
Standard Ebooks: Free and liberated ebooks, carefully produced - robin_reala
https://standardebooks.org/
======
throwanem
> ...each Standard Ebook is lightly modernized to feature consistent and
> modern spelling and hyphenation, so old-fashioned ephemera doesn’t distract
> you from timeless content.

I _like_ old-fashioned ephemera...

~~~
Animats
One can way overdo the modernization. From "The Message", a modernized
Christian Bible:

 _" God, my shepherd! I don’t need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush
meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me
catch my breath and send me in the right direction. Even when the way goes
through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side. Your trusty
shepherd’s crook makes me feel secure."_

Don't go there.

~~~
15charlimit
I thought I was reading an overtuned ELI5 machine translation for a minute.
This is awful and significantly more difficult to read than even the KJV,
which isn't exactly friendly for modern readers.

~~~
Animats
It's a tough translation. That section starts "The lord is my shepherd", and
continues with a sheep metaphor, with "green pastures" and water, the things
sheep need. Sheep draw confidence from the shepherd; they're herd animals and
the shepherd is their alpha. Sheep are very herd-bound, far more than cattle
or horses; a little bit of guidance and the whole flock follows. They've been
bred for docility for millennia; the ones that were easy to herd were kept and
bred. The people who wrote that were writing for an audience which knew that;
today's audience has probably never seen sheep being herded. Modern versions
face the question of how much explanatory material to attach, or whether to
try to express that in the main text. Scholars prefer translator footnotes;
preachers don't.

Still, if you're not translating between languages, it's probably best to stay
with the original. Compare, say, Kipling's "007".[1] This assumes some
knowledge of railroading in the steam era. "Modernizing" Kipling would be a
terrible mistake. It's probably best to leave anything post-1800 entirely as
original. And don't even try to "clean up" Shakespeare. It's been done.[2]

[1]
[https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/days/chapte...](https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kipling/rudyard/days/chapter8.html)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bowdler)

------
timsayshey
This really looks amazing! That is all -- I have nothing negative to say --
you guys are killing it with this project :)

Curious, who is the founder of this project? Interested to hear more about
it's background and the team behind getting this off the ground.

~~~
acabal
Glad to hear you're liking things! I started the project and am the managing
editor of sorts. We're just a small group of volunteers. Our process is very
painstaking and specialized so we get much fewer contributors than larger,
more easy-going projects like Gutenberg; but I'm just glad that we can
contribute a little to free culture everywhere :)

------
kwhitefoot
Hmm. I've just downloaded Algis Budrys' "Short Fiction" and Lewis Carroll's
"Alice", I have to say I have mixed feelings about the files. Both render very
badly in Calibre (on Debian Linux, latest stable), very uncomfortable to read
with lots of unexpected spaces breaking up the words, yet they render
perfectly in Ionic on my Nokia N9 and in FBReader on my Lenovo Android tablet.
I've never seen this happen before so I'm not sure if this is a bug in Calibre
or in the epub file.

A couple of questions:

\- How come there is no search function?

\- Why are authors sorted by first name?

\- Do the results of the proof reading get fed back to Project Gutenberg, et
al.

\- Will readers like FBReader be able to add this catalogue?

So, sounds like a good idea and I hope it succeeds but it's not quite there
yet.

~~~
acabal
Have you tried downloading the compatible epub2 file, instead of the epub3
file? I don't think I've used Calibre to test our ebooks on, generally we test
on eink devices and tablet reading software, all of which works more or less
fine. Unfortunately the state of ereading software today looks a lot like the
terrible IE6/Netscape days of yore, where there are no standards and everyone
does their own thing differently. It's difficult/impossible to make one file
that will render well across all devices.

There is no search function because our catalog is so small. It's growing
though, so maybe it's about time to add a search function too. Sort by first
name is an oversight that I hope to be able to fix later this week.

Our edits don't go back to Project Gutenberg, because our final files are so
different from what PG produces merging would be impossible. We also introduce
typographical and spelling changes that they might not want to accept.

Yes, FBReader and other readers that use OPDS can add our catalog:
[https://standardebooks.org/opds/](https://standardebooks.org/opds/)

Edit: Just tried reading the _Alice_ compatible epub file using Calibre 2.55
on Ubuntu 16.04 and it seems to render fine. Maybe you can send a note to our
mailing list and we can discuss this in more detail so I can get things fixed?

~~~
kwhitefoot
Both files were epub2 not epub3.

