Re: Computing Editorial (please read)

[Lee Hart <leeahart@earthlink.net>]

Paul Schlyter wrote:
>> DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE!!! Instead use a scanner + OCR software. Yes,
>> the OCR software has its flaws, and you'll often have to proofread
>> what the OCR software produced. But in my own experience, OCR'ing
>> printed pages and reformatting + proofreading them afterwards is some
>> 4-5 times faster than typing in all of it by hand.

CBFalconer wrote:
> A lot of stuff is available scanned,  but locked up in PDF files
> etc.  It would be useful to have a means of extracting that scan
> and passing it on to OCR software.

Exactly. Manuals from the early days of microcomputing are often in bad
shape, printed with cheap printers, and full of typos and unreadable
text. They include source code listings that must be rendered perfectly,
or they become worthless (can't mix up ohs and zeros, ells and ones).
Formatting is often vital (exactly how many spaces go between these
quotes?).

It helps if the text has working hyperlinks, so you can find
definitions, and use the index and table of contents. Finally, you not
only want to be able to read the document, but if there is source code,
you may want it in machine readable form so you can actually load and
run it.

So, I've done whatever is necessary to get the old manuals into usable
form. Generally, it gets scanned, then OCR'd, then proofread. Often,
whole sections need to be retyped because the automated conversion is so
bad.

I generally make it an HTML file. This saves space for downloading or
disk storage compared to some graphic format like PDF. You can use the
hyperlinks to jump around in it. And, the code segments in it are plain
ASCII, so you can cut and paste them into a program to be executed on
the real hardware or an emulator.
-- 
Lee A. Hart                Ring the bells that still can ring
814 8th Ave. N.            Forget your perfect offering
Sartell, MN 56377 USA      There is a crack in everything
leeahart_at_earthlink.net  That's how the light gets in - Leonard Cohen