[HN Gopher] Standard Ebooks
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Standard Ebooks
        
       Author : pauloxnet
       Score  : 322 points
       Date   : 2024-01-01 11:51 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (standardebooks.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (standardebooks.org)
        
       | Handprint4469 wrote:
       | I would love if they offered a download option for a file you
       | could just upload to Lulu (or similar service) to have it printed
       | and mailed to you.
       | 
       | Every time I buy one of these public domain books from Amazon,
       | they are invariably shitty, low-quality "printed by Amazon"
       | versions. I miss the time where you could get a high-quality
       | hardcover, but more and more those seem reserved only for the
       | current week's NYT best-seller books.
        
         | dimmke wrote:
         | This could be a cool monetization strategy. I don't really read
         | physical books, but the "classics" on Amazon are often complete
         | ripoffs. Here's Crime and Punishment for $10 just to get the
         | Kindle version: https://www.amazon.com/Punishment-Penguin-
         | Classics-Fyodor-Do...
         | 
         | I feel like these open domain novels published by big
         | publishing houses have the veneer of legitimacy, but projects
         | like the one this thread is about I think could accomplish much
         | more. Especially for authors where the work is translated into
         | English. Plus the cover designs are much cooler.
         | 
         | I will say, the search on their website is kind of slow and
         | could use some work.
        
           | zuminator wrote:
           | In fairness though, if you sort by price, you can always find
           | classics on Amazon for dirt cheap. E.g.
           | 
           | https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Works-Dostoyevsky-
           | Punishment...
           | 
           | Although there's no saying as to whether or not they will
           | have proper spellcheck, TOC, if they are legitimately in the
           | public domain, or even if it's the right book with all the
           | pages. That's where a service like Standard Ebooks is
           | superior to the potluck you get from Amazon.
        
           | smogcutter wrote:
           | Not the greatest example, as the translation is not public
           | domain.
        
           | paulcole wrote:
           | Why is that book a ripoff?
        
             | cxr wrote:
             | Without discounting the point made by smogcutter about
             | Penguin's edition not actually being public domain: for a
             | classic work, I'd expect to be able to get a paperback for
             | less than $10.* And that involves a real-life physical
             | artifact which (a) necessarily has lower margins than an
             | ebook, and (b) doesn't come with the omnipresent threat
             | that it will evaporate from your device (or your managed
             | online locker or whatever), nor that you'll have to stop
             | reading if your battery dies, nor that you're unable to
             | easily hand to someone else to let them thumb through or
             | borrow it. For an ebook, $3 or $4 sounds about right. Maybe
             | $5 for a relatively modern translation, as in the case
             | here. Recall that Netflix in comparison is $X per month
             | (fill this is in; I don't actually know, but I know the
             | number is not high) and libraries are free-ish. Price
             | points at or around $10 per work or more feel like a
             | shameless ploy to trigger the sensation of "economy" in
             | "false economy" and push people into rent-seeking platforms
             | where they consistently hand over a continual stream of
             | payments in perpetuity for "unlimited" access--to select
             | items within the very limited one month term that the
             | payment gets you.
             | 
             | * NB: whether this is actually the case or not is a
             | separate matter
        
         | acabal wrote:
         | I've considered running a campaign to finance a print run of
         | some of our (SE's) books. But the fact is that it's just so
         | easy to find super cheap paper copies of these books almost
         | anywhere. As long as you buy a copy that was printed before,
         | say, 2005 - or from a reputable publisher like Oxford or
         | Penguin - then the edition will already be pro quality. (After
         | that, it's much more likely that you're buying a print-on-
         | demand copy of a raw Project Gutenberg text.)
         | 
         | If we _did_ offer print books, I think the value-add would be
         | making them extremely ornate, one-of-a-kind editions like Arion
         | Press or Folio Society make, and we 'd charge a lot for a copy.
         | But even then I'm still not sure the juice would be worth the
         | squeeze, because that's _also_ been done to death... how many
         | more fancy editions of _Dracula_ or whatever does the world
         | need?
        
