Ulysses page-by-page: 2015

Thursday, December 24, 2015

[Indenting in Ulysses]

[notes for a comparison of levels-of-indenting across editions]

my prediction is that stanzas are indented so that the longest line is centered... so the longer the line the smaller the indent

1922 measured in cm on a 21 cm wide page (at least 15 levels so far-- reduce to maybe 5? or add one 'em' for each step? how many em's in a iphone line? 30?):

Mocker: # 3 = 14%
That can enjoy 3.5
Doomed for a certain time to walk the earth. 3.5
That has been explained, I believe, by jurists. 3.5
You are my looking glass from night to morning. 4
Dearest Papli, # 4 = 19%
Whelps and dams of murderous foes whom none 4
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils # 4.5 = 21%
'Twas rank and fame that tempted thee, 4.5
While his family weeps and mourns his loss 5
And in the porches of mine ear did pour. 5

And therefore he left out her name # 5.5 = 26%
Dear Henry, # 5.5cm = 26%
The hungry famished gull. 5.5
Waves o'er the waters dull. 5.5
Don Giovanni, thou hast me invited 5.5
O, won’t we have a merry time, 6
My father gave me seeds to sow. 6
. . . . mentreche il vento, come fa, si tace. # 6 = 29%
To the High Sheriff of Dublin, # 6 = 29%
Won’t you come to Sandymount, 6
O, Mairy lost the pin of her drawers. 6
How could you possibly do so? 6
Who fought with heart and hand. 6
Is coming! Is coming!! Is coming!!! 6
While you're coming through the rye. 6
Then he passed the female catheter. 6
Orchestral Satan, weeping many a rood 6
Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick 6

Never missed nor he never will. # 6.5 = 31%
And no more turn aside and brood 6.5
Jubilantium te virginum. 6.5
The rocky road to Dublin. 6.5
Shall weave old England's winding sheet. 6.5
Then here’s a health to Mulligan’s aunt 6.5
Couch a hogshead with me then. 6.5
All dimpled cheeks and curls, 6.5
Co-ome thou dear one 6.5
'Tis time for this poor soul 7
And Ulster will be right. 7
He comes, pale vampire, 7
Don Giovanni, a cenar teco 7

Miss Martha Clifford # 8 = 38%
Dolphin's barn lane # 8 = 38%
Laud we the gods # 8 = 38%
Him Satan fleers, # 8 = 38%
O, O the boys of 8
Heigho! Heigho! 8
Plumtree’s Potted Meat? 8
Comes lo-ve’s old... 8
Là ci darem la mano 8
c/o P. O. # 9 = 43%
Henry Flower, Esq, # 9.5cm out of 21cm = 45%
You mean the will. 10

c/o P. O. Westland Row, # 11cm = 52%
Dublin. # 12 = 57%
Dublin. #12 = 57%
H. Rumbold, #14 = 67%

MARTHA # 14.5cm = 69%
— 7, Hunter Street, # 14.5 = 69%
Liverpool. #15 = 71%
City. # 15cm = 71%
Master Barber. #15 = 71%
(Laughter.) # 15.5
MILLY # 16.5 = 79%
M. # 16.5 = 79%

z5 uses:
p {text-indent: 1em; margin: 0px;}
p.indent {text-indent: 5em;}
p.indent2 {text-indent: 10em;}
p.noind {text-indent: 0px;}
div.addrss {margin-left:10em;}
div.stanza {text-align: left; margin-left: 1em;}
div.center { text-align: center;}
div.stanza p { margin: 0px;}
p.quest {margin: 0px;}
span.floath {margin-left: -1em;}
p.spk {text-align: center;}
p.center {text-align: center;}
p.centerh {text-align: center;)
p.hangind {} #bloom's library p661ff
p.marg2 {} # skip a halfline??
p.right2 {}

p69:
<div class="addrss">
Henry Flower, Esq, # 9.5cm out of 21cm = 45%
c/o P. O. Westland Row, # 11cm = 52%
City. # 15cm = 71%
</div>

p75:
<div class="stanza marg2">
Dear Henry, # 5.5cm = 26%
</div>
MARTHA # 14.5cm = 69%
P. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.
He tore the flower gravely [...]

