Hi,
as you know, Wolfe and Archie used to call Cramer
The Man About the Chair when they wanted to escape others’ notice; I think I’ll be calling you
The Person With the Scanner, as I can’t even be sure of your gender!
On Tuesday, 29th January 2008 at 20:21:02 (GMT -0500 EST), you wrote:
Quote:
Yes, I was aware of the torrent, it contains most of the files (unproofed) available on eMule, in Sony reader format, which consists of unformatted text. As a reader of his books - in printed book format - you should be aware that RS used italics, not only for the name of newspapers or the text of some messages, but also in order to emphasise the meaning or intonation of words within dialogue. Any removal of this formatting is, one may say, a deliberate distorsion, a betrayal of his work.
In this, you’re absolutely right. I hate it when formatting, indicating the writer’s emphasis, is removed in a digital version of a text. Such a text can no longer be considered a proper version of the work in question and should be corrected, or discarded entirely.
On the other hand, it’s very well possible to preserve emphasis in plain-text files, too! We see that in plain-text email discussions; emphasis can be achieved like *this* or like _this_. A cruder, but still acceptable way of converting italics to plain text is THIS, yet I never employ it, as *this* and _this_ may later on be converted to formatted text automatically, while THIS cannot – at least not as easily and not unambiguously. (Because there may very well be some
legitimate passages in the original text that the writer composed in ALL CAPS.)
Quote:
You may notice that the files uploaded do use an unified format (font, size, etc). If I missed that on any of them, please let me know and I'll fix it.
Nope, they don’t. For an example, click on this screenshot:
However, as far as webpages go, I’d consider it a faulty practice trying to set a specific font and font size for one’s readers. The best practice for webpages seems to be to specify no more than the
variety of font to be used, if that at all; for example, one might want to specify a serif font (such as Georgia, without naming Georgia) rather than a non-serif font (such as Arial, without naming Arial). However, many web designers prefer not trying to specify even the serif and non-serif font variety...
In contrast, your files demanded specific fonts (in the above instance, Book Antiqua and Georgia, respectively). Of course, there may be many readers whose computers lack these specific fonts, so how the texts would look on their computers would be uncertain. And, there may be a lot more readers who may have the fonts installed, but who simply don’t enjoy reading texts in these particular fonts. I for one believe Georgia is the ideal font for reading texts on a PC, as this is a font specifically developed for the PC environment – but other readers may have other preferences. That’s why Web usability experts advise webpage authors not to require specific fonts to be used for the display of texts.
Quote:
Faterson wrote:
There are a few details that might need fixing. For example, in Fer-de-Lance, I notice that the apostrophe sign (') is displayed correctly towards the beginning of the text, while it is shown as an empty box towards the end.
I re-checked 'Fer-de-lance'; I didn't find that occurence you mentioned.
It’s definitely there... For example, in the paragraph towards the end:
Rex Stout wrote:
“No, you. Don’t quibble. You killed him."
... only the final quotation mark is correctly displayed, while the introductory quotation mark and the apostrophe in
Don’t are displayed as empty boxes (when viewed in
Opera 9.25). This is not
Opera’s fault. Rather, your file is inconsistent in using both
curly (
“,
” and
’) and
straight/non-curly (
" and
') quotation marks and apostrophes. However, these are totally different characters in the computer environment, even though both the curly and the non-curly quotation marks/apostrophes serve the same ultimate purpose. See an
overview of this and related HTML formatting.
Whenever your file uses curly (= formatted) quotation marks or apostrophes instead of non-curly (= unformatted) quotation marks or apostrophes, these are displayed as empty boxes in my browser. Again, it’s not the browser’s fault, but it’s because your files lack the specification of an encoding in the pages’ headers.
If you want the curly (= formatted) quotation marks and apostrophes to be displayed correctly for all viewers of your webpages, you must manually insert the following line in the header of every HTML page:
Code:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
An even better, absolutely universal and fool-proof solution would be inserting the following line in the header of every HTML page:
Code:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
Both encondings – the Western, older
ISO-8859-1 encoding, and the new, universal, world-wide
UTF-8 encoding – are capable of handling curly quotation marks and apostrophes. However, only
UTF-8 would be capable of also handling Slavic diacritic letters properly; and, if I’m not mistaken, there might well be a few Slavic names or phrases included in the
Corpus. In fact, I’m certain that Marko Vukcic’s name, when written properly in Montenegrin/Serbian, contains diacritic signs over at least one of the C letters, and that these diacritic C letters would fail to get displayed correctly in anything other than
UTF-8. On the other hand, due to Fritz and the many culinary terms in the
Corpus, the proper display of all French diacritic letters is an absolute necessity, and this can only be achieved by specifying
ISO-8859-1 or
UTF-8 in the headers of all webpages. Taking into account
both Fritz and Marko, the proper solution would definitely be the universal encoding,
UTF-8.