           | zopa wrote:
           | I think you might be underestimating the value-add---at least
           | based on the existence of this thread! Yes quality copies are
           | out there, but easy to find for the Editor-in-Chief of
           | Standard Ebooks doesn't mean easy for everyone. I suspect
           | plenty of people would find a trusted, no hassle source for a
           | quality print copy worthwhile, just for the simplicity and
           | convenience. Though I totally respect not wanting to waste
           | ink and kill trees reprinting something that's already widely
           | available.
        
             | acabal wrote:
             | Folio Society basically already does this, at a premium
             | price. Used copies of well-set PD classics from respected
             | publishers like Franklin Library or Modern Library go for
             | pennies and can be shipped to your door fron places like
             | Abebooks, or you can easily find them at your nearby
             | library sale/used bookstore/charity shop/etc.
             | 
             | I've been toying with the idea for a while but I think the
             | market is just too saturated, even for premium editions.
             | Maybe the focus should be on reviving more obscure works...
             | not sure.
        
       | dflock wrote:
       | A well run open source ebook project, producing the highest
       | quality ebooks. Always looking for volunteers as well as
       | donations.
        
         | dalanmiller wrote:
         | What's the best way to volunteer?
        
           | acabal wrote:
           | https://standardebooks.org/contribute
        
       | dimmke wrote:
       | This is really cool. I'm going to donate.
        
       | mmastrac wrote:
       | I published a couple of books for the project during a sabbatical
       | in 2021 (The Devil's Dictionary [0] and a cheesy, small H. Beam
       | Piper book named Four-Day Planet).
       | 
       | The process and tools are quite nice and it's very rewarding to
       | see your work in ebook form. It takes a _long_ time to proof and
       | re-read a book, but it's surprising how many times you can do
       | this and how differently you need to read to catch errors versus
       | just enjoying the damn book.
       | 
       | The fascinating part of the project is a _strong_ editorial
       | opinion, which IMO makes the project successful. There is a core
       | group of people that upholds the standards for the project, and
       | the resulting consistency of quality of output derives from that.
       | The team clearly cares about the quality, and has demonstrably
       | maintained that over the huge number of releases.
       | 
       | I even went to the archives of the "San Francisco Newletter and
       | California Advertiser" to collect some of Bierce's original work,
       | making it the most complete, and most corrected open-source
       | version of the book. [1] The one previously hosted by Project
       | Gutenburg was quite old and, frankly, quite riddled with
       | transcription errors.
       | 
       | I haven't tried reading the Devil's Dictionary back-to-back since
       | I published it, but I might one day. There's a lot of detail in
       | this work that I never saw until I had it under a microscope.
       | 
       | [0] https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/ambrose-bierce/the-
       | devils-...
       | 
       | [1] https://archive.org/details/san-francisco-newletter-
       | dec-11-1...
        
       | NKosmatos wrote:
       | For other curious HNers, what differentiates [0] them from
       | Project Gutenberg [1] is the improved typography/styling and the
       | full usage of modern reader techniques. Think of it like, etext
       | != ebook.
       | 
       | [0] https://standardebooks.org/about/what-makes-standard-
       | ebooks-...
       | 
       | [1] https://www.gutenberg.org
        
         | chrismorgan wrote:
         | So why don't they contribute these things back to Project
         | Gutenberg? Particularly the typography ones like curly quotes
         | and proper dashes, as those are almost always _corrections_
         | where the overly-ASCII Gutenberg source doesn't match the
         | original.
        
           | mouse_ wrote:
           | Also wondering this.
        
           | acabal wrote:
           | Like PG, our editions are blends of other editions, along
           | with our own updates. Often our edition winds up looking
           | nothing like the PG edition, for example when we combine
           | volumes, extract footnotes into endnotes, remove pagination,
           | and so on.
           | 
           | So submitting back to PG would be more like _replacing_ a PG
           | edition, instead of _updating_ it; and I doubt the original
           | PG submitter would like it if their hard work was simply
           | replaced by someone else who thought their version was an
           | improvement.
           | 
           | Our volunteers _do_ sometimes submit typos they find back to
           | PG. We don 't require that, so some producers do, and others
           | don't.
        
