Would like to contribute

[Daniel Lyons]

Hi,

I would like to do Creative Evolution by Henri Bergson, since I read it as an undergraduate ~20 years ago. But I see that you want an established contributor to do it, so for a first project I was thinking to start with The Chink in the Armour by Marie Belloc Lowndes, since it is on the "good for first time contributors list."

What's the next step?

-- 

Daniel Lyons

[Daniel Lyons]

Hi,

I have started the work on The Chink in the Armour. It's in my repository at: https://github.com/fusiongyro/marie-belloc-lowndes_the-chink-in-the-armour

If I have made any obvious mistakes already, please let me know. I am pretty good at reworking things with git.

I believe the current step is to compare the scanned book to the imported Gutenberg text, which I am doing.

Thanks,

[Alex Cabal]

Sorry for the delay. This one would be a good start. I've created a
project and Weijia will manage with Vince reviewing.

This should be a pretty straightforward production.

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. Please follow
it exactly:

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

Please email often if you have any questions at all. Our standards are
well-established so there is probably already a standard for formatting
whatever problem you've encountered.

When you're ready, email back with a link to your Github repository so
that I can assign you a manager and reviewer.

Have fun! :)

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[Weijia Cheng]

I took a look at your repo. Our repositiories should not include configuration files for external programs (e.g. .envrc, .gitignore, flake.nix, etc.) or temporary notes like what you have put into the readme. Also, it is important that you remove the Project Gutenberg footer text in the initial commit, before any other commits are added.

Because you haven't done much work on the project so far, I would recommend that you start over in a fresh repository, and attempt to follow the step-by-step guide as closely as possible for your first project (including the suggested commit structure).

[fus...@storytotell.org]

On Jul 2, 2026, at 10:42 AM, 'Weijia Cheng' via Standard Ebooks <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I took a look at your repo. Our repositiories should not include configuration files for external programs (e.g. .envrc, .gitignore, flake.nix, etc.) or temporary notes like what you have put into the readme. Also, it is important that you remove the Project Gutenberg footer text in the initial commit, before any other commits are added.

Because you haven't done much work on the project so far, I would recommend that you start over in a fresh repository, and attempt to follow the step-by-step guide as closely as possible for your first project (including the suggested commit structure).

I have made the revisions you mentioned. Sorry about the initial mess. Is there a reference for the suggested commit structure? I’m wondering if the commit messages so far are in accordance. If you have time, please take another look.

— 
Daniel Lyons

[Alex Cabal]

For your first project your commits should follow the step by step guide
exactly.

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[fus...@storytotell.org]

On Jul 2, 2026, at 10:42 AM, 'Weijia Cheng' via Standard Ebooks <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I took a look at your repo. Our repositiories should not include configuration files for external programs (e.g. .envrc, .gitignore, flake.nix, etc.) or temporary notes like what you have put into the readme. Also, it is important that you remove the Project Gutenberg footer text in the initial commit, before any other commits are added.

Because you haven't done much work on the project so far, I would recommend that you start over in a fresh repository, and attempt to follow the step-by-step guide as closely as possible for your first project (including the suggested commit structure).

I will revise the repo later today to make these changes. Thank you for the feedback!

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— 
Daniel Lyons

[Daniel Lyons]

OK, I have started over, if you have a second to check the work for the initial commit, I would appreciate it!

The next step is to split the files. I think this is going to wind up creating a file with just the title page and then the next file will be the first chapter. Is this expected?

[Weijia Cheng]

The new repo looks better, except that it looks like you still have your .gitignore file in the repository.

You can manually split off the epigraph and the halftitlepage before you split the chapers.

[Daniel Lyons]

On 7/2/26 8:43 PM, 'Weijia Cheng' via Standard Ebooks wrote:

The new repo looks better, except that it looks like you still have your .gitignore file in the repository.

That file was generated by se when it made the folder, but I will remove it.

You can manually split off the epigraph and the halftitlepage before you split the chapers.

I think there is just a title page. Do you have an example handy I can look at?

