[First Project] The Emerald City of Oz by L. Frank Baum

[Alex Hedges]

As my first production, I would like to work on _The Emerald City of Oz_ by L. Frank Baum. This is already a wanted book, [The Emerald City of Oz](https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/l-frank-baum/the-emerald-city-of-oz), and I'm finishing up the previous book, so I'd like to be able to read a Standard Ebooks version.

For the transcription, I will use the transcription of the 1910 edition, <https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/517>. The other one hosted on Project Gutenberg, <https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/41667>, is illustrated and includes editorial changes by the transcribers, so I will not use it. The books' credits do not reference any specific scans, but I found <https://archive.org/details/emeraldcityofoz00baum> on the Internet Archive, which seems to correspond to the transcription.

I tried to do my first production two years ago (<https://groups.google.com/g/standardebooks/c/PExvBO_CALs/m/B6tl9-CsCQAJ>), but I ended up silently dropping it due to a lack of time. I will make sure to work faster and be more communicative this time!

[Alex Cabal]

OK sure, you can work on this one.

I suggest starting with the illustrated PG edition because it looks like
they made spelling consistent and corrected obvious errors which is what
we would do anyway. So that's less work for you to start with. Removing
the images is easy. You can also re-add the preface that is found in the
earlier PG edition.

Please send a link to your repo once you start.

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[Alex Hedges]

Thanks for the suggestion! I diffed the two versions, and
spot-checking the differences, I can see that the edited one is more
correct to the scan's text.

I've started the production at
<https://github.com/aphedges/l-frank-baum_the-emerald-city-of-oz>. I'm
doing work on the `dev` branch and pushing to `main` once I'm more
confident about its correctness. Please let me know if you prefer
another workflow. I've made enough changes on `dev` to be able to
start proofreading the book, but I need to clean up the commit
history, so I don't recommend looking over it now.

I have some questions about things I've come across so far:

- How does one make a preface?
<https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step#split>
suggests using `se add-file`, but it doesn't support a preface. I used
the file created by `se add-file dedication .` and added some changes
from the SEMOS. Is that the correct way to do it?
- I couldn't find any specific guidance on how to format signage. Is
there some undocumented style I should be following?
- Most of the signage in the book starts with an image that
roughly resembles 👉. Should I use the emoji or the original image, or
should I just leave it out?
- How does one figure out the indentation level for poetry? The
Project Gutenberg HTML used the classes classes `indent2` and
`indent4` (only 1 em of difference between them), so I created similar
classes `i2` and `i4`. Is that correct, or should all indentation
start with `i1` as the first level?
- The Oz books have a robot-like character named Tik-Tok, and his
dialogue is written differently. Chapter 4 of _Ozma of Oz_
(<https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/l-frank-baum/ozma-of-oz/text/chapter-4>)
describes his voice as follows: "The words sounded a little hoarse and
creakey, and they were uttered all in the same tone, without any
change of expression whatever." Section 8.7.7.6 of the SEMOS
(<https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.7/single-page#8.7.7.6>) says
to use non-breaking hyphens for words that are "stretched out by a
speaker for prosodic effect," but this seems different. _Ozma of Oz_
just uses the normal hyphen-minus for Tik-Tok's speech, so that
doesn't answer my question. On a similar note, how does one format a
stutter? That seems similar enough, and I noticed at least one case in
this book.
- I've been committing more granularly than recommended by "Producing
an Ebook, Step by Step". Is that okay? Do you want me to make empty
commits as checkpoints to match what is used in the guide, or is what
I am doing good enough?

I'll be traveling over the next several days without access to my dev
computer, but it'll give me plenty of time to read over the draft. I
probably won't respond to any responses until next week.

- Alex

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[Emma Sweeney]

- How does one make a preface?
<https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step#split>
suggests using `se add-file`, but it doesn't support a preface. I used
the file created by `se add-file dedication .` and added some changes
from the SEMOS. Is that the correct way to do it?

That can work; make sure it has preface semantics. You can also manually create a `preface.xhtml` file, then copy and paste the text into the file.

 

- I couldn't find any specific guidance on how to format signage. Is
there some undocumented style I should be following?

That seems like it requires some custom styling. Sometimes you can borrow styling from other Oz books. Can you send a picture of the signage?

 

- Most of the signage in the book starts with an image that
roughly resembles 👉. Should I use the emoji or the original image, or
should I just leave it out?

You can use ☞ (U+261E) for the manicule.

 

- How does one figure out the indentation level for poetry? The
Project Gutenberg HTML used the classes classes `indent2` and
`indent4` (only 1 em of difference between them), so I created similar
classes `i2` and `i4`. Is that correct, or should all indentation
start with `i1` as the first level?

