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Project Gutenberg had (has?) a tendency toward plaintext that always put me off. (And it has been over a decade I'm sure since I explored the site—so I am no do

Project Gutenberg had (has?) a tendency toward plaintext that always put me off. (And it has been over a decade I'm sure since I explored the site—so I am no doubt now misinformed.) I like a styled formatted book—would prefer PDFs. (I know, not a popular format apparently.) I like the idea of Project Gutenberg but guess I found book scans on archive.org my preference. My go-to example is Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" with the fantastic art of John Tenniel and Carroll's sometimes creative formatting of the prose… I see they (Project Gutenberg) have ePub now, which can be good if well done. (If not well done it can be a kind of mess. Re-flowable "HTML", paginated… Anyone ever try to print a long web page and did you enjoy the result? Perhaps that is as much on the ePub reader though.)

graemep 5mo ago
I have got quite a few books over the years from Gutenberg, and the epubs have been fine 0 even of illustrated ones.
RattlesnakeJake 5mo ago
Check out Standard eBooks. They take the text from Gutenberg and add a level of polish to the ePubs.
JLO64 5mo ago
As others here have mentioned, https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/ is excellent and my understanding is that they use Gutenberg books as a source for theirs but done up much nicer.
- dempedempe 5mo ago
  Source can be anything with the original text, but, more often than not, ends up being PG.
- everybodyknows 5mo ago
  You can contribute to Standard Ebooks by finding OCR errors, then pushing your fixes to https://github.com/standardebooks https://github.com/standardebooks
jiffygist 5mo ago
I on the other hand prefer epubs for fiction. I mostly read on the phone.
JSeiko 5mo ago
We're supporting EPUB3 for the vast majority of books! At the same time we also have a "Plain Text" version for each as in a sense it's the most robust. PdFs are in the works!
- JKCalhoun 5mo ago
  That's cool. I'll have to read up on EPUB3—I'm not familiar with it. (I worked on iBooks for the Mac like 15 years ago—it's where I got to dive into the ePub format. A lot has changed in the standard since I am sure.) EDIT: looks like EPUB3 has a "paginated" mode as well as more sophisticated layout tags. Also appears to have support for ruby and vertical writing modes. This was not yet supported in WebKit when I worked on iBooks. Somehow, this white guy from Kansas (who knows no language other than English) got tapped to implement the vertical TOC for Asian languages. Also tasked with annotating the ePUB pages to display (also vertical) ruby text…
the_af 5mo ago
I like plain text. You can always post process it into any other format you prefer.
- JSeiko 5mo ago
  it's also very "accessible" - good for assistive technologies and people with "ou-of-the-ordinary" requirements
  - robin_reala 5mo ago
    Well, the problem is that you lose then all the semantic information that was encoded into the HTML or ePub versions. Those tend to be better for assistive tech users.
- lxgr 5mo ago
  Not really, given that it can’t represent even basic formatting such as bold or italic text, chapter markers etc. As an output format it’s ok, but as an input format, it’s almost as bad as PDF.
gluejar 5mo ago
PDF coming this year.
skrtskrt 5mo ago
The common issue with PDFs is that e-readers generally have terrible support for them.
gofreddygo 5mo ago
I love, love, looove the fact that I can have a book's html version on project gutenberg bookmarked and continue to read across devices without ever having to login. I use the browser's inbuilt capability extensively to enhance my reading experience (fonts, backgrounds, text to speech, print formatting, share snippets). None of this is a good experience with pdf, epub or any other format. I've read more (meaningful) text on PG than any other digital platform. Huge fan. Thanks for all the work and for keeping it clean and free
- JSeiko 5mo ago
  Interesting. Do you "just" use the browser's built-in capabilities or also some browser extensions?
  - gofreddygo 5mo ago
    I just use the built-in capabilities these days as everything that I would need is in there. This was not true many years ago when I did use some browser extensions.
iberator 5mo ago
check it again. most books have epub avalible
tangledhelix 5mo ago
This is covered in the FAQ - https://www.gutenberg.org/help/faq.html#why-is-project-gutenberg-so-set-on-using-plain-text https://www.gutenberg.org/help/faq.html#why-is-project-guten... And as another person noted, the vast majority of books have HTML, EPUB, Mobi formats. We are also looking at both KEPUB (Kobo) and PDF which will probably come in the future.

graemep 5mo ago

I have got quite a few books over the years from Gutenberg, and the epubs have been fine 0 even of illustrated ones.

