[A] The dog-parrot in TLH
Shadowcory
far and didn't find it, and the APF hasn't got anything past CJ.
On Page 12 of TLH, there a picture of this man (Leonard?) looking at
parrots and launching a paper plane. If you look at the parrot on the
left, it has "Dog" written on - possibly a reference to the parrot in
TT? (IIRC they're (Spoilers) looking for Vetinari's dog, and everyone
arrives with "Dogs". Sacharissa says something of the lines of "No,no,
that isn't a dog, it's a parrot. Look, you've written "Dog" on the
side of it and taught it to bark, but it's still a parrot.")
bewtifulfreak
Ah, I was wondering about that, and I think you're absolutely right! Thanks
for the refresher.... :)
Ann
--
kate and ben moule
"bewtifulfreak" <bewtifulfr...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bjkd9f$ka6tq$1...@ID-203359.news.uni-berlin.de...
time, more annotations, past CJ?
I'm sure I've read all kinds of info.
There are refernces in LH to a whole host of NASA ancecdotes and factoids,
which I'm sure I've read somewhere, but where, they weren't on the website
when I last checked...
Ben
Richard Eney
kate and ben moule <benan...@mouleb.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
<snip>
>On the subject, am I compleatly going mad, or were there, at one point
>in time, more annotations, past CJ?
>I'm sure I've read all kinds of info.
>There are refernces in LH to a whole host of NASA ancecdotes and factoids,
>which I'm sure I've read somewhere, but where, they weren't on the website
>when I last checked...
There are other websites run by fans which contain later annotations, but
the APF hasn't been updated for a long time. Leo has other work to do
(something called a "liff" or "life", I'm told).
=Tamar
David Barnard
"Richard Eney" <dic...@radix.net> wrote in message
news:bjqsjc$d2a$2...@news1.radix.net...
<snip>
> There are other websites run by fans which contain later annotations, but
> the APF hasn't been updated for a long time. Leo has other work to do
> (something called a "liff" or "life", I'm told).
>
> =Tamar
It has been years since I posted last, but this jerked me out of my lurking
lethargy. I've frequently considered volunteering to
update/maintain/otherwise love, cherish and wotnot the APF. It was, for a
long time, the ultimate annotation reference. It still is, for some things.
Anyway, my idea: Has anyone considered the possibilities of wiki? After a
long, tortuous debate on ABP, anyone could just walk up and amend the APF.
Of course, this is open to abuse, but these issues are all countered by the
folks over at wikipedia.org. There are various freely available wiki
implementations, so that doesn't have to be an obstacle. Annotations given
the blessing of Pterry could be frozen, but everything else would be fair
game.
Insanity? Or an idea whose time has come?
David Barnard
Karen
Barnard <abp.remove...@didactylos.net> writes
>*remembers this is a bottom posting ng*
>
as in 'the norm for readable usenet' :}
>"Richard Eney" <dic...@radix.net> wrote in message
>news:bjqsjc$d2a$2...@news1.radix.net...
><snip>
>> There are other websites run by fans which contain later annotations, but
>> the APF hasn't been updated for a long time. Leo has other work to do
>> (something called a "liff" or "life", I'm told).
>>
>> =Tamar
>
>It has been years since I posted last, but this jerked me out of my lurking
>lethargy.
Well its nice to see you again... I actually wanted to mail in response
to this but I'm honestly not sure what the spamtrap actually is in the
posting address or if there is one for sure. So an abbreviated response
here.
>I've frequently considered volunteering to
>update/maintain/otherwise love, cherish and wotnot the APF. It was, for a
>long time, the ultimate annotation reference. It still is, for some things.
>
Mail the maintainer(s) - certainly upgrades are currently in progress
and will need assorted help from proofreading to content feedback to
contributions to....
>Anyway, my idea: Has anyone considered the possibilities of wiki?
yesh.
>After a
>long, tortuous debate on ABP, anyone could just walk up and amend the APF.
>Of course, this is open to abuse, but these issues are all countered by the
>folks over at wikipedia.org.
yesh again. I'm actually quite intrigued as to how others would view a
Wiki APF or component thereof? How people would see the pros and cons of
this style of APF?
If you are not familiar then do look at <http://www.wikipedia.org> -
I've now used this in a team structure for tech info quite successfully
and can think of a stack of non technical uses for it.
>There are various freely available wiki
>implementations, so that doesn't have to be an obstacle. Annotations given
>the blessing of Pterry could be frozen, but everything else would be fair
>game.
>
>Insanity? Or an idea whose time has come?
>
The wiki idea isn't insane and has come up before - how to implement it
most effectively for the AFP, I don't know, that would be one for said
maintainer.
