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Your rating: Now say why...
Voluminous finds free, public-domain books on the Internet, downloads them, formats them for easier reading, and manages the collection. Offering more than 20,000 books from the outset, including many famous plays, novels, poetry and reference works, new titles are added to the catalogue regularly. Voluminous also includes a variety of ways to pick out the titles you want: search by title or author instantly, or browse the topic catalogue, based on the Library of Congress classification scheme.
What's New
Version 1.0.7:
- Snow Leopard compatibility update.
Requirements
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
PPC / Intel, Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
Voluminous User Discussion (Write a Review)
Overall:
(2)
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| Downloads:5,095 |
| Version Downloads:1,531 |
| Type:Education : Literature |
| License:Shareware |
| Date:31 Aug 2009 |
| Platform:PPC / Intel |
| Price: $29.95 |
Overall (Version 1.x):   |
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| Ease of Use: |
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Voluminous finds free, public-domain books on the Internet, downloads them, formats them for easier reading, and manages the collection. Offering more than 20,000 books from the outset, including many famous plays, novels, poetry and reference works, new titles are added to the catalogue regularly. Voluminous also includes a variety of ways to pick out the titles you want: search by title or author instantly, or browse the topic catalogue, based on the Library of Congress classification scheme.
Copyright © 2012 MacUpdate LLC
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+15
I'd buy this instantly. For the time being I stay clear.
+1
+5
thebrix reviewed on 18 May 2008
The previous commentator is misguided because there is a big distance from a raw ASCII file downloaded from Project Gutenberg's Web site to something which is reasonably pleasant to read on-screen; all texts contain lengthy doses of boilerplate legal and licensing information and, especially with older text, hard formatting (chapter headings, page headings, page numbers, tables of contents etc.) which takes no account of the actual screen size and looks dreadful on anything not 80x24 (?) characters. As well as the hyphenation bug noted earlier ...
I mark Voluminous down slightly because I still feel it is a bit expensive and because the new output to text file outputs the original Gutenberg text, not the parsed and cleaned text (which shows how untidy the raw text frequently is!) - a slight annoyance.
Now ... can we have an Apple ebook reader?
+2
+12
uncoy reviewed on 28 Apr 2008
It's clowns like this who give Mac shareware a bad name. Turning freeware volunteer labour into payware for the naive.
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+46
Your argument against it is a bit like saying that our local public library provides books for free, therefore no-one should profit from selling the backpacks or bookshelves that are used to manage those books. In other words you are comparing apples and oranges.
Another example: There are millions of people who earn a living developing web applications using open-source software developed by volunteers. Is that wrong too?
Ironically, I've never used this software, but even a quick look over its website shows how unnecessary and poorly considered your point was.
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+12
Frankly, I don't see the value added in Voluminous. Project Gutenberg has perfectly decent search and perfectly decent display options (.txt, .doc, .pdf).
Voluminous more like someone coming along and trying to charge you for the right to breathe.
Can you say no value added?
+46
Now I'm confused. Surely the following descriptions on this site make it quite clear that the books are "public domain":
"Find/download free public-domain books online."
"Voluminous finds free, public-domain books on the Internet, downloads them, formats them for easier reading, and manages the collection."
...not to mention the FAQ on their own site. Even the product by-line "Internet Librarian for Mac OS X 10.5" makes it clear that this isn't selling you the books themselves.
> Voluminous more like someone coming along and trying to charge you for the right to breathe.
Clearly you're just beginning to troll now. If that logic applies to this product, then does it apply to a product like OmniWeb which dares to charge for browsing the "public domain"?
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/
> Frankly, I don't see the value added in Voluminous.
I think that was all you needed to say in the first place.
+12
You know what Voluminous needed to do to enable people to enjoy Project Gutenberg on their computers?
Put up this list of links:
Top 100 Ebooks
Recent books
Offline Catalogue
Bookshelf by Category
If Voluminous were freeware with donations going to Project Gutenberg, it would be a nice contribution.
Right now, it's straight parasiteware.
For those of us who had to put up with Nick and I this far, here's a bonus:
The University of Adelaide's Collection of Ebooks, even better presented than Project Gutenberg. If you've got extra cash to spare, donate to either Gutenberg or the University of Adelaide. Those are the guys bringing the books to you, not these crooks.
+46
Ha ha, yes I can see we could be at this for a while so I'll sign off reiterating that I don't think this developer is doing anything wrong providing a service that makes accessing public domain content easier. There are many many cases of people making a living in similar ways.
That said, I think it's time for the developer(s) to defend themselves as I'm not even a user!
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+11
One important point is being missed:
I for one cannot use Voluminous.
Why?
Tiger users and earlier are apparently being ignored.
Don't blame me, blame Apple for their Leopard problems and restrictions.
Project Gutenberg as-is works on almost *any* system!
AFAICT there is no reason to shut us out like this.
Please stop doing that, all you Leopard-only developers!
+5
The application automatically putting books into Library of Congress categories is very helpful when trying to find things, although it is a pity that about 40% of the Gutenberg catalogue appears not to be classified at the moment.
The only minor problem I have come across at the moment is that hyphenation is not removed or redone - I see text such as "bor- rowed" and "news- papers" in the book I am reading. However, having tried to do this sort of thing in the past, I know how hard it is to knock glitches out of Gutenberg text, and the authors have done an excellent job for v1.0.
Some might think that the application is a bit expensive (£15/$30) for what it does, but there is a lot going on under the bonnet and I will be buying it soon.