You just have to eyeball them. Open the file in a browser and see if the indents match the page scans.

 

- The Oz books have a robot-like character named Tik-Tok, and his
dialogue is written differently. Chapter 4 of _Ozma of Oz_
(<https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/l-frank-baum/ozma-of-oz/text/chapter-4>)
describes his voice as follows: "The words sounded a little hoarse and
creakey, and they were uttered all in the same tone, without any
change of expression whatever." Section 8.7.7.6 of the SEMOS
(<https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.7/single-page#8.7.7.6>) says
to use non-breaking hyphens for words that are "stretched out by a
speaker for prosodic effect," but this seems different. _Ozma of Oz_
just uses the normal hyphen-minus for Tik-Tok's speech, so that
doesn't answer my question. On a similar note, how does one format a
stutter? That seems similar enough, and I noticed at least one case in
this book.

Just use regular hyphens. Otherwise the line breaks will get really messed up. `se typography` will take care of the rest.

 

- I've been committing more granularly than recommended by "Producing
an Ebook, Step by Step". Is that okay? Do you want me to make empty
commits as checkpoints to match what is used in the guide, or is what
I am doing good enough? 

For your first production, your commit history should match the steps taken in the Step-by-Step Guide. Do not make empty commits. Granular commit changes should mostly be for [Editorial] commits in your production.

Emma

[Alex Cabal]

OK, David will manage with Emma reviewing. Emma already answered your
questions in this thread.

[Alex Hedges]

I'm sorry for the long time without saying anything! I'm close to finishing my initial proofread, so I should have a close-to-final draft in a couple of weeks.

 

- I couldn't find any specific guidance on how to format signage. Is
there some undocumented style I should be following?

That seems like it requires some custom styling. Sometimes you can borrow styling from other Oz books. Can you send a picture of the signage?

 

Most signs are of the form seen on page 100. I used small caps for those. The only differently styled sign I could find was on on page 102, and I'm not really sure how to handle it!

With regards to borrowing styling from the other Oz books, each of the 5 existing books has a different style for signage, probably because each was produced by a different person. Having some better guidance in the SEMOS on signage would probably be useful. Maybe it can also have a semantic inflection like diaries, letters, etc. currently do?

- Most of the signage in the book starts with an image that
roughly resembles 👉. Should I use the emoji or the original image, or
should I just leave it out?

You can use ☞ (U+261E) for the manicule.

 

I had no clue that the manicule existed! I'll use ☛ (U+261B, BLACK RIGHT POINTING INDEX) in the relevant signs.

- How does one figure out the indentation level for poetry? The
Project Gutenberg HTML used the classes classes `indent2` and
`indent4` (only 1 em of difference between them), so I created similar
classes `i2` and `i4`. Is that correct, or should all indentation
start with `i1` as the first level?

You just have to eyeball them. Open the file in a browser and see if the indents match the page scans.

 

My production currently tries to match the scans, but the proper style still isn't clear to me:

• Should I number the classes as i1, i2, etc. instead of what I did?
• Should the indentation depths match the scans or match the specific padding-left values used in SEMOS§7.5.4?

- I've been committing more granularly than recommended by "Producing
an Ebook, Step by Step". Is that okay? Do you want me to make empty
commits as checkpoints to match what is used in the guide, or is what
I am doing good enough? 

For your first production, your commit history should match the steps taken in the Step-by-Step Guide. Do not make empty commits. Granular commit changes should mostly be for [Editorial] commits in your production.

Good to know! Does that mean I can rebase main to match what you expect?

[David]

1. Sign on p102 - is a bit trickier. I would be inclined to respect the linebreaks with `<br/>`, retain the ALLCAPS as-is (against normal SE practice), which will likely require an se-lint-ignore.xml file, and use something like this in `local.css`:

#chapter-10 blockquote{

text-align: center;
font-style: italic;
}

2. Good to use the "manicule". Your choice of U+261B matches your scans, and will make it the only one in the corpus (Emma's recommendation of U+261E matches the handful of other examples already in the corpus), but that's probably fine.

3. Poetry indents: You didn’t provide links to examples (that's always a help), but eyeballing the thumbnails of your scans, I see you have some poems in chapter 21, anyway. Am I right in thinking you still have the PG markup in your text? The instructions/examples in SEMoS you linked to look pretty clear to me. The poems/verse will need to be reformatted according to that standard. Use the examples after 7.5.8 as a "template", and let us know if you get stuck.

