User talk:DavidBrooks

Hello DavidBrooks, welcome to Wikisource! Thanks for your interest in the project; we hope you'll enjoy the community and your work here.

You'll find an (incomplete) index of our works listed at Works, although for very broad categories like poetry you may wish to look at the categories like Category:Poems instead.

Please take a glance at our help pages (especially Adding texts and Wikisource's style guide). Most questions and discussions about the community are in the Scriptorium.

The Community Portal lists tasks you can help with if you wish. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me on my talk page! John Vandenberg (chat) 22:21, 1 July 2008 (UTC)


 * one down, how many thousand more to go?. :-) -- John Vandenberg (chat) 15:48, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Page out of order with the preceding page in EB1911 - Volume 03
Hello! David, can you help with this, please? Clarice Reis (talk) 22:23, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Thank you David for your attention. And no, I did not create categories in the Commons. I only use those that exist there. Clarice Reis (talk) 23:49, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Using the Gutenberg-converted text for EB1911
Hi David, I recently edited "Page:EB1911 - Volume 14.djvu/898" using converted Gutenberg text using my conversion script. I had just converted the section "Isabnormal Lines to Italic" (available from https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dssahqtjtqleml9/AACOO55819IOefkYIXafYyZva?dl=0 filename:Wiki-EB1911 Isabnormal to Italic.txt) and pasted in the text — search for "page865" to quickly locate the correct page in text file).

After the conversion script has run, I manually add article links (if they aren't there) for any q.v. mentions and run a macro in Notepad++ which converts html codes for Greek etc. to their literal equivalents e.g. from &# 7944;&# 960;&# 972;&# 954;&# 961;&# 965;&# 966;&# 959;&# 957; to Ἀπόκρυφον which makes for easier proofing.

I also manually edited some line breaks on that page mentioned above to match your earlier edit for easier comparison; updated some Greek characters after viewing https://archive.org/stream/encyclopaediabri14chisrich#page/865/mode/1up; and edited text in italics so that the commas are not italicized.

There were a few fixes to your last edit on "Isaiah, Ascension Of" on that page included with the converted text ( https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Page%3AEB1911_-_Volume_14.djvu%2F898&type=revision&diff=7208849&oldid=7188189 ). e.g.
 * "of Hezekiah" instead of "at Hezekiah"; and "collectio" instead of "eollectio"
 * use of and  to correctly show reduced line height. (also no need for = then)
 * don't italicize "The" in The Testament of Hezekiah etc.

I also saw in a few cases you had correctly used ndashes where Gutenberg had hyphens e.g. "1–iii." (nice work!) — I've left your ndashes in-place after copying the Gutenberg text (I always do a comparison and check after pasting in converted text).

If you plan to edit more pages included in the converted texts available feel free to use them — might save you a bit of time! If there are pages you want to edit that are available in Gutenberg that I haven't converted yet, let me know and I'll convert them. Or you could use the executable to convert them if you like. Anyway, keep up the good work! — DivermanAU (talk) 06:20, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
 * I worked on proofreading for a while but rarely do anything now as I know it's in good hands. I even wrote a custom editor to do some repetitive tasks and make it easier to insert dashes and diacritics (and because I felt like doing some coding). This particular edit was due to exasperation at the poor state of 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Isaiah, Ascension of while updating the citations in w:Ascension of Isaiah. Anyway, thanks for all the helpful advice - and the help! I had forgotten much of what I knew about breathing marks, let alone the other polytonic marks, and the side-by-side scans in Wikisource are too blurred to be sure (I guess archive.org is cleaner). But it is easy to distinguish hyphen from n-dash in that source. Still, it's amazing how often you stare at a source, particularly the parts that are known to be tricky, and still miss things. Other notes:


 * I had tried the /s and /e variations of fine print recently, but the result didn't look right for some reason. I forget why.


 * You used em to shift the header text into the right place. I created EB1911 Page Heading but the off-center result always bothered me. Wouldn't it be better to incorporate the em-space into the template itself; it may be necessary to code to distinguish whether the page number is left or right.


 * Similarly, you added the 109% font size to author initials - surely that would be best incorporated in the template?


 * Again, thanks for the note. DavidBrooks (talk) 16:13, 22 January 2018 (UTC)


 * Hi David - we could always use more proof-readers! There's no Gutenberg text to copy from after the "Mecklenberg" article unfortunately.

As for the /s and /e variations of EB1911 Fine Print, I find it looks good (and has the reduced line height that matches the printed text) as long as: if there are line breaks in the text, then have the EB1911 Fine Print/e (edit: and EB1911 Fine Print/s) on their own lines. I've used this paragraph (which has a soft line break) as an example of EB1911 Fine Print/s and EB1911 Fine Print/e


 * The use of em in Page Headings could be automated I guess, but would need code to ascertain the page number and adjust for number of digits in the page number (I use if there are three digits,  for two digits. Also need to cater for section headers, e.g. "POPULATION]", in which case spacing needs to be added to the page number side.


