[First Project] Robur the Conqueror by Jules Verne

[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Hello all! It's my first post here, I'm in love with the project and it would be my pleasure to contribute even a little.

I saw Jules Verne on the "Wanted Ebooks" list, do you think I can start this one?

I've already installed the command-line tools and I confirm they work for me, I was able to run every step and generate a dummy epub file. Now I'm reading the Manual of Style, and I should be all set to start.

Can I have your green light to begin?

Best,

- Kos

[Alex Cabal]

Sure, pick one particular book and let us know and we can help you get
started!

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[Weijia Cheng]

Alex, I think Kos is referring to this one given the title.

[Alex Cabal]

Ah OK, I missed that.

This translation is anonymous so credit it to the first publisher, which
this page lists as "Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington"
https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Jules_Verne_Translations#Robur_le_Conqu.C3.A9rant

Make sure to find the page scans of the exact same translation, as there
are many different translations.

I don't see any formatting so it's possible PG removed it during
transcription. Once you find the page scans, eyeball each page to
restore any missing formatting like italics.

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

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 12/30/23 5:54 PM, Weijia Cheng wrote:
> Alex, I think Kos is referring to this one

> <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3808> given the title.

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/7a34f5f5-7161-430f-b353-9b8fad5e59c5n%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/7a34f5f5-7161-430f-b353-9b8fad5e59c5n%40googlegroups.com> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/7a34f5f5-7161-430f-b353-9b8fad5e59c5n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/7a34f5f5-7161-430f-b353-9b8fad5e59c5n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>>.

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[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Thank you! Going to get started with "Robur the Conqueror" then.

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[Alex Cabal]

https://github.com/Kos/jules-verne_robur-the-conqueror/

Weijia can you manage this with Robin reviewing?

> <mailto:standardebooks%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>
> > <mailto:standardebook...@googlegroups.com
> <mailto:standardebooks%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>>.

> > To view this discussion on the web visit
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[Weijia Cheng]

Sure, I will manage this.

[Robin Whittleton]

Sounds good.

On 2 Jan 2024, at 02:48, Weijia Cheng <weijia...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sure, I will manage this.

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[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Nice to meet you Weijia and Robin!

1. Can you please advise which scans I should use?

A. Works of Jules Verne, v. 14, 1911

B. The clipper of the clouds, 1887

Looks like both use the same translation. Edition B uses British English spelling.

2. Edition B also contains illustrations; shall we preserve them in the ebook?

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/C94E76F0-F330-42D8-BDD6-2F9051911CBA%40reala.net.

[Weijia Cheng]

1. Use A since it is the more recent edition.

2. No, we don't include decorative illustrations, only illustrations that are necessary to understand the plot (e.g. diagrams, maps, that sort of thing).

[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Hello! I'd like to check in.

I'm making some progress which you can follow along in the repo. I already corrected some issues from the transcript, but there's more work to do. (I can now see why good scans are essential!)

I have a few questions:

1. In dialogue, when addressing someone politely, is the correct capitalization "sir" or "Sir"? My source and my PG transcription seem to disagree on this.

2. Similarly, what's the proper way to capitalize a vessel name: "Go-ahead" vs "Go-Ahead"? (In the source, "Go-ahead" and "Goahead" appear interchangeably.)

3. How shall I semanticate the sound in phrases like the one below? The manual suggests the italic tag, does that apply in this example?

    " But in vain did they seek for any other sound than an interminable and inexplicable f-r-r-r which seemed to envelop them in a quivering atmosphere.

4. Last but not least, the book includes some words which strike as offensive today. What's the most appropriate and respectful way to address the issue? (The transcript I'm using opted to capitalize each instance of the word.)

Best,

- Kos

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/393330ef-3905-4aef-ba7f-b69168da0bc8n%40googlegroups.com.

[Weijia Cheng]

1. It looks like the scans use the lowercase sir, which is what I would have expected. Go with the scans and change them to lowercase.

