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==Untitled==
 
This page archives discussions upto the end of Oct 2006. [[User:Mukerjee|mukerjee]] ([[User talk:Mukerjee|talk]]) 05:17, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
 
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:, but they did not extensively employ them. (For the [[Chinese writing system]], moveable type would be markedly less efficient than for European [[alphabet]]s.)
 
I have removed this because I consider it (a) inaccurate, and (b) a POV statement. This statement implies that the use of logographic scripts is less efficient than the use of alphabets. Although it is true that there are thousands of Chinese characters, it is only a significantly smaller number that is used most. You probably know this... Also, if the statement was simply ''true'', there'd be no need for a justification added in brackets (this is where you defend your POV). I think what I don't like about this snipped is the choice of ''extensively''. The range of printed products, for example, was more extensive than in European until much later.
I like pie
 
Also, maybe you'd enjoy reading the contribution about Gutenberg's using different letters above on this page... Now how's that for efficiency?
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John Man is one source of Gutenberg using the [[golden ratio]] in his page proportions. He says "The half-folio page (30.7 x 44.5 centimetres) was made up of two rectangles – the whole page and its text area – based on the so-called 'golden section', which specifies a crucial relationship between short and long sides. The proportions are complicated to work out, and produce an irrational number, as pi is, but it is a ratio of about 5:8. They are proportions which, as the Greeks knew when they built the Parthenon, are peculiarly easy on the eye, and were therefore common in both archtecture and art." Now, considering that the proportions he cites are 1:1.45, which is born out by measurements on this figures, and neglecting his unfounded opinions about what the Greeks might have known about the golden ratio, the most generous interpretation is that he is using "golden section" as representative of that broad class of ratios in the range 1.4 to 1.7 that have been shown to be "easy on the eye" and that are known to be commonplace in proportions of rectangular art and architecture. Given this wide discrepancy between the actual page proportions and Rosarivo's claim that Gutenberg used the golden ratio, what are we as wikipedia articles to make of this peculiar claim? And what conclusion did the "experts at the Gutenberg Museum" come to when they "analyzed" it? Perhaps Jossi has that volume and will let us know. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 07:08, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
 
== [[Cultural depictions of Johannes Gutenberg]] ==
 
I've started an approach that may apply to Wikipedia's Core Biography articles: creating a branching list page based on ''in popular culture'' information. I started that last year while I raised [[Joan of Arc]] to [[WP:FA|featured article]] when I created [[Cultural depictions of Joan of Arc]], which has become a [[WP:FL|featured list]]. Recently I also created [[Cultural depictions of Alexander the Great]] out of material that had been deleted from the biography article. Since cultural references sometimes get deleted without discussion, I'd like to suggest this approach as a model for the editors here. Regards, '''[[User:Durova|<font color="blue">Durova</font>]]''' 18:58, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
 
==Clean-up and changes by Mukerjee Oct 18==
 
A number of changes were made and the article was considerably cleaned up on
Oct 18:
 
* The claims of printing in Korea and China, largely unreferenced were referenced with extensive quotations
* The Biography section which was only a paragraph with other fragments scattered elsewhere was cleaned up (but still needs work).
* The contributions of Gutenberg as the father of the printing press and a leading catalyst of the Renaissance have been under challenge from a number of quarters, this was presented with documentation
* The possibility that East-West traffic over the two preceding centuries of the Mongol Empire may have led to some knowledge in Europe of movable type was introduced
* A number of sentences and structures (such as the unwieldy initial paragraphs) were copyedited ruthlessly, merged with other fragments, and cleaned up.
 
User Dicklyon reverts with the comment: too much of a change to do without discussion.
This is not a criteria in Wikipedia, where ruthless editing is consistently
encouraged.
 
Please justify in what way these changes are inappropriate and merge them by
putting in extensive work instead of just a revert.
 
