User:AmbrosiaN
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About Me
- Real Name: Amber (Ambrosia is a longtime nickname)
- Teams: LaTeX Typesetters, Team Esperanto, Team Macintosh
- Location: Pennsylvania (I'm in EST, UTC-0500)
- DP Niches: Esperanto, LaTeX projects, anything that's been in PP too long
- Jabber Handle: AmberOnAMission[at]gmail[dot]com or AmbrosiaN[at]jabber[dot]org
In real life, I'm a graduate student in Engineering Science and since that's evidently not enough to keep me busy, I joined DP.
My Roles in DP
While still relatively very new at DP, I like to think I've been very active! I do have several roles in our little community including:
- Post Processor
- Content Provider
- LaTeX Typesetter
- Occasional Smooth Reader
- Rounds: P1, P2, F1
- Forum enthusiast
I am proficient with different types coding, so things like LaTeX and HTML are particularly suited to my strengths!
My Tech Stats
A short list of my system and relevant programs. (The advice following this section may not be of use to non-Mac users.)
- MacBook Pro running 10.5.8 (Leopard)
- Guiguts
- Guiprep
- TeXShop
- TextWrangler
- Gimp
- Preview
- Firefox [I also check my HTML on at least IE (on my lab PC) and Safari]
Computer resources at my university give me access to: Omnipage, ReadIris, Photoshop CS2, and more. (I am fairly knowledgeable in Photoshop if help is needed.)
My Personal PP Checklist
This list came about as I was discussing the process with srjfoo and pointing out some of the issues I have with the current list. This is by no means a "definitive checklist," but may be helpful to other PPers, especially those still developing their method. Everyone's will be a little different, but there are generalities that will be common to all processes.
Starting Out
Pick a project
- There are (at present) over 1000 books available for PP, so there's plenty to pick from! Certain genres go quickly and never seem to have a lot in them.
- Look through the PP project listings under the PP tab (you must have access to the PP round to actually check out the project to yourself).
- When you see one that interests you, go to the project page, download the page images (the links are right under the checkboxes for project updates)
- Open all of the pages in Preview (CMD+A to select all, then double click to open them all at once in one window).
- Now scan through the pages, checking for:
- Overall number of images (I like working with images, but like to have 1 text and 1-2 image-laden projects, for variety)
- Difficult tables
- Language peculiarities
- Weird layouts
- Anything else that may cause you not to take it
- If you don't find anything off-putting in the scans, go to the project comments and see what the proofers and foofers had to say. Again, if there's anything you don't want to handle, go back to looking.
Download and organize
- When you find a project you like, check the project out for PP (look for the button under the download links) and download the text documents.
- These come in zipped files, which my computer is set up to unzip onto my Desktop as soon as they're finished downloading.
- Trash the zipped files, then rename the images folder to "pngs" and the text folder to "Other".
- Open the "Other" folder and drag the main .txt file onto the Desktop.
- Tip: Try to pick something short with no capitals. When I work on something like "One Hundred Books Famous in English Literature", I title them "onehund". "A History of Bohemian Literature" became "bohemianlit", etc.
- In your PP folder (mine is at: ~/DP/PP) create a new folder. Drag the two folders ("Others" and "pngs") and the title.txt into the project folder.
- Tip: This folder and the main file are easiest to deal with if they are renamed something like title and title.txt.
Initial check
- Open title.txt in Text Wrangler (TW).
- This is where my process begins to differ from the main Guiguts (GG) checklist.
- Tip: Editing in TW will NOT stop you from opening this in GG later, using page anchors, etc. Be careful not to harm the page separators!
- It is easier to deal with the file in TW at this point then GG.
- Open all the images in a single window (I do this in Preview again, see "Pick a Project").
- Create a second (new) document in TW. This is where I keep the notes I need in future steps. I usually save it as "First Check" in the title project folder.
- Now look through the text carefully.
- This does not always mean reading fully for me, but it does mean scrutinizing each page. Some will argue this is easier when reading, but I find that I find more if I'm focused on finding errors and save reading for later.
- As you come across certain features in the text, it's best to make a note for later processing in your "First Check" document. This is easiest with TW, as it has tabs for multiple open projects. You can also separate the windows (I work on a laptop and this becomes a space issue).
- Features to note:
- Footnotes (# of FN, png #, pg #, multiple anchors?)
- Images (png #, pg #, size, color, hi-res provided?)
- Non-Latin 1 characters
- I only keep track of non-Latin 1 characters if working with text that contains a limited number of specific Unicode characters, like letters with carons and circumflexes.
- Poetry Sections (for non-prose works: png #, pg #)
- Block Quotes
- Transliterations (png #, pg #)
- Spellings or hyphenations to check carefully
- Words spelled incorrectly in the original
- Changes made to the original text (only if they can't be helped)
- Anything else that may pose a problem later
- Other things to check carefully:
- Markup—especially for short words like "is" or "he", which are easily missed
- Short words like "be", "us", "and"
- It gets a little ridiculous to go through all of these in GG, so I try to focus on he/be errors and other short words to avoid going through these later.
- Sentence ending punctuation
- Diacritics/Special characters
- Tip: If you know you'll need to make a Unicode document, either start replacing the diacritical characters now (either with correct markup, e.g. [vc], or the actual characters). Note: GG has reduced my UTF-8 diacritics to gibberish, but usually it's repetitive gibberish that can be searched and replaced easily.
- Tip: If there are a lot of non-Latin characters, it's much easier to do a "Replace All" expression than fix them all by hand (e.g. Find=[oe] Replace=œ, &c.) The ability to do non-regex searches more easily is one of the best reasons to use TW instead of GG.
- Markup across pages
- Tip: If there is an </i> before and <i> after the page separator, leave it, or your page numbers will become italicized in HTML. However, check that poetry blocks and block quotes won't be split in the middle.
- Correct punctuation [in particular, I've found ellipses (i.e. ...) and hyphens/en-dashes/em-dashes, &c.]
- Features to note:
My DP Work
Content in Progress
Currently have CCs and in the process of prepping:
- La Rabistoj: Dramo en kvin aktoj by Friedrich Schiller, Translated into Esperanto by Dro. L. L. Zamenhof (PM: bunny-crunch)
- Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe by Svante Arrhenius, Translated into English by Dr. H. Borns (PM: Adair)
- Radio-Active Substances by Mdme. Marie Sklodowska Curie (PM: Adair)
- Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Vol. XV.
- Condensation of Determinants, being a new and brief Method for computing their arithmetical values. By the Rev. C. L. Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) (PM: Carlos?)
I have other works available to CC, including those from my university library, please PM me if you have any interest.
Works Currently In PP
In Progress
- Bibliographical notes on one hundred books famous in English literature (1903)
- One hundred books famous in English literature (1902)
- Jewish Influences in American Life: Volume III