However, for
UTF-8 it’s not enough simply to insert the line:
Code:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
in the header of every page, but also the entire page (file) must be converted into
UTF-8. This is a trite affair and can be accomplished simply by opening the file in a reliable plain-text (!) editor, such as
EditPlus or
PSPad, and re-saving it in
UTF-8. So, it might take something like a minute or two to convert the entire
Corpus into
UTF-8; however, such procedure would definitely be recommended for anyone who is serious about digitizing
any literature in the 21st century. All other encondings other than
UTF-8 are simply no longer viewed as ideal in this day and age.
Plus, if you’re so strict about preserving all passages emphasized by original writers, another fine similar distinction is that of ensuring that hyphens (
-) are not used instead of dashes (
– or
—). And, in your files, they are; Wolfe, as a pedant par excellence, would definitely frown upon that.
The difference between a hyphen (
-) and a dash (
– or
—) is that dashes are at least twice as long as hyphens. For the respective HTML codes, please again refer to the
table mentioned earlier.
Now, if you want to make sure that dashes are displayed correctly on webpages, you first need to check,
throughout the files, that dashes, rather than hyphens, are used everywhere where they are appropriate. And this is a chore that can take many hours if you have lots of text to process, as the chore cannot be reliably automated following the scanning of a book. On the other hand, ensuring the proper and unified display of dashes is a must for anyone who’d like to engage in professional-grade digitization. To make the matters worse, beside the ordinary
hyphen (-) there are at least two common kinds of dashes:
n-dash (–) and
m-dash (—), the former usually surrounded by spaces and the latter not; the former preferred by British publishers and the latter by American ones. Again, dashes may be emulated even in plain-text files, as you can see me doing in this email message. My dashes in plain-text emails look like this:
-- as opposed to simple hyphens:
-.
Now, in order for the dashes also to get
displayed on a webpage, you either need to use the code description for a dash:
&# 8211; (removing the space prior to the number)
or you again need to specify either the
ISO-8859-1 or the
UTF-8 enconding in the header of every webpage. Since files that include code equivalents of characters instead of characters themselves look ugly when you examine their raw source, making future potential edits of such files less transparent, it would definitely be advisable to insert the
UTF-8 or
ISO-8859-1 specification into the header of every page. As can be seen, the specific enconding reference would serve at least a double purpose: it would take care both of the proper display of quotation marks and apostrophes
and the proper display of dashes. And, from among the two encodings, once again the
UTF-8 option would be preferable, as it comprehensively deals with all such formatting worries once and for all.
Unless the
UTF-8 or
ISO-8859-1 specification is inserted in the header of every webpage, any real dashes (as opposed to hyphens!) within the texts are likely to be displayed as empty boxes for many viewers of the webpages – a re-occurrence and variation of the quotation marks and apostrophes issue examined above.
Anyway... as promised, when I’ll be launching a chronological re-read of the
Corpus soon, I’ll be reading it in electronic versions
only, despite already having all paper volumes at my disposal, and I’ll be correcting each and every typo or typographical inaccuracy/inconsistency as I go along. I can’t promise I’ll notice and correct each and every error; but that will be my goal.
Quote:
The only images I included in the books were those of the pencil arrangements in 'The Zero Clue', where they are essential to the story.
It’s probably true that drawings do not play an important part in any
Rex Stout story. I for one can’t think of any other story apart from
›The Zero Clue‹ where pictures would be essential... In fact, maybe you could even enjoy
›The Zero Clue‹ without the drawings... See, we don’t primarily read Nero Wolfe for the mystery angle, do we?
Compare that to the famous Sherlock Holmes story
›The Adventure of the Dancing Men‹. Any digital version of this story that would fail to incorporate the (many!) pictures within the story would be woefully inadequate! I suppose the same is true for many
Ellery Queen or
Agatha Christie stories that hinge on the exact time and location of the murders (the
Orient Express comes to mind!).
Quote:
Faterson wrote:
See, the problem with online piracy is that pirates are terribly unfair in what content they choose to pirate. They mostly only choose to pirate the popular content.
