Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Thank you for all your questions, feedback and encouragements. I don't have enough time to individually answer every request or question; even if I'd like to. The volume of feedback increased beyond my wildest expectations. Maintaining this site is very time-consuming; so please bear with me a little bit.

The following questions have been asked very frequently. Please feel free to browse this FAQ; chances are high that your question has already been addressed. Of course, I'll do my best to timely answer questions that have not been listed in this FAQ.

Regards,
-Farid. 2003/03/04. Last update: 2004/03/11.

About This Site

• What's that little devil at the bottom of every page?
  This is the mascot of the FreeBSD Operating System that powers this computer. BTW, it's not a devil, it's a good natured daemon. We're not a satanic site :-). Just click on the logo to learn more about that excellent operating system.

• Why don't you use JavaScript, Java, Flash, DHTML, Frames...?
  Because they're not compatible with every browser. This site has been designed to be viewable with any browser. As nice as little gimmicks can be, they are a big impediment to users of text-only browsers like w3m, or for cellphones with text displays. Accessibility is also very important to us, because text-to-speech conversion software often chokes on dynamic content. Please be tolerant towards users of non-mainstream browsers.

• Which browser best renders this site?
  This site should render correctly on any browser. If things don't show up as intended, you're likely having problems in the cascading style sheets (CSS) implementation of your specific browser. In this case, please do one (or more) of the following:
  • Upgrade to the newest version of your browser. Most vendors have fixed a lot of CSS shortcomings in their latest browser versions.
  • Turn off CSS rendering in your browser. The contents will still render, though not as nicely as with enabled CSS.
  • Drop me a mail, specifying the problem, and the type of browser you're using. Since I don't have access to every browser, I'd need your feedback while fixing the CSS or other attributes. I don't have a Windows System here, therefore no Internet Explorer! IE-Users: your feedback is very important to make this site a better viewing experience for you. I can't do that alone, since Microsoft doesn't provide a FreeBSD or Linux implementation of their IE.
  Mozilla's Gecko engine renders this site optimally, as would any web browsers that use Gecko internally.

• What does this site's logo mean?
  This is a broken multifacetted cross. It's an insider joke and a symbol. You may interpret this archetype any way you feel appropriate. Please don't use this logo without properly acknowledging its origin with a direct referral to us. A notification of its use would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

• Why did you change the skin to all-grey?
  Out of personal feeling, and for improved accessibility. Searing soul pain turned into a dull absence of all emotions. Everything feels grey, lifeless, dead. Burning soul turned to ashes.

How To Help

• Would you accept banner ads to our site? We pay per referral much more than our competitors...
  No, sorry. This site is purely non-commercial. I have no intention of making money out of it, despite its costs.

• I'd like to support your site. Would you accept donations?
  No, thank you. As in the case of banner ads, I don't seek financial support; though I'm grateful you've asked. If you want to donate time or money, please consider helping our main data provider Project Gutenberg either by participating in the Distributed Proofreaders network, or by making a donation to them. Providing online texts for free already helped a lot of people as well as many schools all around the world who can't afford to import expensive paper books.

• What else can I do to help your site?
  The easiest way to help is by adding a link to our site on your web pages. If you maintain or regularly contribute to human-edited web directories, you may consider submitting our site for inclusion.

• We're a web hosting company and would like to host your site...
  If you've got bandwidth and (a lot of) disk space to burn, we can talk about hosting this site on your machines. I'd acknowledge your contribution in a discreet way. There's one condition however: your machines must run FreeBSD and Apache, and I'd need both a full SSH Unix account and access to raw log files on your server as a bare minimum. I had to politely reject quite a lot of offers from prospective web hosters, because they didn't or couldn't meet these criteria.

Virtual Library

• Why is the Virtual Library growing at such a slow pace?
  While scripts exist that can convert nearly any Etext into mediocre HTML, the result is often disappointing. There is presently no reliable way to automatically convert plain texts or texts with foreign HTML markup into HTML suited for this site. The conversion is therefore a manual process which I can only do in my spare time. This is by nature slow. Moreover, I only add texts to the virtual library that I've read beforehand and that I think worthy enough for inclusion. Don't worry though, I've read much more than is currently present in the VL; the bottleneck is truly the conversion process right now, not the reading.

• Why wouldn't you add abstracts or summaries?
  Despite being very popular, the summaries on this site have often been used by students to avoid reading the original texts. I wouldn't bother if people cheated or cut corners in their homework assignements, but many teachers convinced me to drop the summaries for the benefit of their students. To summarize: Read the Text, Luke!

• I've found an Etext in the VL, but would need a translation into <add-your-favorite-language-here>.
  Unfortunately, only the most important texts have been translated in foreign languages and even in this case, copyright laws specify that the year of the death of the translator, not the author, should be considered. In other words: There is a general lack of translations which are in the public domain right now. I'm planning to add as many translations as I can find, once enough english texts are present; but I'd need your feedback to refer me to such translations.

• Isn't it a copyright violation to publish those texts on the Internet?
  No. The copyrights of the Etexts published on this site have expired. The texts are now in the public domain and can be freely redistributed. More information about copyright laws are available on Project Gutenberg's Copyright HOWTO page. The remaining contents of this web site are however copyrighted according to the provisions of this site's copyright.

• Why are you copying Project Gutenberg files instead of providing a PG mirror?
  As explained here, this is a different kind of mirror to a selected subset of Etexts, HTMLized and chopped in smaller chunks for faster download. Moreover, there are other Etext providers besides Project Gutenberg. I don't have enough bandwidth to host a full mirror of PG on this machine. Sorry.

Quotes Collection

• There are other, bigger quotes collections on the Net. What makes your collection different?
  Unlike most other quotes collections, we try to refer you to the exact spot of the quote in the full texts that are already part of the Virtual Library. We believe that providing the context of a quote in this way may be useful. Of course, not all quotes are attributable, and only a subset of quotes belong to freely available Etexts (and we host only a subset of the latter in the VL). So don't expect too much here.

Future Plans

• We'd like to build a community of readers via a message board. Could you please add such a board to your site?
  Sorry, I have no plans to add a message board to this site right now.
  

• When will the search page work?
  I have currently no plans to fix this. Are you overworked like me right now? ;-). Sorry for the inconvenience.

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