*The purpose of this page is to showcase various material from my collections (pictures, illustrations, short articles), hence the name "Miscellanea". Due to the everchanging nature of the internet and a shortage of storage space, if you see something you are interested in, be sure to download it because it may at some point 'disappear'. I'd like to say this site will be here awhile, but the best laid plans of mice and men...

MATERIAL SOURCES: All electronic texts on this site have been digitized from "TREE-ware" in my possession at the time of processing. Sometimes the hard-copy is retained; sometimes it is "recycled" to be read by folks who have no access to computers and electronic texts. Occasionally texts of the same title are released in close proximity to releases from other sites. I'm led to believe that the occurance of two parties separately and concurrently scanning the same material is rare. To my knowledge it has happened twice with material from this site--which must say something about the popularity of the author whose work was being digitized! And, although the source material was presumably the same, the end results are somewhat different in ways which I'll briefly discuss below:

WHAT MAKES THE TEXTS HERE SO DIFFERENT?: Arguably the first, foremost, and most visionary ongoing effort to preserve text in an electronic format is guided under the directorship of Project Gutenburg. One of their guidelines is to keep the code simple enough that machines will be able to interpret it decades from now. As such, the ASCII format has been latched onto as the 'weapon of choice.' Yet as information technology progressess, ASCII limitations become more apparent, and in some cases it is an awkward vehicle for certain types of data. Straight conversions from ASCII to other popular formats (microsoft ".lit", adobe acrobat ".pdf", etc.) often neglect the potential of those newer formats. Data which was left out during original ASCII etext production, due to its inability to represent it, is seldom (if ever) re-inserted into more recent formats which ARE capable of handling it. Essentially, these straight ASCII conversions are often like preparing the same old hamburger in a multitude of ways. You can make a cow into hamburger, and you can make a variety of dishes from the hamburger. But, inflating the hamburger back into a cow takes a little more effort (this is where the analogy ran out of road, so to speak). Unlike the beef analogy, electronic texts can be expanded and improved upon, should anyone consider the proposition worthy enough to do so. Continuing this line of thought: When a text IS updated to more closely resemble the author's intent, can the more recent version ever propagate amongst the masses fast enough to overtake and replace the more lossey predecessor? (Yes, lossey is a real word!) If a negative scenario is valid, it should be the desire of dedicated e-book producers to depict the original source as accurately as may be possible. For this reason it has been my personal choice to represent the books and articles below as hypertext mark-up language (web-pages). The advantage of such is: the additional ability to indicate nuances of expression represented by indicators such as italics, bold print, international characters ("top-hats", accent marks, umlauts, etc.), representation of accompanying art-work, "open source" for easy manipulation, as well as traditional compatibility with virtually any computer capable of an internet connection. Also, the amount of extra space taken up by the html file in comparison to ASCII text is often negligible, certainly not enough to attract much attention from minimalists.

The preceding is not meant to dun (there's a word you don't hear every day) the efforts of other e-book producers. However, my philosophy is that the nature of the digital beast necessitates that the scope of electronic conversion should be reevaluated from time to time.

The books and articles listed below have been tested and are compatible in browsers at least as far back as the ancient Netscape version 3 and should be viewable in all web-browsers available today and released in the future. Additionally, more recent browsers such as Internet Explorer will re-flow the text to full-justification (even margins on both sides). No particular font has been selected so text will be displayed in your web-browser's default font. I prefer Times New Roman, but your tastes may vary.

TO EMDASH OR NOT TO EMDASH: Current editions of the Internet Explorer web-browser are capable of handling the more pleasant appearing long-dash or emdash. However, some earlier browsers interpret the code as a question mark rendering it an inconvenience to users of such. I've therefore opted to forego the emdash in the works below, replacing it with two short dashes. Should you wish to view the emdash instead of the double short dashes, the following procedure should prove simple enough:

1. Save the web-page and graphics to your hard-drive.
2. Open the file as an ASCII file in your word processor (Wordpad, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, etc.).
3. Edit and replace all sequences of "--" with "&#8212" (without the quotes).
4. Re-save this as an html file and re-open with your web browser.

The downside is that the file will swell in size.

