[WikiEN-l] Submitting a "print" (linear text) version of Wikipedia to PG?

Daniel P.B.Smith dpbsmith at verizon.net
Sun May 2 00:51:50 UTC 2004


Forgive me if this has been discussed umpteen times... has any 
consideration been given to (periodically) submitting some kind of 
print-like version of Wikipedia to Project Gutenberg?

What brought this to mind was running across Jimbo's statement that 
"I'd like to distribute cheaply-printed paperback copies of Wikipedia 
to every school in every country in Africa, in English or French as the 
local circumstances dictate," and thinking how concordant that was with 
Michael Hart's visions for Project Gutenberg.

BTW, I don't know all the ins and outs but, for the record, although PG 
has traditionally (in IMHO very, very, VERY wisely) concentrated on 
"plain vanilla ASCII" format, they do ''not'' limit themselves to that 
format. So  other formats would be negotiable. It would of course be 
sensible to consult with PG directly on this. I believe they have the 
Distributed Proofreaders working on the 11th edition of the Britannica, 
BTW. There might be some issues about reconciling the GFDL with the 
Project Gutenberg "Fine Print" notice, which they are very, very, VERY 
picky about. However, PG distributes a few copyrighted items, so there 
must be a way to work such things out.


--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net alternate: 
dpbsmith at alum.mit.edu
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
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