12 Nov
2004
12 Nov
'04
2:20 a.m.
>>>> "Zane" == Zane H Healy
<healyzh(a)aracnet.com> writes:
> At 08:45 PM 11/11/04 -0800, you wrote:
>> I'm aware of someone that is looking to get some of the books
>> they publish into a modern format. Curently the data exists in
>> such formats as IBM Mag Cards and Scenicwriter, as well as other
>> formats. Does anyone know of anyway of converting these two
>> formats into something like RTF?
> If they published the books then probably the easiest way to get
> them into modern formats is to OCR the books. I doubt you're going
> to be able to find anything to read the Scenicwriter and IBM Mag
> cards.
>
> Joe
Zane> Actually the company that apparently made Scenicwriter still
Zane> sells software that can handle the files, but I don't think it
Zane> can convert them. The IBM Mag cards on the other hand...
Zane> The interesting thing is they're looking for people to type the
Zane> books into the computer rather than OCR them. And yes, there
Zane> has already been quite a bit of discussion on if OCRing them
Zane> wouldn't make more sense.
Interesting.
This reminds me very strongly of "Travels in Computerland" by Ben
R. Schneider. He went through this sort of struggle back around 1973,
trying to figure out how to convert several thousand pages of
reference book into a computer database. The eventual solution was to
type it and then scan the typed pages.
Nowadays the answer would be different, but it's curious that it
hasn't changed as much as I would expect.
paul