bcd1d4ff   
   XPost: soc.genealogy.britain, soc.genealogy.computing, soc.genealogy.medieval   
   XPost: soc.culture.scottish   
   From: groleau+news@freeshell.org   
      
   Scottish Archive eBooks wrote:   
   > If I may be permitted to return to respond to some of the valid points   
   > raised by Wes ;   
   >   
   > Yes, of course Google books are not without considerable value. They   
      
   If I could afford it, I'd certainly prefer your versions.   
   And recommend them to those who have sufficient disposable   
   funds.   
      
   Since I can't, I wanted to be sure my fellow cheapskates   
   were aware of their options.  :-)   
      
   I actually got a pretty good text file on one occasion   
   by downloading the Google image PDF, saving it as TIFF   
   using GraphicConverter on the Mac [1], opening it in   
   Office 2003 on Windows, and clicking the OCR icon.   
      
   [1] Windows-only alternative:   
        Open in Adobe Reader,   
        hit print-screen on each page you want to save   
        open Paint.NET and paste   
        save as TIFF   
      
   Platform-independent alternative:   
      Go to the page in Google Books.   
      Click for text view   
      cut text from browser   
      paste into editor   
      
   For good quality images, the Office OCR is better than Google's   
      
   For poorer ones (which is most old books), Google has fewer errors   
   but both require proof-reading.   
      
   However, in GraphicConverter or Paint.NET, if you add a step of   
   adjusting contrast and other image-processing tricks, you can   
   make most books nearly error-free in OCR.   
      
   --   
   Wes Groleau   
      
   Change is inevitable.  We need to learn that "inevitable" is   
   neither a synonym for "good" nor for "bad."   
                                   -- WWG   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)