The above statement reminded me of a Radio Erevan joke:
Quote:
Question: Is it true that academician Kozlov was being given a car as a gift?
Answer: It's true, with some corrections: It's not academician Kozlov but academician Alexandrov, it wasn't a car but a bike, and it wasn't given as a gift but stolen from him.
We are not talking about 'piracy' as there is no financial reward in it (without touching the touchy subject of 'word hijacking' - the deliberate distorsion of the meaning of a word for a specific gain), the people are not 'pirates' but file sharers, and the term 'unfair' is not suitable to the subject - scanning and proofing a book with the intention to share it is a work of love which is, in my personal opinion, more worthy than milking the dead for pecuniary purposes, and it would be unfair to expect somebody to buy a book that doesn't interest him, and to scan, proof and upload it in the uncertain hope that somebody, somewhere, sometime, would like to download and read it.
Well, I used to think similarly, too, but then
the big brouhaha started. It’s not just that I received a letter, both in electronic and paper form, from across the ocean from a New York attorney, but a lot of genuine, ordinary fellow Nero Wolfe fans got very angry with me and hurled abuse at me. I, too, thought of what I wanted to do as a labour of love – I’d have nothing to gain by it, only many hours of monotonous work to lose – still I was abused by fellow Wolfe fans as a pirate, virtually a criminal, etc. Just read the feedback samples on the above webpage. If ordinary fellow Wolfe fans can be so vitriolic, you can imagine what a Rex Stout
book publisher will think of your “labour of love”. If you’re familiar with Jim Rock’s diction (publisher of
Stout’s biography by John McAleer and various fascinating
Rex Stout miscellanea), you’ll recognize which of the
feedback samples is his. Although we used to correspond in a friendly fashion regularly, also apart from mailing lists, prior to the 2002 uproar, he hasn’t replied to a single message of mine, on-list or private, ever since.
So, don’t expect anyone to thank you. Instead, expect abuse and lots of trouble – especially from those fellow Wolfe fans whose bookcases are well-stocked with all
Nero Wolfe volumes (some of them in multiple editions), or if they aren’t, they (living in America) simply need to visit any public library to borrow them, or require them via inter-library loan. These fellow Wolfe fans seem incapable of understanding, emotionally, what it feels like for someone to struggle for over 15 years before they are able to read (not own, simply to
read) every Nero Wolfe story. That’s how long it took
me to read all
Nero Wolfe stories; I purchased the first Wolfe volume in Vienna back in 1989 right after the Iron Curtain fell, and I was donated the final
Rex Stout paperback I was still missing in 2006 by a Nero Wolfe fan from overseas. If it hadn’t been for the Internet and generous fellow Wolfe fans around the world, mostly from the US but also from places as unexpected as Taiwan (!), I’m sure I’d still be desperately searching for many Wolfe texts today.
But, you can’t really explain the sense and feeling of
hunger to someone who regularly sits down to a table overflowing with delicious food, can you? Either they can feel other folks’ hunger and sympathize with them and do their best to help them, or they cannot. It’s fine and well for those sitting at the full tables to moralize, condemn and abuse those who lack the privilege, for using questionable means to obtain the missing food... but condemnation and persecution won’t effectively help those who are hungry. I must think of the Italian classic movie
Bicycle Thieves here; perhaps someone could produce a digital remake of the movie, titled
Online Literature/Music/Movie Thieves?
As to the words
pirate, piracy, let’s logomachize for a bit as Wolfe and Archie used to do. When you look at
a dictionary definition of the word
piracy, the definitions no. 2 & 3 seem to be applicable:
The American Heritage Dictionary wrote:
2. The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material
3. The operation of an unlicensed, illegal radio or television station.
To
radio or televison station, one might add
or web site without distorting the intent of the definition.
Would you contend that “word hijacking” has already reached the realm of our dictionaries? The above definition is from
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, 2007 & 2000.
Now, let’s see... I’ll get hold of the dictionary Nero Wolfe burned in Chapter 1 of
Gambit,
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged (1961), to see how it defines
piracy on page 1723 (oh my, heaving this dictionary off the bookshelf is certainly good for toning your muscles):
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary wrote:
3: an act resembling piracy; esp: an unauthorized appropriation and reproduction of another’s production, invention, or conception esp. in infringement of a copyright
Of course, Nero Wolfe burned the dictionary, so presumably
Rex Stout despised the definitions contained therein, but nevertheless this definition is highly interesting.