--
Karen/hypatia Ka...@lspace.org
New? Check http://www.lspace.org
Confused? Mail the Clue Fairies at afp-...@lspace.org
August 20th-23rd, "2004: Discworld" http://www.dwcon.org
David Barnard
news:06rrUbULiRY$Ew...@cableinet.co.uk...
> In article <d178b.2905$YL....@news-binary.blueyonder.co.uk>, David
> Barnard <abp.remove...@didactylos.net> writes
> >*remembers this is a bottom posting ng*
> >
> as in 'the norm for readable usenet' :}
Ah, but I have been hanging out in the unreadable Usenet recently. Truly
horrible it is, to. Although it's not the top-posting that makes it
unreadable, it's all those infantile brains screaming for attention.
> >"Richard Eney" <dic...@radix.net> wrote in message
> >news:bjqsjc$d2a$2...@news1.radix.net...
> ><snip>
> >> There are other websites run by fans which contain later annotations,
but
> >> the APF hasn't been updated for a long time. Leo has other work to do
> >> (something called a "liff" or "life", I'm told).
> >>
> >> =Tamar
> >
> >It has been years since I posted last, but this jerked me out of my
lurking
> >lethargy.
>
> Well its nice to see you again... I actually wanted to mail in response
> to this but I'm honestly not sure what the spamtrap actually is in the
> posting address or if there is one for sure. So an abbreviated response
> here.
anything@mydomain will reach me, unless I have redirected it to the great
bit-bucket in the sky. I didn't really think that through, did I?
Glad to hear I'm no more insane than usual. I'll do the emailing thing...
unless said maintainers hang out here to a significant degree? I don't
recognise any names except for Tamar and the Great Man himself. But then,
it's been a while, and my memory is notoriously poor :-)
Doing a little Googling, I found the thread in AFP to which I'm guessing you
are referring:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=Xns93F065299FEesmilspaceorg%40elfden.co.uk&rnum=3&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26q%3D%2B%2522wiki%2522%2Bgroup%253Aalt.fan.pratchett
(apologies for the evil link). Seems to be not quite the same thing,
although Leo contributed. I must read the AFP FAQ and find out what the
Oracle is.... AFP, APF - must have seemed so funny back then... :-S
David
Leo Breebaart
[ alt.fan.pratchett added to Newsgroups:, please watch your
followups ]
"David Barnard" <abp.remove...@didactylos.net> writes:
> Anyway, my idea: Has anyone considered the possibilities of
> wiki? After a long, tortuous debate on ABP, anyone could just
> walk up and amend the APF.
Great minds think alike. :-)
I started designing APF Wikis in my mind approximately three
seconds after I first learned what a Wiki was. A world-wide
collaborative effort such as the APF is just about the perfect
example of what Wikis were invented for, and where the added
value can be immense.
> Of course, this is open to abuse, but these issues are all
> countered by the folks over at wikipedia.org.
There are a number of reasons why an APF Wiki hasn't been
implemented yet, and this is certainly part of one of them.
Designing, maintaining, and babysitting a Wiki (especially in the
beginning) takes a lot of time, effort and infrastructure, which
for the longest time I just did not have available.
Another reason is that my first priority for the APF has to be
getting it up-to-date with respect to the more recent books -- I
have literally thousands of email and newsgroup annotation
messages that need to be processed. Luckily, I now have time for
active development again, and basically I intend to release a
v9.0 version before the end of the fall.
Finally, there is one major design/implementation issue that I
have not yet come to grips with, but which I think is crucial to
have a clear idea about before I start up an APF Wiki, and that
is how to re-integrate Wikified APF material into the 'editorial'
APF.
I believe strongly that what makes the APF useful is the
*combination* of the collective annotations and contributions and
feedback from the readers, and of the editorial work Miq and I
put into it, i.e. the selection of which annotations to use and
which to leave out, the rewriting and editing of the submitted
texts, and in general the presence of a reasonably consistent
editorial policy and voice throughout the document. The
annotations are the meat of the APF, but I think the editorial
work provides the skeleton.
That skeleton is precisely what you are going to lose in an APF
Wiki. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is simply not
something I want to surrender without a bit of a fight to
preserve it in some form or another. So what I want is basically
a 'conventional' APF existing in parallel to the Wiki version,
but with some means of updating the one with the other and vice
versa. And there lies the rub.
Moving updates from 'my' version of the APF to a Wiki version is not
likely to be the biggest problem, because I have filters and software
and I can generate Wiki-code from my base text file the same way I now
already generate LaTeX or HTML versions of the APF. But if the Wiki has
been out there for three months, and -- let's hope for the best -- a
gazillion changes have been made to it, how do I incorporate those
changes back into my master-version, without having to go through every
sentence by hand?
Clearly some form of rather advanced automation is called for.
