[First Project] The Layton Court Mystery by Anthony Berkeley

[Robert Leonard]

Hi Everybody, 

I've read a bit of it and seems interesting. It would be nice to bring it up to an easily readable ebook standard.  

I've already dabbled quite a bit in CSS code, creating eBooks in Sigil, but haven't done much with standardized formatting (laid out in the Manual of Style). I see it as a great exercise in learning formal style and strengthening my clean coding skills. 

I've performed a cursory search within this group and it doesn't look like anyone has picked up this book yet for conversion. I've already started reading the step-by-step guide to see if there were any major learning curves and I feel pretty confident that I could successfully perform what is needed. 

Transcription: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72883

Page Scans: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Layton_Court_Mystery/To3R4En8s4gC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=The+Layton+Court+Mystery&printsec=frontcover

Cover: I'll need to look a little deeper for PD artwork that'll fit the narrative. It's a witty mid-20s murder mystery, so I have a lot to go on, I'll just need to take a few moments and scan some of the public domain image collections provided by a number of art museums. 

[Alex Cabal]

Great, that one would be a good start.

There is a dedication so you'll have to include a half title page.

If you find a reasonably sized scan of the the first edition dust jacket
(of a hand behind a window) you could use that as a cover. You will need
to photoshop out the title and author.

This #1 in the Roger Sheringham series, see the manual for how to
include that metadata.

Otherwise this should be pretty straightforward.

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

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 mark you as having started.

Have fun! :)

On 8/29/25 3:20 PM, Robert Leonard wrote:
> Hi Everybody,
>
> I've read a bit of it and seems interesting. It would be nice to bring
> it up to an easily readable ebook standard.
>
> I've already dabbled quite a bit in CSS code, creating eBooks in Sigil,
> but haven't done much with standardized formatting (laid out in the
> Manual of Style). I see it as a great exercise in learning formal style
> and strengthening my clean coding skills.
>
> I've performed a cursory search within this group and it doesn't look
> like anyone has picked up this book yet for conversion. I've already
> started reading the step-by-step guide to see if there were any major
> learning curves and I feel pretty confident that I could successfully
> perform what is needed.
>

> *Transcription*: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/72883
> *Page Scans*: https://www.google.com/books/edition/
> The_Layton_Court_Mystery/To3R4En8s4gC?
> hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=The+Layton+Court+Mystery&printsec=frontcover

> Cover: I'll need to look a little deeper for PD artwork that'll fit the
> narrative. It's a witty mid-20s murder mystery, so I have a lot to go
> on, I'll just need to take a few moments and scan some of the public
> domain image collections provided by a number of art museums.
>

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> a7a2-50b75e555e7an%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Robert Leonard]

Excellent and thank you! I'll start setting up the repository over the weekend and will respond with confirmation once everything is set up. 

[Robert Leonard]

Alright, I think I'm getting it. Had a bit of a learning curve getting a Linux distro to work on my windows laptop, things are starting to come together now. Also had to dust off come cobwebs with my Linux command line knowledge. I'm setting things up now and will (fingers crossed) have set up a GitHub repository shortly. 

[Robert Leonard]

Below is the link to the repository for the project. I've performed an initial commit, cleaned out the header/footer language attached from PG. 

https://github.com/pahootaman/anthony-berkeley_the-layton-court-mystery

Thanks again!

Rob

[Alex Cabal]

OK, Lukas will manage this with David reviewing.

> https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/4-semantics
> <https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/4-semantics>
>
> https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/7-high-level-
> structural-patterns <https://standardebooks.org/manual/
> latest/7-high-level-structural-patterns>
>
> https://standardebooks.org/manual/latest/8-typography

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

> d/msgid/ <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/>
> > standardebooks/a69d3c38-c52e-4255-
> a7a2-50b75e555e7an%40googlegroups.com
> <http://40googlegroups.com>
> > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/
> a69d3c38-c52e-4255- <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/
> standardebooks/a69d3c38-c52e-4255->
> > a7a2-50b75e555e7an%40googlegroups.com?
> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer
> <http://40googlegroups.com?
> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>>.

>
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> utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>.