In 1961, they still defined piracy as
appropriation and [!] reproduction of someone else’s work. In 2007, the definition shifted to:
use or [!] reproduction of someone else’s work.
There’s a world of difference between
and and
or, isn’t there?
Because according to the 1961 definition of
piracy, it would be difficult to claim that what you are doing is piracy. You are not
appropriating anyone else’s work, right?
Based on the 2007 definition of the same term, you
are a pirate, as you definitely
are reproducing (electronically) someone else’s work.
Etymologically, the word
pirate is derived from Old Greek and is related to the Old Greek words
attempt / fear / trial / fare. Considering the letter I received from the New York attorney, I’d say that the 4 Old Greek roots are still very much relevant in the 21st century!
Let’s leave it at that for now.
Maybe our dictionaries have never been thoroughly reliable; maybe they provide good
guidance for us language users, but you ultimately always need to rely on your common sense, your own judgment when putting words to specific use.
Quote:
All the titles I put on the website were available on P2P in MSWord DOC format. There was a fair amount of hits, but also there were days and weeks when no one seemed to be interested in NW. I can't afford to keep the computer broadcasting P2P non-stop, I have groceries to buy and rent to pay.
As to specific illicit distribution modes, there is something else and new apart from P2P (BitTorrent, eMule) and the “old-fashioned” webpages. I mean what is termed
one-click hosting, a huge hit in the last couple of years or so:
RapidShare.com and the like.
I still claim what I said in my previous message: piracy is no viable, long-term solution. My hope is that the
Rex Stout Estate will make the necessary arrangements to allow
all of
Rex Stout’s works, not only the most popular ones, to be purchasable, at a reasonable price, in a digital edition –
The Complete Digital Works of Rex Stout. I trust and hope that this will happen sooner than in 2046 (or whatever the official copyright expiration date is); we may all be dead and buried by 2046. And especially:
Rex Stout and his creations may be completely forgotten by 2046. Who can be sure that they won’t?
Quote:
website[s are shut down] only as a result of a complaint
Yes. It’s a perpetual hide-and-seek game. On the one hand, you cannot promote your digitized files, because as soon as the word spreads around, this will cause your digitized files to vanish and be deleted. On the other hand, if you don’t promote your digitized files, no one even knows that they exist, and in that sense your efforts have been in vain, as they cannot achieve their intended purpose. (Here, getting people to read
Rex Stout.)
Of course, the two instances above are extremes; there are various stages in-between the two extremes. I’m afraid this shadowy grey zone is destined to remain the eternal habitat of all “digital pirates”.
Quote:
As far as I am concerned, sexual psychotics and abnormal obsessions are not my field of interest, but as a professional you may need to read that book. 'How Like a God' is available on Amazon from $25 + international shipping (available).
I’ll be happy to read
How Like a God and all the other
Rex Stout books, even non-mystery ones. It won’t be a sacrifice on my part; it will be a pleasure. I do intend to write a scholarly treatise examining
Rex Stout as a writer, not solely as the Nero Wolfe creator; so, for me it will be unavoidable to read everything
Rex Stout ever published (and more). I find this to be a pleasurable chore.
On the other hand, literary scholars shouldn’t be confused with book collectors. If I were supposed to buy every
Rex Stout non-Wolfe book at $25 + international shipping (often more expensive than the book itself), I’d go bankrupt soon. Just for your information, I live in a country where I buy a full-menu lunch for about $1.25. So, a single copy of
How Like a God would equal to 20 full-menu lunches for me (disregarding the expensive international shipping!). Would any American reader buy a
Rex Stout book if its price were equal to that of 20+ full-menu lunches? A book collector, yes; a literary scholar or ordinary reader, definitely not.
So, this is no solution. Scholars are not required to purchase the books they intend to examine and
promote through their research. Books, or to be more precise:
texts should be made available for scholars, and in the 21st century, it would be perfectly sufficient for scholarly purposes to make them available
digitally. If such a digital edition were reasonably priced, even a literary scholar might
purchase it, instead of expecting it to be made available for him or her for free. For your information, international inter-library loan in my country is either dysfunctional or so expensive (not to mention inefficient, with you having to wait for
weeks or months for a volume to arrive) that borrowing a book via international inter-library loan is frequently as expensive as buying a new regular book. Again, you can’t expect literary scholars to purchase (or borrow at the price of a purchase) every single book they are required to examine; that’s what libraries were founded for, for heaven’s sake. And, if libraries don’t work, as continental European libraries definitely don’t work in terms of
Rex Stout,
digitization should come to the scholars’ aid in the 21st century.
