[Project Proposal] Recollections of Full Years by Helen Herron Taft

[Jon Erdman]

I wanted to propose a book that isn't on the wanted list, but is something I'd been wanting to read anyway. I know that Standard Ebooks tends to be a bit more choosy about nonfiction that is accepted than with fiction, but I think this counts as "notable autobiography" as Helen Herron Taft was First Lady of the United States and wife of President William Howard Taft. It's quite a bit longer than anything I've worked on to this point, but it looks pretty straightforward in terms of formatting, aside from having lots of photos.

If approved, I will probably take this one a bit slower than I have taken the first couple that I did if that's OK. I just don't want to end up with burnout. By which I mean that I anticipate slow but steady progress, that I'll disappear for months at a time.

Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71696

Scans: https://archive.org/details/recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/mode/2up

[Jon Erdman]

Yikes - unfortunate typo. I meant to say that I do anticipate slow but steady progress and I do *not* anticipate that I'll disappear for months at a time.

[Alex Cabal]

OK, I think that would be fine. For nonfiction/autobiography we
typically do include illustrations so make sure to find the highest
quality scans possible. You should also edit the images to be true
grayscale, and rotate them to be aligned correctly if they're from raw
misaligned page scans.

Please send a link to your repo once you start.

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[Jon Erdman]

Repo link with initial commit: https://github.com/homestar92/helen-herron-taft_recollections-of-full-years

It'll probably be a few days before I get started in earnest, but I was able to go ahead and get this done.

[Jon Erdman]

Looks like her official white house portrait is already in the artwork gallery. I would like to claim it.

https://standardebooks.org/artworks/bror-kronstrand/helen-herron-taft

[Alex Cabal]

OK, Robin will manage this with Emma reviewing.

> > Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71696 <https://
> www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71696>
> > Scans: https://archive.org/details/recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/
> mode/2up <https://archive.org/details/recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/
> mode/2up>

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[Robin Whittleton]

Sounds good, I’ve assigned it to this project.

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[Jon Erdman]

There are very high resolution scans of all the photos in this book included with the Gutenberg transcription, which have already been cleaned up and properly rotated. The only thing I'm unsure of is whether they've been converted to true grayscale, but that's easy enough to check myself when I get to that point. Presumably it's OK to use these as long as they match the scans, right?

[Alex Cabal]

Yes, that's fine.

On 9/2/25 4:55 PM, Jon Erdman wrote:
> There are very high resolution scans of all the photos in this book
> included with the Gutenberg transcription, which have already been
> cleaned up and properly rotated. The only thing I'm unsure of is whether
> they've been converted to true grayscale, but that's easy enough to
> check myself when I get to that point. Presumably it's OK to use these
> as long as they match the scans, right?
> On Tuesday, September 2, 2025 at 3:24:45 PM UTC-4 robin wrote:
>
> Sounds good, I’ve assigned it to this project.
>
>> On 2 Sep 2025, at 21:18, Jon Erdman <homes...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Looks like her official white house portrait is already in the
>> artwork gallery. I would like to claim it.
>> https://standardebooks.org/artworks/bror-kronstrand/helen-herron-

>> taft <https://standardebooks.org/artworks/bror-kronstrand/helen-
>> herron-taft>

>>
>> On Tuesday, September 2, 2025 at 3:08:25 PM UTC-4 Jon Erdman wrote:
>>
>> Repo link with initial commit: https://github.com/homestar92/

>> helen-herron-taft_recollections-of-full-years <https://
>> github.com/homestar92/helen-herron-taft_recollections-of-full-
>> years>

>> <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71696>

>> > Scans: https://archive.org/details/
>> recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/mode/2up <https://
>> archive.org/details/recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/mode/2up>
>> >

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[David]

Just in case ... there are very high resolution scans at this online edition:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/philamer/ACL9111.0001.001/?view=toc

(Also "mirrored" on HathiTrust.) A quick check suggests they're even higher resolution than the Gutenberg transcription scans. Whether the difference actually makes a difference is another question, but worth comparing?

