[First Project] Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country

[Carter Brooking]

Hi, I'd like to produce Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country as my first book. Any thoughts or concerns?

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11052

https://archive.org/details/customcountry01whargoog/page/n6/mode/2up?view=theater

Thanks, Carter

[Vince]

I’m afraid this has the opposite problem of your first proposal: at 141K words it’s 40% longer than our maximum (100K) for first-time producers. (See the second paragraph under “For Your First Production” on the Wanted Books page.) Its formatting does appear to be pretty straightforward, but it has a couple of issues: an abundant (almost 200) use of <br/>s that will have to be dealt with, and none of the thematic breaks appear to be present in the transcription, and there appear to be quite a number of them.

So, Alex can override, but it’s quite a bit longer than we want for a first-time producer. We’re happy for you to work on it if you want to do something under the 100K limit first, either something from the “For Your First Production” section of the wanted list or something else you have in mind.

[Alex Cabal]

I suppose you could give it a shot if you were OK with doing the heavy
lifting of checking carefully against the page scans. As Vince pointed
out, this is is probably more work than it first appears.

On 11/10/22 6:09 PM, Vince wrote:
> I’m afraid this has the opposite problem of your first proposal: at 141K
> words it’s 40% longer than our maximum (100K) for first-time producers.
> (See the second paragraph under “For Your First Production” on the
> Wanted Books page

> <https://standardebooks.org/contribute/wanted-ebooks>.) Its formatting

> does appear to be pretty straightforward, but it has a couple of issues:
> an abundant (almost 200) use of <br/>s that will have to be dealt with,
> and none of the thematic breaks appear to be present in the
> transcription, and there appear to be quite a number of them.
>
> So, Alex can override, but it’s quite a bit longer than we want for a
> first-time producer. We’re happy for you to work on it if you want to do
> something under the 100K limit first, either something from the “For
> Your First Production” section of the wanted list or something else you
> have in mind.
>
>> On Nov 10, 2022, at 5:33 PM, Carter Brooking <cbro...@gmail.com

>> <mailto:cbro...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi, I'd like to produce Edith Wharton's Custom of the Country as my
>> first book. Any thoughts or concerns?
>>
>> https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11052

>> <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11052>
>>
>> https://archive.org/details/customcountry01whargoog/page/n6/mode/2up?view=theater <https://archive.org/details/customcountry01whargoog/page/n6/mode/2up?view=theater>
>
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[Stoyan Stefanov]

Hello folks,

I thought I can jump on this even though it's a first project. I've been on a Wharton binge and I think I'm motivated to see this through.

To Vince's comment I see the <br>s and the lack of thematic breaks (<hr>s) and wanted to get a sense of the work involved first, so I got started. I think they look manageable.

My repo https://github.com/stoyan/edith-wharton_the-custom-of-the-country/

And the commit that fixes <br>s in chapter 1 (of 46) https://github.com/stoyan/edith-wharton_the-custom-of-the-country/commit/69de94f6bcfb8189ae6766debae5906c45dde540 The <br>s are mostly extraneous but once in a while they need to be <p>s according to the scan.

LMK if this looks ok so far and if I have a go-ahead to continue.

Kind regards,

Stoyan

[Weijia Cheng]

Alex will decide if this is still ok as a first project, but looking at what you have done already, you should follow the step-by-step guide as closely as possible for your first project as closely as possible, down to the commit names and sequence of commits. (You should even do this in subsequent projects, until you really know what you are doing and know when and why you should deviate.) Reviewers do a (roughly) commit-by-commit review of each project so it is really important to match the prescribed steps so that reviewers can tell, at a glance, what you have and haven't done.

[Weijia Cheng]

Oops, repeated "as closely as possible" accidentally, but really that point can't be emphasized enough :)

[Stoyan Stefanov]

Thank you, I can start over and follow the sequence of commits precisely. Then ask here before doing something that I’m unsure of. 

Le 18 mars 2025 à 6:40 PM, Weijia Cheng <weijia...@gmail.com> a écrit :

Alex will decide if this is still ok as a first project, but looking at what you have done already, you should follow the step-by-step guide as closely as possible for your first project as closely as possible, down to the commit names and sequence of commits. (You should even do this in subsequent projects, until you really know what you are doing and know when and why you should deviate.) Reviewers do a (roughly) commit-by-commit review of each project so it is really important to match the prescribed steps so that reviewers can tell, at a glance, what you have and haven't done.

