Science Fiction Burroughs, Edgar Rice: The Barsoom Series. XHTML. v1. 08 Aug 2009

[rogue_ronin]

Books 1-10 in XHTML format with CSS. Custom covers, buttons and other small images. Complete TOC, endnotes and internal navigation icons. Done in xBook format (search the forums) with lots of metadata in the head. All sizes are either in percentage, em, ex or are 1px, so fonts should size up and down decently if not perfectly. It only declares Serif or Sans Serif for font-families.

Does not, and will not include scanned images from the first editions. Future editions could probably add a Barsoomian map, though. Can anyone point to a good one? I'd also be open to more modern illustrations.

Should convert nicely to any format, assuming it can deal with CSS. Any straight html conversion might be pretty ugly. Check it out in your browser to see what it's trying to be. (Best if you keep the browser window narrow, around 600 pixels.)

Hint: click the cover to jump to TOC, click the colophon image to "close" the book by jumping back to the cover. Or just page down -- it's all in one file.

This undoubtedly could still be improved. I'd appreciate any comments. Well, almost any.

I might do the Venus series next.

m a r

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[ahi]

This is amazing!

Are you also the artist behind the pictures?

Would you be amicable to my creating 6" screen sized PDF editions from this material?

- Ahi

[rogue_ronin]

Darn it! I had a nice answer for you, but lost it...

Let me try to re-create it.

The figure art and planet images were all found on the web. I cleaned them up, pulled them from their backgrounds where necessary (#6 had a horrible, horrible background), added color, removed color, added gold-leaf to some (hard!) and just generally made the figures fit the theme (which grew from the first cover.)

I got better with The Gimp as I went, but I think the third cover is the best. The last three might be a little formulaic. I did all the buttons myself, but got an outline or two from more found art (like the points of the arrows.) I did nearly all the color, definitely all the fonts, layout and layering.

The internal structure and layout grew out of trying to understand CSS and make a generally useful set of XHTML tools to structure and edit eBook sources. Plus, I like to think a bit about how it should work. Most eBooks are ugly, and not fun to play with. And I think that the source is pretty readable, which is important.

I don't think I have any moral claim to control this -- I hunted for and assembled a lot of stuff, and added the value of my hard work, a logical structure and my sense of aesthetics and function. But the beauty of the things (if it's there) is in large part due to inspiration from the great work of the artists (including ERB!) Just trying to properly respect them by doing it as right as I can.

So, go forth and convert! Add more value!

m a r

ps: I think that the use of fonts could use some tweaking, so any suggestions will be listened to. If you fix anything, let me know so I can fix it here.

[capidamonte]

I like these.

I changed one of the covers to better suit the set.

This work is assumed to be in the Life+70 public domain OR the copyright holder has given specific permission for distribution. Copyright laws differ throughout the world, and it may still be under copyright in some countries. Before downloading, please check your country's copyright laws. If the book is under copyright in your country, do not download or redistribute this work.

To report a copyright violation you can contact us here.