FWIW. David / Fife, UK

[Jon Erdman]

Some of the scans of the photos in that edition are rather poor quality even if the resolution is high. Some look pretty good though. I could certainly take it case by case and take the cleanest available copy of each photo. The gutenberg ones all come in around 1000x650 (650x1000 for vertical photos) which seems reasonably good to me, especially when 2000x2000 is the absolute max allowed. But I recognize that it's all subjective.

[Jon Erdman]

Do the photographs need to have the full-page class on their figure blocks? I assume yes for the Frontispiece, but I'm less certain of the others. In the print edition, the photos each get a full-page, but I'm not sure if that's necessary here, especially for horizontal photos.

[Robin Whittleton]

One thing worth mentioning is that we always display photos in their correct orientation: we don’t display horizontal photos rotated 90º and in a vertical orientation.

Looking through the rest of the corpus, I think A Yankee in the Trenches is an example where Jason decided to convert a vertically-oriented horizontal photo in full page (https://archive.org/details/yankeeintrenches00holm/page/28/mode/2up) into a horizontally-oriented inline one (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-derby-holmes/a-yankee-in-the-trenches/text/chapter-3#illustration-3). That approach makes sense to me.

-Robin

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[Jon Erdman]

Yeah, I figured that just made the most sense and was already what I was doing. In the print edition all of the pictures are full-page, and I think horizontal photos make the most sense inline, and for the sake of consistency I'll probably make the vertical ones inline too unless you tell me to do otherwise.

Another question:
In the print edition, there are instances where multiple thematically-related photos form one figure and share a caption, such as this:

https://archive.org/details/recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/page/52/mode/2up

Should I leave these as one photo and keep the figcaption as it is in print, or should I separate them and give them each their own figcaption derived from what's in the text (obviously this would be editorial since we'd be writing our own caption here)

Another example is here:

https://archive.org/details/recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/page/8/mode/2up

I'm inclined to leave these together since that's how the author presented them and it avoids having to write a new caption to make the pictures make sense. Also not sure whether more creative solutions such as placing two <img> tags in a single <figure> block might be acceptable here. I don't recall seeing any indication in the SEMoS about whether that could be done as all the examples have just one image. That would cause the figure block ids to not match the file names unless I made the filenames something like "illustration-1-2.jpg" and that also seems like a problem. So leaving them together as a single jpg feels like the cleanest solution. Especially for examples like the second one I posted in this post, where splitting them up could cause them to be displayed one on top of the other, which I don't think would look very good.

[Robin Whittleton]

I think I’d suggest multiple images. The figure element technically allows multiple elements inside it, also long as tehy’re accompanied (and described) by a single figcaption. What I don’t know is if our default figure CSS supports that usecase. Can you test?

If you were to try to keep it to a single image or two photos then the gap in between would be a fixed white, which would look pretty bad if the user is using dark mode.

You could split the caption into multiple figures / figcaptions. Obviously that’d be a bunch of [Editorial] work, and I guess it’s not obvious that that would be easy / worth it in every situation. But it’s a possibility.

-Robin

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[Jon Erdman]

Since this is a recurring pattern and not a one-time style hook, I assume this is a situation where classes would be OK? If so, I was able to do it with classes (though I could certainly use chapter ids and nth-of-type pseudo-classes in a selector if we wanted to avoid classes still).

I was able to make this work - none of this is committed to the repo since I don't know what to do about filenames, but here's my code snippets for both the HTML and CSS:

This is the first example of side-by-side photos in chapter 1:

<figure class="double-horizontal-figure" id="illustration-3">

    <img  alt="A bespectacled man with a moustache and a neutral facial expression in 19th century clothing." src="../images/illustration-test-horiz.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" />

    <img  alt="A short-haired woman in 19th century clothing with a very slight smile." src="../images/illustration-test-horiz2.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" />

    <figcaption><abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> and <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> John Williamson Herron, <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> Taft’s father and mother</figcaption>

