Kevin's Watch

Good idea, Jay. I like it.

Yep a good idea!

As an experiment I downloaded the Real Story in Adobe EPUB Format. Will this be the same as all the eBooks - do anyone know?

Surely it was only scanned once and then distributed? Mind you I have no idea how it works!

On my B&N reader, it's actually a PDB file... whatever that means And I hear tell that Kindle is yet another file type altogether...

Is anyone running this show? I see the sub-forums but I'm not going to plop down money for eBooks unless I see some sign that this is a coordinated activity. (Or maybe I will, and capture all the glory for myself!)

wayfriend wrote:Is anyone running this show? I see the sub-forums but I'm not going to plop down money for eBooks unless I see some sign that this is a coordinated activity. (Or maybe I will, and capture all the glory for myself!)

Yeah, I figured that depending on what people want to do, they could just about choose what they want (some people may want to use this opportunity to do a re-read). But, now that you mention it, you could start handling A Dark and Hungry God Arises8) (or the other two, if they appeal to you more).

To others: this doesn't mean you can't read ADaHGA for the purpose of the project... we'll always need people to verify!

Sorry, Orlion, I missed the place where people are signing up for different books. Where is it?

wayfriend wrote:Sorry, Orlion, I missed the place where people are signing up for different books. Where is it?

Hmmm.... that's a good idea...but where? I think I'll start a topic in each of the forums where people can state that they have and are reading that certain e-book... that might work best.

My statement was based on StevieG's comment that he had all ready purchased the Real Story e-book... come to think of it, I'll probably maintain a list in this forum here of people who have signed up and which books, so there can be two areas... one specific to the book and the other giving a general glance...yeah, that'll fit perfectly

All right, anyone who wants to participate can sign up here. You need only mention which book you wish to edit, and I think I can deduce your Watchname

As we begin, I'd ask that we try to spread ourselves out so we get all the books covered. Then, as more people sign up, at the "Who's Reading?" thread at each of the book forums, assignment of chapters can be made.

So, if you're the first to sign up for a book, start with Chapter 1 and move on until told otherwise (or to your hearts content ). Once we get initial editing done, we will still need verification, so one could sign up for that as well (and you can still read to see if anything's slipped past the radar.)

Based on Avatar's previous comments, I'll be checking for spelling errors more than anything else.

Do we need to compare the eBook with the paper book - I suppose it doesn't hurt... thoughts?

StevieG wrote:Based on Avatar's previous comments, I'll be checking for spelling errors more than anything else.

Do we need to compare the eBook with the paper book - I suppose it doesn't hurt... thoughts?

Yeah, Avatar's comments are sound, so I'd basically focus on spelling errors and what not... if something doesn't seem to read right, then I'd go ahead and compare.

I'm a little confused. If the book is scanned, then how can there be spelling errors? Is the problem with the pages being out of order?

I guess we just need to delve in and see, eh?

As I understand it, the scanning software reads the text and reproduces it. It's not scanning in the sense of taking an image of the physical page. If the scanning program misreads or otherwise incorrectly scans a word, you can end up with a nonsensical misspelling.

I could be wrong. This is just what I've deduced.

Ki was just talking about rereading The Gap last night. I'll check and see if she wants to participate. We're also trying to get our son to read it (he read the first one a couple years ago). Maybe it's time for a family group-read. Wouldn't be a bad time to start up the dissection again.

Cagliostro wrote:I'm a little confused. If the book is scanned, then how can there be spelling errors? Is the problem with the pages being out of order?

I guess we just need to delve in and see, eh?

Sometimes a scanner can read an n as an ri, or an ri as an n, and vice versa. i and l often are confused, as are ; and i. Just for examples. If there's any dust on the page, or if the page isn't loaded with the text perfectly horizontal, or, and I think this is most likely, if they use a lower-res scan because its a faster scan, then these kinds of issues can occur.

Also, some OCR programs, when they are confused, use a spell checker to try and correct their mistakes. This can make things worse.

Some people call these errors scannos.

Like Cj and WF said...OCR, or optical character recognition, converts a scanned image into editable text. But it's often not very good at it.

If you've ever solved a Captcha, you're actually helping Google get the text right in the millions of books they're scanning. Captcha shows you one word that was scanned correctly, and one word that wasn't. If everybody gets the first right, and agrees on the second, it assumes your answer to the second is also right, and updates it's system to reflect the corrected word, and replace the mis-scanned one.

--A

It seems like a lot of work to scan the books and not just use the same image (likely pdf) that was used for the hard copy printings. Especially when it's such a flawed process - I've seen plenty 't's turned into 'c's and 'y's into 'v's.

Anyhoo, a note for those doing this: SRD's mentioned a few times in the past that the UK editions of the books are full of errors on their own, so be careful what you're using to compare. And of course the UK editions will have different text from US ones to begin with (remember the Lego/Legos issue for Runes of the Earth?), so you might only want to do comparisons with US copies of the series.

Two good points, Murrin.

First, what kind of fly-by-night publisher is this if they're scanning physical pages and don't have access to an electronic version?

Second, I was up for finding those kinds of scannos that stand out. But a word-by-word comparison of a whole book against another whole book? That seems like a task that is two or three magnitudes more difficult.

Isn't the goal to prove that there are lots of errors, rather than to build an exhaustive list of all the errors?

wayfriend wrote: Isn't the goal to prove that there are lots of errors, rather than to build an exhaustive list of all the errors?

That's exactly right, wayfriend. Originally, I was thinking that a comparison would be necessary, but because of the nature of the 'flaws', that would probably not be necessary... and now the point that Murrin brings up...

So as wayfriend pointed out, (and others to, I believe, but wayfriend more recently ) the focus is to just read the e-books and look for spelling errors and the like. Book-to-book comparison should only be used if it is suspected that something (like a couple words or phrases) is missing. In that case, if that type of error is found, should the book being used to compare be noted (which is even more important because of the point Murrin raised).

Once again, most of the errors (or, at least enough to show to the editors if something is wrong) can be found by just reading the e-version, and you shouldn't feel like you have to compare them to an actual book.

I'm still up for this, but I'll be AFK for about a week. The B&N site you linked to confused me, though: when I clicked 'Buy' they gave me a link to other publishers' sites...I'll have to check that out some more.

I don't really care which book I get to re-read, just note it won't be too fast (between work, entertaining the kid and sleep ).

Spiral Jacobs wrote: I don't really care which book I get to re-read, just note it won't be too fast (between work, entertaining the kid and sleep ).

Same! And I'm a slow reader to add to it...

Orlion, I've added a couple of chapter threads in the Real Story sub-forum. Do you want to do it this way?

PS. I've read the first 5 chapters and although I haven't found any errors yet, it's hard to look for them because I'm so HOOKED on the story!! Must. concentrate.