p268:
<div class="addrss">
Miss Martha Clifford # 8 = 38%
c/o P. O. # 9 = 43%
Dolphin's barn lane # 8 = 38%
Dublin. # 12 = 57%
</div>

p64:
<div class="stanza marg2">
Dearest Papli, # 4 = 19%
</div>
Your fond daughter,
MILLY # 16.5 = 79%
P. S. Excuse bad writing, am in a hurry. Byby.
M. # 16.5 = 79%
Fifteen yesterday. [...]

p247:
Bronze by gold, Miss Douce's head by Miss Kennedy's head, over the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing steel.

p291:
<div class="addrss">
— 7, Hunter Street, # 14.5 = 69%
Liverpool. #15 = 71%
</div>
<div class="stanza">
To the High Sheriff of Dublin, # 6 = 29%
Dublin. #12 = 57%
</div>
Honoured sir i beg to offer my services in the abovementioned painful case i hanged Joe Gann in Bootle jail on the 12 of Febuary 1900 and i hanged... — Show us, Joe, says I.
— ... private Arthur Chace for fowl murder of Jessie Tilsit in Pentonville prison and i was assistant when...
— Jesus, says I.
— ... Billington executed the awful murderer Toad Smith...
The citizen made a grab at the letter.
— Hold hard, says Joe, i have a special nack of putting the noose once in he can't get out hoping to be favoured i remain, honoured sir, my terms is five ginnees.
<div class="addrss">
H. Rumbold, #14 = 67%
Master Barber. #15 = 71%
</div>
— And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen.

p313:
<div class="right3">
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . la tua pace # 6 = 29%
. . . . . . . . . . . che parlar ti piace #
. . . . mentreche il vento, come fa, si tace. #
</div>

p200:
(Laughter.) # 15.5

p195:
To whom thus Eglinton: #
<div class="stanza">
You mean the will. #10
That has been explained, I believe, by jurists. # 3.5
She was entitled to her widow's dower
At common law. His legal knowledge was great
Our judges tell us.
Him Satan fleers, # 8 = 38%
Mocker: # 3 = 14%
And therefore he left out her name # 5.5 = 26%
From the first draft but he did not leave out
The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters,
For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford
And in London. And therefore when he was urged,
As I believe, to name her
He left her his
Secondbest
Bed.
</div>
Punkt
<div class="stanza">
Leftherhis
Secondbest
Leftherhis
Bestabed
Secabest
Leftabed.
</div>

p209:
<div class="stanza">
Laud we the gods # 8 = 38%
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils # 4.5 = 21%
From our bless'd altars.
</div>

p579&c:
<div class="stanza">
— Buffalo Bill shoots to kill, #
Never missed nor he never will. # 6.5 = 31%
</div>

Tuesday, December 8, 2015

Electricity in Ulysses

Dublin was just beginning to be electrified.

Neither the Tower nor 7 Eccles seems to have any electricity.

The Library does, the Pigeonhouse is a power station, the trams are electric.

Bloom dreams of electrical devices, and theorizes about its effects.

Some street lights have been converted from gas to electric.

The ballast office clock works by electric wire, and the race results come by telegraph.

The newspaper and some stores have telephones.

(Would the printing presses use electric motors?)

The theatres probably used arc lighting.

Sunday, December 6, 2015

The generic Ulysses project

The goal: optimized editions of Ulysses on every ebook platform

The text: start with 1922, fix the typos, avoid controversies by hewing to 1922 (or to current consensus when it's uncontroversial)

The platforms:

HTML plus CSS: using the simplest possible CSS classes, get the basic layout right, so others can tweak it easily; a single file c2Mb, ampersanded special characters
(recent draft: https://sites.google.com/site/ulyssestext/1922r.html )

epub: break out chapters

markdown: asterisks for italics, ledger-table, minimal indents using nbsp?

gitbook: add back br, center, and...?

pdf: two versions, one small, one pretty

kindle: ?

Pagination: not normally visible (too intrusive), maybe hidden 1922 pagination plus Gabler

Annotations: eventually support multiple-file (chapters) with interlinear notes?

Conversions:

gitbook exports simplified epub, pdf, and mobi

Calibre for Windows does conversions from epub

Tuesday, October 20, 2015

[Ulysses etexts]

(probing the question of a maximally flexible, minimally intrusive css design...)