I am reverting back to the new version which certainly reads better, and has
far better referencing and citations than the present version. Please give
your reasons here; please do not blindly revert; '''edit''' the text
to merge the elements you don't agree with. It does not make sense to keep
the older inferior version that people are working with still. [[User:Mukerjee|Mukerjee]] 05:46, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 
:Such an extensive edit that throws out the stable work of many editors over many months, with no chance for incremental review and collaboration, is just too disruptive and disrespectful, in my opinion. But I'll let someone else decide now whether to revert you again. I recommend a revert, followed by you re-integrating changes piece by piece, with time between for reactions and negotiations. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 06:01, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 
:p.s. We don't need weasle words in the lead. If it is verfiably true that "Even within Europe, there are those who claim that Laurens Janszoon Coster of Holland may have used movable types earlier," then you have to say WHO makes such a claim, and give a verifiable reference for it. The things I have read about Coster did NOT say that anyone actually claims or believes that, only that it was a local legend for a while. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 06:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 
::I understand your angst at having many microscopic changes gone. But the so-called "stable" version read rather poorly, and at least the English and the flow is a lot cleaner. There were repeated references (e.g. two consecutive parags referred to his family in Biog; the A&E award had two references, etc), there were poor constructs,
and of course, the referencing was admittedly poor. So please try to look at the whole picture. Wikipedia says it right up front - edit the page only if you don't mind others "ruthlessly" editing your text.
As for the weasel word issue, this is what the current version reads (pls see the Biography section) - these were edits that were made before your comment here:
 
:::His business partner was Johann Fust who was more of a banker than a printer, but a 1568 history by Hadrianus Junius of Holland claims that the basic idea of the movable type came to Gutenberg from Laurens Janszoon Coster via Fust, who was apprenticed to Coster around 1940 and may have brought some of his equipment to Mainz. Eventually Gutenberg lost money and most of his press was sold to Fust to meet debts.
 
::In this instance, "even" acts to demote the significance of the previous statement, and may indeed be considered a weasel word. If you feel it is inappropriate, edit it away by all means.
 
::While I did add many facts that take something away from the legend of Gutenberg, if you feel these are inappropriate, please edit it with your references and counter-claims. I also did a LOT of work copyediting it, which is bum-work, and if you feel it does not read better now, go ahead edit it the way you see fit!!
 
