In article ,
John Smith wrote:

I am interested, did you use fine reader for scanning or another? And, did
you use adobe to create the .pdf or other free software? Is the .pdf text
searchable (in text format) or not (in graphic format?)

The work was done using only noncommercial (freely-distributable)
software tools... the SANE scanning software, NETPBM image-processing
programs, The GIMP for manual image processing, and GPL GhostScript to
create the PDFs. I wrote a bunch of custom scripts to perform some
higher-level functions (e.g. automatically levelling, centering, and
"bleaching" the pages).

The text is not searchable. I don't have access to OCR software which
can do the job with acceptable accuracy, nor the time required to
proofread the whole book and correct the inevitable errors. The PDF
text is all in graphic format.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

.... shame, searchable text is nice... I have finereader, what is the
graphic format of the scanned pages... perhaps it can work with that?

Warmest regards,
John

"Dave Platt" wrote in message
...
In article ,
John Smith wrote:

I am interested, did you use fine reader for scanning or another? And,
did
you use adobe to create the .pdf or other free software? Is the .pdf text
searchable (in text format) or not (in graphic format?)

The work was done using only noncommercial (freely-distributable)
software tools... the SANE scanning software, NETPBM image-processing
programs, The GIMP for manual image processing, and GPL GhostScript to
create the PDFs. I wrote a bunch of custom scripts to perform some
higher-level functions (e.g. automatically levelling, centering, and
"bleaching" the pages).

The text is not searchable. I don't have access to OCR software which
can do the job with acceptable accuracy, nor the time required to
proofread the whole book and correct the inevitable errors. The PDF
text is all in graphic format.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

In article ,
John Smith wrote:
... shame, searchable text is nice... I have finereader, what is the
graphic format of the scanned pages... perhaps it can work with that?

The original scans are 300 dpi grayscale, PGM (portable graymap)
format. Easily translated to TIFF.

The data in the PDF itself is 300 dpi one-bit-deep black&white data,
compressed... converted from the grayscale data via thresholding.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Well, will have to play with this awhile... never attempted to use
finereader with existing scans... and not having much luck working something
out--I expected it to be more straight-forward...

Warmest regards,
John

"Dave Platt" wrote in message
...
In article ,
John Smith wrote:
... shame, searchable text is nice... I have finereader, what is the
graphic format of the scanned pages... perhaps it can work with that?

The original scans are 300 dpi grayscale, PGM (portable graymap)
format. Easily translated to TIFF.

The data in the PDF itself is 300 dpi one-bit-deep black&white data,
compressed... converted from the grayscale data via thresholding.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

On Sun, 22 May 2005 17:52:48 -0700, "John Smith"
wrote:

--I expected it to be more straight-forward...

For Pete's sake. You're getting something for free and then bitching
about it.

Sheeeeeeeee

I don't think you grasp what is being done here... I am not even
contemplating using it... but transforming it into other formats for others
use... 33 megs is pretty big for a book... down about one-meg would be more
useful...

Warmest regards,
John

"Dan Richardson arrl net" k6mhatdot wrote in message
...
On Sun, 22 May 2005 17:52:48 -0700, "John Smith"
wrote:

--I expected it to be more straight-forward...

For Pete's sake. You're getting something for free and then bitching
about it.

Sheeeeeeeee

In article ,
John Smith wrote:

I don't think you grasp what is being done here... I am not even
contemplating using it... but transforming it into other formats for others
use... 33 megs is pretty big for a book... down about one-meg would be more
useful...

Getting it down to 1 meg would necessarily sacrifice almost all of the
detail in the photographs - they'd be unviewable. 1 meg might be
enough space for the text, and possibly for the black&white charts and
line drawings (as bitmaps) but the photos would be lost.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

For Pete's sake. You're getting something for free and then
bitching
about it.

=========================

"For Pete's sake" is an interesting American exclamation. How did it
arise?

Did it arise in the 1930's? Any connection with the villain Pegleg
Pete who appeared in Mickey Mouse cartoons of that era?
----
Reg.

Dave:

Are you familiar with microsoft reader... it reads ebooks in something of a
"paperback style." I am not sure if there is a counterpart in the Linux
world... are you dual boot?

Warmest regards,
John

"Dave Platt" wrote in message
...
In article ,
John Smith wrote:
... shame, searchable text is nice... I have finereader, what is the
graphic format of the scanned pages... perhaps it can work with that?

The original scans are 300 dpi grayscale, PGM (portable graymap)
format. Easily translated to TIFF.

The data in the PDF itself is 300 dpi one-bit-deep black&white data,
compressed... converted from the grayscale data via thresholding.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Dave:

Are you familiar with microsoft reader... it reads ebooks in something of a
"paperback style."

Not familiar with it, don't really care to be. I have a policy of
avoiding the use of Microsoft software on my systems except when no
decent alternative exists.

I am not sure if there is a counterpart in the Linux
world...

Adobe Acrobat Reader has a "continuous, facing" display option - pairs
of pages side by side - which I suspect is close to the "paperback
style" to which you refer. Works fine with the PDFs I'm distributing.

are you dual boot?

No, I don't trust that mode, for a couple of reasons. Some M$
operating systems are known to rather aggressively overwrite or
destroy other OS's partitions or boot blocks, sometimes without asking
or warning. And, given all of the security exploits against Windows
and Explorer and etc. floating around, I feel safer not allowing
Windows to have direct access to my hardware.

I do occasionally run Windows (usually Win98) in a VmWare virtual
machine, with a virtualized hard drive, for things like tax software,
ham-radio programming utilities, etc.. That way, it's running safely
in user mode, can't get to the real hardware, and I can wipe it and
start over from a checkpoint save without affecting the rest of my
system.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!