In the `class="i1"` values, the "i" number corresponds to the `padding-left` indent level: i1=2em, i2=3em, i3=4em, etc. Use the appropriate value for your case.

4. Rebase: it is often the case that a repo requires a rebase (or two ... or three...) to conform to SE standards. My advice at this point is: unless you're absolutely clear what you're doing and why, leave this for review. Emma will give specific instructions about what is required, and running my eye down the commits currently visible in your repo, nothing jumps out at me. Do follow the commit messages as the Step-by-step guide sets out as closely as possible, certainly for your first few projects anyway. Even then, using the Guide commit messages is always best practice, and varying only for specific reasons.

[Alex Cabal]

All caps can be done by casing correctly in the source, and then adding
text-transform: uppercase CSS. lint will not consider that.

On 5/1/26 3:36 AM, David wrote:
> 1. Sign on p102 - is a bit trickier. I would be inclined to respect the
> linebreaks with `<br/>`, retain the ALLCAPS as-is (against normal SE
> practice), which will likely require an se-lint-ignore.xml file, and use
> something like this in `local.css`:
>
> #chapter-10 blockquote{
> text-align: center;
> font-style: italic;
> }
>
> 2. Good to use the "manicule". Your choice of U+261B matches your scans,
> and will make it the only one in the corpus (Emma's recommendation
> of U+261E matches the handful of other examples already in the corpus),
> but that's probably fine.
>
> 3. Poetry indents: You didn’t provide links to examples (that's always a
> help), but eyeballing the thumbnails of your scans, I see you have some

> poems in chapter 21 <https://archive.org/details/emeraldcityofoz00baum/
> page/220/mode/2up>, anyway. Am I right in thinking you still have the PG
> markup in your text <https://github.com/aphedges/l-frank-baum_the-
> emerald-city-of-oz/blob/bbd455164971531f3de7f8914a444be3df1c27d0/src/
> epub/text/chapter-21.xhtml#L41>? The instructions/examples in SEMoS you

> linked to look pretty clear to me. The poems/verse will need to be
> reformatted according to that standard. Use the examples after 7.5.8

> <https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.7/7-high-level-structural-
> patterns#7.5.8> as a "template", and let us know if you get stuck.

>
> In the `class="i1"` values, the "i" number corresponds to the `padding-
> left` indent level: i1=2em, i2=3em, i3=4em, etc. Use the appropriate
> value for your case.
>
> 4. Rebase: it is often the case that a repo requires a rebase (or
> two ... or three...) to conform to SE standards. My advice at this point
> is: unless you're absolutely clear what you're doing and why, leave this
> for review. Emma will give specific instructions about what is required,
> and running my eye down the commits currently visible in your repo,
> nothing jumps out at me. Do follow the commit messages as the Step-by-
> step guide sets out as closely as possible, certainly for your first few
> projects anyway. Even then, using the Guide commit messages is always
> best practice, and varying only for specific reasons.
>
> On Friday, 1 May 2026 at 00:25:22 UTC+1 Alex Hedges wrote:
>
> I'm sorry for the long time without saying anything! I'm close to
> finishing my initial proofread, so I should have a close-to-final
> draft in a couple of weeks.
>
> - I couldn't find any specific guidance on how to format
> signage. Is
> there some undocumented style I should be following?
>
>
> That seems like it requires some custom styling. Sometimes you
> can borrow styling from other Oz books. Can you send a picture
> of the signage?
>

> Most signs are of the form seen on page 100 <https://archive.org/
> details/emeraldcityofoz00baum/page/100/mode/1up>. I used small caps

> * Should I number the classes as i1, i2, etc. instead of what I did?
> * Should the indentation depths match the scans or match the
> specific padding-left values used in SEMOS§7.5.4 <https://
> standardebooks.org/manual/1.8.7/7-high-level-structural-
> patterns#7.5.4>?

>
>
> - I've been committing more granularly than recommended by
> "Producing
> an Ebook, Step by Step". Is that okay? Do you want me to
> make empty
> commits as checkpoints to match what is used in the guide,
> or is what
> I am doing good enough?
>
>
> For your first production, your commit history should match the

> steps taken in the Step-by-Step Guide <https://
> standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step>.

> Do not make empty commits. Granular commit changes should mostly
> be for [Editorial] commits in your production.
>
>
> Good to know! Does that mean I can rebase main to match what you expect?
>

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[David]

Alex - is it preferred to use `span` or `b` in this case? E.g.

    <p><b>Visitors<b> are requested to <b>move<b><br/>

    ...

with local.css:

#chapter-10 blockquote b{
    text-transform: uppercase;
}

Thanks!