Library Data in a Doc?

[Quint]

Before my catastrophic hard drive crash I had a Word document that had collected the various Library Data entries in one place (plus, of course, all of my own campaign specific entries). I don't suppose anyone else has been anal-retentive to have done the same thing that I could start rebuilding from?

I don't care about which edition particularly, though I have a bias for CT, but I included pretty much anything and everything that was appealing.

Thanks in advance,

D.

 

[Timerover51]

Before my catastrophic hard drive crash I had a Word document that had collected the various Library Data entries in one place (plus, of course, all of my own campaign specific entries). I don't suppose anyone else has been anal-retentive to have done the same thing that I could start rebuilding from?

I don't care about which edition particularly, though I have a bias for CT, but I included pretty much anything and everything that was appealing.

Thanks in advance,

D.

I have considered something like that, but more focused on the various animals that appear in adventures or the JTAS. I have not gotten around to doing it though.

 

[tjoneslo]

There are a couple of "Gather pages from a wiki and put them into a document (usually PDF)" free projects in the world. If you are really interested I could do some more digging and see what I could produce from the Traveller wiki with one of more of them. I'm sure if I could come up with a good list and document production others might be interested too.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Library Data on a web page.

Traveller wiki

 

[Whipsnade]

I'd avoid the Wiki page as there's no quick or easy way to differentiate actual canon from the well meant but mostly awful fanon posted there.

By way of example, here's the page for the Darrian Navy. While actual information on that organization is sparse and scattered between JTAS, AM:8, and RSB among others, you'll notice that no canonical information or references are present on that page at all. Instead, the topic features nothing more than someone's pet project.

Hans tried keeping up with the fanon edits there, while grousing to me about the constant effort in private. With his passing however, there is no one who can re-route the Peneus and Alpheus rivers to flush clean the Augean Stables the Traveller Wiki is fast resembling.

It took several years and new edition to excise another pet project from canon, Charles Gannon's IRIS. One is left to wonder what sort of time and effort will be required to sponge away all the fanon in the Wiki?

 

[tjoneslo]

It took several years and new edition to excise another pet project from canon, Charles Gannon's IRIS. One is left to wonder what sort of time and effort will be required to sponge away all the fanon in the Wiki?

It will require someone with Hans' attention to detail and knowledge of the existing canon combined with an ongoing dedicated effort to fix the articles. I also had several discussions with Hans about how to best format the articles highlight the canon as separate from the fanon. We never came up with a way to make everyone happy.

 

[Xenon]

a thought- there exists software to compare documents, used by schools to find plagiarism in papers. it could be used as an easy way to comb through a large sum of data, and check for references to cannon. anything with cannon references gets them added, anything without such gets tagged as fannon.

data analytics can solve the problem, its just a question of who if anyone would have access to the tools, and be able to use them properly. it would certainly require inputing all the books in a readable format, not sure if you can do that with PDF, or if OCR would be accurate enough (ive seen the horrible errors the 1st ed AD&D reprints had).

heck, traveller in general would be better off with a few spreadsheets or apps to easily apply the rules for various things (trade codes, starship construction, and so on).

 

[Quint]

Thanks all, yes I'm trying to stay away from farming the wiki simply because of the canon/fanon issues.

I suppose that I can look at this as an excuse to simply pare things down to a very Proto-Traveller level of Library Data and then build it back up again...

*sigh*

I hate computers sometimes, unfortunately I really only have myself to blame for not having a decent back up (I thought I did, of course, but didn't - of course...)

D.

 

[aramis]

Thanks all, yes I'm trying to stay away from farming the wiki simply because of the canon/fanon issues.

I suppose that I can look at this as an excuse to simply pare things down to a very Proto-Traveller level of Library Data and then build it back up again...

*sigh*

I hate computers sometimes, unfortunately I really only have myself to blame for not having a decent back up (I thought I did, of course, but didn't - of course...)

D.

There's always the MT Imperial Encyclopedia. It's mostly library data.

 

[Quint]

There's always the MT Imperial Encyclopedia. It's mostly library data.

*grumble*

But not all of the High Passage, Far Traveller, Traveller Digest, blah, blah, blah...

I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I may just have to recruit a family member who types much faster to transcribe things...

D.

 

[Timerover51]

What would be the copyright status if someone with a Traveller license put together the library data from the early books, or the various creatures that appear in the early adventures and the early JTAS articles? Would a license cover that, or would Marc have to okay it?