Ulysses is remarkable for embedding transcriptions of various media: letters, ads, imaginary theatrical programs and scripts (contemporary and historical), an accounts book... Might Joyce have preferred to give these appropriate fonts, if the publisher had been willing? Apparently not, although Eolus got one special (weirdly inapt) font.

new:

onepage html

online options:

variorum
well-proofed epub

archive.org
multiple formats, page images, 1922

wikisource.org
unannotated, 1922, linebreaks, pages

wikisource.org
annotateable, 1922, italics, linebreaks, pages

online-literature.com
no italics, 1961, episodes

gutenberg.org
html, italics, radically simplified indenting, 1986? full book

geoffwilkins.net
pdf, italics, 1986? full book

archive.org-gutenberg
txt, CAPS for italics, linebreaks, 1986? full book, Col Choat

indenting styles:

1922 p3 indents everything the same

1986 has different indents for episode-start (w/asterisk), plain paragraph, and speech (no indent, em dash? no spaces)

Philly p1 indents paragraphs deeply (except no indent for episode-start), speeches not at all, but space after dashes

Slote39 p5 has small equal indents for paragraphs and speeches, but no indent for episode-start, and space after dashes

1961 p3 resembles Slote39 but puts the 1st two words on p2, all caps, and no space after dashes

so ideally we should let the stylesheet decide the indent for these three types of paragraph, and whether there's spacing after the dashes (is that even possible?). 1961 also distinguishes episode-starts that aren't also the start of one of the three 'books' but this is nonjoycean.

1.239-241 doesn't indent the stanza, and leads with a dash; ditto 1.300, but not 1.260 or 1.264 which are indented with no dash

1922 p9 indents deeply with no dash, p10 indents two stanzas less deeply (but identically, even though they're very different widths)

1961 has no dashes and widely varying indents

Slote p9-11 has no dashes, and slightly different indents

the dashes are logical to distinguish spoken/sung stanzas from thought, but they look highly unjoycean to me unless accompanied by a hanging indent as 1922 p13-- is it possible to leave those choices (display dash or not, hanging indent or not) to the stylesheet?

stanza-indents should be individually left-aligned and probably approximately centered if this is possible. with a hanging indent as well this could get messy.

in small windows, would it be possible/ make sense to use another level of hanging indent for wrapped lines? (FW2 does this, but FW1 used a weird square-bracket right-aligned overflow)

most editions skip a line before and after stanzas, but 1986 does not.

skipping lines between paragraphs should be a stylesheet decision-- i'm sure the main reason not to has been to save paper.

4.397-414 is Milly's letter (cf Martha's at 5.421ff). 1986 uses three special indents for the open and close.

1922 has one special indent for the open, and another very deep one for the two signatures p64 which are in small caps

both Slote and 1961 also have one special indent for the open, but right justify the two signatures in small caps

5.62-65 has Henry Flower's address on Martha's envelope. 1922 p69 uses three special indents, as does 1961. 1986 seems to treat it as a stanza with a deep hanging indent for the 3rd line.

5.144-147 is Plumtree's ad. 1922 p72, 1961 and Slote all treat it as a stanza. 1986 centers each line separately which looks much better to me. (is there a historical ad this could mimic? it seems a shame to create a special class otherwise)

Eolus needs centered headlines, all caps. 1922 p112 uses a funky 1922-era? font, and skips two lines before and after each headline. 1961 seems to skip 3 before and two after, along with an extrabold style. 1986 skips two lines before and one line after each. Slote skips a line before each, but not after. (nobody mixes large and small caps?) the breakpoints for linewrap should probably be fixed based on 1922, but 1922's were probably arbitrary unless jaj modified some...?

7.717-719 is a right-aligned stanza with 'ellipses' to approximate a left-alignment as well. the number of fullstops before the last line varies from 0-6.

8.15-16 is a stanza for 1922 p144, for 1961 and for Slote, but just two nonitalicised paragraphs for 1986. (if it's an ad like Plumtree's the lines could be centered separately) 8.90-93 is just such an ad for 1986. but for 1922 p146, for 1961 and for Slote it's 3 italicised 'paragraphs'.

9.118-121 is an 'ad' for everyone, eg 1922 p179, but 1961 and Slote use all caps for two of the lines.

9.190-191 is a single wrapped long stanza-line. 1961 and Slote don't indent it at all!

9.500 is typeset to align with the notes in the image (if it's included in the image, is that acceptable? it won't be searchable, and the font may not match...)

