PB: George MacDonald: The Diary of an Old Soul

NB.Mick
NB.Mick MVP Posts: 15,969
edited November 20 in English Forum

I am thankful for Logos providing us some of George MacDonald's works recently. As Rosie mentioned in a thread discussing this bundle, the book "Diary of an Old Soul" was not among those offered. This calendar devotional seems to be exceptional, one author wrote in the North Wind journal

A Book of Strife, in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul (1880) may be George MacDonald’s most important poetic achievement: a towering but neglected work of Scottish religious verse (cf. Raeper 121ff). Although prepared for publication, The Diary of an Old Soul is largely a confessional text. In three hundred sixty-six modified rhyme royale stanzas, MacDonald expresses his own doubts and questions, hopes and fears, surrounding his devout religious belief. In it, he fulfils the promise of his first major poem, Within and Without (1855), shifting his concept of mystic pilgrimage out of an explicitly narrative frame and turning it instead into personal contemplation. MacDonald covers a broader spectrum of themes, questions, and speculations in The Diary than he does in his own specifically religious poems like “The Disciple” (1867); the entire poem, indeed, can be read as a form of prayer, an act of contemplatio of God in Christ. Only in his letters does MacDonald appear more vulnerable. In a sense, The Diary of an Old Soul may justly be said to be the touchstone of his work; it may be difficult if not impossible to comprehend MacDonald without understanding this poem.

Of course this caught my interest. The text - of course in the Public Domain - is freely available from several places on the web, I took archive.org's representation of the Project Gutenberg etext as my source (thanks to John Bechard who compiled this in the 1990s!). The original book was printed only on one page of the paper, thus leaving space for the reader's own thoughts. I tried to emulate this in my version by giving ample white space and a fill-in box for reflections. 

1452.George MacDonald -Diary of an Old Soul.docx

Compile as a type Calendar Devotional to have it work as intended - you can even put it into a home page tile:

 

I grabbed a simple, non-original but expressive cover from a picture search - somehow it refuses to upload here.

Have joy in the Lord! Smile

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Comments

  • GaoLu
    GaoLu Member Posts: 3,483 ✭✭✭

    Thanks!

  • Bruce Dunning
    Bruce Dunning MVP Posts: 11,143

    Thanks for creating this! It rounds out the George MacDonald collection.

    Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God

  • Bruce Dunning
    Bruce Dunning MVP Posts: 11,143

    NB.Mick said:

    I grabbed a simple, non-original but expressive cover from a picture search - somehow it refuses to upload here.

    It needed to be converted from a JFIF to JPG. This is the site I use - https://jfif-to-jpg.file-converter-online.com/

    Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God

  • NB.Mick
    NB.Mick MVP Posts: 15,969

    Thanks for creating this! It rounds out the George MacDonald collection.

    You're very welcome. It was a pleasure for me (and a preparation for a larger project, getting re-acquainted to using plain text source, Excel and Word to create a PB that is consisting of a multitude of similar "chunks").

    Have joy in the Lord! Smile

  • Brad
    Brad Member Posts: 927 ✭✭

    Yes, indeed!  A big thank you for this terrific resource.  Unfortunately I'm getting a "build failed with 3 errors, 2 warnings" on every attempt.  It has been a long time since I had a PB build fail.  I'm hoping to figure it out soon, because it will be great to have this resource available in Logos.

  • NB.Mick
    NB.Mick MVP Posts: 15,969

    Brad said:

    Unfortunately I'm getting a "build failed with 3 errors, 2 warnings" on every attempt.

    can you share your logs?

    For the file above I get the two warnings and get one error, but they don't break the build. The error is about font Tahoma, there's still two places with an unreadable character in this font which is supposed to be an e with a trema (two dots) over it. I updated that and this file will compile for me without warnings or errors: 3603.George MacDonald -Diary of an Old Soul.docx

     

    Have joy in the Lord! Smile

  • Timothy Jang
    Timothy Jang Member Posts: 73

    Thank you very much! I appreciate it. 


