No Fear Shakespeare - ALL

It all started with Hamlet (see No Fear Shakespeare - Hamlet for more details).  I figured that since I could make one of these, I could do the rest.  All it would take would be a more general program and some "skillz" at using Microsoft Word.

Again, I'm sorry, but no source code will be released at this point.  It's a bit neater than it was when I was extracting Hamlet, but it's still difficult to explain.  Maybe I'll just release it in its unpolished form sometime.  But it doesn't really matter because the program has already done its job.  All of the No Fear Shakespeare plays have been extracted and converted into these files.

Here's a quick overview of what I did, if you care.  First, I saved an example of a No Fear Shakespeare webpage from some random play (probably Macbeth).  Then, I played with the HTML until I knew what I needed to extract and what other things to keep and what to delete.  I wrote a C# program to extract this stuff and compile a .HTM file (a.k.a. just a webpage).  Then, I copied all the text in this formatted .HTM file and pasted it into a word template I made just for these No Fear Shakespeare plays, preserving the source formatting.  It still didn't look great, so I created a VB macro in Word to touch up the text.  Since I was using my slow laptop, it took a while to paste and format such large volumes of text.

Now you can go download all of the files, and here are some things you should know first:

• You can get specific Word 2007 (.DOCX) or .PDF files by going into the different folders for the different plays.
• The .DOCX files are smaller, but you'll need something to read it, but I think the .PDF files seem more professional.
• You CAN edit the .DOCX files, but you CANNOT edit the .PDF files.
• "No Fear Shakespeare WORD2007.zip" contains only the .DOCX files for each of the plays.
• "No Fear Shakespeare PDF.zip" contains only the .PDF files for each of the plays.
• "No Fear Shakespeare HTML.zip" contains only the HTML files for each of the plays.  HTML is by far the smallest format, and is the best if you are reading on the computer (printing the HTML file makes it really small and the formatting is kind of funny).  You MUST all of the .HTM files in the same folder as the "No Fear Shakespeare  Macbeth  Act 1, Scene 1_files" folder and the ""No Fear Shakespeare  Macbeth  Act 1, Scene 1_files.htm" file because they contains all the scripts used in displaying the .HTM files correctly.
• "No Fear Shakespeare ALL.zip" contains all of the files.  You still have the keep the .HTM files in the same long-named folder with the scripts.

Remember, THE TEXT IS NOT MINE!  IT IS ALL FROM SPARKNOTES!

All of these files are kind of long (they're full plays with Modern English translations), so printing them out will use a lot of paper.  But it's still better than buying the No Fear Shakespeare book from SparkNotes (in my opinion).

If you liked this, don't forget to tell your friends!  Please link them to this blog first instead of giving them a direct link, because it increases the traffic on this site, which makes me happy!

Have fun reading Shakespeare (if that's possible).  Believe me, the No Fear Shakespeare version is countless times easier to read than the real thing!

So, without further ado, here's the link to download those files:

http://www.mediafire.com/?jrmympa4hhmu9

No Fear Shakespeare - Hamlet

We all know how much of a pain it is to read Shakespeare.  Thank goodness SparkNotes came up with their "No Fear Shakespeare" series.  It basically translates all the old English gibberish to modern day English!  SparkNotes even makes it free to view online.

The problem is that viewing online requires you to have an Internet connection with lots of distracting link and an annoying background.  SparkNotes gives you the option to purchase the "No Fear Shakespeare" book from places like Barnes and Noble or as an iPod app, but it costs MONEY!

So I decided to write a program to extract all of "No Fear Shakespeare - Hamlet" into a document viewable document on your computer!  No more pesky advertisements!  No more annoying background!  Just plain text on a plain white background for your reading pleasure (if reading Shakespeare could be a pleasure).  You can even print it out and use it, as if you had the REAL "No Fear Shakespeare" version, but just so you know, it's a lot of paper!

Sorry, but the source code will not be released right now, not because I care about other people stealing my ideas, but because it's very unrefined, and my extraction method was rather crude.  One thing that everybody can learn is how to download HTML code using C#:

WebClient wc = new WebClient();
string html = wc.DownloadString("put_website_url_here");

If it's not obvious enough, put the website URL as a string in the parameter of the DownloadString(...) method.  Then you get all of the HTML code as a string.  In a nutshell, I used that code example to get the HTML for all the parts of "No Fear Shakespeare - Hamlet" that I needed, put it in the correct SparkNotes format, and exported it to a Word document.  Then, I used CutePDF (it's free!) to convert that Word document into a .PDF file.

I don't even know how legal this is, so I'm going to make this loud and clear:
THE ACTUAL WORK IS NOT MY OWN!  ALL I DID WAS COMPILE IT INTO AN EASY-TO-READ FORMAT.

I'll even include an MLA citation:
Crowther, John, ed. “No Fear Hamlet.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2005. Web. 1 Dec. 2010.

I didn't do any formatting, so sometimes the line breaks are at very inconvenient locations and the overall layout of the document may not be super-visually-appealing.  Sometimes the spaces between words get screwed up.  The line numbering is also kind of sporadic.  If anybody wants to, then please download the Word document and make the necessary changes, such as getting rid of "Original Text" and "Modern Text" so it doesn't appear so much.  It may also be nice to make the font size on the headers bigger.  It'd be great to make sure the page breaks are in nicer places.  If you're bored, I'd appreciate it if you would be willing to help fix up the document.  Or, if you're reading off the Word document, you can fix up the document as you read.  Another thing: I don't really know how to add bookmarks for the Acts and Scenes in Adobe Reader, so if you want to do that, thank in advance!  If you do actually help fix up the stuff, leave a comment or email me.  UPDATE: I fixed some of the formatting.  It looks less crude and more professional now!

Alright, thanks for reading all my blabbering (but that's OK if you just skipped down here).  You can download either the Word document or the .PDF file at the following link:
http://www.mediafire.com/?9q04an5o3hhoi

If you're going to use this or tell your friends, please link them to this blog page first so I get more traffic!  Thanks a ton!

UPDATE:  I have uploaded all of the No Fear Shakespeare plays!  Click here to see No Fear Shakespeare - ALL

* Note: Just because I don't like Shakespeare doesn't mean other people can't enjoy his works.  So please don't hate on me for hating on Shakespeare =P (besides, he probably wrote his plays to torture 21st century high-schoolers anyway!).


*** Disclaimer: You may NOT distribute the stuff for money.  You didn't make those files yourself, and you definitely didn't write the content.  If you started selling this and Sparknotes took off their free online version of "No Fear Shakespeare," then we'd all be screwed!