</figure>

And the vertical double-photo in chapter 3:

<figure id="illustration-8">

    <img  alt="An avenue lined with cryptomeria trees. A lone person is walking along the avenue." src="../images/illustration-test.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" />

    <img  alt="A traditional Japanese temple, with a flight of stairs leading to it. Several people are visible in the photo on the stairs and on the lower level in front of them." src="../images/illustration-test2.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" />

    <figcaption>Nikko. An ancient cryptomeria avenue and a glimpse of the famous temples</figcaption>

</figure>

Here is the CSS that makes it all work:

.double-horizontal-figure{

    text-align: center;

}

.double-horizontal-figure img{

    display: inline-block;

    max-width: 49%

}

I don't think any special CSS is needed for two vertically-stacked images as the break-inside: avoid; that we include in the standard figure css handles everything we need on its own.

I've attached screenshots from my reader of choice, KoReader, to show how an ereader app renders these.

So yes, this is super doable. The open questions are, what to do about filenames, since this will cause them to differ from the id of the figure that they are a part of (maybe illustration-x-y.jpg where x is the figure id and y is the image within the figure?)

Additional question, since you mentioned dark mode users. In the cases of non-rectangular images like those in the first example here, should we consider using png rather than jpg for these, so that we can make the background transparent?

[Robin Whittleton]

For the rounded images I’d just keep them as a single image, with a little padding around the outside: basically treating the white background as a matte. You mentioned PNG but the trouble is that the file sizes can get really large with photographs. Probably worth testing though.

If you do split them into two (or there are other horizontally stacked images) then the CSS you proposed feels a little fragile: you’re assuming that the 2% space remaining is greater than the width of the single space in between the images. That’s probably true, but it might not be at small widths or with the font size bumped up. Please check that.

On the vertically stacked images I’d suggest we need a little margin in between the images. Something like figure > img + img{ margin-top: 1em; }

As for the filenames, go with illustration-x-y.jpg like you suggested, yes.

-Robin

On 4 Sep 2025, at 22:29, Jon Erdman <homes...@gmail.com> wrote:

Since this is a recurring pattern and not a one-time style hook, I assume this is a situation where classes would be OK? If so, I was able to do it with classes (though I could certainly use chapter ids and nth-of-type pseudo-classes in a selector if we wanted to avoid classes still).

I was able to make this work - none of this is committed to the repo since I don't know what to do about filenames, but here's my code snippets for both the HTML and CSS:

This is the first example of side-by-side photos in chapter 1:

<figure class="double-horizontal-figure" id="illustration-3">

    <img  alt="A bespectacled man with a moustache and a neutral facial expression in 19th century clothing." src="../images/illustration-test-horiz.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" />

    <img  alt="A short-haired woman in 19th century clothing with a very slight smile." src="../images/illustration-test-horiz2.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" />

    <figcaption><abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> and <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> John Williamson Herron, <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> Taft’s father and mother</figcaption>

</figure>

And the vertical double-photo in chapter 3:

<figure id="illustration-8">

    <img  alt="An avenue lined with cryptomeria trees. A lone person is walking along the avenue." src="../images/illustration-test.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" />

    <img  alt="A traditional Japanese temple, with a flight of stairs leading to it. Several people are visible in the photo on the stairs and on the lower level in front of them." src="../images/illustration-test2.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" />

    <figcaption>Nikko. An ancient cryptomeria avenue and a glimpse of the famous temples</figcaption>

</figure>

Here is the CSS that makes it all work:

.double-horizontal-figure{

    text-align: center;

}

.double-horizontal-figure img{

    display: inline-block;

    max-width: 49%

}

I don't think any special CSS is needed for two vertically-stacked images as the break-inside: avoid; that we include in the standard figure css handles everything we need on its own.

I've attached screenshots from my reader of choice, KoReader, to show how an ereader app renders these.

