You can actually view which ones are in the worst shape, and which ones are in the best shape by the detailed analysis created
here: this is just another tool that makes, at least in my case, ePublishing these texts easier. While one may promote this or that standard for the republication of Puritan texts, many of the things mentioned are optional. Most people do not know H&G, people can look up Latin in Google, there is no reason to restructure Puritan style for those interested in reading the Puritans. Extensive footnoting and margin references are also optional. There is a base body of the text, a point the authors are trying to convey, and this is the substance that is at the root of the publication. If one wants to be engulfed with their conceptions of "craft," more power to them. But in my situation, like I have stated before, I have to find a balance between quantity and quality. There are very few people that put their hand to the plow to publish Puritan works, there are even fewer who do so without the opportunity for monetary compensation. Either I can spend months on a single text, and over a life-time reintroduce very few of them comparatively, or, try to get them back into a readable format, according to my ability, understanding there are 1,000's of these works that sit dormant and unknown. Let this sink in. Many people only know of 20 or 30 Puritan and Non-Conformists authors. After months of daily research, almost a 1,000 authors were discovered, out of 1,000's more potentials, spanning 1,000's of works. As of right now, most remain in obscurity only known by those most entrenched in the genre. I seek to remedy that. We no longer live in a day were former processes need be followed. And ultimately, it is up to the discretion of the reader if a work is "up to par" in their opinion to read. With the works I do, there is no investment on the part of the reader; if they do not like the format, they do not have to read. I can understand the constraints of a person who is trying to justify the price of a book because they depend on peoples purchases. But I am under no such constraints. I simply edit within the confines of my gifting, sow, and let God use as he sees fit.
www.puritanboard.com
but I've not found it little effort so far with my first use of EEBO as a base text (as I say I prefer not to use EEBO texts as base texts but for a check text, use a late edition to facilitate tracing changes made in various editions; but I'm challenged to have to do that for Rutherford's Spiritual Antichrist). For the more technical puritan works, Greek and Hebrew has to be restored; the missing words and mangled words with missing letters fixed, and edited for modern usage (like the sentence structures Logan mentioned earlier). So for a 500 page book that is weeks of work. But that is just the start. To make sense to the modern audience, the Latin must be translated (and even in basic works there will be a little) and the marginal references researched and tracked down. Two summers back for instance, I did bibliographical work on a relative short text of a 100 pages by Gisbertus Voeitus, and it took more than a month pulling and tracking down the books referenced (it was harder not only because these were dissertations packed with more references than a normal book but because the text was also all in Latin but i did this pretranslation to aid the translator).