  • Rosie Perera
    Rosie Perera Member Posts: 26,202 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Thank you so much, Mick!

  • Brad
    Brad Member Posts: 927 ✭✭

    NB.Mick said:

    Brad said:

    Unfortunately I'm getting a "build failed with 3 errors, 2 warnings" on every attempt.

    can you share your logs?

    For the file above I get the two warnings and get one error, but they don't break the build. The error is about font Tahoma, there's still two places with an unreadable character in this font which is supposed to be an e with a trema (two dots) over it. I updated that and this file will compile for me without warnings or errors: 3603.George MacDonald -Diary of an Old Soul.docx

     

    Thank you, NB.Mick.  I'm only getting 2 errors now, and 0 warnings, with the updated file.  Here's where the trouble kicks in:

    [Error] Error while building book: Error compiling resource.
    [Error] Exception: LDLS4.Panels.PersonalBookBuilderPanel.PersonalBookBuilderException: Error compiling resource.
    at LDLS4.Panels.PersonalBookBuilderPanel.PersonalBookConverter.CompileResource (Libronix.DigitalLibrary.LicenseManager licenseManager, System.String manifest, LDLS4.Panels.PersonalBookBuilderPanel.ResourceDocumentData metadata, LDLS4.Panels.PersonalBookBuilderPanel.IPersonalBookBuildLog buildLog, LDLS4.Panels.PersonalBookBuilderPanel.PersonalBookConverter+TempFiles tempFiles, Libronix.Utility.Threading.IWorkState workState) [0x000de] in /Volumes/Code/Jenkins/workspace/Logos-Desktop-Mac-Beta-Ship/DigitalLibrary/src/LDLS4/Panels/PersonalBookBuilderPanel/PersonalBookConverter.cs:511
    at LDLS4.Panels.PersonalBookBuilderPanel.PersonalBookConverter+<CreatePersonalBookWork>d__2.MoveNext () [0x0045b] in /Volumes/Code/Jenkins/workspace/Logos-Desktop-Mac-Beta-Ship/DigitalLibrary/src/LDLS4/Panels/PersonalBookBuilderPanel/PersonalBookConverter.cs:147
    at Libronix.Utility.Threading.AsyncWorkerTask`1[T].EnumMoveNext () [0x0001a] in <cdec5422a3e1410980755fe41bd7ca24>:0
    at Libronix.Utility.Threading.AsyncWorkerTask`1[T].EnumMoveNextWithCatch () [0x00002] in <cdec5422a3e1410980755fe41bd7ca24>:0
    --- End of stack trace from previous location where exception was thrown ---

    at Libronix.Utility.Threading.AsyncWorkItem.Verify () [0x0000b] in <cdec5422a3e1410980755fe41bd7ca24>:0
    at LDLS4.Panels.PersonalBookBuilderPanel.PersonalBookViewModel+<CreatePersonalBookWork>d__137.MoveNext () [0x0011e] in /Volumes/Code/Jenkins/workspace/Logos-Desktop-Mac-Beta-Ship/DigitalLibrary/src/LDLS4/Panels/PersonalBookBuilderPanel/PersonalBookViewModel.cs:727

  • NB.Mick
    NB.Mick MVP Posts: 15,969

    Brad said:

    Thank you, NB.Mick.  I'm only getting 2 errors now, and 0 warnings, with the updated file.  Here's where the trouble kicks in:

    I can't make anything out of that except assuming you're running on a Mac.

    Can you invoke http://wiki.logos.com/diagnostic_logging, presumably by holding the command key down while starting Logos? Then have Logos build the PB and fail. You'll then have a PB-log from the PB tool, but also a Logos log that shows what happened in detail, possibly also an error log. Please upload those here with the paperclip function - someone may see the issue (sorry if your snippet should have been from that Logos log already - unfortunately, I personally am often at a loss when seeing Mac logs).

    Have joy in the Lord! Smile