9.684ff is a mess, partially imitating the layout of an Elizabethan script, sort of like a stanza with no italics. 1922 p194-195. 1986 relocates the first line, and the weird italic 'Punkt' which everyone else centers with no fullstop. Elizabethan scripts aligned overlapping speakers when a line was split between them, some editions imitate this better than others.

9.893ff anticipates Circe's script layout, with the twist of not-quite-right-justified "(Laughter.)" or "(laughter)" eg 1922 p200,

9.1171-1176 is centered lines with dash in 1986, no dash in 1922 or 1961 or Slote

9.1181-1189 is a special nightmare with unindented small caps (indented and mixed in 1922 and Slote), indented "and"s, and that giant right brace that spans three lines vertically, bisecting the middle line

in 10 it's tempting to tag the intrusions, but joyce conspicuously didn't. sectionbreaks are marked with skipped lines and: a triangle of asterisks in 1922 p215, three asterisks in a row in 1986, one hollow star in 1961, one black star in Slote.

the overture to episode 10 is set off by one blank line except in 1961. everyone but 1986 indents each instrument, and 1986 is also the only one to use hanging indents when wrapping lines.

only 1922 p408ff uses hanging indents for stage directions. Slote skips lines only around name-lines. (1922 looks especially odd for the three-paragraph stage direction at p412-413. cf 10.131ff-- nobody skips lines between these) Slote also centers short stage directions.

1922 doesn't skip a line between question and answer in episode 17, but indents each. 1986 does skip one line, no indents, and skips two between questions. Slote and 1961 indent but don't skip the line.

Bloom's budget 17.1456ff, 1922 p664, has at least four aligned columns, with two headings centered over two each. all use hanging indents (except 1986 that doesn't need any), only 1922 fills lines with ellipses. only 1986 has a superscript 'd' in "recd".

Friday, August 7, 2015

[A Fitbit for Poldy]

"Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said dressing... Timing her. 9.15. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage." [p67]

Leopold Bloom would have been the first man in Dublin to order a Fitbit wristband:

Steps, Calories, Distance: we can reconstruct most of the Bloomsday distances, approximate the steps, and guess the calories
Clock: reconstructable
Sleep Tracking: naps, ch13, ch17/18
Auto Sleep Detection
Silent Wake Alarm (ch13?)
Floors Climbed: mostly street level, or entryways ("Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the landing." p65)
Active Minutes: this would be interesting to graph
Multi-Sport: Sandow's exercises? "Must begin again those Sandow's exercises." Gerty's ball?
Continuous Heart Rate: fear of Boylan "The flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold statues: quiet there. Safe in a minute."
Caller ID
Text Notifications
Music Control: Bloom's iPod as Spotify playlist
GPS Tracking: easy to reconstruct

Personal logging demo

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

[Ulysses emoji update]

If you try to translate Ulysses into emoji you run into various serious problems:

different platforms support slightly different subsets, with slightly different representations, and the results of copying between them are often unpredictable
searching for the best symbol is slow and clumsy, so you'll probably have to compile your own exhaustive cheatsheets
they're optimised for Japanese teen culture, and you ought to master those meanings before redefining them
they have no grammar (like 'A said B thinks C will do X') and hacking one together from repurposed bits is tedious [terrible attempt] [fragments]
symbols acquire many meanings and context doesn't help disambiguate very well
if the Japanese teens have standard sexual euphemisms i haven't found their glossary yet

On the other hand, the challenge is enriching, and can produce unexpected insights as you reduce events and details to their broader themes...

grammar

plurals could be a plus sign, or even a number (x2)

1st/2nd/3rd person could be a number or icon or icon-with-number

past/present/future could be arrows??

in general, you want to 'bracket' modal events and introduce them with an indicator of the modality: A thinks, B dreamt, C will try

there's plenty of variant brackets that could indicate modalities too:

( ) thinks
[ ]
{ } imagines
⸨ ⸩ says
❨ ❩
❪ ❫
⸦ ⸧
❬ ❭
❮ ❯ future
❰ ❱
❴ ❵
❲ ❳
⦗ ⦘
⁅ ⁆
〈 〉

Saturday, June 6, 2015

[Ulysses emoji?]

Updated thoughts on an emoji translation of Ulysses, after roughing out the first few pages:

There's still less than 1000 emoji 'words', but creative workarounds can fill the gaps, and searching for these is a good (and usually fun) literary exercise. Don't expect the translations to be readable without paraphrases.