HOW ARE THESE TEXTS PRODUCED?: Each text has been scanned using Optical Character Recognition software (OCR), namely "Finereader." Some error correction takes place from within this program as well as the intial scan. The result is saved into a rich text file, preserving much of the original formatting. This is in turn opened with a word processor. Preprogrammed subroutines of my design in the form of macros process some of the more redundant formatting actions automatically. The text is read and edited to correct errors which escaped the previous processes. Afterwards it is saved as an html file. I then open it with a WYSIWYG-type ("What You See Is What You Get) web-page editor and insert tags, links, pictures, etc. The product of this manipulation is then opened with a text editor and tweaked to include text styling (namely full-justification), enlarge the font size, and reduce the file size even more by stripping the unnecessary end-of-paragraph tags (which might have been necessary at one time in the distant past). In short, it is a refining process which whittles off what doesn't belong, and glues missing parts back on.

10-22-2007

THE GIRL FROM FARRIS'S by Edgar Rice Burroughs THE EFFICIENCY EXPERT by Edgar Rice Burroughs Two novelettes by the creator of Tarzan are revisited as newly formatted Adobe Acrobat files. The pdf files work quite well with Adobe Acrobat reader version 8.1. When running the Acrobat program, click the menu icon for side-by-side pages (TWO-UP), non-scrolling, for a reading experiencing that more closely mimics that of a handheld book. (Also choose VIEW / PAGE DISPLAY / and uncheck SHOW GAPS BETWEEN PAGES.) PLEASE don't pay $5 to download copies from internet rip-off artists when you can get them here for free!

05-30-2007 LITTLE TICH by Little Tich - okay, it is a link to a real book instead of an e-book. However the scarcity warrants my informing Sax Rohmer collectors of its limited availability.

12-22-2002

THE PRINCE OF INDIA by Lew Wallace, (author of Ben-Hur, etc.), with accompanying art. President James Garfield, having just read Ben-Hur, granted Gov. Lew Wallace an Ambassadorship in Turkey with hopes it might inspire yet another literary masterpiece. This was the result. While Wallace is a notable character in U.S. history in several instances, his authorship of "Ben-Hur" is perhaps his crowning achivement. Unfortunately, he wasn't successful at topping its success. This is a TWO volume work presented as one web-page. It is quite lengthy, approximately 1.77 MB, with graphics. In print this was over 1,050 pages. I have a little fine tuning yet to do on it, but it is approximately within 99.8% accuracy--good enough for government work--ha!

BAT WING by Sax Rohmer (with frontispiece illustration, etc.) This is a Paul Harley detective mystery which bears certain similarities in its solution to a Sherlock Holmes tale whose title escapes me at present. An American literary genius is mentioned prominently; I assume Rohmer held this author in high regard. Rohmer's command of the language boosts him a couple of notches in my book as well. The image to the left is an embossed character from the front cover of the McKinlay, Stone, & Mackenzie "Masterpieces of Oriental Mystery" release. The volumes in this set were also marked by an icon on the title page presumably representing Sax Rohmer's brainchild, Fu-Manchu, with a ring on the fourth finger of one hand, and smoking apparatus held betwixt the second and third fingers of the other hand. This icon was not colorized as depicted within the e-text; it is purely of my own doing. Have an interest in the author, Sax Rohmer? Be sure to visit the Page of Fu-Manchu at: http://www.njedge.net/~knapp/FuManchu.htm

THE BOY TRAPPER by Harry Castlemon (with four illustrations) This complete in one volume juvenile boys' novel is the second of three installments in the BOY TRAPPER series--the first entitled "Buried Treasure (Old Jordan's Haunt)" and the last, "The Mail Carrier." The first chapter serves to summarize the "Buried Treasure" volume. Harry Castlemon was one of the first of many U.S. authors to specialize in juvenile series books, pre-dating more familiar material such as the "Hardy Boys" series by over 50 years. Like many other works of this type from that period, it embeds a morality lesson within the plot. WARNING: This is not PC by today's so-called "standards". It employs characterizations and language by which the easily offended will be easily offended. This electronic version was scanned from the 1878 Porter & Coates edition with brown and black boards, gold lettering on spine, 306 pages with four engravings.

