Michael S. Hart passed away in early September — you might not know his name, but you certainly know his work. Hart founded Project Gutenberg, the oldest and arguably the best free e-book library in the world, home to tens of thousands of titles in dozens of languages, all contributed by volunteers. Project Gutenberg is no doubt going to continue to thrive, but as a tribute to Hart, let's take a look at the free software tools you can use to participate, from scanning in an old book to helping the Project's ongoing proofreading and formatting work — and sharing PG books with others.
Sepllchecking. I mean, spellchecking: it’s such an integrated part of our word processing and email workflow these days that we feel ripped off when an application (or phone…) doesn’t have it built-in. Sadly, grammar-checking is a little bit behind. Checking words against a dictionary is trivial, but picking out parts of speech and sentence structure is trickier. Some proprietary office suites include grammar tools built-in, although the free software suites do not. But there are plug-ins available that bring grammar and stylistic help to all of the major open source word processors.
Sepllchecking. I mean, spellchecking: it’s such an integrated part of our word processing and email workflow these days that we feel ripped off when an application (or phone…) doesn’t have it built-in. Sadly, grammar-checking is a little bit behind. Checking words against a dictionary is trivial, but picking out parts of speech and sentence structure is trickier. Some proprietary office suites include grammar tools built-in, although the free software suites do not. But there are plug-ins available that bring grammar and stylistic help to all of the major open source word processors.