2. You can probably leave it as it is capitalized in the scans, but make sure you normalize the hyphenation if you haven't done so already.

3. Yes, I think you can use italics per 8.2.6.

4. The SE editorial line is that we don't host bowdlerized editions of public domain books, or bowdlerize books ourselves. While no one should feel themselves obligated to work on or finish a book that they find offensive, we want to present books honestly as products of the time they came out of and often that involves concepts and terminology that are considered offensive today. In this case, for our purposes you should just leave it as it is in the PG transcript. The capitalization change of "negro" to "Negro" is line with our spelling modernization practices, where we change "sound-alike" spellings to their more modern version. You can see on Google Ngrams that the capitalized spelling clearly increased in popularity over time over the non-capitalized spelling--the history behind that is quite interesting since there was an entire movement led by W.E.B. Du Bois to encourage using the capitalized spelling. That's as far as our SE editorial policy goes.

For the next bit I'll take my SE editor hat off. This is one of the challenges of working on public domain books, written in a time when racism was deeply ingrained and normalized in the political and social establishment of English-speaking countries. Not long ago I (an ethnically Chinese person) had worked on Roads to Freedom by Bertrand Russell where he casually and unironically references the idea of the Yellow Peril in a book that otherwise had very little to do with that ideology and was interesting for me to read. Obviously, it's very frustrating, no matter what your ethnic or racial background is, to read that kind of rhetoric when you are working public domain literature. That's why I said at the start that no one should feel obligated to work on a book that they find offensive, since if I had started that book and then realized the entire book was like that, I definitely would have just given up on the project to save myself that sort of headache and passing along a book whose flaws outweighs its merits. Anyways, this is my way of saying that though we don't have the responsibility of "fixing" what people wrote in the past at SE, we do have the power to help decide what literary artifacts are worth sharing by choosing what projects we work on, and the presence of racist or otherwise discriminatory themes is a more than valid reason to drop a project if you really can't bring yourself to see it published as is.

[Alex Cabal]

For issues like these, you should follow the page scans and not
necessarily the transcription, because if they differ it might be
because the PG transcriber quietly bowdlerized it themselves. This
occurred for example in HG Wells' _Invisible Man_, where the PG
transcription quietly replaced the word "nigger" in print, with "slave"
in their transcription.

On 1/6/24 3:50 PM, Weijia Cheng wrote:
> 4. The SE editorial line is that we don't host bowdlerized editions of
> public domain books, or bowdlerize books ourselves. While no one should
> feel themselves obligated to work on or finish a book that they find
> offensive, we want to present books honestly as products of the time
> they came out of and often that involves concepts and terminology that
> are considered offensive today. In this case, for our purposes you
> should just leave it as it is in the PG transcript. The capitalization
> change of "negro" to "Negro" is line with our spelling modernization
> practices, where we change "sound-alike" spellings to their more modern
> version. You can see on Google Ngrams

> <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=negro%2CNegro&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3> that the capitalized spelling clearly increased in popularity over time over the non-capitalized spelling--the history behind that is quite interesting since there was an entire movement led by W.E.B. Du Bois to encourage using the capitalized spelling. That's as far as our SE editorial policy goes.

[Weijia Cheng]

Sure, I was suggesting that in this case though, if the only change was that PG capitalized "negro," that's actually in line with our other spelling modernization practices backed by ngrams. But if PG had made some other changes that was not a sound-alike spelling change, we would revert. Alex makes the final call, though.

[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Thank you, I'm grateful for the thorough answers!

I think I have what I need to continue.

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[David at Standard Ebooks]

I agree. That's why I dropped Wilkie Collins' Hide and Seek, which to modern eyes (well, mine at least) seems to include borderline paedophilia and certainly offensive paternalism by the rich.

David / Melbourne, Australia 

[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Was wondering, I think I'll need to rebase my git history and add some [Editorial] annotations.

For example, any kind of alignment of inconsistent spelling like discussed earlier constitutes an editorial change, correct?

