Scanning old manuals

From: jim_at_ezol.com <(jim_at_ezol.com)>
Date: Tue Mar 9 11:01:46 1999

>Okay,
>
> I have some old computer manuals and I just bought a scanner...... Anyone
>care to suggest the best way to convert these manuals to electronic form
>and not take up HUGE amounts of memory?

I'm looking for insight on this as well... I've been experimenting
with various ways to convert my old manuals and listings to electronic
form with mixed results. It is not as easy as it might seem.

The first problem is how labor intensive this is. Just a 100 page manual
could take hours to scan front and back of every page. A scanner with
a GOOD sheet feeder that doesn't skew the pages would be very desirable
here.

Next, is how to balance the text content with the graphical content of
the pages. Do you leave the pages as a scanned image? Or do you
try to OCR them?

Leaving them as a scanned image is the easy way out, but isn't always
practical. Some pages I have have very small print, and the resolution
of the image required to make this text readable makes for huge files.

I have attempted to OCR several of my manuals, but this is labor intensive
as well, since the OCR dictionary seems ignorant to any technical term
or abbriviation, and the formatting of the pages gives it fits too.

What is the answer? I have a huge pile of old, hard to find docs that
I am eager to put in electronic form for many reasons... ease of access,
sharing with others, preserving hard to find information, getting some
space back that's currently occupied by a mountain of books.....


>Thanks,
>
>Arfon

Thanks,
Jim
Received on Tue Mar 09 1999 - 11:01:46 GMT