RattlesnakeJake 5mo ago

Check out Standard eBooks. They take the text from Gutenberg and add a level of polish to the ePubs.

JLO64 5mo ago

As others here have mentioned, https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/ is excellent and my understanding is that they use Gutenberg books as a source for theirs but done up much nicer.

dempedempe 5mo ago
Source can be anything with the original text, but, more often than not, ends up being PG.
everybodyknows 5mo ago
You can contribute to Standard Ebooks by finding OCR errors, then pushing your fixes to https://github.com/standardebooks https://github.com/standardebooks

jiffygist 5mo ago

I on the other hand prefer epubs for fiction. I mostly read on the phone.

JSeiko 5mo ago

We're supporting EPUB3 for the vast majority of books! At the same time we also have a "Plain Text" version for each as in a sense it's the most robust. PdFs are in the works!

JKCalhoun 5mo ago
That's cool. I'll have to read up on EPUB3—I'm not familiar with it. (I worked on iBooks for the Mac like 15 years ago—it's where I got to dive into the ePub format. A lot has changed in the standard since I am sure.) EDIT: looks like EPUB3 has a "paginated" mode as well as more sophisticated layout tags. Also appears to have support for ruby and vertical writing modes. This was not yet supported in WebKit when I worked on iBooks. Somehow, this white guy from Kansas (who knows no language other than English) got tapped to implement the vertical TOC for Asian languages. Also tasked with annotating the ePUB pages to display (also vertical) ruby text…

the_af 5mo ago

I like plain text. You can always post process it into any other format you prefer.

JSeiko 5mo ago
it's also very "accessible" - good for assistive technologies and people with "ou-of-the-ordinary" requirements
- robin_reala 5mo ago
  Well, the problem is that you lose then all the semantic information that was encoded into the HTML or ePub versions. Those tend to be better for assistive tech users.
lxgr 5mo ago
Not really, given that it can’t represent even basic formatting such as bold or italic text, chapter markers etc. As an output format it’s ok, but as an input format, it’s almost as bad as PDF.

gluejar 5mo ago

PDF coming this year.

skrtskrt 5mo ago

The common issue with PDFs is that e-readers generally have terrible support for them.

gofreddygo 5mo ago

I love, love, looove the fact that I can have a book's html version on project gutenberg bookmarked and continue to read across devices without ever having to login. I use the browser's inbuilt capability extensively to enhance my reading experience (fonts, backgrounds, text to speech, print formatting, share snippets). None of this is a good experience with pdf, epub or any other format. I've read more (meaningful) text on PG than any other digital platform. Huge fan. Thanks for all the work and for keeping it clean and free

JSeiko 5mo ago
Interesting. Do you "just" use the browser's built-in capabilities or also some browser extensions?
- gofreddygo 5mo ago
  I just use the built-in capabilities these days as everything that I would need is in there. This was not true many years ago when I did use some browser extensions.

iberator 5mo ago

check it again. most books have epub avalible

tangledhelix 5mo ago

This is covered in the FAQ - https://www.gutenberg.org/help/faq.html#why-is-project-gutenberg-so-set-on-using-plain-text https://www.gutenberg.org/help/faq.html#why-is-project-guten... And as another person noted, the vast majority of books have HTML, EPUB, Mobi formats. We are also looking at both KEPUB (Kobo) and PDF which will probably come in the future.