Perhaps my I have a different calibre version, I'll check again. I opened the
Budrys file in Calibre's editor and what I saw that a lot of perfectly
correctly spelt words were highlighted as being misspelt. I copied some text
from there to Emacs and then saw that there was a hyphen (actually I'm not
sure exactly what character it is but it looks like a hyphen) at the point
where the reader renders a space.

> FBReader and other readers that use OPDS can add our catalog:
> [https://standardebooks.org/opds/](https://standardebooks.org/opds/)

Your site looks very pretty but I feel that it is hard to discover things.
Sometimes fewer or smaller graphics can make it easier to find one's way
around.

Anyway, I do understand that it is tough to find time to make everything
perfect (I'm a software developer and my to do list never gets shorter).

Thanks for finding time to reply.

~~~
gwillen
I'm not involved in this project but I'll bet you're seeing these:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_hyphen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_hyphen)

------
acabal
Hi folks, I'm the guy who started and runs Standard Ebooks. It looks like it's
been given the hug of death at the moment, sorry about that! While I try to
beef up the server you can see all of our productions on Github:
[https://github.com/standardebooks/](https://github.com/standardebooks/)

You may also be interested in our toolset (GNU-compatible only at the moment,
we're working on converting everything to Python but we're not there yet):
[https://github.com/standardebooks/tools](https://github.com/standardebooks/tools)

I'm happy to answer any questions anyone has. We're also more than happy to
have new contributors, if you're interested in working on and proofreading a
public domain ebook that you've been meaning to get to.

Some of you have mentioned concerns about the modernizations we do. The key
word I think is " _light_ modernization". Mostly that just means bringing
spelling up to modern standards, and removing a lot of hyphens in words that
are no longer hyphenated. A common one, for example, is to-morrow -> tomorrow.
Another one we recently added was lacquey -> lackey. Generally we leave
punctuation and grammar alone. I liken this to modern books replacing the
"long s" character--it's just presentation that doesn't affect the meaning.
Modern readers would rather see "successful" instead "ſucceſsful" even though
the latter is what was originally printed.

I struggled for a long time with my desire to see older books with modern
spelling and typography, versus preserving the intent of the author and
original publishers. Over time I've come to realize two things:

1\. Many books back in the day were heavily edited by the printer and
publisher without the author's input anyway, so you'll get various editions
over time that look totally different. Jane Austen books are a good example of
this--early editions often have a pathological overuse of commas, while later
editions published after her death just remove a lot of them without comment.
So when we're producing our own ebooks, we accept that there's a level of
editorial discretion involved, and that "the author's intent" was a very fuzzy
and often totally ignored topic hundreds of years ago anyway. How can we tell
what the author's intent was in the first place, if various printers and
publishers have meddled with the editions for hundreds of years already?

2\. For those of you who want to read the originals in their totally unedited
form, other projects like Project Gutenberg or Wikisource already have those
faithful transcriptions for you, and places like Internet Archive, Hathi
Trust, and Google Books have the page scans for you. By lightly modernizing
our own productions, we in no way diminish your access to the painstakingly-
preserved digital editions; we're just adding another option for you to read.

~~~
microcolonel
Is there a way to contribute to the index pages? I found a typo ( _sales_ as
_salees_ ) on one of them[0] and I don't see a repository for the main site
itself.

[0]: [https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-meredith/the-
shavin...](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/george-meredith/the-shaving-of-
shagpat)

Also, I think it might be interesting to have multiple editions in the future.
It would be nice to support editions in reduced reading levels for works which
are not artistic prose (such as translated prose, or philosophy). For example,
in the first paragraph of _On Liberty_ , Mill writes:

> A question seldom stated, and hardly ever discussed, in general terms, but
> which profoundly influences the practical controversies of the age by its
> latent presence, and is likely soon to make itself recognised as the vital
> question of the future.

This sentence has five clauses, and one parenthetical; difficult prose. The
first chapter of _On Liberty_ contains a total of 80 adverbs, ~69 uses of
passive voice. It also contains a bizarre convention of referencing previous
phrases with ordinals.

~~~
kwhitefoot
Would multiple editions be worth the effort? I can see that having them might
be useful to some few people but creating a new version of On Liberty would be
a substantial amount of work even if it could be done algorithmically because
of the proof-reading required to make sure that it conveyed the same meaning
as the original.

Are there many people who would struggle to read the original who are
nonetheless sufficiently interested that they would read a 'simplified'
version?

------
DoubleCribble
"Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?" [1]

Liberated? That ephemera might actually be integral to the story and you are
NOT the arbiters of intent. Please keep your modernizing out of my lit'ratur.

[1]Pap, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

~~~
peller
Taken to an extreme, would you propose to altogether disallow translation from
one language to another? To instead force readers to learn new languages in
order to strictly preserve the original authors' intents?