<Reader_Recollections of Full Years - Helen Herron Taft_131.epub_p16_2025-09-04_162118.png><Reader_Recollections of Full Years - Helen Herron Taft_131.epub_p64_2025-09-04_162157.png>

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/d7661571-1b91-4f1e-bf4f-00353a745992n%40googlegroups.com.
<Reader_Recollections of Full Years - Helen Herron Taft_131.epub_p64_2025-09-04_162157.png><Reader_Recollections of Full Years - Helen Herron Taft_131.epub_p16_2025-09-04_162118.png>

[Jon Erdman]

There are a few other horizontal photos aside from the rounded ones. However, I actually found a solution with no special CSS. I can put them in a table inside of the <figure> tag and put the two pictures in the same row. This solution also works for a 2x2 grid of photos, which will be useful in one specific instance in chapter 9. Here's what the HTML looks like (this is just a proof of concept, I just used the photos I already had handy, so ignore the fact that the filenames are kind of nonsense). For 1x2 horizontal figures (which is most of them) they would just not have the second row.

<figure id="illustration-26">

    <table>

        <tr>

            <td><img alt="A photo of a rice terrace." src="../images/illustration-26-1.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" /></td>

            <td><img alt="A photo of a rice terrace." src="../images/illustration-26-2.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" /></td>

        </tr>

        <tr>

            <td><img alt="A photo of a rice terrace." src="../images/illustration-3-1.png" epub:type="z3998:photograph" /></td>

            <td><img alt="A photo of a rice terrace." src="../images/illustration-3-2.png" epub:type="z3998:photograph" /></td>

        </tr>

    </table>

    <figcaption>Views of the extraordinary igorrote rice terraces. Practically all of the north central Luzon is cultivated in this manner</figcaption>

</figure>

There is no CSS to share because it only relies on the standard figure and img css.

As for the rounded photos, I'll keep them together and try making them transparent PNGs and see how much it balloons the file size. If it's reasonable, I'll take that approach for the benefit of dark mode users, else I'll leave it as a jpg with a white background (I'll still edit it so that the background is pure white to save file size)

[Jon Erdman]

I found a way to achieve transparent backgrounds with reasonable file size. It involves breaking the letter of the rule in SEMoS but I think still keeps with the spirit of the rule. If instead of true greyscale, I save it as an indexed png with a palette of 64 greys, I achieve a file size that is roughly double the jpg, with no perceptible quality loss (i imagine the scans aren't detailed enough where more than 64 greys would really help). Since there are only two pairs of rounded photos like that, this would increase the size of the finished epub by a few hundred kilobytes in total. If I were to make it true greyscale, it would increase the finished size of the epub by about a megabyte. If you're OK with this, I'll go with that approach and I think it'll look really nice for dark mode users.

Separate matter entirely, I found a scan on Hathitrust that has really good copies of the photos - better resolution and contrast than the gutenberg copies. I'm going to use those instead so we have the best quality possible. That scan is located here. I think I will use that scan instead when I get to the point of populating metadata, since I'm using it for the production.

Last question and then I think I'm good to continue on my own for a while - some photos have copyright notices attached to them, copyrighted to Harris & Ewing (apparently a photo studio in Washington, D.C.). Since the book is from 1914 and is public domain, including the photos inside it, do I need to replicate those copyright notices? If I remove them is that editorial since it's *technically* removing text from the book? Should I include Harris & Ewing in the metadata somewhere since they contributed photos to the book?

[Robin Whittleton]

On the table solution, that’s problematic for accessibility, and has unwanted side-effects on tap in Apple Books. You could, however, put them in divs and use display: table / display: table-cell. That theoretically works on everything last time I tried it, but it was a slightly different setup so would need further testing.

On PNG vs JPG, could you upload an example so we can see?

On the copyright, you can remove that notice as it’s expired. But yes, feel free to add them to the metadata as an illustrator (i.e. marc role “ill”).

-Robin

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/1d7e3f83-e7dc-44f4-88d8-3fe3063ad28bn%40googlegroups.com.

[Jon Erdman]

I can play around with using divs and display: table / display: table-cell. For the images, here are the examples.

