LL-L "Technica" 2003.10.18 (03) [E]

Sat Oct 18 18:52:17 UTC 2003

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L O W L A N D S - L * 18.OCT.2003 (03) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian B=Brabantish D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian
L=Limburgish LS=Lowlands Saxon (Low German) N=Northumbrian
S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic V=(West)Flemish Z=Zeelandic (Zeêuws)
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From: Andy Eagle <andy at SCOTS-online.org>
Subject:  "Help needed"

Sandy Fleming wrote:
>
>As some of you will know, texts on the Scotstext site
>(http://scotstext.org/) are presented in edited form: I make general
>improvements to the orthography and occasionally grammar with a view
>to
>presenting the Scots at its best, as far as preferences of
>experienced
>readers in Scots will allow.
>
>This creates problems for researchers who would sometimes much
>prefer to see
>the original text. I decided on editing the texts, however, for the
>following reasons:
<snip>

R. F. Hahn Wrote:
<snip>
>I strongly recommend using pdf files for facsimiles.  If you use
>Adobe
>Acrobat you don't have to mess with gifs and graphics programs at
>all.
>Under "File" -> "Acquire" in Acrobat you can scan the pages directly
>into
>pdf
>format, and this creates clean facsimiles.  In that case you can
>also bundle
>the pages, either consecutive pages (whole chapters or books in
>fact) or
>bundles of assorted pages you want to be downloaded as a group. One
>of the
>advantages is the combination of ease and speed.  Obviously, stains,
>scribbles, etc., would appear, and I would not only not worry about
>that but
>I as a user of the resource would prefer "undoctored" copies. The
>only
>disadvantage is that scanned pdf files can be fairly large.  I would
>solve
>that by making them available in zipped format.

Does this still allow text searches or cut and paste with an Adobe
PDF Reader?
Something I assume researchers would appreciate.

Andy Eagle

----------

From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Technica"

> From: Ruud Harmsen <rha at rudhar.com>
> Subject: Computer/technical
>
> 08:50 AM 10/17/2003 -0700, Lowlands-L:
> >The only
> >disadvantage is that scanned pdf files can be fairly large.
>
> But probably not much larger than in a "direct" graphic format like
> GIF or JPEG.
>
> >I would solve that by making them available in zipped format.
>
> Worth a try, but I don't expect much improvement here, because PDF
> has its own compression built in. It has for text, I don't know if

I've tried it both ways for the first 14 pages of a book. See the results
at:

http://www.scotstext.org/photoscans/the_winds_heart/

The PDF file is 6Mb, and zip compression only reduces it by a few kb. Note
that most of this is due to the cover having to be scanned in colour, the
text pages themselves aren't all that big. It does mean that illustrated
editions will be gigantic, however!

The collection of pages as separate PNG files, one per page, amounts to half
the size of the PDF file.

I agree with Ron that using PDF is much easier. In fact this turned out to
be a good way of producing the PNG files, because Adobe Acrobat can export
all its graphics as graphics files (GIF isn't supported though, hence my use
of PNG).

However, my priority is to present the books in a form that's easily
accessed and can be used as far into the future as possible, rather than my
own convenience. I think therefore it makes sense to use the barest and most
easily downloaded form.

I've realise that another advantage of the having individual graphics pages
would be that I could have links from the text versions to the photoscans,
so that people could easily check on the originals as they read. With the
graphics being accessible as single pages through this sort of index, people
wouldn't have to download more than they needed to look at and everything
could be viewed quickly online if required.

Perhaps the best solution would be to have the individual graphic pages
accessible through an index as on the sample page above, and a zip archive
of the whole book (including the hypertext index page) as well. Then if it
was required in PDF the user could assemble their own PDF document, isn't
that right?

The advantage of the zip archive is that it would be half the size of the
PDF. While the telephone network in Scotland may be excellent, I'm not
forgetting that in many countries every download is still an adventure!

Thanks for the suggestions so far - any further comments (or warnings
against the direction I'm going in) would be very welcome.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Technica

Andy:

> Does this still allow text searches or cut and paste with an Adobe
> PDF Reader?

No, Andy, it doesn't.  It simply makes facsimiles like any graphics program.
The advantage is that you can bundle pages and can create indices.

> Something I assume researchers would appreciate.

Good point, though I assumed that Sandy would make the facsimiles available
in addition to his edited text versions.

Sandy:

> I've tried it both ways for the first 14 pages of a book. See the results
at:
>
> http://www.scotstext.org/photoscans/the_winds_heart/

Very nice!  It's slow downloading to older computers, though.

> Perhaps the best solution would be to have the individual graphic pages
accessible
> through an index as on the sample page above, and a zip archive of the
whole book
> (including the hypertext index page) as well. Then if it was required in
PDF the user
> could assemble their own PDF document, isn't that right?

That sounds like a good plan.  It would be nice for the user to have a link
to the corresponding page facsimile on each hypertext page.  The facsimile
should open in a new window to allow on-screen comparison.

It would be interesting to see what some of the better libraries do with
their special collections.  I believe the British Museum
(http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/,
http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass/) and the British Library
(http://www.bl.uk/) display some ancient manuscripts in facsimile, and I
just read in the _National Geographic_ that the Al Azhar Library of Kairo is
about to display some of the exquisit treasury of old books it holds (which
is something to watch unfold at http://www.alazharonline.org/).

Keep up the good work, guys!
Reinhard/Ron

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