX is a good (and free!) typesetter; but if you don't have the program,
having the files in that format will not help you.  Therefore, in the
Utils directory is a program "tex2asc", a rudimentary TeX-to-ASCII
converter.  It was written solely for the purpose of converting these
particular documents into ASCII form, so it probably won't work if
you try to use it on any more complicated TeX document.

Compiled versions of the program, for MS-DOS and VMS, are available in
libellus/utils, and a Macintosh executable will be put there if it can
be run without crashing the Mac.  If you plan to use it on a Unix
system, however, you will have to compile it before you can use it:

machine% uncompress tex2asc10.tar.Z
machine% tar xvf tex2asc10.tar
machine% cd tex2asc10
machine% make

If you do plan to use TeX to format the documents, make sure that you
have the file "ks_macros.tex", also stored in the Utils directory.  This
file contains macros needed by some of the documents.  If the document
that you plan to format contains Greek characters, be sure also that you
have the Greek font specifications (gr*.pk and gr*.tfm, also in the
Utils directory).

See the file README.tex for more information as to the reasons behind
choosing TeX over various other formats (notably plain ASCII) and how to
obtain TeX for your particular computer.