For example:

Milky Way

bento box

tear-off calendar

is a pretty eloquent summary of Joyce's intent-- neatly packing the whole universe into 18 compartments like a bento lunchbox, one for each hour of a single day.

performing arts

turns out to be useful as a verb meaning 'acts like'.

The closest thing to 'Ireland' is another island nation:

Japan

There's no symbol for 'mirror' yet, but we can recycle

optical disc

(For Caliban not seeing his reflection my best-so-far is losing his cellphone reception)

The Japanese roots of

folded hands

make it an ambiguous mix of prayer and thanks and respect, the latter intensified as

person bowing deeply

The only 'body' of water is

water wave

For buying and selling, is it cheating to use this:

currency exchange

Or for "beastly dead", the chilling:

meat on bone

We need to disambiguate mothers, aunts, etc beyond

older woman

I'm looking forward to using

roasted sweet potato

as Bloom's potato, and

Father Christmas

as Father Conmee, and maybe

as "parallax", and

moyai

for statues.

I haven't spotted anything naughtier than

women with bunny ears

so all kinds of sexual euphemisms need to be assigned (the Japanese must have suggestions).

For convenience, major characters probably need dedicated emoji.

imp [Buck Mulligan]
or

horse face [Mulligan 'equine']

person frowning [Stephen???]

people
communications
food-plants-animals
other stuff (clothes, buildings, vehicles, sports, etc)
misc

=================
[i'm stumped for now how to embed emoji in blogger posts. i tried two custom fonts, but may have missed a step. what's especially frustrating is they display fine in blogger's editor...
ps: hacked workaround using open images]

The practical vocabulary of emoji, formalised as unicode, seems to be growing more expressive by daily leaps and bounds.

It's not just coincidental that more and more joycean motifs are getting their own icons-- we all share the same motivations, as Finnegans Wake tries to prove.

online resources tend to be sorted by nerdy categories, not literary ones. so i've started these category pages, struggling not to overlook anything:

people,
food-plants-animals,
stuff,
misc

old notes:

special/farfetched: potato"🍠" , macintosh, Boylan "👲" , tower"🗼" , sing "🎤" , masturbate "😉" , curses/profanity,

¨ roasted sweet potato

missing: tobacco "🚬" , ad, coffin "💀", grave, library, bookstore "📚" , soap, story, wordplay

random possibilities:

Mulligan's fry "🍳"
hovering man: macintosh?
school: Deasy's, Belvedere, etc
santa: "🎅" Conmee
bowing: asking favor?
satchel: "🎒" schoolchildren, Nestor
ear: eavesdropping, attention, audience
2 men: Mulligan linking SD
man:"👨"
boy: "👦" Patsy
haircut: self-grooming?
ring:
bride:
circus tent: Mirus bazaar
happy raised hand: greets?
restroom: jakes, greenhouse "🚽"
womans clothes, handbag, dress: "👜" "👗"
OK face: "🙆" Lenehan?
no-good face: "🙅" Tisdall Farrell? blind stripling? sailor?
princess: "👸" cavalcade?
person frowning: Simon?? Menton, Cyclops, Corny?
old man: "👴" AE? sailor?
girl: "👧" Gerty, Dilly
dancer: "💃" maybe storytellers?
two women: Katey&Boody, midwives, Sirens?
woman's boots: "👢" Bella,
high heels: "👠" highclass ladies
bunny girl: "👯" prostitutes
man&woman: "👫" (whole range of mostly imaginary relationships?)
kiss: "💏" ditto physical
woman: "👩" Molly, Miss Dunne, Martha Clifford, Mina, Lydia
older woman: "👵" milkwoman, May, Josie?
ebook "📖"
audio clip
video clip
encounter?
pedestrian "🚶"
praying "🙏"
bath "🛀"
children
tram "🚃"

hearts

is there any way to use these as variations on the theme?

(Hades' organ is the heart)

open book

performing arts [fiction]

milky way [macrocosm]

tear-off calendar [microcosm]

man

splashing sweat [trials]
(Greek flag)

sun with face [sunny day]

clock face eight-thirty

European castle [tower]

imp [Buck Mulligan]

kimono [yellow silk dressinggown]

jeans [pants]

haircut [shave]

speech balloon [monolog patter]

smirking face [mocker]

dancer [performing/miming]

performing arts [pretending to be characters]

folded hands (prayer) [priest]

man [Stephen]

person frowning

unamused face