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[Alex Cabal]

OK. As has been mentioned before this is longer than what we usually
suggest for a first production but if you're motivated then you can work
on it. I see PG is removed formatting like italics so you will have to
eyeball each page of the page scans to restore all of it. You will have
to review the page scans carefully.

As Weijia mentioned please follow our step by step guide exactly in
terms of process and commits.

Make sure to read the Standard Ebooks Manual of Style before starting,
as you won't know what to fix if you haven't read the standards. In
particular, please closely review the semantics, high level patterns,
and typography sections:

https://standardebooks.org/manual

https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/4-semantics

https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/7-high-level-structural-patterns

https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/8-typography

The step by step guide will take you from start to finish:

https://standardebooks.org/contribute/producing-an-ebook-step-by-step

This page on common issues in older books may be useful:

https://standardebooks.org/contribute/how-tos/common-issues-when-working-on-public-domain-ebooks

Robin will manage this with Weijia reviewing.

> https://archive.org/details/customcountry01whargoog/page/n6/mode/2up?view=theater <https://archive.org/details/customcountry01whargoog/page/n6/mode/2up?view=theater> <https://archive.org/details/customcountry01whargoog/page/n6/mode/2up?view=theater <https://archive.org/details/customcountry01whargoog/page/n6/mode/2up?view=theater>>

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[Stoyan Stefanov]

Thank you! I'll start over.

A question about some of the stray commits I did in the first attempt. Removing all `id` attributes and turning <h3> chapter titles into <h2>s should be part of the first initial commit, correct?

And then fixing <br>s and turning ALL CAPS to <em>s should be part of the 4th (Manual typography changes)?

[Weijia Cheng]

You could remove the id and style attributes after you've split and cleaned the file. I would suggest changing <h3>s into <h2>s as part of the manual typography changes. Fixing <br>s and all caps should also be part of the manual typography changes as you suggested.

[Weijia Cheng]

To be clear, it would be fine to remove the ids in their own commit. Not everything necessarily fits in the commit structure outlined in the guide.

[Stoyan Stefanov]

Thank you Weijia!

I started over, here's the new repo (same URL but new repo)

https://github.com/stoyan/edith-wharton_the-custom-of-the-country/commits/master/

I hope this looks better. I plan to continue with commits like "Manual typography changes: XXX" where XXX is the change in question until I'm ready to move to the next step 10 in the guide. E.g. "Manual typography changes: fix <br>s", "Manual typography changes: ALL CAPS to <em>" etc.

Sounds ok?

[Robin Whittleton]

Yes, that works. If it ends up being too granular then it’s easy to squash commits together; what’s harder is to split them apart.

-Robin

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[Stoyan Stefanov]

I have a question about formatting. Screenshot from the scan: https://www.onlinemusictools.com/_bd/quote.png (external link, the mailing list didn't let me upload)

I think it's going to be <blockquote> but the three levels of capitals are confusing me, especially the second one.

<blockquote>

NEW YORK BEAUTY WEDS FRENCH NOBLEMAN

<br/>

MRS. UNDINE MARVELL CONFIDENT POPE WILL ANNUL PREVIOUS MARRIAGE

<br/>

MRS. MARVELL TALKS ABOUT HER CASE

</blockquote>

[Robin Whittleton]

Blockquote is right, but we want to style the capitals, not keep them in the markup for accessibility reasons. So something like:

<blockquote>

<header>

<p>New York beauty weds French nobleman</p>

</header>

<p>Mrs. Undine Marvell confident Pope will annul previous marriage</p>

<p>Mrs. Marvell talks about her case</p>

</blockquote>

Then you can style it with something like:

blockquote > header > p { text-transform: uppercase; }

blockquote > p { font-variant: small-caps; }

blockquote > p + p { font-variant: all-small-caps; }

Usually we stick with small caps instead of uppercase, but in this case when there are three different styles in use in the original we can replicate it.

(Obviously you may need to target the blockquote more directly if you have other blockquotes in the production.)

-Robin

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[Stoyan Stefanov]

Amazing, thank you Robin!