[Coco] Re: CoCo magazine project

[Michael Wayne Harwood]

Good stuff - as always!!


> 1. If DjVU will be that much smaller it would be worth buying a copy,
> especially if you're planning on doing other works. So add $1 to every
> copy to cover the cost of the software if necessary. I don't know that I'd
> worry much about UNIX/LINUX viewers, but Mac would be nice. You'll cover
> 90% of interested parties with a PC viewer though.

Adding $1 wouldn't cover the cost unless I knew I was going to sell about
300 or so copies!  I am still playing around with the opensource DjVU
utilities and the jury is still out.  In some cases I get a much better
quality than the JPEG compression that most of the .pdf builders use, in
other cases .pdf is either just as good or a clear winner.

I am going to have to disagree with you in regards to availability of
viewers - whatever format is chosen it will need to support the big 3 at
least: Windows, OSX, and Unix.  Solaris and FreeBSD fall in the Unix camp
and have Linux compatibility to some degree, so if a format is chosen that
doesn't have a native Solaris or FreeBSD client hopefully the Linux client
will be workable.  I have an UltraSPARC 5 that is begging for my attention
so I might fire it up and install Solaris 10 on it at some point. 
Scanning is fairly brainless work fortunately - I get other things done at
the same time!!


> 2. While a complete searchable database would be nice, a simple index for
> each disk would be sufficient. It could be a text or RTF file that can be
> put in a word processor and searched. Simple, but effective for the most
> part.
>
> 3. Why worry about OCR capability? It's nice for listings, but the
> scanning and error correcting will be time consuming for you.

The OCR will be what I call "one pass" or just a quick OCR of the orginal
scans with little or no effort of correction.  This will be of some worth
to many, and having it done at the start eliminates my having to charge
for an upgraded product in the future.  Unfortunately I will HAVE to
charge license fees a second time if the product is changed to include new
features, so I am doing everything I can to get as much packed into the
initial offering as possible.


> 4. If it takes four CDs divide the CDs into sets and make each available
> separately, with a discount for buying the entire collection at once.
> Those who can afford to will buy the entire collection, others can buy a
> CD every few months or so if they need to. So it's $55 if you buy all at
> once, $65 (an extra $5 each CD for S&H) if you buy one at a time @ $12.50
> each + $5 S&H.

I have thought about this and I am not sure how I want to approach this
yet....it's nice to hear someone else say it so I can chew it over on it a
little more...

> 5. Bottom line is you're going to have to balance functions with your time
> and effort. No matter what you do someone will criticize you for doing to
> not enough -- they "would have done it better" but didn't do anything.

*grin*  Agreed!

Regards,
Michael Harwood