[Robert Leonard]

Thanks!

Hi Lukas and David, glad to meet you look forward to this project. I've already started some of the initial breaking up/cleaning up of the original transcript (see commit history) ahead of the actual review work. I mainly did that to double check I had everything set up (working via WSL-> Ubuntu in windows 11)  and tool sets installed correctly. I'll be doing the bulk of reviewing via VS code. A bit more sophisticated a setup than using Sigil, but the coding looks more or less the same (I'm more familiar with CSS and Python... XHTML isn't that hard to pick up though, fairly similar). 

Thank you again for the opportunity, this is exciting!

Rob

[David]

Hi Rob - Since I'm up for the review on this one, I thought I'd take a quick peak at your repo to see how things are going so far. Some things caught my eye:

1. I'm not sure why you made the "squo" changes in this commit. It was correct as it was, so worth dropping that commit (or reverting)?

2. At some point you're getting an ` xmlns=""` string showing up in the XHTML tags. I don't know where this could be coming from (I use VSCodium, the "libre" version of VS Code), and have never seen that before. But you don't want this littering your project.

3. And just to encourage you either to copy/paste commit messages from the Step-by-Step guide, or take great care in typing them out! ;-)

Hope this helps as you gather momentum! Lukas will, of course, be fielding any questions you have moving forward.

David / Fife, UK

[Robert Leonard]

Hi David, 

Thank you for steering me in the right direction, I'll look at 1, that may have been caused by some of the tools used to automate across-the-board-changes. Reverting may be the easiest solution. I noticed the weird string throughout each document as well, I'm using VS Code, but have used Codium quite a bit when I was exclusively using Linux. I may play around with a clean copy of the original transcript and see if I get the same results. 

Yes yes, I noticed my typo on a commit, lol. 

Thank you again,

Rob

[Robert Leonard]

Hi David, 

I couldn't quite see what was creating all the junk code using VS Code so I started wiped my repository clean and started clean using Codium. I don't know why I didn't just use Codium to begin with, I like it better. The transcript already looks much better. 

I'm going to start chipping away at the formatting this week but I do have one question (that I don't immediately see an answer to in the Style Manual); for a dedication, do I create a separate file for that (e.g., separate from a chapter file)? Currently, I have a XHTML file simply named "dedication" with the text, but wasn't 100% sure how it should be listed in the directory. I know, small thing to get hung up on, but I'm someone who is a stickler for process, which is great for this type of exercise (I'm actually having a lot of fun!).

Thank you again, 

Rob

[David]

I'm glad that's worked out for you, Rob.

Lukas will be fielding your questions moving forward. In this case you can either find an "exemplar" from an existing ebook (the "old" way). Better, delete your current empty file, and make a new one with `se add-file dedication .` (See the "endnotes" step in the Producing guide which gives another use for this `se` command.) That will produce a "populated" file with the necessary framework.

Hope that helps! And over to Lukas... ;-)

[Robert Leonard]

Thanks!

Hi Lucas. I've gone in and started cleaning up the transcript. There's a small number of commits made that are pretty easy to follow but there was one where I accidentally labeled wrong (Was thinking of "semanticate" when I was actually conforming sections and titles). 

There's a commit for modernizing spelling. The tool also corrected many of the hyphen-spacing between older words. There were a few instances where I left in the hyphen, per Merrian Webster's current spelling and usage. 

I've mostly been working on formatting of the individual files per the style guide but will start going through and correcting semantics, especially with italicized and foreign words. 

Please let me know if anything jumps out at you that needs my immediate attention. 

Thank you again!

Rob

[Lukas Bystricky]

For the most part it looks like you're on the right track. A few observations:

1. You have a merge commit there; I'm not exactly sure what it's merging, but we almost always avoid merge commits. If you can rebase it out now that would be best. It can be a bit tricky though, so let me know if you need help with that.

2. As you mentioned one of the commits has the wrong message. That should also be fixed, but it's much easier so you can wait to do that if you want. 

3. Typically we leave the hyphen changes from modernize-spelling, regardless of what MW says, unless it's actually a different word. It's just too much work to go through all the changes and compare with MW every time. 

