Joel, Totally agree , pdf is much easier Regards, Scott Sent from my iPad
On Dec 31, 2011, at 9:56 AM, "Joel C. Ewing" <jcew...@acm.org> wrote: > On 12/30/2011 10:30 AM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: >> In<4efdc973.3050...@acm.org>, on 12/30/2011 >> at 08:23 AM, "Joel C. Ewing"<jcew...@acm.org> said: >> >>> First thing I do with new equipment/appliance manuals is either find >>> and save an on-line pdf version >> >> Why? I know that in some cases PDF is all that's available, but >> certainly not in all. >> > > I want a form that preserves for my personal use, and has the ability to > recreate if necessary, the original multi-page documents for human viewing. > PDF was designed with precisely that in mind and does it very well. I want a > format with a proven track record of continued support over an extended time > period on multiple hardware platforms and operating systems. The PDF specs > are openly available, free PDF readers are available for multiple > environments from multiple independent sources. Ditto for free print-to-PDF > converters, and direct PDF creation support is now built into many > applications as well. > > There are other formats that are useful or even "better" in specific > environments, but nothing at this point is as ubiquitous as PDF, and I have > no idea what systems I may be running ten years from now. > > If you can get a text-based PDF document from the original source, that would > certainly be preferable, as that allows text searching capability. But, if > all you have is a hard copy, none of the current freely-available OCR tools > come close to preserving the original document as accurately as image-based > PDF, unless you have the time for extensive manual editing. Bitsavers.org > uses a modified archive approach that uses higher resolution to allow > possible future OCR; but compensates for higher resolution by using > black/white threshold images that sacrifice quality of embedded document > illustrations. I prefer to go with lower resolution adequate for human > reading and preserve gray scale, and even color, where its use is significant. > > -- > Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR jcew...@acm.org > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