             | chrismorgan wrote:
             | Yeah, I was just looking through _A Christmas Carol_ and
             | observed a handful of editorial changes in the commits
             | <https://github.com/standardebooks/charles-dickens_a-
             | christma...> (bran-new - brand-new, frouzy - frowzy, and
             | "Lowercase some gratuitously uppercased words"). Frouzy -
             | frowzy I'm mildly in favour of. Ditching bran-new
             | definitely loses character (he omitted the d on
             | _purpose_!). One or two of the lowercased words _were_
             | mildly strange capitalised (e.g. Idol was inconsistent with
             | the previous paragraph); but the lowercasing of many
             | introduces broad stylistic inconsistency, and direct local
             | inconsistency sometimes; and most of the capitalisations
             | were _not_ gratuitous. In fact, more than a few were
             | clearly to be pronounced, as a form of emphasis (e.g. Poor,
             | One, Us); and some were distinctly proper nouns in the
             | context, the removal of which increases the parse
             | difficulty (e.g. One1,  /(Cold )?(Roast|Boiled)/); and some
             | reflect customs still common or even _preferred_ in their
             | domains (e.g. Act, Angelic, Apostles, Star). I just reckon
             | that commit should be reverted, because from my perspective
             | it's mostly actively bad, and the rest subjective. I'm
             | curious what your reaction is to my opinion here.
             | 
             | But yes, I see that you're practising some editorial
             | oversight and not aiming to faithfully represent the
             | original in all regards, which I gather is more generally
             | Project Gutenberg's goal; and this would obviously
             | contraindicate upstreaming.
             | 
             | On the other hand, when it comes to more stylistic matters,
             | I tend to wish Project Gutenberg had more consistency.
             | There's too much gratuitous variation in presentation and
             | ridiculous 256-colour backgrounds. It's often too obvious
             | much of it is the work of a group of individuals rather
             | than a coherent effort.
             | 
             | I'm curious about the footnote-to-endnote thing, because
             | I'm not sure how the various formats in question handle
             | them all, but in _print_ endnotes are almost always just
             | _awful_. If anything, I'd be expecting to replace endnotes
             | with footnotes. (Me, I'm partial to sidenotes.)
             | 
             | --***--
             | 
             | 1 Hickory dickory dock, three mice ran up the clock; the
             | clock struck one, and has been charged with assault and
             | battery.
        
               | wharvle wrote:
               | Yeah, any edition of a book that's "updating" modern
               | English loses me, including messing with capitalization.
               | Not interested. I love the formatting on Standard Ebooks,
               | but they're no use to me if they're "updating" language,
               | aside from things like repairing typesetting and
               | formatting lost or mangled in PG editions.
               | 
               | Agree on notes in print, side notes (on very-wide
               | editions) are best, then foot, then _end of chapter_
               | endnotes. Full end-of-work endnotes are awful. Maybe they
               | 're better in ebooks, than footnotes, though? E-readers'
               | poor UX for not-even-that-advanced features of books is
               | part of why I barely use them, and practically never for
               | any work that'd have notes of any sort.
        
           | weijiacheng wrote:
           | In addition to what Alex has said, as an SE contributor I do
           | try to submit errata to Project Gutenberg where I can find
           | the time and energy. Part of the problem, though, is that
           | PG's errata process
           | (https://www.gutenberg.org/help/errata.html) is quite
           | cumbersome since you have to write an email to their errata
           | team with each individual error. That's a real hassle to try
           | to keep track of and submit. Ideally, if PG had something
           | like a pull request system, I would just be able to find
           | those errors in their code and submit the changes directly,
           | but unfortunately they don't have that, so far as I am aware.
           | 
           | That is one major advantage SE has, I think, which is that we
           | _do_ allow people to make pull requests against any of our
           | ebook repositories and any PRs that get merged are
           | automatically deployed to the site. This makes it much, much
           | easier for tech-savvy people to submit proofreading
           | corrections!
        
