Byte Magazine

[Hagstrom, Paul]

> On Mar 29, 2019, at 2:01 PM, ben via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> I have been trying to read the Dr Dobbs PDF scans and a few other PDF's. They seem to work only with the NAME BRAND pdf reader. Of course I use the OTHER brand. It would be nice if when scanning a file THEY used a generic output rather than latest bells and whistles.Some PDF's seems
> to raw bit mapped images that take forever to display. If you can't read
> them what is use of archiving them.
> Bitsavers works for everybody but they don't have books in general.
> Ben.

Perhaps an obvious thing to say, but I'm sure others who have encountered this would appreciate your efforts if you were to re-scan these things or convert existing scans from the format you are having difficulty with into a format that is less proprietary.

There are definitely scans out there that would be better if they were made today or even made with more care.  Some things could use re-scanning.

Nevertheless, I appreciate the fairly significant amount of effort that went into scanning things originally, particularly when scanners were worse, computers were slower, and disk space was expensive.  I am not angry at them for not doing a bunch more work than they actually already did.