[Vince]

We actually do want to fix modernize-spelling, specifically our words file, if it is dehyphenating words that M-W says should be hyphenated, or it if’s not dehyphenating words that should be. Rarely, words exist both ways in M-W, depending on noun vs. verb, etc.; in those cases, they have to be dealt with manually.

I’ve submitted a PR for far-fetched and tight-lipped. In the future, you can either let us know what words are being handled incorrectly on the list, or you can submit a PR yourself.

Thanks!

[Lukas Bystricky]

Yes, that's a good point Vince. We would want any changes to hyphenation to be done at a corpus level, not in individual ebooks, but of course improvements to the toolset are always welcome. So in the future if you see any hyphenation that doesn't match MW feel free to submit a PR. That's entirely optional though; as I mentioned it can be a lot of work. 

[Robert Leonard]

Thanks Lukas and Vince!

For the hyphenation, the modern spelling tool and MW were apples to apples except in a single instance in which it was clearly a matter of context on how the two words were used in a sentence (the tool wanted to merge them, MW said no). I'll leave that be for now. I do agree, changes should come at the top level to standardize consistency; this is my first project so I want to focus on getting the process right with this exercise before submitting a PR. 

Yeah, I don't know what happened with the merge. Chalk it up to my experience with Git from command line (much more comfortable using it from Codium and GitHub). Originally, I was trying to change the description of the commit message via command line and for some reason, it generated a branch that needed merged, it's a mess (I know, lol). I haven't had to rebase before, I'll look into it first. If I run into trouble, I'll come yelling. 

Thank you both again for your hard work. 

Thank, 

Rob

[Robert Leonard]

Hi Lucas, 

I've made typogriphy and semanticate (excuse the typo in the commit name) commits pushed into my repository. 

I'll get to cleaning my commit history in a bit but one thing I noticed while reviewing changes before pushing my last commit was some weirdness going on with elipses throughout. It doesn't look like anything any of the SE tools did, it may be from the original scan from the transcripts. I need to re-review the rules in the style manual to how those should be standardized. 

[Alex Cabal]

`se typogrify` should standardize ellipses in almost all cases. They
will appear as a hair space followed by a single ellipses character,
optionally followed by another hair space and period.

> should be hyphenated, or it if’s /not/ dehyphenating words

>> rleona...@gmail.com <http://gmail.com/>wrote:

>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Hi Lucas. I've gone in and started cleaning up the
>> transcript. There's a small number of commits made
>> that are pretty easy to follow but there was one where
>> I accidentally labeled wrong (Was thinking of
>> "semanticate" when I was actually conforming sections
>> and titles).
>>
>> There's a commit for modernizing spelling. The tool
>> also corrected many of the hyphen-spacing between
>> older words. There were a few instances where I left
>> in the hyphen, per Merrian Webster's current spelling
>> and usage.
>>
>> I've mostly been working on formatting of the
>> individual files per the style guide but will start
>> going through and correcting semantics, especially
>> with italicized and foreign words.
>>
>> Please let me know if anything jumps out at you that
>> needs my immediate attention.
>

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[Lukas Bystricky]

I don't see that you've run typogrify in your commit history, maybe I missed it or maybe you haven't pushed it. But in any case, what's wrong with the ellipses? Typogrify should change three consecutive periods to an ellipsis glyph (i.e. …). Depending on which editor you're using this may render a bit strangely. 

(See 8.7.6) 

[Robert Leonard]

I think you're right, I was looking at comparisons via GitHub and it looked strange, but I do see it must have been cleaned up with the Typogrify tool. 

The Typogrify commit should be in the repository, It's the second from most recent commit. 