             | cxr wrote:
             | > Part of the problem, though, is that PG's errata process
             | (https://www.gutenberg.org/help/errata.html) is quite
             | cumbersome since you have to write an email to their errata
             | team with each individual error. That's a real hassle to
             | try to keep track of and submit. Ideally, if PG had
             | something like a pull request system, I would just be able
             | to[...]
             | 
             | On the other side of the coin, Standard Ebooks's heavy
             | endorsement/buy-in of GitHub-based workflows are offputting
             | to broader audiences. (It's pretty offputting to me, and
             | I'm not even non-technical; I just recognize it as a sort
             | of Conway's Law + Law of the Hammer sort of thing, and it
             | chafes.) I.e., for others what you describe is far less
             | than "ideal".
        
               | acabal wrote:
               | You don't have to use Github if you don't want to, but
               | you _do_ have to use Git. We 've had more than a few
               | producers successfuly produce ebooks without using GitHub
               | or Google Groups.
        
       | acabal wrote:
       | Editor-in-Chief here, happy to answer any questions!
       | 
       | Of interest might be my blog post on how SE runs on a small VPS
       | using classic web tech: https://alexcabal.com/posts/standard-
       | ebooks-and-classic-web-...
       | 
       | (This post is slightly out of date as there _is_ a database now;
       | but it 's used for managing Patrons - and soon a cover art
       | listing and approval system - not for serving the actual ebooks,
       | which are still served as described in the post.)
       | 
       | Our volunteers have spent the last few months preparing a few
       | notable books published in 1928 to be released today, Public
       | Domain Day. Those are the top 5 books in the ebook list, starting
       | with _The Mystery of the Blue Train_. Check them out!
       | 
       | We welcome new contributors if you'd like to work on producing a
       | new ebook. In the next week we'll also have a brand new cover art
       | database launched, so if you'd rather help by cataloguing new
       | cover art for future ebooks, get in touch at our mailing list!
        
         | Lukas_S wrote:
         | This is such a cool project. Every time it hits the front page
         | I browse the selections like I'm at a book store.
         | 
         | Have you considered making books sortable by popularity? It
         | might be more approachable for new users if they see books they
         | recognize at the top.
        
           | acabal wrote:
           | That's a frequent request but it would also require having
           | our catalog in a database, which we don't have right now. I
           | do think the time is soon for doing that for several reasons,
           | but there's no spare time in my day at the moment.
        
             | wood_spirit wrote:
             | Perhaps there's no need for a db? If you have basic web
             | logs, some volunteer can find out how many times a book was
             | downloaded etc, and use that to do a one-off "best of 2023"
             | etc? A kind of SE Wrapped thingy?
        
         | harwoodjp wrote:
         | You could probably drop the server and use Cloudflare Pages and
         | a SSG. I use Astro for https://sabine.press/
         | 
         | Edit: oh and Lambda for a total of 2 server functions
        
           | acabal wrote:
           | Well, the point is _not_ to jump at the new-fangled tech and
           | AWS cloud lock-in :)
        
         | NelsonMinar wrote:
         | Thank you for Standard Books!
         | 
         | I remember when Manybooks used to be what you want. But quality
         | dropped precipitously with self-published new novels, I suspect
         | some money is changing hands somewhere.
         | 
         | What happened to Manybooks? Does Standard Books have a plan for
         | avoiding that?
        
           | acabal wrote:
           | I don't know anything about Manybooks' history, sorry.
           | 
           | At SE we focus exclusively on US public domain titles; that's
           | one of the major philosophical points of the project. The
           | other major point is a high quality standard, so it's in our
           | best interest to keep pursuing that. SE became known due to
           | its quality standard, not because it's more free ebooks.
           | Therefore if we strayed from those points then we'd be just
           | another free ebook site, of which there are no shortage.
           | 
           | Quality is also why we reject self-published books that have
           | been dedicated to the public domain, as those are typically
           | low-quality content to begin with. (Though I wouldn't call
           | _every single book_ we host  "high quality content" in the
           | sense that each one is up there with Shakespeare. But books
           | that have survived a hundred years tend to have survived
           | because they're not slush.)
        
