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    #2
    pox
    Registered Users Posts: 77 ✭✭pox


    im being a little dim here, but I cant
    quite get what this site is about. is he
    trying to tell us that he's got books
    on his server that we can download?
    I would spend more time trying to figure
    it out but like homer I haven't got time
    to read the sign, just give me the gist of it.


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    #3
    LoLth
    Registered Users Posts: 10,339 ✭✭✭✭LoLth


    the site is for a thing called Project Guttenburg (funnily enough that's where the book burning was wasn't it???).

    and here's a cut'n'paste from teh faq:

    Help And Faq

    Getting Files
    I can't find the book I'm looking for.
    Why couldn't I reach your site? (or Why is your site slow?)
    I get an error when I try to download a book.
    I get gibberish onscreen when I click on a book.
    What is ZIP? Where can I get it?
    When I print out an e-text, it isn't well formatted.
    I'd like a list of... titles, authors, books.
    Are Project Gutenberg's texts available on CD?
    About the E-texts
    What books will I find in Project Gutenberg?
    Can I download and read your books?
    What am I allowed to do with the books I download?
    About the Site
    Can I copy your site, or your site materials?
    Can I become an FTP mirror?
    About the Project
    What is Project Gutenberg?
    How can I help?


    I can't find the book I'm looking for.
    First go to the Search page. Sometimes you may miss in searching because of alternative spellings, so try searching separately for both Author and Title. Read the Search Tips.

    If you've tried all the searches you can think of, then it's not in the Project Gutenberg archive. Don't despair! It may be elsewhere on the Web. Go to the major search engines and try there. You can also try asking on the Volunteers' Web Board; some of the volunteers may know where to find it.

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    Why couldn't I reach your site? (or Why is your site slow?)
    This isn't common, but it happens, and, hey!, you're here now. Project Gutenberg is a very busy site, probably one of the busiest non-commercial sites on the Web, and sometimes the amount of traffic causes a slowdown.

    There may also be a bottleneck somewhere else between you and the site. If at first you don't succeed, don't tell us, just try, try again. The correct address is either:

    http://promo.net/pg/
    or

    http://www.gutenberg.net/

    If you really think we need a bandwidth upgrade, please see the Contact Information page and consider contacting the Webmaster.

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    I get an error when I try to download a book
    We do not keep e-text files on this site. Instead, many FTP sites throughout the world hold the whole Project Gutenberg archive of texts. An FTP site is just a computer on the Internet that specializes in holding files for download and sending them to people on request. You can find a list of FTP sites that hold Gutenberg texts here.

    When you're searching or browsing for titles and authors, you're on this Project Gutenberg site, but when you click on the book to download it, you are connected to an FTP site. At the time you click on the filename, your browser contacts an FTP site and tries to download the file from there. If you get an error, it could be because the FTP site is busy, or because there's a network traffic bottleneck between you and that FTP site, or because the text you're looking for is missing from that FTP site.

    Usually, the easiest solution is to choose another FTP site to download your text from. Go to the Search page, choose a different FTP site, and search again for your text.

    Tip: You should always try to choose the FTP site closest to you. Not only are you helping to minimize Net traffic by choosing a nearby site, but your file will download faster!

    If all else fails, note the year and the filename of the book you want, choose an FTP site from this list and click on one of them. Then browse your way through the listings to the file you want.

    For example, if you find "Lady Susan" by Jane Austen, you will see that it was published by Gutenberg in 1997, and its filename is lsusn10.txt, so browse to one of the FTP sites, choose the directory called etext97 and click (or right-click and Save, depending on your browser) on the file lsusn10.txt.

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    I get gibberish onscreen when I click on a book.
    To save download time, our e-texts are stored in zipped form as well as text form. Zipped files are smaller, and take less time to transfer to your computer, but you need a program to unzip them. If you try to view a zipped file directly, it looks like gibberish.

    You can recognize zipped files easily because their filenames end in .zip.

    If this happens, either make sure you're asking your browser to Save the file rather than display it (often, you right-click the file and choose Save) or else click on the version of the file that ends in .txt instead of .zip. You don't need a Zip program to view .txt files.

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    What is ZIP? Where can I get it?
    Zip is a format in which files are compressed. Since they're smaller, they download faster, save bandwidth and save space on your computer. To make or open zipped files, you need a program that can zip and unzip files. PKWARE and WinZip are two among many sites on the Internet where you can get programs to handle Zip files.