[Robert Leonard]

Hi Lucas, 

I'm running into an issue while running the lint tool. I keep getting an error relating to the a block quoted list on chapter 15. To me, the coding looks correct but I'm getting the error message "Element requires at least one block-level child", below is the lint tool error message and accompanying code. 

 s-007 │ Manual Review │ chapter-15.xhtml │ Element requires at least one block-level child.                                                                                                                   │
                                                                          → │ <li><abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> A. Grierson.</li>                                                                                                                                                                  → │ <li><abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> R. Sheringham.</li>                                                                                                                                                            → │ <li>Bull.</li>  

<blockquote class="result">

                <div>

                    <ol>

                        <li><abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> A. Grierson.</li>

                        <li><abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> R. Sheringham.</li>

                        <li>Bull.</li>

                    </ol>

                    <p>Distance between first and second, ten yards; between second and third, one five-barred gate (taken by the second in his stride).</p>

                </div>

            </blockquote>

Also, the sentence beneath the list is italicized in the original text. The sentence is a note written along with the 3-person list. The italicized element list in the style manual didn't have a 100% fit for something like this, any help with that? (i.e., would I use the <q> element?)

Thank you again. I wanted to have this piece of code cleared up before performing the next commit, it's the last chapter-related error I have when running lint (everything else being items dealing with metadata and the colophon). 

[Lukas Bystricky]

Lint is complaining about the <li> element not having a child <p> (see 5.6). This particular example is not exactly a blockquote so you can keep the <ol> but remove the <blockquote> and <div> tags. 

Regarding the last sentence, <q> is for quotations that otherwise don't have quotation marks which isn't the case here. I'd say an unsemanticated <i> is fine. 

P.S. In the future if it's best if you post a screenshot of the relevant part of the scans.

[Robert Leonard]

Will do, I'll reference with copies of the original scans in the future. 

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction on the other issues, that should clear things up. 

[Robert Leonard]

Hi Lucas, 

Thanks again for your last suggestion, I made the revisions, sent the commit, and have moved on to proofreading. I've proofread chapter 1 and have seen no issues stemming from the SE tools or compared to the original text (using the "Things to Look Out For When Proofreading" guide). It helps immensely that the original text is from the 20th century and from a British author with one foot firmly planted in the American writing style. All in all, I feel lucky to have picked a pretty straight forward text as my first project.

My next question is what is the process for communications during this part of the project? If there's no revisions/changes needed, there's nothing to commit. In the meantime, do I just message in this email thread my progress? 

Thanks again, 

Rob

[Lukas Bystricky]

It sounds like you have things under control. Basically you can just message whenever there's something you're unsure of. If we don't hear back from you for several months we may poke you. 

[Robert Leonard]

Hi Lucas, 

I've proofread the transcript a few times and committed a small number of editorial changes regarding the Americanization of the word "skeptic" and "skeptically" (was spelled with a 'c' in the original text). Otherwise, the tools did their job wonderfully. 

Saying that, I'm moving on to next steps and wanted to lock-in a cover art before it gets taken. I've found nice oil painting named "Landscape with a Bull" from the SE artworks library (https://standardebooks.org/artworks/anonymous/landscape-with-a-bull), that would go great with the book. Looks like the public domain status has already been vetted, which makes things easier. 

If needed, here's my rationale for wanting to use this picture. There's a three-chapter arc in the middle of the whodunit mystery where the two protagonists follow a series of clues that lead to the name "Mr. Prince", and his location at a nearby farm on the other side of the village from Layton Court. The primary protagonist, Roger, spends an entire chapter creating an imaginative story (all based off minimal evidence and LOTS of assumptions) that this Mr. Prince is the killer. They get to the farm, is told by an old man near the entrance that Mr. Prince is in the field, and run out there to tackle and interrogate him. Mr. Prince ends up being a prize-winning bull with a temper. This leads to an almost out-of-place comedic scene involving the bull chasing the two men through and out of the farm.  It's a real 'Don Quixote' moment for the story. 

I know this is a long winded explanation for why I feel the picture would fit the story, but for anyone who has read The Layton Court Mystery, they would IMMEDIATELY get the reference (not unlike the myriad of versions of Don Quixote with windmills on the cover). Let me know if I need to do anything extra on my end to get approval. 

Thank you again!
Rob

[Robert Leonard]

Sorry, should have attached linked and screenshots of the [Editorial] commits for ease of review. Here you go. 

repository: https://github.com/pahootaman/anthony-berkeley_the-layton-court-mystery

Editorial commits

Chapter 8 [src/epub/text/chapter-8.xhtml]

Chapter 24 [src/epub/text/chapter-24.xhtml]

Chapter 25 [src/epub/text/chapter-25.xhtml]

Chapter 27 [src/epub/text/chapter-27.xhtml]

Note: editorial changes to chapter 8 and 24 are on the same commit. After I committed and sent it off, I decided to do it on a per-chapter basis. 

