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PDF files ex Gallica

From: Norman Wolcott <nwolcott~at~kreative.net>
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 1998 13:21:35 -0500
To: "JV_forum" <jvf~at~math.technion.ac.il>

        En tout cas, (to show off my french), the boiler-plate on the front page
of the gallica site makes it very clear that user tampering (or using?)
this
information which is there only for "look" don't "touch", will, as said
formerly on french banknotes, be punished
           "avec travaux forcés a la perpeptuité".
        Be that as it may, encouraged by M. Butcher's interest I revisited the
site and went to the "Page premier" of "Les Anglais au Pole Nord". There,
after a while, and the screen blinking at me at 20 hz, a picture of the
cover of the book came out. Then pushing one of the buttons, I got a
message that said I could download pages of the text in either PDF or TIFF4
format. Since TIFF4 is much more amenable to manipulation in graphics
editors than PDF, I opted for that mode. I wa asked how many pages I
wanted, and when I said 20, the site generated a ftp file which contained
687000 "octets" (which I believe is inter-speak for bytes) which I then
proceeded to download. After downloading the file I examined it with
PaintShopPro 4.0 which reported an error in Huffman code and would not open
the page. So I could not find out the resoloution that way. I then imported
the file into Paperport which had no problem with it and reported 20 pages.
I was able to open a sample page, crop it to size, straighten it, and
re-save it. The annotation reported pixel density of 300 dpi. When printed
the page was about 10 x 14 cm. The text was certainly legible and improved
over the screen view in the browser. Whether good enough for OCR we will
have to see. I have included a 34 K TIFF file of a sample page.
        TIFF files. TIFF4 is a variety of TIFF file used for multi-page black and
white documents, used for example in fax files. While fax is limited to 200
dpi, the TIFF4 format can specify any density. Graphics programs are
usually able to open TIFF4 files, although some not TIFF4 aware will only
show the first page. I can also send the file in uncompressed tiff or GIF
if there is a desire.
        All of this seems a little overkill if all that is wanted is a textual
rendition of the original text which is in the public domain, and available
in Livre du Poche. However even these paperback editions are now $15 or $20
when available. This is what John Walker did in "Earth to the Moon" and "80
Days". Of course if an original text is not available, then the PDF files
would be worth a try. More interesting is the depiction of the art work on
thie "vingt-quatriemme" (is that 28 or 84th edition?) edition and the
listing of Verne's works available and the prices therefore.
Norman M. Wolcott: nwolcott~at~kreative.net;
nwolcott~at~capaccess.org;nwolcott~at~post.harvard.edu
(2 meg max)Mailboxes are browsed in that order.

----------
> From: BUTCHER, Charles William <wbutcher~at~eng.ied.edu.hk>
> To: 'Jules Verne Forum' <jvf~at~math.technion.ac.il>
> Subject: .pdf files on French National Library Gallica site
> Date: Monday, March 02, 1998 5:10 AM
>
> Dear All,
>
> The Gallica site of the French National Library is amazing.
> (When will other nations catch up?) It has thousands of books, which can
> be downloaded in a few seconds. However, some of the Verne volumes (at
> http://gallica.bnf.fr/scripts/recherche.exe?Ori=Lst_Aut&Auteur=Verne,,Ju
> les&A=1&F_imp=o&F_per=o&F_txt=o) are in .pdf (ie Acrobat 3.0) format.
>
> They sometimes download, sometimes not (it IS experimental).
> Would anyone be able to use recent OCR software to convert these image
> files to text? The original is not very good, so the result would only
> be 95% perfect, but it would be very useful even to have imperfect
> texts ...
>
> Bill

Norman M. Wolcott: nwolcott~at~kreative.net;
nwolcott~at~capaccess.org;nwolcott~at~post.harvard.edu
(2 meg max)Mailboxes are browsed in that order.

• application/octet-stream attachment: page3.tif (Paint Shop Pro Image)

Received on Thu 05 Mar 1998 - 21:19:14 IST

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