Scanning old manuals

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Tue Mar 9 13:23:51 1999

I had high hopes of benefitting from my sheet-fed scanner by scanning large
software and hardware manuals into machine-readable files and searching
them, but it turned out there is no easy way.

Most scanner software sets, even the ones costing less than $100 including
the scanner, have a "scan to text" mode, which means you lose all the
illustrations but get a machine-readable text file. Subsequently, you have
to reconnect them to the pictures by composing a new version of the
document and inserting the pictures, scanned as line art or as color
pictures, with the associated disk-space consumption. Tables, screened
half-tones, and other highly structured images, regardless of the fact
their content is really text, need to be treated as graphics because of the
alignment of the printing grid with the scanner grid. If you scan screened
photos, you can get lucky with the pictures, but it is just that . . .
LUCK. Normally you have to take the most trouble with screened half-tone
pictures. Once the document is scanned and composed, you can compress it
and ship it around on the internet as an object.

Dick

----------
> From: Arfon Gryffydd <arfonrg_at_texas.net>
> To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp_at_u.washington.edu>
> Subject: Scanning old manuals
> Date: Tuesday, March 09, 1999 9:33 AM
>
> 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?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Arfon
Received on Tue Mar 09 1999 - 13:23:51 GMT