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-- 
--
Daniel K Lyons
fus...@storytotell.org

[Alex Cabal]

The .gitignore file ignores itself - so it should never have been formally committed even though it exists in the repo. If it did, then something is off with your repo

[Daniel Lyons]

On 7/2/26 10:00 PM, 'Alex Cabal' via Standard Ebooks wrote:

The .gitignore file ignores itself - so it should never have been formally committed even though it exists in the repo. If it did, then something is off with your repo

Well, it's gone now, but it's fairly normal practice in software to have .gitignore checked in.

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[Vince]

Sometimes, but it’s not our practice; as Weijia said, we specifically exclude it and all other dotfiles.

[Weijia Cheng]

The manual explains the structure of the halftitlepage and many other common pages. You can use se add-file halftitlepage to create a halftitlepage skeleton.

[Daniel Lyons]

On 7/3/26 5:30 AM, 'Weijia Cheng' via Standard Ebooks wrote:

The manual explains the structure of the halftitlepage and many other common pages. You can use se add-file halftitlepage to create a halftitlepage skeleton.

OK, I am through the second commit step. If it looks OK I will do the next step.

Thanks for your assistance!

On Friday, July 3, 2026 at 12:27:51 AM UTC-4 Vince wrote:

Sometimes, but it’s not our practice; as Weijia said, we specifically exclude it and all other dotfiles.

On Jul 2, 2026, at 11:02 PM, 'Daniel Lyons' via Standard Ebooks <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

On 7/2/26 10:00 PM, 'Alex Cabal' via Standard Ebooks wrote:

The .gitignore file ignores itself - so it should never have been formally committed even though it exists in the repo. If it did, then something is off with your repo

Well, it's gone now, but it's fairly normal practice in software to have .gitignore checked in.

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[Daniel Lyons]

I have a couple small questions:

1. The book is full of titles like Madame, Monsieur, Count, Duchess, etc. Should these be annotated with <span epub:type="z3998:name-title">? If so, also when they appear in dialogue with dropped sounds (as in "M'sieur")?
2. I manually added <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">M.</abbr> for what appear to be abbreviations for Monsieur. Is that right?
3. There are a considerable number of hyphenated rooms "dining-room," etc. I see that generally this isn't bothered with if it isn't caught by se modernize-spelling, but thought I'd check if that's still the case.
4. There are many locations in French in the book, is it best to annotate these with <span xml:lang="fr">?
5. In the source document, basically every French word or expression is in italics. The style guide suggests that these may be unnecessary. Is this something we do in a later step or should that be part of the semanticize or typogrify steps?

Otherwise, I am through the Modernize hyphenation and spelling step.

Thank you!

[Daniel Lyons]

Damn, the dining-room thing is answered in the next section. Oops! Sorry for the noise on that one.

[Weijia Cheng]

1. No, we usually only add the name-title semantic when those are abbreviations.

2. Yes, that's correct.

3. Looks like you figured that out.

4. See 8.2.9.2. You only need to add the span if "words in the name might be mispronounced in English pronunciation."

5. You should remove italics on words that are now found in Merriam-Webster during the "Manually add additional semantics" step as part of the semanticate step.

[fus...@storytotell.org]

On Jul 4, 2026, at 6:14 PM, 'Weijia Cheng' via Standard Ebooks <standar...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

4. See 8.2.9.2. You only need to add the span if "words in the name might be mispronounced in English pronunciation.”

So let’s take some examples and see if I have the right reasoning process. I might not be the best for this since I don’t know a lot about French.

- “Hôtel de l’Horloge” - I am not sure how to pronounce this myself so I wrapped it in the lang=fr span.

- “Grand Jeu” - I think this is pronounced like “zhoo” but would be pronounced in English a bit like “Jew,” so I think it should be wrapped 

- “Avenue l’Opéra” is probably pronounced fine as English

- “The Gare du Nord,” “Square of the Trinité” seems like the English pronunciation is probably OK

- “Hôtel Pension, Villa du Lac, Lacville” seems  also like the English pronunciation is probably OK

Agree so far?

— 
Daniel Lyons

[Weijia Cheng]

A helpful heuristic is to look at the name and see if there are any words that have entries in the English-language dictionary, but the English word is pronounced very differently from the French word. Wiktionary is very useful for this because it is one dictionary lookup for every language, and it sometimes has recordings of words in foreign languages. Usually this is an issue with common nouns that are part of the name, rather than proper nouns.

