[bksvol-discuss] Mangling poetry for Bookshare
- From: "Estelnalissi" <airadil@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 02:22:43 -0400
Dear Volunteer Friends,
Voices, I'm hearing voices!
Just doing my job, validating Tolkien poetry, when I swear The professor
murmured in a voice whose cultivated restraint didn't disguise his outrage.
"It isn't meant to sound that way!"
I want to please him and Bookshare and daisy readers and braille readers and
readers looking at the poems visually, really I do, but I believe preserving
the content, cadence, the stream of thought and graceful formatting for all
readers requires about 60 more years of ingenius invention and development
of our tools.
I hope all of the many geniuses in our volunteer group and associated with
it will take full advantage of any medication on the market to manage their
disorders so they may make the fullest use of their talents, solving my
poetry delimma even sooner than I project.
I'm being silly, not sarcastic. Bookshare has exceeded my fondest fantasies
of having access to books that were locked in print. It's that this poetry,
no matter how careful the scanner, validator and admin are, will be awkward
reading with blame to nobody.
Not only am I at a loss as how besst to format verses which use 3 different
left margins, but I'm inserting numbers every 5 lines. These numbers are
offset to the left so a sighted reader can use them like a ruler to quickly
find specific lines of the poem for study or quoting, etc. These numbers are
so far to the left, that the print reader can visually tune them out and
read the poem without the numbers intruding.
Not so for a braille reader, especially using a continuous line refreshable
braille display. They will see lines like, "hand in hand, 15 small
footprints in the golden sand," and forgetmenots 35 red daisies" If you're
reading with Jaws. how do you like the way he pronounced forget me nots,
almost like "fordget minnots? If you download the book and listen to the
poem, you'll be jolted every 5 lines by the intrusion of a number in to an
otherwise sweet, tender, wistful stream of words.
Some of you are way ahead of me and can cleverly tell your computers to skip
the numbers, and reverse the order, too.
This isn't a complaint. It's me noticing my limitations in preparing a book.
I know how lucky I am to be having this discussion. Part of what keeps me
spinning so enthusiastically and part of what propels evolution are the
unsolved puzzles. Wrinkles and all, serious Tolkien readers are going to
have a delightful time with this book. Once it's approved, they will be able
to get a copy as out of thin air.
Please share any poetry formatting tips to help me prepare the best possible
file.
That's all of my hot air. You can go back to selecting books from thin air
whose quality keeps getting better. Happy reading!
Always with love,
Lissi
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