 * I need to use 109% font size for author initials if it is inside "EB1911 Fine Print" (which is 92%), otherwise the initials are too small. For normal size text, no size alteration is needed. So the template needs to cater for both cases; maybe an optional switch, say "|size=l" for large (109%) font could be useful.


 * My main focus has been on Wikipedia "Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with no article parameter" and creating or proofing the corresponding EB1911 articles in Wikisource. — DivermanAU (talk) 20:09, 22 January 2018 (UTC)

Reversed comma versus rough-breathing diacritic
Hi David, I see on Page:EB1911 - Volume 01.djvu/111 I see you used a reversed comma ʽ instead of the rough-breathing diacritic ‛. I'm no expert in Arabic — I had been using what I thought was the rough-breathing diacritic (U+201B I believe). Maybe the reversed comma should be used instead like you did. The two characters look identical to me — is there a difference? Is there a reference you used for this for this and could you share? w:Ayin recommends: ʿ (U+02BF) "modifier letter left half ring" — but that doesn't look quite the same as either of the two above. Thanks. DivermanAU (talk) 09:05, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, there are at least two identical-looking characters that have the reversed 9 shape, which is clearly the shape used in the printed text for ayin: "Modifier letter reversed comma" and "single high-reversed-9 quotation mark". The latter is the U+201B you refer to. No expert either, but I switched to using the former (U+02BD) due to guidance at w:Romanization of Arabic, which looks reasonably well-informed. See footnote 4 to the table. The article does refer to common transcription standards in early 20th century texts. Apparently the "reversed comma" is preferred because Unicode classifies it as a letter not punctuation. It's also suggested for use at w:Modifier letter reversed comma. I'd have expected to find another version of the same visual deep in the Unicode table somewhere near other Arabic stuff, but I guess if it's there I haven't found it yet.


 * I boldly added the above guidance to WikiProject 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Style Manual.


 * Thanks for pointing me at w:Ayin. That emphasizes the simple "no blob" semicircle (U+02BF) for contemporary use. But I think we're trying to approximate the printed books where possible. DavidBrooks (talk) 16:56, 26 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the information David. I agree we should be approximating the printed book and looks like the (U+02BD) character is the one to use for Arabic in editing EB1911. There's a mention of U+02BD in w:Rough breathing but it states "It may bind typographically with the letter encoded before it to its left", that just confused me even more! But it seems to work as I expected if I use before or after a character. DivermanAU (talk) 06:36, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Curly quotes
Hi David, I noticed your edits changing "straight quotes" to “curly ones” using AWB. Are you aware of the discussion about this currently underway at the Scriptorium? Might be worth a read.

My take: under current policy, and also under the proposed new policy that currently has overwhelming support, this would not be an accepted change. Current policy says only straight quotes; and the proposed new one advises using curly quotes only where there's reason for confidence that curly quotes will be used by all contributors. It seems to me that the Encyclopedia Britannica is exactly the sort of project intended to be excluded by that; lots of individuals, using varying software and with varying preferences and with varying awareness of policies, work on the EB, and it's a crowd that would be difficult to corral.

Just thought you should be aware, if you're not. -Pete (talk) 15:33, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the heads-up. I've added the "respect a project's preferences" opinion to the RFC. I admit to a little hypocrisy: I should be spending time on proofreading and verifying, not the relatively unimportant consistency pass. DavidBrooks (talk) 16:18, 28 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Ah, I wasn't aware this was addressed in the EB style guide. Thanks for noting that. (I think your comment on Scriptorium was in the most useful place, btw.) And if this amounts to hypocrisy, I think we're all guilty to some degree :) Thanks for the response. -Pete (talk) 16:25, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

question on wiktionary= links for EB1911
You have indicated (March 3, 2021) that the EB1911 project does not support wiktionary= — I don't understand. In the EB1911 article for Tench, in my browser the message "sister projects, definition" appears, and clicking on the link "definition" brings up the wiktionary entry for "tench". What is meant by saying that the EB1911 project does not support "wiktionary=" ? Suslindisambiguator (talk)

Water Suppy
I did not upload the images. Instead I simply looked for the worst OCR pages and fixed them up a bit. -- PBS (talk) 16:57, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Changes to the Polytonic template
Hi David, not sure if you're aware but the Polytonic template no longer exists! Inductiveload has changed it to a redirect to the Greek template, but this affects the display of Ancient Greek text as used in EB1911 and elsewhere. I've left a message on Inductiveload's talk page requesting a revert, any support you can offer to help revert the change would be appreciated! Regards, DivermanAU (talk) 22:43, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Apparently there is a discussion on this []