Do I understand correctly that italicizing vessel names is not considered editorial?

[Weijia Cheng]

If you're restoring the transcription text to what is printed in the page scans you are referencing, e.g. lowercasing sir, then that doesn't constitute an editorial change. But if you are making a change that deviates from the original text from the page scans, like normalizing the hyphenation of "Go-ahead," that is an editorial change. Italicizing vessel names, and adding semantics in general, is not considered editorial since it is only changing the formatting/presentation of the text, and not the text itself.

[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Hello,

I have just pushed a few new commits. I ran aspell on the text and corrected the spelling where appropriate. I included some editorial changes to use American spelling consistently in the instances where Merriam-Webster called out a specific spelling as primarily British.

Next I'm going to begin proofreading! I'll appreciate hints on how to approach this; I thought about opening the epub on a device and comparing paragraph-by-paragraph with the scans? One type of error I've seen so far is a line from the book was missing in the transcript. Sometimes two paragraphs from the book were joined into one.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/6c22108f-4b7a-47fc-8337-5a501c5e9906n%40googlegroups.com.

[Weijia Cheng]

Although we convert British-style quotation marks to American-style, we don't change spelling between national styles, so we should revert those spelling changes. As for proofreading, usually what I like to do is download the file onto an ereader and do a smooth read of the text for errors, while also occasionally comparing paragraph by paragraph with the scans (especially if there are missing text errors like you've mentioned). I would also recommend reading the typography section of the manual before you proofread, especially with everything pertaining to semantics, so that you can keep an eye out for text that requires semantic markup as you read.

[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Hello, it's been a while since I last checked in with you.

I had a break but I'm back at proofreading. I have 5 chapters left.

This phase feels like it takes a lot of time, but it's very rewarding. I discover all kinds of problems; usually it's just a paragraph break in the wrong place or wrong punctuation, but sometimes I also discover an entire line of dialogue missing.

I'm going to follow up once the proofreading is done.

Best,

- Tom

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/810eb665-a169-41c3-b34d-efa179a1da47n%40googlegroups.com.

[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Greetings from 2025!

We're now a year older since I last posted here. This feels embarrassing to admit. I hope you all are doing well!

I have recently bought an e-book reader, which rekindled my interest in supporting Standard Ebooks. Proofreading is much more comfortable now, so I went ahead and completed my proofread of Robur the Conqueror.

Additionally I've updated to standardebooks==2.7.3 and did a whole round of updates. https://github.com/Kos/jules-verne_robur-the-conqueror

This means I'm now at step 23, the cover image. I remember being stuck on this for a while, but meanwhile this painting has been added to the SE database: https://standardebooks.org/artworks/maurice-jean-bourguignon/the-last-zeppelin-raid-the-night-of-january-29-30-1916

I like it because it leaves a lot to imagination when it comes to the shape of the aircraft. Normally a zeppelin wouldn't be my pick for this book, given how important it is to the plot that Robur's vessel is heavier than air, but this painting seems to fit the mood perfectly.

What do you think about this pick?

Additionally I have found some artifacts when reading the .kepub build on my Kobo reader:

1. [screenshot] The `se lint` command instructed me to use non-breaking hyphens for extended sound ("f-r-r-r-r"). My reader renders unnecessary white space right after such a word; they don't show up when I'm viewing the same .kepub file in Calibre reader.

2. [screenshot] I've also observed additional whitespace next to "south latitude", after the coordinates.

Are these known issues? Should I address them somehow?

[Weijia Cheng]

Ok, I assigned the painting to this book in the database. I have seen similar rendering artifacts before and unfortunately there is nothing we can do from our side. It is up to the ereader's renderer.

[Alex Cabal]

Hi Tomasz, this project has since been marked as abandoned and someone
else is working on it now. Sorry!

