[bksvol-discuss] Re: Need Help to Confirm Bug In Bookshare Tools
- From: "Mayrie ReNae" <mayrierenae@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 5 Jul 2009 22:16:52 -0700
Hi Evan,
I'll definitely download a book that I proofread to check for this kind
of error.
However, I wonder. When using the brf files, will the weird spacing
occur if bookshare thinks that you are using a different size braille
display than you are actually using? I know that in my account I needed to
specify the size of braille display I use to download brf files.
Did you check the xml or daisy file on your book to see if it is just a
brf thing?
Mayrie
_____
From: bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of EVAN REESE
Sent: Sunday, July 05, 2009 6:26 PM
To: bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] Need Help to Confirm Bug In Bookshare Tools
Hello All,
Lissi and I have discovered that in one recent book we did, errors were
introduced by the Bookshare processing that were not in the original rtf
submission. These errors take the form of words being split, often in
strange places--that is, not between syllables. I was checking the quality
of a recent book we did and discovered that the word "girl" appeared in one
place as "gi rl", and the word "will" appeared as "w ill". That was in just
the first few pages. It seems likely that more of these will appear if I
keep reading. We checked Lissi's proofread rtf file, and neither of these
errors were there. I had seen this odd word splitting in some other books,
some of which I was thinking of rescanning, and just assumed they were
scannoes that were not noticed by the proofreader. (I'm sure that many of
you know that lots of books get into the collection without a REAL
proofreading, even now.) It never occurred to me until today that these
errors would come from Bookshare's tools. It was a bit of a shock, in fact.
Lissi did mention that when she has clicked on the link for misspellings
when checking in a book, she has sometimes seen letter groupings tagged as
errors that she was not able to find in the rtf file, so she was unable to
correct them. When she was not able to find the misspellings in the file,
she ignored them, figuring that Bookshare was just wrong. That is not as
strange a position to take is it may sound, since Bookshare cannot even give
a consistent word count on the submission form!
I use brf files, but if these errors are being introduced before braille
translation, then they would probably appear in the Daisy version of the
book as well.
We plan to check some of our other books to see how prevalent this problem
is, but we can at least say for certain that the Bookshare tools introduced
errors in at least this book that were not in the file that was checked back
in after proofreading. It seems very unlikely that this particular book
would be unique. If this happened to this book, then it is likely happening
to others.
That's what we want your help with. We would be very grateful if some of you
out there would be willing to check a proofreading or two of your own and
see if this problem exists in those books. I think it would be best to check
proofreading's, not submissions, to eliminate the possibility of errors that
might have crept in between submission and proofreading. I know this may
take a bit of time, since not only do you need to find any split words, but
then you need to compare the Bookshare version with the original rtf file so
that it can be shown that those errors are not in the file that was checked
back in to Bookshare. It is probably best to check the most recent
proofreading's to ensure that any problems you discover were not the result
of tools that have been superseded. The book we found these split words in
was added to the collection on June 18. On the other hand, I don't think
that huge numbers of examples need to be found in each book. If just a few
examples are identified in several recently added books, that should be
enough evidence to prove that the Bookshare tools are adding these errors.
Maybe, if a few more people can confirm this, we can get it looked into.
Thanks a lot for any help in this investigation. It's a little disappointing
to think that those of us who do our very best to get the highest quality
books into the collection might be having our work degraded by a software
glitch of some kind. We're hoping to get some confirmation of this
particular glitch so we can quash it as soon as possible to ensure the best
reading experience for readers. I know most of you here agree on that,
otherwise you probably wouldn't be subscribed.
Thanks again for helping us check into this if you can.
Evan
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