::also, to the best of my knowledge, it is not weasle, but [[weasel]].[[User:Mukerjee|Mukerjee]] 06:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 
==questions and other points. ==
#Perhaps some of the perennial discussion on this and related pages would be allievated by an article, Printing in China and Korea. there is enough for an article, and it's a subject fork, not a POV fork, and the split would match most people's interest in one or the other. There's obviously two different traditions, tho there may be links. The very disagreement of the editors here is evidence that there is more than one POV.
#The controversy over whether G. was the true inventor has been going on since the 15th century. Strongly asserting there is only one justifiable position is not evidence. The copntroversy, in fact, is such a major subject of intellecual history, that it could merit its own article. (btw, from what I know, I do think the key figure was Gutenberg. The verb in the last sentence was "think."
#If it comes to WP policy, it encourages bold editing, but it discourages large changes where there is unsettled argument without prior discussion. Here's the place to discuss.
#Can someone give an explanation to the date of 1447 of Gutenberg doing just what?
#LC & BM do not call the 1455 copy a preliminary edition or different from the 1456.
#wasn't there an indulgence (or 2) printed by Gutenberg in 1456 (Scheide Library & I think the Morgan)
#and how about the work by Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Paul Needham mentioned above on how he may not have actually cast his type in areusable metal mold. There's a good BBC discussion now at: http://www.open2.net/home/view?entityID=15601&jsp=themed_learning%2Fexpanding_viewer&sessionID=-1161237951933&entityName=object
& http://www.printinghistory.org/htm/news/national/needham.htm, and various other lectures to be found in Google.
#The discussion in the 1911 EB under Typography is basic reading, if a little on the long side, and puts the treatment here to shame.
#ditto the bibliography at http://www.bl.uk/treasures/gutenberg/references.html
[[User:DGG|DGG]] 07:04, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
*::As for larger issues, I agree to some degree. I edited the article again to remove any "strong" views - rectified some points that might qualify. The initial sentence: "he was believed to have invented X, but it already existed..." is an edit of the earlier sentence, it is substantially correct; there are still textbooks with this creditation. As for a separate article on printing in Korea/China the existing article on [[Printing]] already goes a good way, perhaps some more inputs there may be needed. Any reference to this aspect here is only in the context of whether G was possibly influenced by this asian invention or whether it was a completely independent re-invention. This is relevant to the larger than life legend behind Gutenberg, which appears to be crumbling in recent times.
::: I also found no evidence for 1447 - it was there before. I just cleaned it up and made it a link ;-). My best info on this dates it about 4-5 years before the first bible, i.e. around 1450.
::: The "fair" in the biography also needs a reference badly...
::: I also merged two conflicting statements about the antecedents of his printing press - the article said it was derived from both a heavier binding press, and also the wine presses... needs a reference as well!!
::: Why don't you add the BBC link - the point about the mould being non-reusable is quite interesting, but more relevant is the position (as is true of all inventions) that it was a gradual process, not something that Gutenberg engineered suddenly. A good place would be after the Fabbiani comment, which also needs more substance btw. Perhaps that comment should also be shifted down to near the Legacy area, which needs to be consolidated considerably. [[User:Mukerjee|Mukerjee]] 11:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 
==comments and remaining qys.==
type I--minor
#Presses--there were many kinds of presses around, for wine, for bookbinding. for olices, for cloth printing perhaps? This needs checking by someone who knows, but my ignorant a priori guess is that for a rectangular press, it wouldn't have been wine or oil. Can be left ambiguous till we find some more real evidence--I prefer to rely on secondary sources that know ore than I do.
#I will put in Needham's work. Are there any good refs for Fabbiani?
#the Paris "edition" seems a ghost--I need to check at a real library.
#there were indulgences mentioned earlier in the commentary; they are real, & critical to the history. I'll put them in
#'''Donatus'''. a/c the 1911 EB, there seem to be a number of copies & editions of various dates. I need to look further, and learn more, but it is almost certainly not as simple as given here.
#This qy of his ethnicity has attracted some scholarly attention, & does belong.
#The Golden section belongs in the article on the Gutenberg Bible, not here.
#which fair?
type II, larger:
#The disproportionate length of the Asian influence section here makes it obvious to me that it should go elsewhere--especially as it concerns the invention of printing & movable type, not Gutenberg's work per se. But Needham & his collaborators are generally a very good source--for the Chinese history, at least. It seems to be discussed at every possible page on this & related topics. I'm thinking of the best way to bring it together.
#On the other hand, the discussion of his life needs a good deal of additional material.
#I am not all that happy with general descriptions of Gutenberg as a catalyst, beyond saying the obvious. There's an immense amount of evidence, but it probably material belongs somewhere in the history of printing in europe,
[[User:DGG|DGG]] 22:45, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
 
==New agenda?==
 
The recent re-write may have some improvements, but the way it filled the lead with scepticism instead of positive statements about Gutenberg seems like it is based on a whole new agenda. I certainly agree that the article needs to respect the Korean history, and needs to represent skeptical viewpoints, but that's not what the lead should be about.
 
Furthermore, there is now a large reliance on a web ref by Thomas Christensen, apparently self-published on his own blog site. This doesn't seem like it meets the usual standards of [[WP:V]] and such. There are lots of authoritative biographies and other things on Gutenberg; this article shouldn't need to rely on a 2006 web page.
 
[[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 06:44, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
 
:::: Hi, Tom Christensen here (on a foreign machine and not remembering my log-in, sorry). I haven't used Wikipedia Talk much, so apologies if I don't do this quite right:
 