[Jon Erdman]

I was able to get it to work using divs and display: table-cell.

This HTML

<figure id="illustration-test">

    <div>

        <img alt="An avenue lined with cryptomeria trees. A lone person is walking along the avenue." src="../images/illustration-8-1.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" />

    </div>

    <div>

        <img alt="A traditional Japanese temple in Nikko. There is a flight of stairs in front of the temple and several people walking on and in front of those stairs." src="../images/illustration-8-2.jpg" epub:type="z3998:photograph" />

    </div>

    <figcaption>it's a test!</figcaption>

</figure>

Plus this CSS:

#illustration-test div {

    display: table-cell;

}

yields more or less exactly what we need. That was just a proof of concept, so obviously I'll have to do some other minor tweaking to make it look as good as it can, but conceptually the idea seems to work, with fairly minimal CSS.

[Alex Cabal]

Robin makes a good point about small screens.

If we're discussing the two oval images, I would separate them in two
separate images because then we can rearrange them when entering a small
screen.

Open each file in a browser and use the browser's responsive mode to see
how the file would look like on a phone sized screen. There should be no
horizontal scrollbars and images should be arranged reasonably given
size constraints.

>> located here <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?
>> id=hvd.32044011454253>. I think I will use that scan instead

>> illustration-3-1.png" epub:type="z3998:photograph" /></td>

>> <td><img alt="A photo of a rice terrace." src="../images/

>>>> <https://archive.org/details/
>>>> recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/page/52/mode/2up>

>>>> Should I leave these as one photo and keep the
>>>> figcaption as it is in print, or should I
>>>> separate them and give them each their own
>>>> figcaption derived from what's in the text
>>>> (obviously this would be editorial since we'd be
>>>> writing our own caption here)
>>>>
>>>> Another example is here:
>>>> https://archive.org/details/
>>>> recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/page/8/mode/2up

>>>> <https://archive.org/details/
>>>> recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/page/8/mode/2up>

>>>> think/A Yankee in the Trenches/ is an

>>>> example where Jason decided to convert a
>>>> vertically-oriented horizontal photo in full
>>>> page (https://archive.org/details/
>>>> yankeeintrenches00holm/page/28/mode/2up

>>>> <https://archive.org/details/
>>>> yankeeintrenches00holm/page/28/mode/2up>)

>>>> into a horizontally-oriented inline one
>>>> (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-
>>>> derby-holmes/a-yankee-in-the-trenches/text/

>>>> chapter-3#illustration-3 <https://
>>>> standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-derby-
>>>> holmes/a-yankee-in-the-trenches/text/
>>>> chapter-3#illustration-3>). That approach

>>>>> <https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/
>>>>> philamer/ACL9111.0001.001/?view=toc>

>>>>> tostandardebook...@googlegroups.com.
>>>>> To view this discussion visithttps://
>>>>> groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/

>>>>> c67adfe0-ee60-42e9-8560-
>>>>> c930191f2cb3n%40googlegroups.com <https://
>>>>> groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/
>>>>> c67adfe0-ee60-42e9-8560-
>>>>> c930191f2cb3n%40googlegroups.com?
>>>>> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

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>>>> ff58e410-e11c-4aa8-bdae-
>>>> f25234a3ba4cn%40googlegroups.com <https://
>>>> groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/
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>>> d7661571-1b91-4f1e-
>>> bf4f-00353a745992n%40googlegroups.com <https://
>>> groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/
>>> d7661571-1b91-4f1e-
>>> bf4f-00353a745992n%40googlegroups.com?
>>> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

>>> <Reader_Recollections of Full Years - Helen Herron
>>> Taft_131.epub_p64_2025-09-04_162157.png><Reader_Recollections of Full Years - Helen Herron Taft_131.epub_p16_2025-09-04_162118.png>
>>
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[Jon Erdman]

Splitting the oval images into two separate images should be very easy for me to do, I'll go ahead and do that next time I sit down to work on this.

