20 Sep
1999
20 Sep
'99
6:12 a.m.
Not sure if this is relevant, but the Xerox S/W that comes with many
scanners likes to read uncompressed TIFFs.
Neil Morrison
email:morrison@t-iii.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Erlacher [SMTP:edick@idcomm.com]
Sent: Friday, September 17, 1999 10:41 PM
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
Subject: Re: Intel OS DOC and SOURCE
Well, I like my scanner because it has a sheetfeeder and because it's
legal
size, but, alas, it's only capable of a limited range of formats. After
all, I've had the thing for nearly ten years. Now, if you have a way to
massage the old style TIFF (targa) files into something better, perhaps
that
would be the thing to do.
A lot depends on what requirements the TBD web host will have, and I'll
perhaps hold off until a site is found.
OTOH, I did sort of allow that since Hans Franke is going to be at the
VCF,
though I'm not, I can arrange to get this stuff hauled out there for him
by
someone from here who's going. I will have to see whether he's willing to
get this stuff scanned and appropriately compressed, then made available
via
the web.
Wait and see . . .
Dick
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Smith <eric(a)brouhaha.com>
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
<classiccmp(a)u.washington.edu>
Date: Friday, September 17, 1999 6:57 PM
Subject: Re: Intel OS DOC and SOURCE
"Richard Erlacher"
<edick(a)idcomm.com> wrote:
> If there were a web site which would accomodate the many thousands of
pages
> involved here I'd consider scanning the
stuff and forwarding the
bitmaps
to
> whoever wants them. Now, keep in mind that a
typical TIFF of a printed
page
> in single-bit format is about 1 MB in size,
and we're looking at a
1-2'-high
> stack of paper with both sides printed in
most cases. LEt's see. . . a
ream
> is about 1-3/4" = 500 sheets . . .
let's say 10 reams . . . so we're
looking
>> at 10 GB, right (GAWD! . . . I hope I've miscalculated!)
>
>No, for text and line art, just use TIFF Class F Group 4 compression.
>It's lossless, and for typical pages at 300 DPI it's only about 50K.
>Intricate pages somtimes wind up around 100K-120K.
>
>And although not all software can deal with that format, the Group 4
>fax compression is one of the native formats for PDF, so I now supply
>all of my scanned documents as PDF files. For a few examples, see:
> http://www.36bit.org/dec/
>
>Yes, I know that some people hate PDF format, and that you can't read
>them on a Commodore 64 or PDP-11/05. To which I say, too bad. I got
>many more complaints about other formats. Some people even wanted text
>pages in JPEG format, which is just about the worst conceivable format
>for them, since JPEG is a lossy format designed for continuous tone
>images.
>
>I've hacked a version of the imagepdf program from Thomas Metz's PDFLIB
>to directly import TIFF Class F Group 4 files into PDF files without
>decompressing them, so that it's not necessary to buy the $300 Acrobat
>program from Adobe.
>
>Eric