The name of presscom arose from the eight figure MSDOS
file name restrictions and is now short for presscommune. The
domain name was reserved in 1998 before its editor
discovered that there were a number of 'presscom' sites
in addition to the US and UK domain. At least three of
these sites appear to have similar aims, that
of providing resource documentary and/or historical material.
The site has opened with the collected works of
JAMES HALLIWELL (later known as Halliwell-Phillipps),
partly because he is an ancestor of the editor of the site,
and was therefore a known quantity, but otherwise because
he was an enthusiastic gatherer and publisher of
popular English written and oral tradition. In some cases the resource base may stray to publications/
manuscripts which are not strictly within the declared ambit,
but it is hoped the material will add to the stock already
on-line and be of help to someone somewhere (in a non-destructive sense).
No attempt has been made at providing a 'translation' of
the texts where they appear in Anglo-Saxon, Latin, French,
or German (&c.,). In the future, time permitting,
a reference may be made to English language versions
where they appear on the Internet or if the editor comes
across a published translation this may be included.
Remarks on style
Acknowledgements
The presscom logo was designed by the highly intelligent,
witty, prescient and beloved H.Aspersa, whose ancestors inhabited
these isles long before even the Celts arrived (although it is claimed—obviously by someone who witnessed it—that the species was brought over by man 200,000 years ago) and who contributed
worldwide to the material foundations of modern civilisation.
For this alone they should be respected, in addition to their artistic
talents. Honour the little animals: a piece of lettuce a day, or even a special corner with spider-plant (so long as the little dears are trained—much like little children or pets—to know it is there), keeps
H.Aspersa and his-her fellow shelled species away from your plants and
stops you from becoming an earth-terrorist !
The artwork was processed by
Adobe's Photoshop and Ulead's PhotoImpact programs. Arachnophilia
v.4 is used for most of the html writing. Using basic html has its limitations compared to CSS but it allows the copy to be read by most browsers, old as well as recent versions.
Contact
A word of warning!
26th September, 2007
Attempts have been made to approximate the style
of the title pages of the republished material, although as of
today's date this still needs to be perfected.
Footnotes are usually placed just beneath the text to which they
refer (giving the text a somewhat Tristram Shandy appearance — and the beer-lemonade drink called 'shandy' is not being referred to here).
The pagination of the original text is referenced in bold
italics between two hash marks. In a few cases simply the two
strokes '/ /' denote a change of page numbers. Where the brackets are [ ] this indicates that the page number has not been printed on the relevant page but is assumed from the sequence to be the number shown.
The earlier republished illustrations are not always the original print size. In some cases the pictures have been 'enhanced' in terms of contrast, brightness or exposure rating. Those with blemishes caused by scanning have been 'cleaned' of obvious extra pixillation, particularly if saving in 'transparent gif' mode. Since 2006 most of the illustrations appearing directly with the text are the printed size, have reference made to the printed size in the "alt" information line, and enlargements are linked. From 2 September, 2006, a remark will appear when the illustrations are all sized to a smaller thumbnail due to the large number of pictures some of the books republished possess.
Web editorial notes are now in a different font colour (light blue-biased purple)
The opening page was based on a template in Lotus
SmartSuite's Freelance Graphics program. It also coincidentally
reflects the staircase design at the British Library in London, England.
(The comment which followed this in earlier versions has been censored.)
The contact email will change irregularly to try to prevent spammers. The site constructor can be contacted at present at webpublisher[@]presscom.co.uk.
It is strongly suggested that visitors to the site have a good firewall installed on their computer, particularly one that blocks attacks on the ports—after accessing the Presscom site its creator found that the incidence of attacks increased thereafter for the online session, no matter which computer the session was held from.
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CENSORED! -- almost. Very sadly, my affines and consanguinals have continued to interfere in matters which are not their business and act in an extremely unfortunate manner. In this they ironically imitate not the generous predisposition of our common ancestors but the behaviour of those who pitted their prejudiced and witless spite against the latter, this time using modern methods of control. This site may have commenced with reference to the editor's inheritance but sadly it owes nothing to those who share this commonality. The uploading of material to the site is presently resuming. I first intend to fulfill all those unfinished aspects. This was initially hampered by discovering the small and extremely versatile html editor had a temporary file problem and was feeding back into the pages errors that had already been fixed. This appears now to have been overcome. |
(as the mediterranean weather moves north)
Enjoying a little world-play now and again.