:::: To begin, I was not the person who referenced my work on Korean movable metal type printing in this wikipedia article, and I just learned of it through a visitor to my site. In fact, it appears that some of what I did was referenced without attribution, but I am am not writing to complain about that. What I do want to do is to respond to user Dicklyon who dismisses my article in his post above as "self-published on his own blog." This is not altogether untrue, but it is certainly misleading. The piece was reviewed and accepted for publication by "Arts of Asia," which is a highly respected scholarly publication in the field of Asian art and culture. Because they will not bring it into print until perhaps next summer, I asked the editors if they would object to my posting it on my own website (not blog), and they agreed. (I used this web forum to get further feedback from people with knowledge in the subject.) So it's not as if this was a slapdash piece that was put up without any scholarly review, as Dicklyon seems to imply (there is a comment about the Arts of Asia publication commitment on my website, if Dicklyon had cared to check before rushing to judgment). Furthermore, the essay is extensively footnoted, so nearly all of my references can be checked if anyone cares to do so. Many come from the research library of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, where I have been the director of publications for a number of years (and where examples of the Korean printing in question have been exhibited). It's ironic that Dicklyon thinks my article does not "meet the usual standards" of Wikipedia since it is probably among the most responsibly vetted content on this page.
 
:::: -- TC
 
:::::Hey, Tom, it's great to hear from you. I hope you'll understand that I meant no disrespect for your work, and made no judgements on it; and yes I did check and saw that your site said it had been accepted for publication next year, but that was not material to my objection. The edits I was complaining about made such a severe change of tone to the Gutenberg article, justified by snippets of your findings, out of context in my opinion, that I felt they were unjustified, or at least badly written and badly place in terms of impact on the Gutenberg article, such that referring to your not-yet-published work did not live up to the [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] requirements of such a radical change. I'd love to hear your opinion on the article changes that were made, so that at least we know if you agree with them, based on your own expertise in this field. To the extent that they are accepted vetted points, we should strive to incorporate them appropriately here and in the printing in East Asia article. Alternatively, to the extent that you've found out and published new things, we should really wait until they are published, and get a chance for scholarly reactions perhaps, before we accept them as [[WP:V]]. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 00:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
 
:::::: Thanks, Dicklyon. I'm sorry if I was being oversensitive. I agree that this article, based on its title, should be about Gutenberg and not about Asian printing except as it is or may be pertinent to him. (One thing about Gutenberg is that he is both an individual person and a symbol of the revolution in European printing. Usually when he's mentioned it's more as the symbol than as the man (cf. McLuhan). I'm not sure how or if the article should address this. I admit I was a little pressed for time and haven't really studied the entry or its history. I'll try to have a closer look as soon as I get a chance. Thanks again for your reply, -- T.
 
:::::::No problem, Tom. I do sometimes stir up more argument than I intend to, so I've had sensitivity training suggested for me. And did you just say "Asian printing"? How broad of you... ;^) [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 03:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
 
:::::::: Haha, good catch on "Asian printing." --TC
 
:There may be other new agendas, but what I listed above is an attempt to center this article on Gutenberg, and expand it where it needs expansion. As for removal of arrant irrelevance, yes. Maybe its unusual, but I go about it slowly if it serems to have been there a long time. [[User:DGG|DGG]] 04:42, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
 
::Yes, I agree. My query was primarily about Mukerjee's changes that injected a rather severely sceptical tone into the lead. Enough so that I initially just reverted the whole thing as too disruptive. So I'm trying to see what others think of this new direction, even as I try to tone it down a little. He makes a lot of points that he attributes to "current scholarly re-assessment" which means Christensen's self-published blog; six references to it, colored by his own interpretation, too. To me, this sounds like sever POV, not [[WP:V]]. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 06:53, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
:::Fortunately for myself, I have not been involved in the earlier discussion & controversy & want to approach it afresh [[User:DGG|DGG]] 07:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
 
::::I don't know what earlier discussion or controversy there might have been. I'm referring to Mukerjee's big edits of Oct. 18 immediately before you stepped in. He has added a lot of seriously sceptical tone, intended to minimize any credit given to Gutenberg and the influence of European printing, and justified it with 6 references to a new unpublished blog by Christensen. But, if nobody much cares, I'm not going to make it my issue either. I did a little to tone it down, but some help restoring a more neutral perspective, based on verifiable good sources, would be appreciated. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 16:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
 
