[Coco] Re: Rainbow on Disk

[Shawn M. Hedgecorth]

I looked at your sample magazine, and thought that the quality is excellent.
It doesn't look like it was scanned at all. As for doing OCR, I don't think
that the whole project should be done that way. It would not be necessary
for the program listings for the issues that Rainbow on Tape or Rainbow on
Disk were available (if Lonnie agrees to include those files). In most cases
it would not be necessary for the articles that descriptions of the programs
 It would not be necessary for the advertisements. It would be beneficial to
use OCR for the tutorial articles and the Q&A, so that it would be possible
to do a keyword search like Mark mentioned earlier.  As for the color
questions that have come up, as a rough guess 2/3 to 3/4 of the magazine
content is in b&w. For those pages, use 8-bit greyscale when scanning if
there is anything beyond text and 2-bit if it is text only. For the pages
with color, 16-bit color is more than adequate (24 or 32-bit would be
serious overkill and 8-bit might leave something to be desired).
 
As far as the distribution media goes, I think it would be nice to have a
choice of CD or DVD. Personally, I would prefer to have it on DVD, but as
was noted in a previous post, not everyone has a DVD drive.
 
To whoever decides to be the project manager for this, I am willing to
provide my time in scanning and am willing to sacrifice my magazine
collection to help.
 
Shawn Hedgecorth
 
 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: farna at att.net
Date: 06/09/05 09:52:15
To: coco at maltedmedia.com
Subject: [Coco] Re: Rainbow on Disk
 
Sounds like most agree on PDF format. OCRing would be a waste of time IMHO
and probably wouldn't be allowed. I know I wouldn't allow it on any of my
copyrighted works (though I'm not concerned about the CoCo related stuff --
I turned that all over to Glenside or public domain long ago). I don't even
allow electronic copies of current AIM issues simply because they are easy
to copy and distribute and I still generate a small amount of income from
back issues. I thik that's the main reason Lonnie Falk has agreeed to any of
this now -- there can't be many issues of Rainbow left and I doubt there are
many sales at $9 each.
 
Falsoft does have copyright issues to think about, that's why Lonnie can't
just give Rainbow to public domain. In order to do that he'd have to contact
everyone who retained copyright to an article and just gave Falsoft printing
rights or remove the articles. Apparently there is a stipulation in the
contracts that gives Falsoft reprinting rights though.
 
I think this negates the whole re-typeset and/or OCR issue too. Reprints
must be just that -- exact reprints. I remember ordering a reprinted article
from an out of stock issue of Rainbow once. I got it complete with all ads
and parts of other articles intact -- exact copies of the pages. I believe
it would be in the contract. So don't mess up the deal by trying to do to
much! OCR the listings since they were intended to be shared and it just
saves typing in, but don't make possible problems for Falsoft by OCRing or
re-typesetting the whole thing.
 
One more point -- the sample that Michael Harwood posted to his site it
great! But if the PDF files are 144 dpi there is no need to scan the
originals at any more than 150 dpi. I explained why in my previous post. The
only reason I use 200 dpi for AIM is so I can blow a pic up if necessary and
still retain a minimum of 100 dpi. 100 dpi for greyscale photos is fine,
anything over 150 dpi a waste of space as far as current print and display
technology goes. Typical screen resolution is no more than 72 dpi, by the
way. So don'[t go overboard with the scans thinking the higher dpi the
better -- doesn't work that way unless using photgraphic qualit printing
equipment. A typical web press only goes 120 lpi (lines per inch), the
equivalent of 150 dpi. The original Rainbows are only 120 lpi. More than 150
dpi just makes a bigger file or a bigger page (bigger than original). How
many of you have loaded pics from a digital camera and found they were 18" x
24" or some other very large s
  ize? Reduce the "quality" and size will go down. You need a bigger pic for
resizing, cropping, and other manipulations, but not for printing. You won't
be doing any of that with Rainbow -- al the details are finalized. It just
needs to be easily readable with near equal quality photos.
 
If you want to see what a 150 dpi scan convereted to PDF looks like,
download the sample of AIM from my site listed below. The original had all
greyscale photos.
 
--
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Independent
Magazine" (AIM)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://farna.home.att.net/AIM.html
(free download available!)