[Robert Leonard]

Saw a typo on my part during when reviewing the commit for Chapter 27. That's been fixed in a new editorial commit. 

Commit link: https://github.com/pahootaman/anthony-berkeley_the-layton-court-mystery/commit/1c4b53723fff2526b9f90ba6c37d5cb2903a608d

Commit name:  [Editorial] - removed user entered accidental 'a' from the word "skeptically" on line 39.

Commit screenshot:

[David Reimer]

I'm not Lukas (note the "k"! ;) but I am puzzled (and will be reviewing in due course.

As far as I can see, "sceptic", etc., is a "chiefly British spelling":
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sceptic

and this is an `en-GB` book. That means the the spelling with `c` is absolutely appropriate. What made you think it should be "Americanized"? You can see why I'm puzzled!

David / Fife, UK

[Robert Leonard]

Apologies, the technical guide called for using American spelling of words. If I misunderstood the directions put forward by the guide, I'll notate for my future reviews and revert to the original en-GB spelling. 

[Vince]

> On Oct 21, 2025, at 3:06 PM, Robert Leonard <rleona...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Apologies, the technical guide called for using American spelling of words.

If it does so, it needs to be corrected. Where specifically did you see this?

[Alex Cabal]

It doesn't say American spelling, it says American quotation style,
which is double quotes for dialog and not single quotes. Otherwise we
don't change between en-US and en-GB.

On 10/21/25 3:06 PM, Robert Leonard wrote:
> Apologies, the technical guide called for using American spelling of
> words. If I misunderstood the directions put forward by the guide, I'll
> notate for my future reviews and revert to the original en-GB spelling.
>
> On Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 3:27:51 PM UTC-4 David wrote:
>
> I'm not Lukas (note the "k"! ;) but I am puzzled (and will be
> reviewing in due course.
>
> As far as I can see, "sceptic", etc., is a "chiefly British spelling":

> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sceptic <https://
> www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sceptic>

> and this is an `en-GB` book. That means the the spelling with `c` is
> absolutely appropriate. What made you think it should be
> "Americanized"? You can see why I'm puzzled!
>
> David / Fife, UK
>
> On Tue, 21 Oct 2025 at 20:18, Robert Leonard wrote:
>
> Sorry, should have attached linked and screenshots of the
> [Editorial] commits for ease of review. Here you go.
>
> repository: https://github.com/pahootaman/anthony-berkeley_the-

> layton-court-mystery <https://github.com/pahootaman/anthony-
> berkeley_the-layton-court-mystery>
>
> *Editorial commits*
> Chapter 8 [src/epub/text/chapter-8.xhtml]
> 1.png
>
>
> Chapter 24 [src/epub/text/chapter-24.xhtml]
> 2.png
>
>
> Chapter 25 [src/epub/text/chapter-25.xhtml]
> 3.png
> Chapter 27 [src/epub/text/chapter-27.xhtml]
> 4.png
>
> *Note*: editorial changes to chapter 8 and 24 are on the same

> commit. After I committed and sent it off, I decided to do it on
> a per-chapter basis.
>
> On Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 2:54:30 PM UTC-4 Robert Leonard
> wrote:
>
> Hi Lucas,
>
> I've proofread the transcript a few times and committed a
> small number of editorial changes regarding the
> Americanization of the word "skeptic" and "skeptically" (was
> spelled with a 'c' in the original text). Otherwise, the
> tools did their job wonderfully.
>
> Saying that, I'm moving on to next steps and wanted to lock-
> in a cover art before it gets taken. I've found nice oil
> painting named "Landscape with a Bull" from the SE artworks
> library (https://standardebooks.org/artworks/anonymous/

> landscape-with-a-bull <https://standardebooks.org/artworks/
> anonymous/landscape-with-a-bull>), that would go great with

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[Lukas Bystricky]

Cover art looks good, I've assigned it.