For horizontally-stacked images, I can make it so that larger screens show them horizontally just like the printed edition, but then very narrow screens stack them on top of each other vertically. I should be able to do that using media queries in the CSS similar to what we see in the CSS for Chapter 17 of James Joyce's Ulysses. If the captions refer to them as "left" and "right", I'll probably have to do an [Editorial] commit to instead use "first" or "second" but that seems like a reasonable editorial change to make.

[Robin Whittleton]

I can’t tell the difference between those images, and Alex makes a good point about stacking, so let’s go for it.

-Robin

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[Jon Erdman]

Ran into something I'm unsure how to handle here - what do I do about a foreign-origin word that is now commonly used in English and appears in Merriam-Webster, but was italicized in the source text. Examples here: masseurs and ménage.

Since they are now part of English verncular and appear in Merriam-Webster, SEMoS suggests that they don't need to be italicized and don't need the xml:lang defined. Do I un-italicize them? Do I use <em> or is it OK to just go ahead and add xml:lang since the text italicized them anyway?

[Robin Whittleton]

You can remove the italicisation, assuming the meaning didn’t change when it was brought into English: https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.4/single-page#8.2.9.4 . You don’t need to do this as an Editorial commit as you’re not changing the meaning of the text. Those words no longer need an xml:lang as they’re now considered part of English.

For words that aren’t in MW and remain italicised, you wouldn’t use <em> because the italics isn’t applying emphasis to those words, but indicating that they’re words foreign to English. You can use a standard <i xml:lang> for that.

-Robin

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[Jon Erdman]

I am currently in the proofreading stage, but before I get too far I wanted to make sure that my code for figures that contain two images horizontally is suitable.

For reference, here's a link to an example of the HTML in this situation:
https://github.com/homestar92/helen-herron-taft_recollections-of-full-years/blob/main/src/epub/text/chapter-1.xhtml#L40-L50

And the CSS is here:
https://github.com/homestar92/helen-herron-taft_recollections-of-full-years/blob/main/src/epub/css/local.css#L92-L111

This CSS results in the group of two images being placed side-by-side, with 1em of space between the two images. There is also a media query which makes the two images instead appear vertically stacked if the viewport is very narrow (600 CSS pixels or less)

This was one of the trickier CSS problems to find a solution to, so I wanted to make sure that this solution is acceptable now rather than waiting until I've completed proofreading.

[Robin Whittleton]

The markup looks fine. For the CSS, I’d personally rework it slightly.

First, I’ll put selectors that target the parent elements earlier than those that target the children. There’s no functional difference here, but it makes it easier to read in my opinion.

Next, I’d use direct child selectors (>) which will improve the performance a little when we have a known markup structure.

Finally, with media queries I’d usually work starting from the smallest window and getting bigger. That has the bonus of simplifying the code here, as divs are block-level by default. This is untested, but the result of those three changes would be something like:

.horizontal-double-figure > div > div:last-child {

margin-top: 1em;

}

@media (min-width: 600px) {

.horizontal-double-figure {

display: table;

margin: 1em auto;

border-spacing: 1em 0;

}

.horizontal-double-figure>div>div {

display: table-cell;

}

}

-Robin

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[Jon Erdman]

Ran across a spelling that I'm not sure whether or not to modernize. The book uses "despatch" rather than "dispatch" in many places. For the most part, the book uses UK English (despite coming from an American author) and Merriam-Webster does have a record for "despatch" as "A chiefly British spelling of dispatch", but I've never seen this spelling used in English literature before, so I think it may actually be an archaic British spelling. Should it be modernized to "dispatch," or should it be left alone since it is technically a valid UK English spelling of the word?

[Robin Whittleton]

Given the ngrams usage even on the British corpus is pretty low I think this is a reasonable modernisation. I’m not aware of any major differences in usage.

-Robin

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/4662d649-4d8b-43e2-8d8a-087506182f9an%40googlegroups.com.

[Alex Cabal]

This word is very commonly spelled that way in the corpus. At least 1358
individual xhtml files contain that spelling. So leave it as en-GB.

