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Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by JKCalhoun on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:03PM (#48151054)
Project Gutenberg had (has?) a tendency toward plaintext that always put me off. (And it has been over a decade I'm sure since I explored the site—so I am no doubt now misinformed.)

I like a styled formatted book—would prefer PDFs. (I know, not a popular format apparently.)

I like the idea of Project Gutenberg but guess I found book scans on archive.org my preference.

My go-to example is Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" with the fantastic art of John Tenniel and Carroll's sometimes creative formatting of the prose…

I see they (Project Gutenberg) have ePub now, which can be good if well done.

(If not well done it can be a kind of mess. Re-flowable "HTML", paginated… Anyone ever try to print a long web page and did you enjoy the result? Perhaps that is as much on the ePub reader though.)

Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by JSeiko on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:08PM (#48151149)
We're supporting EPUB3 for the vast majority of books! At the same time we also have a "Plain Text" version for each as in a sense it's the most robust. PdFs are in the works!
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by JKCalhoun on Friday May 15, 2026 @04:19PM (#48153298)
That's cool. I'll have to read up on EPUB3—I'm not familiar with it.

(I worked on iBooks for the Mac like 15 years ago—it's where I got to dive into the ePub format. A lot has changed in the standard since I am sure.)

EDIT: looks like EPUB3 has a "paginated" mode as well as more sophisticated layout tags.

Also appears to have support for ruby and vertical writing modes. This was not yet supported in WebKit when I worked on iBooks. Somehow, this white guy from Kansas (who knows no language other than English) got tapped to implement the vertical TOC for Asian languages. Also tasked with annotating the ePUB pages to display (also vertical) ruby text…

Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by JLO64 on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:06PM (#48151111)
As others here have mentioned, https://standardebooks.org/ is excellent and my understanding is that they use Gutenberg books as a source for theirs but done up much nicer.
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by everybodyknows on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:38PM (#48151520)
You can contribute to Standard Ebooks by finding OCR errors, then pushing your fixes to https://github.com/standardebooks
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by dempedempe on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:20PM (#48151288)
Source can be anything with the original text, but, more often than not, ends up being PG.
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by RattlesnakeJake on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:04PM (#48151091)
Check out Standard eBooks. They take the text from Gutenberg and add a level of polish to the ePubs.
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by jiffygist on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:07PM (#48151137)
I on the other hand prefer epubs for fiction. I mostly read on the phone.
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by skrtskrt on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:37PM (#48151509)
The common issue with PDFs is that e-readers generally have terrible support for them.
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by gluejar on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:35PM (#48151489)
PDF coming this year.
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by graemep on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:04PM (#48151090)
I have got quite a few books over the years from Gutenberg, and the epubs have been fine 0 even of illustrated ones.
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by the_af on Friday May 15, 2026 @01:20PM (#48151281)
I like plain text. You can always post process it into any other format you prefer.
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by JSeiko on Friday May 15, 2026 @02:06PM (#48151822)
it's also very "accessible" - good for assistive technologies and people with "ou-of-the-ordinary" requirements
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by robin_reala on Saturday May 16, 2026 @02:41PM (#48162644)
Well, the problem is that you lose then all the semantic information that was encoded into the HTML or ePub versions. Those tend to be better for assistive tech users.
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by lxgr on Friday May 15, 2026 @07:00PM (#48155029)
Not really, given that it can’t represent even basic formatting such as bold or italic text, chapter markers etc.

As an output format it’s ok, but as an input format, it’s almost as bad as PDF.

Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by gofreddygo on Friday May 15, 2026 @05:02PM (#48153779)
I love, love, looove the fact that I can have a book's html version on project gutenberg bookmarked and continue to read across devices without ever having to login. I use the browser's inbuilt capability extensively to enhance my reading experience (fonts, backgrounds, text to speech, print formatting, share snippets). None of this is a good experience with pdf, epub or any other format.

I've read more (meaningful) text on PG than any other digital platform. Huge fan. Thanks for all the work and for keeping it clean and free

Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by JSeiko on Saturday May 16, 2026 @11:38AM (#48161134)
Interesting. Do you "just" use the browser's built-in capabilities or also some browser extensions?
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by gofreddygo on Saturday May 16, 2026 @01:03PM (#48161913)
I just use the built-in capabilities these days as everything that I would need is in there. This was not true many years ago when I did use some browser extensions.
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by iberator on Friday May 15, 2026 @08:17PM (#48155560)
check it again. most books have epub avalible
Re:Project Gutenberg – keeps getting better by tangledhelix on Saturday May 16, 2026 @04:21PM (#48163459)
This is covered in the FAQ - https://www.gutenberg.org/help/faq.html#why-is-project-guten...

And as another person noted, the vast majority of books have HTML, EPUB, Mobi formats. We are also looking at both KEPUB (Kobo) and PDF which will probably come in the future.