::::I've now removed a few more of the revisionist opinions of Christensen. If his ideas get reviewed and published and have time for a reaction in the community of Gutenberg scholars we can consider putting some back. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 17:07, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
:::::We'll get there. Any idea of the title of an article on Far East Printing,?
*History of printing in the Far East? (is "Far East" culturally acceptable?)
*History of printing in China and Korea
*History of printing in China, Korea, and Japan (was there any in Japan?)
It's really a separate & impt topic and if nobody here can do it, I will learn enough to bring the stuff together at least. The general qy of cultural interchange during the Mongol period is something I'd like to know more about. [[User:DGG|DGG]] 05:38, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
 
:Good idea. I like History of printing in China and Korea, since I haven't heard about Japan being involved early. I suppose you could just say Asia, which have plenty of scope for Mongols, too. I think there's enough material in the references works already to make a decent article. Feel free to start one and I'm sure others will contribute. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 05:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
 
:::: Tom Christensen here again (I commented above in this section). Sorry, when I get home I will find out what my log-in should be -- I'm obviously not trying to be anonymous. There is basic confusion about Asia and Asian printing evidenced here. Yes, there was early printing in Japan, perhaps as early as in China and Korea (I didn't write about it in my article because it was tangential to my topic.) What makes Korea especially interesting is that their movable type was cast metal as opposed to the mostly wood type of China, and it was a more established and significant part of their total printing tradition.
 
:::: Please don't call this region the "Far East." It should be called "East Asia," which includes all three of these cultural areas. (The Mongol homeland, by the way, was in Central Asia but their empire stretched all the way from East Asia (as far as the Korean peninsula) to Persia and West Asia, and indeed even to Europe.) Also, please don't just say "Asia," which is almost worse, since it lumps three-fifths of the world's population together in one giant basket. Please recognize the enormous diversity of this giant region. There was no printing whatsoever in India or Southeast Asia, and to fail to recognize the different traditions of East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia approaches being offensive to a majority of the world's population.
 
:::: Finally, may I add that I hope that when someone writes an article about printing in East Asia they will not simply plagiarize my research and writing.
 
:::: Thanks, Tom
:::::Who could do it better? Do you really want to leave it to us :) As mentioned earlier, I intend to start such a page with the 2 paragraphs here and a new section for Japan, since you mention it. Of course I will not plagiarize your writing, but i will certainly draw on your research. [[User:DGG|DGG]] 05:03, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
:::::: Thanks, DGG. I'll be happy to contribute what I can. You folks have been very tolerate of my whining! I'm impressed by the serious attitude and cooperative spirit I'm seeing here. --Tom
 
:::Hello everyone - wow! I keep low a few days and Wikipedia has unearthed Tom Christensen himself... Glad to see that I seem to have stirred up a hornet's nest. Actually at a document processing conference some years back I had heard some discussion of how Gutenberg's reputation as the inventor of reusable metal type may be more legend than substance - but then this was beer talk. Then I recently saw Tom's article (in the context of a novel on Genghis Khan that I had just read, the Blue Wolf by Frederic Dion) - and I thought the Gutenberg article should say some of this. Then I found the lead page very poorly written and scattered, so I put in many changes, and dare say I considerably improved the flow at least... Sorry if I stepped on any toes in the process, but if there are elements in the Gutenberg story that are more myth than history, it needs to be highlighted.
:::I just put in some changes in the article - put back a quote I had initially from Tom - don't know what version you saw but at least in the page I had edited, the concluding parts were largely from your text. As for the lead, I found the opening line saying "popularly considered to have invented" and then it went on for two paragraphs before bringing in the primacy of the Korean invention. I just put the same lines in the first para where they can appear in the context of "popularly considered".
:::And sorry Tom if you feel that there was plagiarism - don't know which version you saw, but the version I had edited had explicits quotes (which is back now), and where it used your material (it was the bulk of the middle part), I had cited you SIX times - abcdef - at various points. Of course there were other aspects too - e.g. the Tsien and Sohn quotations were from your article, and in a scholarly treatise I would not have quoted these without reading the original source, but they do satisfy the Wikipedia notion of [[Wikipedia:Verifiability|verifiability]] - that others can verify this source, and your article was certainly trustworthy as a pre-print of a journal article. And it was quite a good read as well... Please do replace the web reference with the journal edition as soon as it comes out!
:::As for the article on "history of printing in the far east" - I do not find any article on "history of printing" per se... and maybe the basic history of printing in general is not completely separate from the history of printing in the far east. If there are additional aspects, e.g. cultural impact, social issues, developments post 1400s etc, or if the article becomes too bulky in describing the Chinese/Korean inventions, a second article on printing in the far east specifically would also be a good thing. However, without an article on "history of printing" per se, it may be premature to start one on the history of printing in China separately ...
:::Indeed, the existing article on [[printing]] already has a good kernel of this history. Perhaps it is the spread of printing in Europe that deserves a separate article on "Effect of Printing in Europe". The existing article on [[printing press]] already does some of that. That article is already tagged to be possibly merged with the article on printing, and this section could be expanded to become the article on the effect of printing in Europe, which is an important topic separate from the history of printing.
:::I also cleaned up a direct webpage link on this page - I will request users to please follow wikipedia citation norms now that this article is using them - see [[Wikipedia:Citation templates]] for guidelines... [[User:Mukerjee|Mukerjee]] 08:40, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
 
