Aan 20-01-97 0:17, in bericht <[log in to unmask]>, Arjen Joao and all others You asked more details about scanners. I asked my son and this is the answer. Ida Kamphuis <[log in to unmask]> schreef: > Dear booklovers, > > My mother subscribes to the PD-list and showed me a letter from someone > having severe problems with reading normal books. If holding the book steady > or the size of the letters is a problem you computer can help out. Don't be > baffled by all the technical stuff, and don't hesitate to ask further > explanations: > I reside at: [log in to unmask] > > Technical solutions to a literary problem: > > 1. It's possible to scan the pages of a book, they can then be > displayed (enlarged if nessesary) on any computer screen. > > Scanners are available from less than one hundred up to several thousand > dollars. A simple hand-heldscanner is a mouse-like device that can be moved > over a page or any flat surface. It will capture a picture of that surface > that can be processed by a computer. Even the cheaper scanners nowadays can > caputure both color and B/W pictures in resolutions (Dots Per Inch or: DPI) > that are more than sufficient to read a printed page from the screen. > If you are planning to scan a lot (a whole book for instance) it might be > wise to invest a couple of hundred dollars in a tabletop scanner. These > devices basically look like very small photocopiers and perform the same > functions as their small hand-held cousins, only faster and with more > convieniance for the user. If you have an A4-format tabletopscanner > available to you you can scan entire pages just by one mouse-click. When > purchasing a tabletop scanner make sure it has a removable lid, otherwise > thicker books may not fit under it. > Also: talk to some-one about you computer: scanning pages takes a lot of > harddisk-space (about 1 megabyte per page, or more) and requires at least a > 486-processor (Apple-users: sorry I can't translate this to Apple CPU's, > talk to you dealer) and 4MB RAM-memory. > > 2 Once you have scanned the pages of your favorite book: > convert them to plain-text, that can be used in any > wordprocessor, with OCR-software > > OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. OCR-programs can convert a > scanned picture of letters into a text-file that you can manipulate in any > wordprocessor and that will take only a fraction of the harddisk-space to > store. A book stored as digitized pictures could take several hundred > MegaBytes to store whereas a novel stored as a flat text-file is only a few > hundred Kilobytes (save a factor thousand in storage!). With most scanners > you get OCR-software for free, but the quality varies and also depends on > the speed and memory capacity of you computer. OCR-software will continue to > improve and computers are doubling there speed every two years so if it > doesn't work just jet at your home it soon will. > > 3 Aren't there book's available as flat-text-files for visually > impaired persons? > > I think there must be, I know there are voice-synthesizers to read > text-files to people who are visually impaired, so there must be (at least > small) libraries of digitized books. If you have a book as a text-file you > can load it into a wordprocessor and set the font-size to 20 or 30 Pts > (whatever is nessesary if the size of the letters is a problem). Also: since > books as flat text-files are generally less than one MegaByte you can share > them over the net with any and everybody. Just don't send a novel to the > list, the listserver won't like that. > > > _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ > _/ Arjen Kamphuis [log in to unmask] _/ > _/ _/ > _/ The young do not know enough to be prudent, and _/ > _/ therefore they attempt the impossible --- _/ > _/ and achieve it, generation after generation. _/ > _/ - Pearl S. Buck _/ > _/ _/ > _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ >