[Coco] [Rainbow on Disc] scanned vs. camera

[Ward Griffiths]

On 04/28/2006 09:53 am, Michael Wayne Harwood wrote:
> Can we revisit this one more time?  I have posted 2 .djvu files for a true
> apples to apples comparison - both files are 1.6mb is size and of the
> exact same 10 pages of the August 1989 issue.  These files have not been
> OCR'd.
>
> The purpose of this comparison is to look at two files that use different
> sources for image capture of the Rainbow magazine pages and determine
> whether the images gathered via the camera are "good enough" or whether
> the wait for the rest of the images to be scanned is worth the effort.
> Please focus your attention on image quality.
>
> The .djvu files are as follows:
>
> http://www.musicheadproductions.org/downloads/camera.djvu
> http://www.musicheadproductions.org/downloads/scanned.djvu
>
> Regards,
> Michael Harwood

I find both quite (visually) readable aside from some bits where the original 
typesetting held some really obnoxious color combinations with 
foreground/background.  The camera version is a bit off angle, which is to be 
expected -- my vote is for the scanner.

I'm going to inventory which issues I have.  The HP scanner my boss gave me is 
flaky but I sometimes have time to kill.  And I don't expect the box of 
Rainbow mags that cost me five bucks 7-8 years ago has a lot of resale value, 
so I have no qualms about tearing them up.  It's my collection of Mencken-era 
"American Mercury" that I really want to scan, but there is no affordable 
non-destructive way to scan acid-pulp magazines from the 1920s -- just 
opening them at all causes bits to fall off -- eventually I'll have to bite 
hard on that bullet.

BTW, if anybody has the March '81 issue of 80 Micro, I would really like a 
copy of my article "Computer Cantos" (pg 154+).  My copy of the magazine ran 
into Poor Richard's old "three removes equal one fire" rule.  I can read the 
ToC on Ira's site, but not the magazine.
-- 
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net

The people of Lancre wouldn't dream of living in anything other than a
monarchy.  They'd done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked.
But they'd also found that it didn't do to pay too much attention to what
the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty
years or so and he'd be certain to want something different and so they'd
have gone to all that trouble for nothing.  In the meantime, his job as
they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practice the waving, have
enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the
plowing, sowing, growing and harvesting.  It was, as they saw it, a social
contract.  They did what they always did, and he let them.
     Terry Pratchett, _Carpe Jugulum_