[texhax] TeXnicians needed for Project Gutenberg math proofreading

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Thu Aug 21 19:13:02 CEST 2003


(Please repost wherever this might be useful, perhaps a German-language
TeX list?)

Distributed Proofreaders (http://www.pgdp.net) is the main source of
public domain electronic books.  It is part of Project Gutenberg
(http://www.gutenberg.net).

DP consists of thousands of volunteers doing hundreds of books each
month, and some of our math books, for which DP is using LaTeX.  Thus,
the project needs savvy (La)TeX folk to correct the OCRed texts.
Usually there's at least one math book in progress.  Right now it is a
German text, Elementare Arithmetik und Algebra, by Hermann Schubert.
http://www.pgdp.net/c/tools/proofers/proof.php?project=projectID3ec3c03223cbc&proofstate=avail_1

If you have Internet access, a browser, and a spare ten minutes now and
then, you can make a significant contribution to mathematics. The
finished e-books are free, downloadable, and computer-searchable.

Sign up at the website (http://www.pgdp.net).  The work is done through
a web interface that lets you compare a scanned page image against OCRed
text, and make any necessary changes to the text.  The interface works
with most browsers, from IE and Netscape to Mozilla and Opera.  (I have
proofread a couple pages myself, and can vouch for it being
straightforward.)  You can do one page whenever you have time or a
hundred a day -- it's up to you. No commitments, no schedules.

If you'd like a change from mathematics, there are plenty of other books
to do: from classics to pot-boilers, in English, French, German, Dutch,
Finnish, Swedish, etc.

I'd like to thank Karen Lofstrom, Sam Rhoads, and Josh Hutchinson for
making me aware of this effort.  I put brief information and a link at
the end of http://tug.org/interest.html.  If you have any questions, I
can try to help, or at least point you to someone more knowledgeable.

Happy proofreading,
karl


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