On 9/29/25 10:35 AM, Robin Whittleton wrote:
> Given the ngrams usage even on the British corpus <https://
> books.google.com/ngrams/graph?
> content=despatch,dispatch&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en-
> GB&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=false> is pretty low I think this is a

>>> <https://github.com/homestar92/helen-herron-taft_recollections-
>>> of-full-years/blob/main/src/epub/text/chapter-1.xhtml#L40-L50>

>>>
>>> And the CSS is here:
>>> https://github.com/homestar92/helen-herron-taft_recollections-of-

>>> full-years/blob/main/src/epub/css/local.css#L92-L111 <https://
>>> github.com/homestar92/helen-herron-taft_recollections-of-full-
>>> years/blob/main/src/epub/css/local.css#L92-L111>

>>>
>>> This CSS results in the group of two images being placed side-by-
>>> side, with 1em of space between the two images. There is also a
>>> media query which makes the two images instead appear vertically
>>> stacked if the viewport is very narrow (600 CSS pixels or less)
>>>
>>> This was one of the trickier CSS problems to find a solution to,
>>> so I wanted to make sure that this solution is acceptable now
>>> rather than waiting until I've completed proofreading.
>>>
>>> On Wednesday, September 17, 2025 at 3:51:36 PM UTC-4 robin wrote:
>>>
>>> You can remove the italicisation, assuming the meaning didn’t
>>> change when it was brought into English:https://

>>> standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.4/single-page#8.2.9.4 <https://
>>> standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.4/single-page#8.2.9.4> . You

>>> don’t need to do this as an Editorial commit as you’re not
>>> changing the meaning of the text. Those words no longer need
>>> an xml:lang as they’re now considered part of English.
>>>
>>> For words that aren’t in MW and remain italicised, you
>>> wouldn’t use <em> because the italics isn’t applying emphasis
>>> to those words, but indicating that they’re words foreign to
>>> English. You can use a standard <i xml:lang> for that.
>>>
>>> -Robin
>>>
>>>> On 17 Sep 2025, at 19:19, Jon Erdman <homes...@gmail.com

>>>> <http://gmail.com/>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Ran into something I'm unsure how to handle here - what do I
>>>> do about a foreign-origin word that is now commonly used in
>>>> English and appears in Merriam-Webster, but was italicized
>>>> in the source text. Examples here: masseurs and ménage.
>>>>
>>>> Since they are now part of English verncular and appear in
>>>> Merriam-Webster, SEMoS suggests that they don't need to be
>>>> italicized and don't need the xml:lang defined. Do I un-
>>>> italicize them? Do I use <em> or is it OK to just go ahead
>>>> and add xml:lang since the text italicized them anyway?
>>>>
>>>> On Sunday, September 7, 2025 at 1:03:19 PM UTC-4 robin wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I can’t tell the difference between those images, and
>>>> Alex makes a good point about stacking, so let’s go for it.
>>>>
>>>> -Robin
>>>>
>>>>> On 5 Sep 2025, at 23:49, Jon Erdman <homes...@gmail.com

>>>>> <http://gmail.com/>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Splitting the oval images into two separate images
>>>>> should be very easy for me to do, I'll go ahead and do
>>>>> that next time I sit down to work on this.
>>>>>
>>>>> For horizontally-stacked images, I can make it so that
>>>>> larger screens show them horizontally just like the
>>>>> printed edition, but then very narrow screens stack
>>>>> them on top of each other vertically. I should be able
>>>>> to do that using media queries in the CSS similar to
>>>>> what we see in the CSS for Chapter 17 of James Joyce's

>>>>> Ulysses <https://github.com/standardebooks/james-
>>>>> joyce_ulysses/blob/master/src/epub/css/local.css>. If

>>>>> pt <https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt>?