         | ebooks-ta wrote:
         | Do you have any thoughts on providing manually pre-formatted
         | PDF files? Em-dashes, curly quotes, etc. are all nice, it's a
         | step in the right direction, but in the end the EPUB file needs
         | to be interpreted by the ebook reader on the fly and in terms
         | of typesetting quality the outcome is far from what physical
         | books provide, since you still get orphans, weird hyphenations,
         | ugly/misaligned chapter titles. For me, nothing beats reading a
         | print-ready PDF file.
        
           | acabal wrote:
           | That's a common request but there are no plans to officially
           | offer PDFs. We offer a variety of reflowable file formats,
           | and each format is more burden to maintain; since PDF is a
           | famously difficult format, maintaining it would be even more
           | burden. A reader requiring a PDF can use a tool to convert
           | any of our files to PDF. That's basically what _we 'd_ do at
           | the end of the day, anyway.
           | 
           | There's been some mailing list chatter lately on how to best
           | format PDF editions, but that's not being pursued on a
           | project level.
        
         | veridies wrote:
         | I've been eagerly awaiting the new Lord Peter Wimsey novel! To
         | avoid burnout, I've been reading them as they enter the public
         | domain instead of reading the whole series all at once, and I
         | was hoping that it would be in the first batch this year. Thank
         | you so much for your hard work!
        
         | pseingatl wrote:
         | What are the dimensions produced by se build-images?
        
           | robin_reala wrote:
           | The expected size for the JPG for the cover is 1400x2100.
        
         | growingkittens wrote:
         | I see that you use public domain images for books - do artists
         | also contribute work from scratch (with an appropriate
         | release)?
        
           | acabal wrote:
           | Nobody has offered as of yet, and if someone did I think the
           | quality would have to be extremely high for me to consider
           | it.
        
             | growingkittens wrote:
             | Do you happen to have a wishlist of artwork or a particular
             | project that would benefit from custom artwork? I would
             | like to contribute art to the project, whether it ends up
             | used or not. I used to work as a digital artist
             | professionally.
        
               | acabal wrote:
               | Sci-fi works are the hardest to find cover art for as
               | naturally there is zero public domain sci-fi themed fine
               | art. If you can paint in a fine art style, contact me via
               | email and let's chat.
        
         | darkflame91 wrote:
         | I have a suggestion: You could optimize the website to be
         | easily readable and navigable on the Kindle's web browser, and
         | recommend it as an option. I've often found it to be the
         | easiest way to get non-store books on my Kindle. I've also
         | noticed that cover images are handled correctly when the ebook
         | is downloaded straight onto the device, with no need for a
         | separate image file.
         | 
         | A hurdle for this though, is that building a good website for
         | the Kindle browser is a pain, as the browser's support for
         | various html/css/js features and standards is all over the
         | place, with no debugging tools available.
        
           | acabal wrote:
           | I believe our website does have some basic Kindle browser
           | support. The problem, as you noted, is that Kindle's browser
           | is terrible.
           | 
           | I say the same thing in every ebook thread: On a purely
           | technical level Kindle is a terrible ereader designed by
           | people who seem to hate books. Buy almost anything else.
        
             | donw wrote:
             | Recommendations?
        
               | AB1908 wrote:
               | I imagine the Kobo is high on that list.
        
               | meristohm wrote:
               | Kobo, with either stock OS or KOReader (I use this, in
               | part because the font size can be easily increased for my
               | daughter who so far needs text larger than stock) or
               | Plato.
        
