[Coco] RE: Rainbow magazines]

[John Murphy]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Hogerhuis" <jhoger at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 5:43 PM


> Whatever the format I think it has to work on Windows, OSX and Linux
> (Linux for me to be interested). But if you put it in something else I
> would just have to convert it for my own use under Linux.
>
> Whatever you do *do not* lock it up in some dastardly DRMed format.
> Please, open, standard, unencrypted, no passwords or keys to lose.
>
> The only document format I know that permits that and has good readers is 
> PDF.
>
> In any event, we're basically just using the format as a container for
> scanned pages. No matter what format we use it ain't gonna be tiny.
> Also we should separate the issue of how to scan and what will be in
> the final product. If you scan at 600dpi B&W, we can down convert it
> to 150dpi later, automatically. But if we want color we have to decide
> that early on since it can't really be added later.
>
> For Thinking Forth we actually re-typeset the book, so that's why it
> is so small. There's no graphics there except for the illustrations.
> Everything else is one character approx equals one byte.
>
> I think it would be a lifetime project to re-typeset Rainbow. Just
> scan it and package it up as PDF, that's feasible.
>
> -- John.
>

For re-typesetting,

http://dproofreaders.sourceforge.net/

is an app that would be a valuable resource...

<quote>
Distributed Proofreaders provides a web-based method of easing the 
proofreading work associated with the creation of Project Gutenberg E-Texts. 
By breaking the work into individual pages many proofreaders can be working 
on the same book at the same time. This significantly speeds up the 
proofreading/E-Text creation process.

When a proofer elects to proofread a page for a particular project, the text 
and image file are displayed on a single webpage. This allows the text file 
to be easily reviewed and compared to the image file, thus assisting the 
proofreading of the text file. The edited text file is then submitted back 
to the site via the same webpage that it was edited on.
</quote>

"All" that would be needed would be a site willing to host the app.

And many, many of the problems around scanning and re-purposing magazines 
are solved problems: another good resource is those evil, 
copyright-infringing ebook-scanning scofflaws at

alt.binaries.e-book.d

Many of them are quite knowledgeable, and don't mind sharing "trade 
secrets", as it were.

John