Luckily, I believe that in theory it should all be possible,
because Wikis already automatically keep track of all updates, so
my gut tells me that there should be possibilities there for
incorporating that existing concept of history into the editing
process of the 'plain' APF. But it's not going to be trivial.
--
Leo Breebaart <l...@lspace.org>
Karen
>"Karen" <Ka...@lspace.org> wrote in message
>news:06rrUbULiRY$Ew...@cableinet.co.uk...
>> In article <d178b.2905$YL....@news-binary.blueyonder.co.uk>, David
>> Barnard <abp.remove...@didactylos.net> writes
>> >*remembers this is a bottom posting ng*
>> >
>> as in 'the norm for readable usenet' :}
>
>Ah, but I have been hanging out in the unreadable Usenet recently. Truly
>horrible it is, to. Although it's not the top-posting that makes it
>unreadable, it's all those infantile brains screaming for attention.
Alt.Config? Or some of the blueyonder groups :}
[..]
>> >After a
>> >long, tortuous debate on ABP, anyone could just walk up and amend the
>APF.
>> >Of course, this is open to abuse, but these issues are all countered by
>the
>> >folks over at wikipedia.org.
>>
>> yesh again. I'm actually quite intrigued as to how others would view a
>> Wiki APF or component thereof? How people would see the pros and cons of
>> this style of APF?
>> If you are not familiar then do look at <http://www.wikipedia.org> -
>> I've now used this in a team structure for tech info quite successfully
>> and can think of a stack of non technical uses for it.
To clarify this bit [sorry post was of the 'early hours braindead'
variety] when I say 'I've used' I do mean 'used' rather than 'set up' -
I liked the idea enough to persuade some project fellows that it would
be useful and just produced some design requirements. One of said
fellows did the actual graft in each case.
>>
>> >There are various freely available wiki
>> >implementations, so that doesn't have to be an obstacle. Annotations
>given
>> >the blessing of Pterry could be frozen, but everything else would be fair
>> >game.
>> >
>> >Insanity? Or an idea whose time has come?
>> >
>> The wiki idea isn't insane and has come up before - how to implement it
>> most effectively for the AFP, I don't know, that would be one for said
>> maintainer.
>
>Glad to hear I'm no more insane than usual. I'll do the emailing thing...
>unless said maintainers hang out here to a significant degree? I don't
>recognise any names except for Tamar and the Great Man himself. But then,
>it's been a while, and my memory is notoriously poor :-)
>
>Doing a little Googling, I found the thread in AFP to which I'm guessing you
>are referring:
>http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=Xns9
>3F065299FEesmilspaceorg%40elfden.co.uk&rnum=3&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26l
>r%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26q%3D%2B%2522wiki%2522%2Bgroup%253Aalt.f
>an.pratchett
>(apologies for the evil link). Seems to be not quite the same thing,
>although Leo contributed. I must read the AFP FAQ and find out what the
>Oracle is.... AFP, APF - must have seemed so funny back then... :-S
>
Funnily enough that was coincidental and only partly what was in my
mind. In fact the reason I knew that the maintainer of the APF is
interested in Wiki is because he was the culprit who introduced it to me
and sold me on the idea. The more I looked at it the more possibilities
jumped out at me for its application and I started jotting down some
design requirements and so on for a number different projects, some
work, some non work.
The technical designs details were not mine at all - I offered them as
an 'opportunity' to other interested parties on grounds that I didn't
have the time or web design knowledge to make a decent job of it.
Anyways that is off topic enough for here I think unless people have
comments specific to Wiki and the APF and that discussion has already
been cross posted to AFP.
Jeroen Geilman
>
> There are a number of reasons why an APF Wiki hasn't been
> implemented yet, and this is certainly part of one of them.
> Designing, maintaining, and babysitting a Wiki (especially in the
> beginning) takes a lot of time, effort and infrastructure, which
> for the longest time I just did not have available.
Agreed - obviously.
A notion: would it be possible to "run" two WiKi's side-by-side, one open to
absolutely everyone, holding the "currently-open-to-the-public" parts of
the APF, and a moderated one that's only editable by the maintainers, so
that - since both are in WiKi format - merging the data from the public one
into the master is a matter of a few clicks ?
> Another reason is that my first priority for the APF has to be
> getting it up-to-date with respect to the more recent books -- I
> have literally thousands of email and newsgroup annotation
> messages that need to be processed. Luckily, I now have time for
> active development again, and basically I intend to release a
> v9.0 version before the end of the fall.
Yes! Good on yer.
> Finally, there is one major design/implementation issue that I
> have not yet come to grips with, but which I think is crucial to
> have a clear idea about before I start up an APF Wiki, and that
> is how to re-integrate Wikified APF material into the 'editorial'
> APF.