         | cxr wrote:
         | The page <title> for collections could stand to lose the
         | "Browse free ebooks in the" preamble. It makes it harder to
         | distinguish when looking at a list of open tabs. Consider:
         | 
         | - "Browse free ebooks in the Encyclopaedia Britannica's Gateway
         | to the Great Books set[...]"[1]
         | 
         | - "Browse free ebooks in the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels
         | set[...]"[2]
         | 
         | - "Browse free ebooks in the Modern Library's 100 Best
         | Nonfiction set[...]"[3]
         | 
         | (Indeed, the titles are even much longer than that. It feels
         | SEO-ish; not sure why that would be a priority for a free
         | culture project like Standard Ebooks, especially give the
         | momentum and cachet it already has.)
         | 
         | Collections should also have placeholders for unavailable
         | titles. For example, currently the "Utopian Trilogy"
         | collection[4] contains exactly one item, in spite of the true
         | size of the set it actually belongs to. When an item is not
         | available because of copyright, that (along with the year in
         | which SE will first be allowed to make its own edition
         | available) should be made clear. Where it's unavailable because
         | no one has yet proofed the text for an SE edition, a clear call
         | to action can be made.
         | 
         | And it's seemingly minor, but on the subject of editions, I
         | wish SE followed closer to the print tradition instead of the
         | modern Web millieu and clearly identified its microeditions as
         | exactly that: distinct editions of the same text. (Yes, that
         | means there are possibly dozens (or hundreds?) of different
         | editions, given that errors can be found after the fact and the
         | SE house style may even change, necessitating updates. No,
         | that's not a problem.)
         | 
         | 1. <https://standardebooks.org/collections/encyclopaedia-
         | britann...>
         | 
         | 2. <https://standardebooks.org/collections/modern-
         | librarys-100-b...>
         | 
         | 3. <https://standardebooks.org/collections/modern-
         | librarys-100-b...>
         | 
         | 4. <https://standardebooks.org/collections/utopian-trilogy>
        
         | devashishp wrote:
         | I'm curious, why do you have a policy against hosting religious
         | books?
        
           | trillic wrote:
           | I'd imagine that if they host one religions books, many more
           | religions will come out of the wood work and demand their
           | books also be included, leading the site to be largely
           | religious texts.
        
             | krapp wrote:
             | Numerous sites, platforms, stores, etc. host religious
             | books, and that has never happened.
        
           | weijiacheng wrote:
           | The site actually hosts several "religious books" (try
           | filtering by the "Spirituality" tag -- I've even produced
           | several books on religious topics myself for SE). What it
           | doesn't host are "Religious texts from modern world
           | religions" (what some might call "scriptures," e.g. the Bible
           | or the Quran) which is a much narrower category than
           | "religious books."
           | 
           | As a religious person myself, I actually think this policy is
           | very sensible. Most (nearly all?) religious texts of major
           | world religions were originally written in languages other
           | than English, and so if SE were to try to host those texts
           | the site would have to make an editorial call about which
           | translations of those texts are the "best." That quickly
           | enters very murky theological territory, where one side of a
           | given religion might push for one particular translation,
           | whereas another side would push for another translation.
           | 
           | To give the Bible as an example, Catholics and Orthodox
           | Christians include the deuterocanonical books (e.g. Tobit,
           | Judith, Sirach) in their canons whereas Protestants exclude
           | these. Would the SE version of the Bible include these? Some
           | American fundamentalist Christians claim that the King James
           | Version is the only valid English translation of the Bible,
           | whereas the Revised Version (also available in the public
           | domain) is based on more reliable Greek manuscripts. But some
           | conservative Christians reject the Revised Version and its
           | descendants based on certain theological premises...
           | 
           | Do you catch my drift? IMHO it's very sensible for SE to
           | avoid these sorts of debates entirely by sticking to books
           | where you could argue (with some degree of handwaving) that
           | there really is a "best version" :)
        
           | pard68 wrote:
           | My thought was that many/most religious works are public
           | domain and are already readily available elsewhere.
        
         | carlosjobim wrote:
         | Hi and thanks for the great work! Have you considered offering
         | .mobi or .azw file formats of the books? With the 2023 browser
         | update, even old Kindles now have a fast and functional web
         | browser. It is almost possible to find and download Standard
         | Ebooks directly from the Kindle browser, but for the file
         | format.
        
           | acabal wrote:
           | We do offer azw3 files for all of our books.
           | https://standardebooks.org/help/how-to-use-our-
           | ebooks#kindle...
        
             | carlosjobim wrote:
             | Yes, Amazon has changed the game and they only allow
             | downloads in .AZW, .PRC, .MOBI or .TXT format now.
             | 
             | I understand that this is their fault and not yours, but
             | maybe it could be interesting for you to offer one of these
             | formats now that the Kindle browser is actually usable?
        
         | crabmusket wrote:
         | Thank you so much for the work you and the whole team, and the
         | contributing community, do! I've read a bunch of classics
         | thanks to your editions, and have donated in the past. This
         | post is a reminder for me to do so again!
        