MR. PRATT by Joseph C. Lincoln Here's a prequel to Mr. Pratt's Patients which is listed several links below. It's yet another superbly-crafted highly-enjoyable light comedy/drama/romance of old Cape Cod. Unfortunately, the only illustration I have is the cover. For a checklist of other Joseph Lincoln books and other bibliographical info browse to David Kew's page: http://capecodhistory.us/Lincoln.htm And of course, many other superb Joseph Lincoln texts may be located at Project Gutenburg: http://promo.net/pg/

DUKE LEOPOLD'S STONE by Mary E. Bradley. An illustrated poem with a moral which immediately followed the above title in original publication.

EXTRICATING OBADIAH by Joseph C. Lincoln Yet another tale of a fictious Cape Cod community. Here there be humour and romance all rolled up in one. Lots of local color and colorful characters. Surely this writer was a Mark Twain of his era.... both wit and a sure understanding of human nature are as indigenous to Mr. Lincoln as fins on a fish. For whatever reason, chapter links work better on this book if you are viewing from Internet Explorer.

MR. PRATT'S PATIENTS by Joseph C. Lincoln (with interior illustrations by Howard Heath): Well those ol' Cape Codgers are at it again, this time as seen through the eyes of Solomon Pratt. The inmates are running the asylum in this little tale of hit and miss-fortunes. This is small-town America at it's best. Lots of "universal" local flavor here with colorful types that you'll find just about anywhere you go if you look for 'em. Okay, maybe people in Cape Cod aren't really like the characters in this book. (Haven't been there so I wouldn't know.) But after reading this little number, who wouldn't want to live there, or at least visit?

"KELLY'S GONE TO KINGDOM COME!" Originally introduced by the "Queen of Song," Maud Lambert This is a piece of sheet music from 1910. The lyrics were authored by Sax Rohmer, writer of mysteries including the "Fu-Manchu" series. It answers another popular piece of music of the day,"Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?" Right click on link and choose "save as" to download midi music file: Kelly's_Gone_To_Kingdom_Come!.mid Right click on link and choose "save as" to download Noteworthy Composer file (score AND LYRICS can be viewed and played from this file): Kelly's_Gone_To_Kingdom_Come!.nwc The Noteworthy Composer program can be downloaded and evaluated from this site: http://www.noteworthysoftware.com/composer/

*The adobe acrobat e-texts listed below have been removed from this page. The bulk of the texts may be found around the internet in various formats.

The Fantasy Library has been given permission to mirror the original adobe acrobat version of many of the texts in their "stacks" pages at: http://www.fantasylibrary.com/

At this time (8-6-2002) three of the PDF titles listed below may still be downloaded from various pages archived on the internet wayback machine. To see how this page once looked, visit: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://home.hiwaay.net/~ajohns/retro/Etext.htm  Even earlier incarnations of this page are archived at: http://web.archive.org/web/*hh_/www.getaway.net/bjohns/ajohns/Etext.htm

Otherwise, you've missed out on the original digitized version of these titles:

Burroughs, Edgar Rice, "The Efficiency Expert"- Released 1-22-2000, PDF
Burroughs, Edgar Rice, "The Girl From Farris's"- HTML format on 1-25-1998; PDF on 12-17-1998
Correll & Gosden, "Sam 'n' Henry" - pdf format [radio related]
Correll & Gosden, "Here they are = Amos 'n' Andy" pdf format [radio related]
Correll & Gosden, "All About Amos 'n' Andy & Their Creators Correll & Gosden" pdf format [radio related]
Rohmer, Sax, "Dope", HTML format appeared 10-27-97 / PDF format released 09-04-99
Rohmer, Sax, "The Return of Fu-Manchu" (#2 of the Fu-Manchu series), released 12-18-1998 pdf
Rohmer, Sax, "The Hand of Fu-Manchu" (#3 of the Fu-Manchu series), 12-23-1998 pdf
Rohmer, Sax, "The Green Eyes Of Bast", Released 08-29-1999 pdf
Rohmer, Sax, "The Quest Of The Sacred Slipper", Released 10-02-1999 pdf
Rohmer, Sax, "Brood of the Witch-Queen", Released May 31, 2002

Comments? Suggestions? Send e-mail to ajohns@hiwaay.net