On 3/5/25 6:18 AM, Tomasz Wesołowski wrote:
> Greetings from 2025!
> We're now a year older since I last posted here. This feels embarrassing
> to admit. I hope you all are doing well!
>
> I have recently bought an e-book reader, which rekindled my interest in
> supporting Standard Ebooks. Proofreading is much more comfortable now,

> so I went ahead and *completed my proofread of Robur the Conqueror. *

>
> Additionally I've updated to standardebooks==2.7.3 and did a whole round
> of updates. https://github.com/Kos/jules-verne_robur-the-conqueror
> <https://github.com/Kos/jules-verne_robur-the-conqueror>
>
> This means I'm now at step 23, the cover image. I remember being stuck
> on this for a while, but meanwhile this painting has been added to the
> SE database:

> https://standardebooks.org/artworks/maurice-jean-bourguignon/the-last-zeppelin-raid-the-night-of-january-29-30-1916 <https://standardebooks.org/artworks/maurice-jean-bourguignon/the-last-zeppelin-raid-the-night-of-january-29-30-1916>

> I like it because it leaves a lot to imagination when it comes to the
> shape of the aircraft. Normally a zeppelin wouldn't be my pick for this
> book, given how important it is to the plot that Robur's vessel
> is heavier than air, but this painting seems to fit the mood perfectly.
> What do you think about this pick?
>
> Additionally I have found some artifacts when reading the .kepub build
> on my Kobo reader:
>

> 1. [screenshot] <https://postimg.cc/DShmxrwg> The `se lint` command

> instructed me to use non-breaking hyphens for extended sound
> ("f-r-r-r-r"). My reader renders unnecessary white space right after
> such a word; they don't show up when I'm viewing the same .kepub file in
> Calibre reader.

> 2. [screenshot] <https://postimg.cc/5jHHy9rw> I've also observed

> <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=negro%2CNegro&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3 <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=negro%2CNegro&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3>> that the capitalized spelling clearly increased in popularity over time over the non-capitalized spelling--the history behind that is quite interesting since there was an entire movement led by W.E.B. Du Bois to encourage using the capitalized spelling. That's as far as our SE editorial policy goes.

>
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[Tomasz Wesołowski]

That's understandable, no worries! Please reuse anything from my repo if that helps.

Going to stand by for now, please instruct if/when I should resume.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/1b0b5b6e-6f0d-4ddd-aaad-7622fcfde6e1%40standardebooks.org.

[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Weija,

I'm not working further on the book as instructed by Alex (remaining work for the record: cover image and content.opf),

however I wanted to follow up on the one specific issue I reported with additional whitespace after some punctuation. [this image]

I did more testing and observed that on my device (Kobo Clara):

- the issue is present in the kepub.epub build created with standardebooks==2.7.3,

- the issue is NOT present in the .epub build from the same version,

- the issue is NOT present in a .kepub.epub created by converting the standardebooks .epub build using kepubify.

This may suggest that it's a problem with standardebooks' kepub build process, rather than with the reader software itself.

Should I prepare some kind of small test case and open an issue in standardebooks github?

Best,

- Tom

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/6a45fcb2-9669-436f-9bc3-d163125ee7d8n%40googlegroups.com.

[Weijia Cheng]

That could be helpful. Please file an issue on the tools repo with your test case.

[Alex Cabal]

When you use a kepub, you trigger Kobo's advanced renderer.

When you use an epub, you trigger Kobo's old renderer which I believe is
ADE.

The two renderers do things differently which is why the different files
appear to have different results. However the kepub is almost the same
as the epub, it just has extra <span>s which the kepub format requires.

On 3/7/25 3:46 AM, Tomasz Wesołowski wrote:
> Weija,
>
> I'm not working further on the book as instructed by Alex (remaining
> work for the record: cover image and content.opf),
> however I wanted to follow up on the one specific issue I reported

> with*additional whitespace after some punctuation*. [this image]
> <https://postimg.cc/DShmxrwg>

>
> I did more testing and observed that on my device (Kobo Clara):
>

> - the issue is present in the *kepub.epub *build created with
> standardebooks==2.7.3,
> - the issue is NOT present in the *.epub* build**from the same version,
> - the issue is NOT present in a *.kepub.epub* created by converting the

> standardebooks .epub build using kepubify

> <https://pgaskin.net/kepubify/try/>.