Personally, I would like to see our storage formats move towards more dynamic
documents, so that the reader can literally flip between the original content
and the "modernized" variation. Ebook readers already have integrated
dictionaries, why not the discussions and interpretations integrated too? (I
ask in a partially rhetorical sense; is fighting the inevitable changing of
language really gaining anybody anything? Is it not possible that that
"problem" is a red herring?)

~~~
DoubleCribble
IMHO, modernization tip toes into the same category as translation. From my
limited literature experience, the translator is always credited somewhere
near the author as it is considered the translator's version.

I can imagine a "Do-Gooder" helpfully going through Huck Finn and modernizing
all that messy vernacular but that book ain't Mark Twain's and it ain't
something I'd want to read. Some folks may have trouble understanding what is
being said but modernizing the text would suck the life right out of the
story.

To your point, I think the ultimate prize is both the original and a
modern/translated digital version. Anecdotally, I might have developed an
appreciation of Shakespeare MUCH earlier in life had I known not just what the
characters were saying but combined with how they were saying it.

~~~
acabal
We actually have Huck Finn in our catalog, and of course we've preserved all
of the vernacular. I invite you to check it out for yourself to see what you
think. "Light modernization" in our sense doesn't mean "ham-fistedly change
old-timey vernacular into new-fangled internet slang", it simply means some
basic, mostly-automated one-to-one spelling and hyphenation updates. Things
like "develope -> develop" and "to-night -> tonight", that would not change
the meaning of the text. Vernacular is not affected by these changes, nor
would we want it to be. :)

Think of it more like modernizing spelling of Shakespeare, so that we can
enjoy the text and not spend time parsing spelling like:

    
    
      Had, having, and in quest, to have extreame,
      A blisse in proofe and provd and very wo,
      Before a joy proposd behind a dreame...
    

Some people might prefer that old-fashioned spelling, and it might be of some
use to academics and historians, but I think the majority of casual modern
readers would have an easier and more enjoyable time with light modernization.

~~~
DoubleCribble
Thank you for the reply. I can only imagine that the application of "Light
Modernization" to this masterpiece would not only change the pronunciation of
the words, it would add the implied missing words thereby disrupting the meter
and rhyme and thus subsequently ruin the sonnet. I understand the point of
making things readable but when you start changing the spelling, you actually
ruin the art form. Sonnet > Light Modernized Poem

 _Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring barque,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come;

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved._

~~~
acabal
Ironically, you've posted the lightly modernized version of 116. :) In the
1609 printing it looks like:

    
    
      O no, it is an euer fixed marke
      That lookes on tempeſts and is neuer ſhaken;
      It is the ſtar to euery wandring barke
      Whoſe worths vnknowne, although his higth be taken...
    

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_116](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_116)

~~~
DoubleCribble
Touche! :D The point still stands. If "mostly-automated one-to-one spelling
and hyphenation updates" changes 'wand'ring' to 'wandering', 'worth's' to
'worth is' or 'Love's' to 'Love is', you break the sonnet.

~~~
roninb
I think this is a good time to maybe do some research into whether your
complaints are valid or not before making them... You clearly aren't seeing
that the point, in fact, does not stand...

~~~
DoubleCribble
OK, now I'm intrigued. How does changing the spelling of key words not break
iambic pentameter?

~~~
PeterisP
Iambic pentameter depends on pronunciation, not spelling, and the
changes/reforms/standartization generally affects the spelling only. If you
take an archaic representation of some sounds and replace it with the modern
representation of those sounds, the verse isn't changed.

In that example, "vnknowne" is pronounced the same as "unknown", despite
having an extra "vowel" in the typography.

~~~
dragonwriter
Spelling (and related things) in poetry (especially contractions) often
signals intended pronunciation variations from the standard pronunciation of a
word.

A _mechanical_ modernization and standardization would seem to run a
significant risk of damaging some of these, though proper manual final review
would hopefully catch and revert the problematic cases.

------
geraldbauer
That's a fantastic initiative to offer world literature. FYI: A while ago I've
started the World Classics Bookshelf -
[http://worldclassics.github.io](http://worldclassics.github.io) The idea is
to use plain text with markdown formatting conventions (for richer typography
e.g. beautiful quotes, em-dashes, etc.). See The Trial by Franz Kafka as an
example -> [https://github.com/worldclassics/the-
trial](https://github.com/worldclassics/the-trial) (in the Manuscripts plain
text source format). The second idea is to use a (standard) static website
builder (e.g. Jekyll) for building the online books (from markdown) and to
offer different book / page designs (kind of like the Zen of CSS Garden e.g.
the Zen of Book Designs). See
[https://github.com/bookdesigns](https://github.com/bookdesigns) for some
examples incl. the "classic" GitBook style ->
[http://bookdesigns.github.io/book-git](http://bookdesigns.github.io/book-git)
Anyways, keep up the great work and publishing public domain world classics.
Cheers.

