[projectaon] Re: First post! (presentation)
- From: Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <jfs@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: projectaon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 1 Mar 2006 10:31:15 +0100
On Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 03:36:27PM -0800, Jonathan Blake wrote:
> On 2/28/06, Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña <jfs@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Even though for the time being I'm going to start helping with the
> > transcription of the spanish books and their eventual conversion to XML I
> > wanted, first, to give you guys a thumbs up and also to volunteer in this
> > effort. I've been involved in free software translation projects for 7 years
> > already (mainly within the Debian project, in which I'm the coordinator of
> > the Spanish translation team) and I think I can help out a bit, so I will be
> > lurking in the mailing list and flirting with the xhtml and XML stuff.
>
> I've been primarily responsible for helping the Spanish team get off
> the ground on the PA server. I'm sure that the Spanish team can use
> your help. I may also need your help in communicating effectively, on
> occasion. I definitely don't speak Spanish. :)
I have no problem with that, I have links with the Spanish group and will
also try to help the translation effort (I'm already subscribed to their
> The Spanish group is also interested in creating PDFs, so maybe both
> groups will benefit from your help. :)
Sure. From what I see in the scripts the PDF conversion is done through LaTeX
using the gbtolatex.pl script. The README file claims it uses pdflatex but,
as far as I can see, it calls Apache's XSLT processor (which uses Java, which
I don't like much). Am I right?
What are the (known) issues with PDF conversion? Does the XSL file for LaTeX
needs to be reviewed, is the output ok?
> > BTW, I wrote a few weeks ago a "FF (Fighting Fantasy) toolkit" that can
> > be used to debug gamebooks and to generate their maps in an easy way.
>
> Having taken a peek at the code, I am impressed with your skill. If
> you're interested, I've taken a snapshot of our CVS repository and
> uploaded it here:
Donwloaded it (had to use erobots=off with wget, though). I've been browsing
some more and I see
> Let me know if you need CVS access.
Well, if you think that the toolkit stuff could be added in there too I don't
mind having CVS access. For now, however, maybe it will be sufficient for me
to provide patches (diff -u format) to the current files, if I can
demonstrate that I can make contributions and CVS access can speed things up
I will ask for it (that's how I typically work in free software projects).
One thing that seems to be missing is a wonderful 'Makefile' that will
automate all the process (check, generate, publish...)
It also looks like the "logic" structure of the book is not linted (with
glint) when reviewing the XML. I added checks in my toolkit to determine when
sections were not referenced by other sections [1] some other logic checks
could be implemented (which would require the toolkit to be able to handle
"conditional" maps).
In PA's case, these kind of logic failures might be due to:
- somebody making a mistake when transcribing a section number
- somebody forgetting to link a section
- the original author making a mistake in a book
I guess the translation efforts (which transcribe other books) might be used
to spot these mistakes too (and to check if they don't make it themselves).
So far, reviewing the XML file for both English and Spanish PA (Raúl provided
me with his XML file for #1) I can confirm that both generate the same "map"
:)
I understand that the XML files for PA are need to use all these tools,
googling I've found http://www.projectaon.org/sanctum/xml/ although it's not
linked from the PA main site. Are this the latest available files? If not,
could someone forward me a tar.gz with them?
> Thank you for offering to help. I look forward to our collaboration.
No problem. I will try to contribute stuff when I tinker with it. I would
really love to see good quality PDFs happen. That might make eBay prices for
these books go down a bit (I'm surprised to see people paying more than 50$
for a used, 20-year old, book!)
Regards
Javier
[1] This check found out that in the Shamuntanti Hills there is a
"phantom" section you cannot get to (section 319). This was discussed at PAE's
forum (http://www.projectaon.org/es/foro/viewtopic.php?t=335#13379) after
we made the graph for that gamebook.
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