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    When I print out an e-text, it isn't well formatted.
    If you have a file ending in .txt from Project Gutenberg, it is usually formatted with about 70 characters per line, and with a Carriage Return/Line Feed pair (also known as a "Hard Return" or a "Paragraph Mark") at the end of every line.

    This is the most widely accepted format for text files, but it's not ideal on all computers and all programs. 70 characters per line means that if you are using an unusually large or small font to print it, lines may wrap around or not reach across the page. The hard return means that on some systems, the lines may appear double-spaced.

    Unfortunately, we can't advise you how best to format texts on all systems, mostly because we don't know every system! Here are a couple of tips you might try:


    If your font is too big or too small, try setting the font to Courier size 10 or Times size 12. It may not be ideal, but it mostly works.


    In a Word Processor, you may be able to remove the Hard Returns, but beware! if you remove too many, the whole text will become one paragraph.


    If all else fails, you can try posting a question on the Volunteers' Web Board, stating your computer, the program you're using to view or print the text, and what it looks like when you do--doublespaced, wrapping or something else. Someone who has a similar computer may be able to help.

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    I'd like a list of... titles, authors, books.
    Go to our home page. All the links to lists are there.

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    Are Project Gutenberg's texts available on CD?
    Project Gutenberg does not publish any CDs. We do know of some companies that publish PG texts on CD. As of January 2000, we are aware of two, Monolithic and Walnut Creek.

    These and other companies who may sell CDs are in no way affiliated with Project Gutenberg. We have not seen the CDs, and Project Gutenberg is not responsible for the product quality or business practices of these companies.

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    What books will I find in Project Gutenberg?
    We cannot publish any texts still in copyright. This generally means that our texts are taken from books published pre-1923. (It's more complicated than that, as our Copyright Page explains, but 1923 is a good first rule-of-thumb for the U.S.A.)

    So you won't find the latest bestsellers or modern computer books here. You will find the classic books from the start of this century and previous centuries, from authors like Shakespeare, Poe, Dante, as well as well-loved favorites like the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the Tarzan and Mars books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Alice's adventures in Wonderland as told by Lewis Carroll, and thousands of others.

    These books are chosen by our volunteers. Simply, a volunteer decides that a certain book should be in the archives, obtains the book and does the work necessary to turn it into an e-text. If you're interested in volunteering, click here.

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    Can I download and read your books?
    Yes. That's what Project Gutenberg is all about--making texts available free to everyone!

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    What am I allowed to do with the books I download?
    Most Project Gutenberg e-texts are public domain. You can do anything you like with these--you can re-post them on your site, print them, distribute them, convert them to other formats.

    Some Project Gutenberg e-texts have copyright restrictions. You can still download and read these, but you may not be allowed to reproduce, modify or distribute them. When browsing or searching on the site, you will see these copyright-restricted texts indicated in the listings. For fuller information about them, download the e-text and read the header of the file, which will spell out the conditions in detail.

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    Can I copy your site, or your site materials?
    No.

    Keeping the PG site updated with the latest e-text releases is an ongoing job, and our experience is that people, however well-intentioned, do not keep copies up to date. We want there to be one clear source for people seeking the latest Project Gutenberg information, and we think that having a lot of out-of-date copies and partial copies scattered around the net would be a bad thing.

    We welcome mirrors and copies of our e-texts, in new FTP sites, but the main web site itself is copyrighted and may not be copied.

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    Can I become an FTP mirror?
    Yes! We're always looking for more FTP mirrors.

    If you have an FTP site with a couple of GB of space, please check our Contact Information page and contact the appropriate person, who will make the arrangements for you. If space is a problem, you can consider holding only zipped copies of the texts. We can move you up or down the FTP site list as you want more or less traffic.

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    What is Project Gutenberg?
    Project Gutenberg is the brainchild of Michael Hart, who in 1971 decided that it would be a really good idea if lots of famous and important texts were freely available to everyone in the world. Since then, he has been joined by hundreds of volunteers who share his vision. Now, almost thirty years later, Project Gutenberg publishes an average of one e-text every day!


    there ya go. It's got most, if not all, of the HG Wells stuff. Alice in wonderland etc.
    I think it has all of Shakespear's works and a ton of technical, scientific, economic etc papers. Well worth checking out if you are interested in a book that you think might be quite old (as in copyright expired)


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