~~~
fernly
You like [http://bookdesigns.github.io/book-
git](http://bookdesigns.github.io/book-git)? I would call it nearly
unreadable. Certainly those blocks of sans-serif are fatiguing to my eyes.

~~~
geraldbauer
Good point. That's just one book design theme. Note: To change the typography
e.g. the font used is just a single line in CSS ;-) Maybe you like the Rust
theme better -> [http://bookdesigns.github.io/book-
rust](http://bookdesigns.github.io/book-rust) or the Epsilon theme -
[http://bookdesigns.github.io/book-epsilon](http://bookdesigns.github.io/book-
epsilon)

PS: And, of course ;-), the idea is to contribute your own designs! It's
really just an HTML template with some CSS.

~~~
accordionclown
rather than a flock of templates with different fonts, i'd suggest some simple
javascript that lets the users choose their preferred font from a generous
assortment.

------
madsbuch
I think it is a great project. An I really like the modernization. As a person
not native to English, reading long prose is already energy consuming. For me,
I like this kind of supply :-)

I see that the page is a bit slow. If you need any help to port it to a static
format (for performance), please let me know.

------
emilecantin
Amazing project! Any plans to port this to other languages? My main language
is French, and I'm looking for good old books for my daughter. She read
through the Comptess of Ségur's "Les malheurs de Sophie", and she loved it.

~~~
acabal
Unfortunately, not at the moment. Producing our ebooks require some level of
copyediting knowledge and none of us speak French :)

------
antognini
These look nice! But I have to say, it is a little bit unexpected that the
alphabetical sort by author name sorts by the author's _first_ name.

~~~
acabal
Sorry, that's an oversight, the back-end setup is naive in how it does this.
I'll have to work on it but I don't have much time today.

------
intopieces
Where can I learn to make carefully produced ebooks? I would like to do this
for my own set of free books.

~~~
acabal
Check out our contributors page:
[https://standardebooks.org/contribute/](https://standardebooks.org/contribute/)

Specifically, see our typography manual, semantics manual, and the step-by-
step guide to producing an ebook (all linked from the contributors page) for
details.

You can also check out our toolset, which automates a lot of what we do:
[https://github.com/standardebooks/tools](https://github.com/standardebooks/tools)

~~~
qrv3w
Your step-by-step guide is maybe the best step-by-step guide I've ever seen.
Very nice work! I'm going to have to give it a try.

------
hkmurakami
I'm telling all my friend about this, with shoddy quality public domain books
flooding Amazon/Google.

Thanks for all your work!

------
manojlds
Site seems to be taking a beating at the moment.

------
chris_st
Run, don't walk :-) to download "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome.
It's hilarious, ignore the overly serious cover image:

[https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jerome-k-jerome/three-
men-...](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jerome-k-jerome/three-men-in-a-
boat)

------
mkeeter
Interesting – seems like there's a bit of overlap with Project Gitenberg
([https://www.gitenberg.org/](https://www.gitenberg.org/)).

~~~
fernly
I took a look at Gitenberg and just don't get it. They appear to have
downloaded a shit-ton of books from Gutenberg into Github -- go to
[https://github.com/GITenberg](https://github.com/GITenberg) and note that
there appear to be 1659 pages(!) in the list of repos -- and then basically
sat on them.

Possibly some number of the books have been vastly improved or cleaned up, but
there is no way to tell them apart from the ones that are simply dups of the
PG files.

------
yadavrg
the website is perfect and host a plenty of good quality ebooks in different
domain, but these are not categories. It should be categorized based on their
domains like- Technology, Architecture, Literature, Management etc. If it will
have subcategories as well then it will be perfect.

------
kermittd
Wow very cool this is awesome! Also similar to a project I've been working on
for a few months.

------
suyash
Ebooks need to become DRM free - full access to the buyer, unlike most books
published on Kindle.