         | krapp wrote:
         | Inevitably, like everyone who rejects PHP frameworks because
         | "PHP is already a templating language", you just wound up
         | reinventing the framework anyway.
         | 
         | I'm not complaining - It's just, there's a _reason_ everyone
         | goes for the existing frameworks and it isn 't addiction to
         | complexity. Raw PHP code is legendarily insecure and prone to
         | XSS and other issues if you don't do things exactly right.
         | 
         | Nice site, though.
        
           | cowsandmilk wrote:
           | > prone to XSS and other issues if you don't do things
           | exactly right.
           | 
           | Not any more so than sites with frameworks. I've found XSS
           | issues in Java Spring framework built sites that didn't "do
           | things exactly right". A framework doesn't magically fix
           | that.
        
             | krapp wrote:
             | No one mentioned magic. Frameworks are designed to do what
             | PHP developers wind up implementing in an ad-hoc, haphazard
             | way themselves, and tend to be better at doing it on
             | average. Any code can have security issues but I'd trust a
             | battle-hardened open source PHP framework over some random
             | coder's hubris any day of the week.
        
       | harwoodjp wrote:
       | I wonder if a scan -> OCR -> LLM proofreading pipeline is
       | possible?
        
         | Forge36 wrote:
         | As a first pass I'm sure it'll save some effort (i.e. l -> 1 in
         | some fonts). I can't imagine it fully replacing and
         | editing/proofreading passes.
        
         | weijiacheng wrote:
         | I am one of the SE editors/regular contributors and I _did_
         | play around with this a bit for a poetry collection:
         | https://groups.google.com/g/standardebooks/c/IUvGLmvZrmM/m/s...
         | 
         | I'm sure someone sufficiently determined and good at prompt
         | engineering, and integrating LLMs into a larger toolset, could
         | come up with something even better. I'm personally very
         | skeptical of LLMs as a technology, but even I have to admit
         | that this was a pretty ideal and unobjectionable use of LLMs.
         | 
         | That being said, though it was a fun experiment, I later found
         | that it was easier (and less wasteful of natural resources) to
         | just do the same thing with a bit of custom markup and a search
         | and replace script.
        
       | flxfxp wrote:
       | Very cool project. Does anyone know of something similar for
       | audiobooks?
        
         | Uvix wrote:
         | Any audio recording will have its own copyright separate from
         | the base text, so it'll be a while before any quality
         | audiobooks enter the public domain.
         | 
         | For now, your best approach would be to take high-quality
         | ebooks like what Standard Ebooks offers, and use text-to-speech
         | software.
        
         | acabal wrote:
         | Librivox creates audiobooks of PD texts. I've heard good things
         | about their work but I personally don't listen to any
         | audiobooks in general.
        
         | rsanek wrote:
         | https://librivox.org/
        
       | wazdra wrote:
       | This is very nice ! I'd love to see this for French literature
       | too
        
       | andrewedstrom wrote:
       | Standard Ebooks is fantastic! In fact, I love what they're doing
       | so much that I actually built a little SaaS product on top of
       | their ebook collection.
       | 
       | The site is called Modern Serial, and it lets you read books from
       | Standard Ebooks in 10 minutes a day as Substack-style email
       | newsletters.
       | 
       | https://modernserial.com/
        
       | 100k wrote:
       | I'm happy to see Standard Ebooks here! I've read their editions
       | of Nostromo by Joseph Conrad and Vanity Fair by William Thackeray
       | and the quality great. I recommend it if you're interested in
       | classic literature.
        
       | pseingatl wrote:
       | What are the standard dimensions produced by se build-images?
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related:
       | 
       |  _Standard Ebooks_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32215324 - July 2022 (256
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Free and liberated e-books, carefully produced for the true
       | book lover_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138534 - Nov
       | 2020 (106 comments)
       | 
       |  _Standard Ebooks: Free public-domain ebooks, carefully produced_
       | - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20594802 - Aug 2019 (129
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Standard Ebooks: Free and liberated ebooks, carefully produced_
       | - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14570035 - June 2017 (96
       | comments)
        
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