::::Mukerjee, you've done it again. A huge wide-ranging edit of all sections, each edit apparently designed to make sure that Gutenberg doesn't get much if any credit for his invention. Some of your edits may be OK, but if you'll make them section-by-section and give others a chance to participate, we can likely converge better. I reverted the lot because it was impossible to see what all to consider based on the huge diff. Try again, piece by piece, and let's see where we get. And try to write a summary that says what you've done, rather than burying a huge change of direction under an innocuous-sounding summary. OK? [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 04:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
==come on==
I do not think that is Mukerjee's intent. I see he put it back, and I did start fixing it up a little, and will continue to, if only the two of you stop reverting! Fix it bit by bit, and we can discuss it as we go. I would have done just the same if the last version was by someone else. Reverting does not help, and neither do major disconnected changes.
But, Mukerjee, the Asian material belongs here only as a short paragraph and a reference to a real article. Don't hide it in here. nobody would look for it here. There is major work needed, to write a real biography rather than this sketch, and I am not going to do it while the articles keeps reversing itself.
 
It is more likely that the printing press article will be expanded than merged,at least if we can find somebody to do the 19th and 20th centuries.
At the moment, the best article on history of Printing is History of Typography. conceivably it's too ambitious, and then we can separate out some of it--but all histories & other books about printing do combine the information about the production of the type itself and the information about the type face.
Just as the facts must reflect the scholarly consensus, so must the organization. And thereis one very obvious thing--to anyone at all who might read the article--the article is entitled Gutenberg, and can and should include a description of the work he did as well as the life.
It should not have 50% of the content about the work earlier people did elsewhere in the world. Even had he devised his methods under the tutelege of a wandering Korean printer, the account of printing in Korea would not belong.
I'm looking at the content and I'm going to keep looking at the content and only that.
I'd do the article on Asia tonight, but I'm giving a lecture on the use of WP tomorrow.
[[User:DGG|DGG]] 06:13, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
 
Thee is a good deal of criticism of WP just now about this sort of thing.
 
:NO, I did NOT put my version back. I just put back one section since dicklyon wanted to see it section by section. I was really mad with Dicklyon's comment and his ownership stance on the Gutenberg article. Perhaps we should really not feel this type of ownership, but now that i am much saner today, I can empathize with it - we all know how it comes, and it is an infallible part of human nature.
 
:How it went, and how it goes with a lot of wikipedia edits, is that I made some small changes first. Then I found the references all screwed up (there was a bracket wrong). Then I re-read a references that DGG and I had discussed earlier, and I put in some more substance from that source and another one - I dug that out of a 2003 conf paper by HS Baird on document image analysis where he talks about the Princeton work and I put in the original reference. I worked for about two hours on the article, and I daresay the result was considerably improved.
 
