[Coco] Re: Rainbow on Disc

[James C. Hrubik, Sr.]

'nother pennysworth of input...

On Jun 9, 2005, at 7:24 AM, farna at att.net wrote:

> 1. ... Shoot for the least common denominator. there are PDF readers 
> for Windows, Linux, and Macs.

... being as how you might want to sell them to a wide-ranging 
audience...

> 4. There is no need to OCR the magazines. That would take a LOT of 
> time and require proof reading and editing. The only reason OCR would 
> be useful is to change the content or lift articles for other 
> publications, something the project doesn't want anyway. OCR the 
> program listings if desired and save as separate ASCII files for 
> tranferring to a computer, but not the rest of the magazines. I do 
> believe the project would be best served by preserving the original 
> magazine format even though none of the ads will be of any use other 
> than historical information. But that may be the only info available 
> on some items in the future, so I think the ads deserve preservation 
> as well.

Rethinking this again.  You want to eliminate as much work as possible. 
  Adobe Reader has the ability to copy text from a .pdf to a clipboard 
for pasting into other apps.  If a .pdf is provided, the user can still 
lift out the program listings.  Maybe the time used to OCR doesn't need 
to be wasted there.  It's not going to be stored on a server for 
distribution, so 300 dpi is attractive for quality and (see comments 
regarding disk format below) there may not be a size problem on CD at 
that resolution.  You have to remember that Lonnie's requirements 
appear to indicate that the pages have to be complete reproductions.

> 5. Cost needs to cover accounting expenses as well as reproduction and 
> license fee. I'm assuming that's the only expenses and time to scan 
> will be by donation. ... If the person doing the copying/accounting 
> isn't getting a little for their time they will quickly tire of 
> keeping this up. The suggestion that distribution be accomplished by 
> someone who already has a vested interest in the CoCo is a very good 
> one! I'd suggest Cloud-9 (assuming Mark is interested) at least for 
> distribution/accounting...

... and as Mark has already said he might be too busy, I would think 
Glenside is the next best bet...

> 6. CD would be the preferred format as every modern computer has a CD 
> drive, but not everyone has DVD. ...
>
> 7. If the collection is to be broken up do it by volume, not by year 
> or single issues. It will be easier to track that way. Rainbow also 
> printed an index aftr the first several years. I'd put a complete 
> index on each CD as the first file on each volume CD. That would make 
> 12 CDs, one for each year. I'd suggest a four CD set with four volumes 
> (16 issues, est. 10 MB each, 160 MB + listings) on each CD. That would 
> be $4 of license fees @ $0.25 each, and I'd suggest $4 for the 
> distributor -- $8 per disc total. That would make a complete set $96. 
> Considering what it would cost to get a full set now that's more than 
> reasonable...

I agree regarding the CDs and nearly universal ability to use them.  My 
suggestion, since the mags are so big (at least until the later 
issues), that if the scan resolution is high (~300), each CD contain a 
6-month spread, 2 CDs per year.  That way, people could buy what they 
needed, or acquire the collection over time.  Remember that the typical 
CoCo user was a "shoestring" user -- first a CoCo, then a printer, then 
a disk drive, etc.  It may now be the 21st Century, but people still 
haven't changed that much.  Each CD would then cost $1.50 plus 
media/distributor cost, and they could be released in sequence as 
completed.


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