BUCKYVERSE

Backstory

After attending my first Trimtab Space Camp in May 2021, I've been reading Bucky books in an effort to explore more of his ideas. As I have been collecting items for my library, many of these books are out of print, only available "used" at very high prices, or are old image scans of printed books. Even the eBooks I've purchased display math formulas incorrectly or are poorly formatted.

Experiment

I decided to do an experiment to see what it takes to digitally translate a printed book to an eBook, viewable on a mobile device or Amazon Kindle. An eBook allows for instant delivery, is easily transportable, saves highlights and notes, updates easily, and is more accessible through adjustable font size and contrast or text-to-speech.

Since I had recently joined a TrimTab book club, they chose the next book, Cosmography: A Posthumous Scenario for the Future of Humanity, his last published book from 1992. There isn't an eBook version available, and the used copy was $60, 2.5x the cover price. (A few months ago, there were 5 used copies on Amazon starting at $120.)

Another piece of my puzzle is I have been learning a typesetting system to layout résumés for a work project. LaTeX «Lah-tech» is a standard for scientific documents, is free software, handles complex mathematical formulas, is text-based, and has been in use for decades. By default, LaTeX produces PDFs which are easy to view on most platforms and devices.

A book is a complicated document, and there was a lot to learn all around. Translating math formulas is its own macro language. Starting out re-typing it page by page is as slow as it goes---I have since upgraded to a book scanner. Setting up chapters and paragraphs, references to a bibliography, indexing keywords, captions to figures, terms to a glossary; this takes typos to the next level. Make one bad enough and LaTeX will give up trying to create the PDF output. Using LaTeX as the source file, there are many tools to translate to other file formats including HTML5, DOCX, and ePub. Because it is text-based, all changes to content and layout can be tracked in a source code control system for distributed editing and long-term, digital preservation.

After many revisions with a jeweler's loupe, learning the differences between a minus sign, en dash, or an em dash; marking when a period ends a sentence, is a decimal point, or is part of an abbreviation; wondering how anything is spelled anymore, I have a prototype in PDF and different eBook formats.

PDF - "portable document format", is a read-only file for easy reading, sharing, and printing.

eBook formats:

  1. ePub - most common format - Apple, Google, Microsoft readers
  2. mobi - Mobipocket format - use on the oldest Kindles
  3. azw3 - better format - Kindle Format 8
  4. kfx - enhanced typography, Kindle Format 10, requires side-loading to Kindles

Results

  1. I hadn't read Cosmography before this.
  2. I can produce an eBook from a printed book in a few weeks.
  3. Buckminster Fuller never met a syllable he didn't like. Ex: omniintercomplementary, differentiallessly, interattractiveness
  4. eBooks are actually files written in the languages of the Internet---HTML and CSS.
  5. Digital can be better, faster, and cheaper.
  6. It's difficult to read a book you can't find, so I want ALL of Bucky's books in my pocket.