:But besides, this I also cleaned up the legacy section which I thought was quite overhauled. It is back to a set of disorganized sentences that it used to be - thanks to dicklyon - and i'll let others work on it. Sometimes reverts just reveal laziness, and an unwillingness to work, hopefully this is not the case here.
 
:As for the lead, any reader would question why the korea reference comes four paragraphs after "popularly considered the inventor". I had only a small change here which I have NOT reverted; let someone else do it incrementally.
 
:Dicklyon says my changes were "designed to make sure that Gutenberg doesn't get much if any credit for his invention." If he wants to glorify Gutenberg, let him find some sources which identify his exact invention, and let these contributions be pinpointed more precisely. I would be happy to know where in W does it say that changes can't be too huge - this can't be a reason really, can it?
 
:Like with most inventions, what I feel is that no single person invented printing, it was a series of small changes, and it seems Gutenberg's legend needs a bit of revision, and that is what I meant by "current scholarship". It is work by other people, and I am just putting up pointers from their work.
 
 
:As for the asian material, what I had re-inserted was a quote from Tom's article - which says how it is possible that G may have heard of movable types because of the connections during the mongol empire ... in fact, it belongs more in this article than some other details perhaps... I am moving the song quote on how he made movable types to printing press and removing it from here, and putting back the quote from Tom here.
 
:And DGG - As for these types of bickering on WP - perhaps we should tell the world that these are actually very positive. What it says is that
:*a) there is a lot of passion, and
:*b) there is no single truth, no yes and no answers - its all gray, all the way.
:Unless one feels passionately (as Dicklyon clearly does, and perhaps DGG and I have started to become), we would not be here fighting on these issues, which a year from now, will seem so childish and petty! [[User:Mukerjee|Mukerjee]] 09:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
 
::M, thanks for doing the one section instead of the whole thing. I do feel strongly that it is inappropriate to make such abrupt changes of direction in an article. I don't feel much ownership of this one, since I didn't even have much to do with writing it, but I did feel that it was need in protection when you showed up and completely threw out all that had been done in a favor a whole new POV. So slow down and let's work it out. And certainly not base a new direction on as-yet-unpublished sources. [[User:Dicklyon|Dicklyon]] 15:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
:: Yes, they can be very positive. The sign that they're not positive is when one person does a revert, or when personal remarks about motivation are made. There are some subjects where this is inevitable, and sensible people avoid them. But I have even in a few months seen quite a number of pages where a series of incompatible changes has reduced the page to a short bland entry, and others where it produces a page of jumbled parts, all put in by different people.
::I did not feel it necessary to insert quotations praising Gutenberg, or commenting how his work was of the greates importance to modern Western civilization. I will, since you are skeptical, but any book on the general subject will have them. Edison was not the first to develop a practical electric lighting system. Darwin was not the first to speculate on evolution. In each case it was the individual genius in developing the system which makes for the historical importance. Almost every element in Gutenberg's invention had been used in Europe before, though probably not type-casting, however he may have done it. But it was he who printed the 42 line Bible, and that is the key cultural event.
 
::Everyone's legacy needs readjustment in subsequent centuries, but usually the core remains, as it does here. The earlier parallel development in East Asia was of great importance to those civilizations as well, and a great demonstration of successful human ingenuity in dealing with what one might have though intractable material (the Chinese characters). it is worth its own discussion, but not in an article about Gutenberg. (We can discuss separately its relevance to the article on the general history of typography.) "May have heard" is not proof of influence, especially if that is the strongest statement a scholarly specialist can make, but on his authority warrants a reference and a paragraph.
 
I know how to word the above in a positive way, and I will, probably next week, if the article is not dismembered by then. Comments that Gutenberg does not deserve credit for the invention of printing in Europe can be inserted, if you can find them, which I doubt. Check my wording in that sentence. [[User:DGG|DGG]] 16:22, 26 October 2006 (UTC)
 
==time & mss.==
By Gutenberg's time, in the [[Rennaisance]], books were written by professional scribes; it was earlier, in the Middle Ages, that only monks had the skill. A contemporary manuscript, the Great Bible of Mainz, took just about a year.[[User:DGG|DGG]] 04:37, 29 October 2006 (UTC)
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