 

[Timerover51]

*grumble*

But not all of the High Passage, Far Traveller, Traveller Digest, blah, blah, blah...

I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I may just have to recruit a family member who types much faster to transcribe things...

D.

No Scanner?

 

[whartung]

I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I may just have to recruit a family member who types much faster to transcribe things...

D.

May I suggest any of the eleventy different cloud storage companies that give you a few free GB to back this stuff up to in the future, so this can not happen again.

 

[Quint]

May I suggest any of the eleventy different cloud storage companies that give you a few free GB to back this stuff up to in the future, so this can not happen again.

Lol, that's where I am now - the last time I checked cloud storage was not professionally compatible for me. Now it is, which makes things much, much simpler.

D.

 

[tjoneslo]

*grumble*

But not all of the High Passage, Far Traveller, Traveller Digest, blah, blah, blah...

I'm just feeling sorry for myself. I may just have to recruit a family member who types much faster to transcribe things...

Let me offer a more targeted suggestion. Given that none of the sources you mentioned are Canon, any attempt to generate a list of canon library entries would have missed all of these.

On the wiki, look up each of the sources (e.g. http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Imperial_Encyclopedia). In the menu on the left side is a "What links here" link. Click on that link and it produces a list of articles in the wiki which derived from the the starting source. Go through each of these. If the article, minus the obvious formatting headers and infobox, is longer than about two paragraphs, it is probably a mixed source article. Otherwise copy the text out into your favorite editing/formatting application.

This should get you about 75% of the source data you like. This then becomes more of a review / minor typing job rather than a wholesale retype from source.

Who knows, you may discover some neat things you never knew about, and probably some you didn't.

 

[aramis]

What would be the copyright status if someone with a Traveller license put together the library data from the early books, or the various creatures that appear in the early adventures and the early JTAS articles? Would a license cover that, or would Marc have to okay it?

I think Marc would need to okay it, and the DGP specific entries would need to be paraphrased. I seriously think Marc WOULD okay it. Whether he'd let it be sold or not is another matter. (EG: For the conversion of Bk8 to MT, he OK'd a fan version, which Marc himself put up on DTRPG at $0.)

 

[Quint]

Let me offer a more targeted suggestion. Given that none of the sources you mentioned are Canon, any attempt to generate a list of canon library entries would have missed all of these.

On the wiki, look up each of the sources (e.g. http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Imperial_Encyclopedia). In the menu on the left side is a "What links here" link. Click on that link and it produces a list of articles in the wiki which derived from the the starting source. Go through each of these. If the article, minus the obvious formatting headers and infobox, is longer than about two paragraphs, it is probably a mixed source article. Otherwise copy the text out into your favorite editing/formatting application.

This should get you about 75% of the source data you like. This then becomes more of a review / minor typing job rather than a wholesale retype from source.

Who knows, you may discover some neat things you never knew about, and probably some you didn't.

That is an excellent shortcut - thank you!

D.

 

[Timerover51]

I think Marc would need to okay it, and the DGP specific entries would need to be paraphrased. I seriously think Marc WOULD okay it. Whether he'd let it be sold or not is another matter. (EG: For the conversion of Bk8 to MT, he OK'd a fan version, which Marc himself put up on DTRPG at $0.)

Just confirming that by Book 8 you mean the book on Robots.

 

[mike wightman]

Yes, the MT version of LBB:8 was a fan based project that used the MT design system to build robots based on LBB:8 and developed from there.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...-Robots?sorttest=true&filters=0_0_10116_0_0_0

It is a really good book.

 

[maksimsmelchak]

Let me offer a more targeted suggestion. Given that none of the sources you mentioned are Canon, any attempt to generate a list of canon library entries would have missed all of these.

On the wiki, look up each of the sources (e.g. http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Imperial_Encyclopedia). In the menu on the left side is a "What links here" link. Click on that link and it produces a list of articles in the wiki which derived from the the starting source. Go through each of these. If the article, minus the obvious formatting headers and infobox, is longer than about two paragraphs, it is probably a mixed source article. Otherwise copy the text out into your favorite editing/formatting application.

This should get you about 75% of the source data you like. This then becomes more of a review / minor typing job rather than a wholesale retype from source.

Who knows, you may discover some neat things you never knew about, and probably some you didn't.

The things Thomas has done at the Wiki are truly awesome.

I am continually finding things for which he and the greater Traveller community are responsible. I cannot praise Thomas enough. I use the "What links here" function all the time.

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.