>>>>> >>>> <homes...@gmail.com <http://gmail.com/>> wrote:
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> Yeah, I figured that just made the most sense
>>>>> >>>> and was already what I was doing. In the print
>>>>> >>>> edition all of the pictures are full-page, and I
>>>>> >>>> think horizontal photos make the most sense
>>>>> >>>> inline, and for the sake of consistency I'll
>>>>> >>>> probably make the vertical ones inline too
>>>>> >>>> unless you tell me to do otherwise.
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> Another question:
>>>>> >>>> In the print edition, there are instances where
>>>>> >>>> multiple thematically-related photos form one
>>>>> >>>> figure and share a caption, such as this:

>>>>> >>>>https://archive.org/details/ <https://
>>>>> archive.org/details/>
>>>>> >>>> recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/page/52/mode/2up
>>>>> >>>> <https://archive.org/details/ <https://
>>>>> archive.org/details/>

>>>>> >>>> recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/page/52/mode/2up>
>>>>> >>>> Should I leave these as one photo and keep the
>>>>> >>>> figcaption as it is in print, or should I
>>>>> >>>> separate them and give them each their own
>>>>> >>>> figcaption derived from what's in the text
>>>>> >>>> (obviously this would be editorial since we'd be
>>>>> >>>> writing our own caption here)
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> Another example is here:

>>>>> >>>>https://archive.org/details/ <https://
>>>>> archive.org/details/>
>>>>> >>>> recollectionsoff0000unse_l1x0/page/8/mode/2up
>>>>> >>>> <https://archive.org/details/ <https://
>>>>> archive.org/details/>

>>>>> >>>> page (https://archive.org/details/ <https://
>>>>> archive.org/details/>
>>>>> >>>> yankeeintrenches00holm/page/28/mode/2up
>>>>> >>>> <https://archive.org/details/ <https://
>>>>> archive.org/details/>

>>>>> >>>> yankeeintrenches00holm/page/28/mode/2up>)
>>>>> >>>> into a horizontally-oriented inline one
>>>>> >>>> (https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-
>>>>> <https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert->
>>>>> >>>> derby-holmes/a-yankee-in-the-trenches/text/
>>>>> >>>> chapter-3#illustration-3 <https://
>>>>> >>>>standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-derby-

>>>>> <http://standardebooks.org/ebooks/robert-derby->

>>>>> >>>> holmes/a-yankee-in-the-trenches/text/
>>>>> >>>> chapter-3#illustration-3>). That approach
>>>>> >>>> makes sense to me.
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>> -Robin
>>>>> >>>>
>>>>> >>>>> On 3 Sep 2025, at 17:39, Jon Erdman

>>>>> >>>>>https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/ <https://
>>>>> quod.lib.umich.edu/p/>
>>>>> >>>>> philamer/ACL9111.0001.001/?view=toc
>>>>> >>>>> <https://quod.lib.umich.edu/p/ <https://
>>>>> quod.lib.umich.edu/p/>

>>>>> >>>>>tostandardebook...@googlegroups.com <http://
>>>>> googlegroups.com/>.

>>>>> >>>>> To view this discussion visithttps://
>>>>> >>>>>groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/

>>>>> <http://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/>
>>>>> >>>>> c67adfe0-ee60-42e9-8560-
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>>>>> <http://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/>
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>>>>> >>>>> c930191f2cb3n%40googlegroups.com
>>>>> <http://40googlegroups.com/>?

>>>>> >>>>> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
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>>>>> >>> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.
>>>>> >>> <Reader_Recollections of Full Years - Helen Herron
>>>>> >>>
>>>>> Taft_131.epub_p64_2025-09-04_162157.png><Reader_Recollections of Full Years - Helen Herron Taft_131.epub_p16_2025-09-04_162118.png>
>>>>> >>
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> standardebooks/F4A599BF-5E8F-484B-AA71-F91B8E4ECFF0%40reala.net
> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/F4A599BF-5E8F-484B-
> AA71-F91B8E4ECFF0%40reala.net?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Jon Erdman]

I believe that this is ready for review now.

[Emma Sweeney]

great work! I filed some minor issues in the repository.

Emma

[Jon Erdman]

Addressed all reported issues.