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Merging rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com into reciprocalsystem.org

Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2018 5:08 pm
by bperet
The "official" site for the works of Dewey B. Larson is: https://reciprocalsystem.org

I am now in the process of deprecating rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com, which will eventually become an alias for the official site. There is a LOT of material to be merged and reformatted and it may take me months to complete the merge on my own.

If anyone wants to help, please let me know. rstheory.org is a Drupal 7 site (content management) and reciprocalsystem.com is just straight html. reciprocalsystem.org is Drupal 8. Mostly a lot of copy/paste from the old sites to the new, along with some formatting, spell checking, adding URL aliases and fixing links.

I am building redirection maps, so the links from the old sites will automatically update to the new locations.

If anyone wants to lend a hand, please let me know. Thanks.

Re: Merging rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com into reciprocalsystem.org

Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 11:51 am
by Djchrismac
I'll help Bruce, just email me instructions and I can assist with migrating and merging. I quite enjoy laborious data entry tasks as I can go into auto-pilot which gives me more time to explore thoughts.. :D

Re: Merging rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com into reciprocalsystem.org

Posted: Tue Dec 18, 2018 10:57 pm
by zuoqian
I also could do some simple work.

Re: Merging rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com into reciprocalsystem.org

Posted: Fri Dec 21, 2018 12:23 pm
by bperet
The merge of the sites is in progress, also lots of new material being added to reciprocalsystem.org.

Once the merge is complete, I will redirect the rstheory and .com sites over to reciprocalsystem.org, which will then be the most complete archive of RS/Larson information available on the net. We are tracking the old URLs so the search engines should still work correctly and auto-update to the new pages on reciprocalsystem.org.

After the merge is finished, I will get back to typesetting the out-of-print books. I would like to put them out as new editions, so if anyone has any comments on areas that need better explanation, figures, drawings, etc., let me know.

Re: Merging rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com into reciprocalsystem.org

Posted: Sun Dec 23, 2018 3:25 pm
by bperet
I have all the ebooks moved over to reciprocalsystem.org (670 pages!!), but they need some work. I corrected many of the errors and missing images, but there is no standardization of format and probably a lot of bad links. Also, the Drupal theme needs to be updated to fix some <cite> references, which are showing up as blocks instead of inline.

Studtmann's thesis, Towards a Unified Cosmological Physics, will not OCR... it was done on a typewriter, double-spaced, and he did the subscripts/superscripts by dropping or hopping up to the line above, so they are not recognized--looks like separate lines of text. I did the preface, but given the formatting and marks/poor ink on the paper, it would almost need to be entered by hand.

The Road to Permanent Prosperity needs editing and url correction.

Still "to do"... move the audio files, photos collections and shopping cart from rstheory.

I am adding some modules for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), so when I switch over, we should get better visibility.

Question: should I enable user logins and page comments? Or just keep in a read-only site and archive of Reciprocal System material?

Re: Merging rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com into reciprocalsystem.org

Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2018 4:25 pm
by bperet
Just about finished merging reciprocalsystem.com and rstheory.org into reciprocalsystem.org. Moved about 6000 pages of information on Larson and the RS, spanning some 60 years.

Remaining: to run some link verifications to make sure I didn't make many typeos, then finish the "redirect" list for rstheory.org to point to the new locations.

Fixed most of the problems with The Road to Permanent Prosperity.

I hope to make the switch around the New Year.

Re: Merging rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com into reciprocalsystem.org

Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2018 3:17 pm
by wsitze
I admire your dedication and endurance. I can work on re-typing Studtmann's thesis. Send me a scanned copy.

Re: Merging rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com into reciprocalsystem.org

Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2018 9:44 am
by bperet
wsitze wrote: Fri Dec 28, 2018 3:17 pm I admire your dedication and endurance. I can work on re-typing Studtmann's thesis. Send me a scanned copy.
I'll PM you the PDF, as it is too large to email. I added a text layer which got most of the words, but superscripts and subscripts (including footnotes) don't show up at the right place when you copy/paste the text, since OCR thought they were on a separate line. Tried to "train" it, but the separation between the superscript and word is too large for it to detect.

I have put the first 25 pages online at /books/tucp, but no footnotes (he loves footnotes... 115 by the end of the first chapter!).

I would recommend using OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) to typeset it, as that copies well into the editor on the main site. It will even paste footnotes appropriately. (Everything I have typeset is done in OpenOffice, since it is OS independent.)

Thanks!

Re: Merging rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com into reciprocalsystem.org

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2018 9:15 am
by bperet
I've got all the material from reciprocalsystem.com and rstheory.org on https://reciprocalsystem.org now. Turned out to be quite a collection... and it's searchable (search is down the bottom of the page).

Working on the Redirection links now, so that existing links in search engines will redirect to the correct place. I made the mistake of writing a quick program to pull the links from the .com site... and found there were some 250 other pages that were hidden from view. Getting that data in now, and adding in redirects for all the bad URLs, to make them good URLs. Should be flipping the switch on reciprocalsystem.com by the 1st. rstheory will follow, after I test the shopping cart modules.

Re: Merging rstheory.org and reciprocalsystem.com into reciprocalsystem.org

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2018 10:00 am
by Djchrismac
bperet wrote: Sun Dec 30, 2018 9:15 am I've got all the material from reciprocalsystem.com and rstheory.org on https://reciprocalsystem.org now. Turned out to be quite a collection... and it's searchable (search is down the bottom of the page).
Thanks for the update and the work to migrate the content.
bperet wrote: Sun Dec 23, 2018 3:25 pm Question: should I enable user logins and page comments? Or just keep in a read-only site and archive of Reciprocal System material?
Definitely keep it as a read-only archive, I found the older style website much easier to read. There is probably no point in having logins and comments enabled though, maybe a note or link to the new site could be added so anyone that does find the old site will have a route to the new one and be able to ask questions there.