Erhm..sorry, I jumped the gun I guess ;-)
> I believe strongly that what makes the APF useful is the
> *combination* of the collective annotations and contributions and
> feedback from the readers, and of the editorial work Miq and I
> put into it, i.e. the selection of which annotations to use and
> which to leave out, the rewriting and editing of the submitted
> texts, and in general the presence of a reasonably consistent
> editorial policy and voice throughout the document. The
> annotations are the meat of the APF, but I think the editorial
> work provides the skeleton.
Definitely - a true WiKi would lose the coherence and editorial style of the
current one.
> That skeleton is precisely what you are going to lose in an APF
> Wiki.
Arf ! I'm repeating you here - but in a Dr.Who-kind of way...
Prepeating, possibly ;-)
> This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is simply not
> something I want to surrender without a bit of a fight to
> preserve it in some form or another. So what I want is basically
> a 'conventional' APF existing in parallel to the Wiki version,
> but with some means of updating the one with the other and vice
> versa. And there lies the rub.
Not at all I think - if it is simple to add registration and moderation to
one WiKi, you can easily run two copies side-by-side.
> Moving updates from 'my' version of the APF to a Wiki version is not
> likely to be the biggest problem, because I have filters and software
> and I can generate Wiki-code from my base text file the same way I now
> already generate LaTeX or HTML versions of the APF. But if the Wiki has
> been out there for three months, and -- let's hope for the best -- a
> gazillion changes have been made to it, how do I incorporate those
> changes back into my master-version, without having to go through every
> sentence by hand?
Well...assuming you can also re-code those filters to cough up the original
data from a public WiKi, you can squirm it through both ways without having
to edit too much by hand.
> Clearly some form of rather advanced automation is called for.
If my suggestion is realistic then I think you only need a way to make the
two WiKi's "aware" of each other, possibly by using a database wherein
every post gets a joint unique ID.
(Or using just one database with extra bits and flags in)
> Luckily, I believe that in theory it should all be possible,
> because Wikis already automatically keep track of all updates, so
> my gut tells me that there should be possibilities there for
> incorporating that existing concept of history into the editing
> process of the 'plain' APF. But it's not going to be trivial.
Hmm...can I help ?
I'd like to - I've always enjoyed the APF, and WiKi does seem the way to go.
--
Jeroen Geilman
Gentoo 1.4 rc4
Leo Breebaart
> would it be possible to "run" two WiKi's side-by-side, one open to
> absolutely everyone, holding the "currently-open-to-the-public" parts
> of the APF, and a moderated one that's only editable by the
> maintainers, so that - since both are in WiKi format - merging the
> data from the public one into the master is a matter of a few clicks ?
I suppose it would be possible, but I think that having a 'moderated
Wiki' kinda goes against the spirit of the thing -- better to keep the
current web site in that role.
I am also not sure how easy it actually *is* to exchange information
between Wikis with "a few clicks" -- but that sort of thing is
definitely a subject for further research.
> > Moving updates from 'my' version of the APF to a Wiki version is not
> > likely to be the biggest problem, because I have filters and
> > software and I can generate Wiki-code from my base text file the
> > same way I now already generate LaTeX or HTML versions of the APF.
> > But if the Wiki has been out there for three months, and -- let's
> > hope for the best -- a gazillion changes have been made to it, how
> > do I incorporate those changes back into my master-version, without
> > having to go through every sentence by hand?
>
> Well...assuming you can also re-code those filters to cough up the original
> data from a public WiKi, you can squirm it through both ways without having
> to edit too much by hand.
I see where you're coming from, but that's nevertheless a very big
assumption. I currently have filters that implement a one-way function
that transforms A into B. What you're positing is a filter that performs
the inverse operation, going from B to A. Coming up with this inverse
function is precisely the problem, and not something that only requires
a simple recode.
> > Clearly some form of rather advanced automation is called for.
>
> If my suggestion is realistic then I think you only need a way to make
> the two WiKi's "aware" of each other, possibly by using a database
> wherein every post gets a joint unique ID.
Hmmm. That would still mean a total re-implementation from scratch
w.r.t. how things are done currently. I'd prefer a more iterative
approach. Either way, it will take some doing & designing...
> Hmm...can I help ?
>
> I'd like to - I've always enjoyed the APF, and WiKi does seem the way
> to go.
Thank you very much for offering; I appreciate it -- having this
discussion with you is in fact already helping me quite a bit. Now for
the next few months, WiKi is simply not going to be an issue as I'll be
busy getting the APF sorted content- and html-wise, but after that I am
sure that I am going to be able to use plenty of help. Keep watching
this newsgroup (or the L-Space Web) for details.
--
Leo Breebaart <l...@lspace.org>