Looking at your examples, I would add the span around "Grand Jeu"  and "Hôtel Pension, Villa du Lac, Lacville" because the French pronunciations of grand and pension are nothing like the English equivalents. The other examples look fine if you were to naively pronounce them in English. 

[fus...@storytotell.org]

Thank you Weija!

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— 
Daniel Lyons

[fus...@storytotell.org]

One more question, regarding this sentence:

“Last week I had only M. le Comte Paul de Virieu⁠—no doubt Madame has heard of his brother-in-law, the Duc d’Eglemont?”

There are two proper nouns here which are not composed of dictionary words but are unlikely to be pronounced correctly as English. Should these be annotated with the span  as well or not?

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— 
Daniel Lyons

[Weijia Cheng]

You can use your best judgment on these cases, but generally I don't think it is worth adding the spans unless there are dictionary words involved.

[fus...@storytotell.org]

In that case I will leave these alone.

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— 
Daniel Lyons

[fus...@storytotell.org]

Another question:

The style guide says that numbers should be spelled out in certain circumstances. However, this book is pretty rife with spelled out numbers in cases that do not match the guide. Should I convert these instances to Arabic numerals to be in conformity with the guide?

The book also refers frequently to the currency “francs.” As far as I know, there is no special symbol for this, so I don’t think this should be changed to anything.

To give a representative example, I think this line:

“One of them,” whispered Madame Wachner eagerly, “had already lost eight thousand francs when I went downstairs to look for you! 

should be converted to this:

“One of them,” whispered Madame Wachner eagerly, “had already lost 8000 francs when I went downstairs to look for you!

Is this correct?

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Daniel Lyons

[Weijia Cheng]

Well, that case happens to fall under 8.8.3: "If they are whole numbers from 0–100 and are made greater by being paired with words like hundred, thousand, million, and so on."

I generally wouldn't trouble with changes to how the numbers presented unless you have an intuition that the numbers are being presented in a strange or unexpected way, in which case I would double-check against the manual. If it reads naturally, it is usually fine.

[fus...@storytotell.org]

I am to step 22: proofread. I’m going to generate the epub and start proofreading.

If you have time to take a look at what I have done so far and let me know what is obviously wrong, I would appreciate it.

Also, I still have warnings from se lint regarding halftitlepage, especially the <h4> for the year. I’m not altogether sure what is best to do about this page, so any advice you might have, I would appreciate!

Thank you,

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— 
Daniel Lyons

[Weijia Cheng]

You need to split off the epigraph into its own file. Also, the halftitlepage needs to follow the standard halftitlepage formatting. See https://standardebooks.org/manual/1.9.0/6-standard-ebooks-section-patterns#6.5

As I mentioned earlier in the thread, you can use se add-file halftitlepage to create a halftitlepage skeleton.

[Daniel Lyons]

I see, I didn't understand the purpose of the halftitlepage or know what an epigraph is.

I take it the flavortext about the what the author is known for and the year of publication is superfluous and I can just put the quotation in the epigraph.

I have made this change, if you have time to take a second glance at it.

Thank you!

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[Weijia Cheng]

Thanks, that looks better!

[Daniel Lyons]

Weija,

I have done corrections on chapters 1-2, please let me know if these two new commits are in the correct format and if the content is acceptable.

I would also like to suggest the "Girl with Cards" as the cover image, from the pre-screened database at https://standardebooks.org/artworks/lucius-kutchin/girl-with-cards

(I have found another image but after reading the guide and having no luck tracking down pre-1913 bibliography entries for it this seems like the better approach.)

Thank you,

[Weijia Cheng]

You should drop the punctuation commit (e1a5d2c9cfd5ad70c1f36a9f77b34299f10aff4f). None of those changes are necessary and in general we don't change punctuation aside from what is done as part of typogrify unless we think there is a printer's error. In this case the original text reads perfectly well and there is no reason to think the punctuation needs to be changed.

The painting looks fine and I assigned it to this book in the database.

[Daniel Lyons]

Weija,

Just so you know I have not disappeared, I am about halfway done with my proofread and have not discovered any new transcription errors through Chapter 14.

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