>
> This may suggest that it's a problem with standardebooks' kepub build
> process, rather than with the reader software itself.
>
> Should I prepare some kind of small test case and open an issue in
> standardebooks github?
>
> Best,
> - Tom
>
>
>
> On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 at 13:26, Weijia Cheng <weijia...@gmail.com
> <mailto:weijia...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Ok, I assigned the painting to this book in the database. I have
> seen similar rendering artifacts before and unfortunately there is
> nothing we can do from our side. It is up to the ereader's renderer.
>
> On Wednesday, March 5, 2025 at 7:19:23 AM UTC-5 kos...@gmail.com

> <mailto:kos...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings from 2025!
> We're now a year older since I last posted here. This feels
> embarrassing to admit. I hope you all are doing well!
>
> I have recently bought an e-book reader, which rekindled my
> interest in supporting Standard Ebooks. Proofreading is much

> more comfortable now, so I went ahead and *completed my
> proofread of Robur the Conqueror. *

>
> Additionally I've updated to standardebooks==2.7.3 and did a
> whole round of updates.
> https://github.com/Kos/jules-verne_robur-the-conqueror
> <https://github.com/Kos/jules-verne_robur-the-conqueror>
>
> This means I'm now at step 23, the cover image. I remember being
> stuck on this for a while, but meanwhile this painting has been
> added to the SE database:

> https://standardebooks.org/artworks/maurice-jean-bourguignon/the-last-zeppelin-raid-the-night-of-january-29-30-1916 <https://standardebooks.org/artworks/maurice-jean-bourguignon/the-last-zeppelin-raid-the-night-of-january-29-30-1916>

> I like it because it leaves a lot to imagination when it comes
> to the shape of the aircraft. Normally a zeppelin wouldn't be my
> pick for this book, given how important it is to the plot that
> Robur's vessel is heavier than air, but this painting seems to
> fit the mood perfectly.
> What do you think about this pick?
>
> Additionally I have found some artifacts when reading the .kepub
> build on my Kobo reader:
>

> 1. [screenshot] <https://postimg.cc/DShmxrwg> The `se lint`

> command instructed me to use non-breaking hyphens for extended
> sound ("f-r-r-r-r"). My reader renders unnecessary white space
> right after such a word; they don't show up when I'm viewing the
> same .kepub file in Calibre reader.

> 2. [screenshot] <https://postimg.cc/5jHHy9rw> I've also observed

> <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=negro%2CNegro&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3 <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=negro%2CNegro&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3>> that the capitalized spelling clearly increased in popularity over time over the non-capitalized spelling--the history behind that is quite interesting since there was an entire movement led by W.E.B. Du Bois to encourage using the capitalized spelling. That's as far as our SE editorial policy goes.

>
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[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Opened issue: https://github.com/standardebooks/tools/issues/801

Testing results: https://github.com/Kos/jules-verne_robur-the-conqueror/tree/whitespace-rendering-test

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/standardebooks/3cf21a8d-bf3d-4b95-b46e-726e93773374%40standardebooks.org.

[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Hello,

It's been a month, I thought I'd circle back here and ask about the latest status? I do have my repository ready for review if you'd like to resume.

Best,

- Tomasz

[Tomasz Wesołowski]

Oh, scratch that, just saw the other thread, looks like there's a third instance of "Robur" on the way.

I was kind of hoping I'll get a chance to resume my project in case the 2nd attempt from January got marked as inactive, but looks like you have decided otherwise, I accept that.

I'll definitely stick around; over the last month I have been getting familiar with Distributed Proofreaders because the SE Wanted list contains a book dear to me but no good transcript exists and I don't feel experienced enough to tackle it myself because it's a 'Hard' project.

Best,

- Tom