Quote:
If, instead of donating your NW collection, you put it on Ebay, you'd earn enough to buy the rest of RS's writings.
That’s highly unlikely! You may not be aware of how much apart from Nero Wolfe was published by
Rex Stout. He only released his
very first Wolfe novel when he was almost 50 years old!
Since these non-Wolfe writings are not popular, and most of them have been out-of-print for decades, their eBay prices would be horrendous.
In contrast, my
Nero Wolfe volumes, even though there are dozens of them, are just reading copies, often ragged paperbacks.
So, nope... My entire, mostly paperback, collection of
Nero Wolfe volumes would maybe buy me a single copy of
How Like a God, perhaps one or two additional
Rex Stout non-mystery books. Nothing more!
And, I definitely won’t be selling anything that was given to me as a gift. I received many of these
Nero Wolfe volumes as gifts, and I’m willing to pass them on as gifts. (Adding to them the numerous
Rex Stout volumes I purchased for my own money, especially in the pre-Internet era and while the now defunct
Rex Stout Library paperback edition at Bantam Books, left incomplete, was still alive in the 1990s.) I do as I preach: when I say that electronic editions are perfectly sufficient for scholarly needs, that applies to me as well – I don’t need to possess anything except for the electronic versions of
Rex Stout’s works. It’s certainly nice and desirable to possess the hard copies of the writings, but it’s not strictly necessary.
Quote:
Then you may scan, proof and upload them for other people's use, and donate the books. And nearly everybody's happy!
Again, that would be the illegal route.
As I operate online under my real name, anything I do must be 100% legal, no matter how nonsensical the copyright laws may seem to be. So, my hope is that the
Rex Stout Estate will agree to publish the comprehensive collection of
Complete Digital Works of Rex Stout and put it up for online sale at a reasonable price. That would be a 100% legal solution that might not only make “nearly” everybody, but absolutely everybody happy!
On Friday, 8th February 2008 at 19:31:05 (GMT -0500 EST), you wrote:Quote:
Note: forwarded message attached.
It seems that you hadn't received my previous email so I am sending it again.
Please confirm its receipt.
No need to worry, everything’s fine!
I received your previous message of 29th January, as can be seen above, and thank you very much for it! I’d been meaning to reply to it but couldn’t get around to doing so. I didn’t think it contained a direct question from you or an urgent concern that needed to be addressed immediately; I take care to reply to such messages right away; if I was wrong in this estimation, please excuse the oversight! I’ve been smothered by work; for a year and a half now, I’ve been trying to emulate Wolfe and Archie – they’re freelance detectives and I’m a freelance translator; I now share many of Wolfe’s concerns, such as which clients to reject and which to accept; much of that is determined by income tax concerns, so whenever I read in a Wolfe book now, “Wolfe wouldn’t take on another client in December, as he’s already had enough income for the year / would welcome just about any client, as our cash balance was rather low at the moment” – well, I can only smile because this definitely sounds familiar and a lot more meaningful to me today. Unlike Wolfe, I don’t have an Archie to prod me to work; I hate earning money every bit as Wolfe hated it (of course, Archie would say that Wolfe simply hated to
work); and I love my
online quotations collection as much as Wolfe loves his orchids – but, my freelance activity hasn’t been as rewarding to me thus far (I’ve only just started) as to enable me to devote sufficient amounts of time to my online literary concerns. I should be so lucky if I were allowed to explore literature daily from 9 to 11 a.m. and from 4 to 6 p.m.! That may come in later years, should my freelance exploits not turn out to be failures. Funnily enough, I do depart for lunch daily at 1:15 p.m., another quirk I share with Wolfe – and this has naturally come to be arranged like that, instead of me trying to imitate Wolfe consciously. Obviously, I need to
depart for lunch instead of simply moving to the dining room, due to there being no Fritz and no dining room in my apartment.
On the other hand, this gives me the opportunity to imitate Wolfe’s mirror image, Archie, and his love of walking down the metropolitan streets; I absolutely love my daily 2x15 minute walks for both lunch and dinner purposes; I wouldn’t trade those walks for a Fritz and a dining room, or I’d intentionally keep them located 15 minutes of walk away from me, so that this most natural of all forms of exercise is preserved for me! Throwing darts is not enough.
[PS: An edited verison of this message is posted to the Nero Wolfe discussion group at YahooGroups and the Rex Stout forum to generate some discussion now or in years to come.]