Manual downloads - please don't use PDF!

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by gizmomelb

PDF is a proprietry format and can change at any time, which means that someone will then need to reverse engineer the new format and code a new (Amiga) viewer.

Also from what I've read (I've never used the program btw) APDF is a little bit flaky and there are incompatibilities with Windows and Mac PDF viewers. You also need a fairly beefy Amiga to run APDF.

Yeh APDF is only usable on 060 and PPC machines in all seriousness. There is an alternative, though, that isn't so resource hungry. A guy called Whoosh777 has remarkably ported Ghostscript 8.50 on his A1200/030:

http://www.whoosh777.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ (Support website)

http://www.aminet.net/package.php?pa...onv/GS8gui.lha (3rd party GUI)

It works on classic Amigas, WinUAE, AROS, MorphOS and OS4. He's also made several Amiga-specific enhancements (e.g. optimised viewers for AGA and gfx cards; PDF/PS to JPG conversion, PDF to PS/ASCII conversion, TurboPrint support). The best part about it is that it's quite stable and gets updated quite often.......a bit uncommon these days with serious Ami freeware.

Anyway, this is mostly just to let people know that there is a better PDF viewer on Amiga than the quite old and outdated APDF.

The Comic Book Reader 'format' is an open format which basically is a set of sequentially numbered images (PNG, GIF or JPG) which are in either a flat folder or a .zip, .rar, .tar or .ace compressed file.

The benefit of this is that virtually every computer system can display GIF, JPEG or PNG images and there is a PKZIP archiver for almost every system too.

The Comic Book Reader is a standard graphics viewer, but what it tries to do it automatically 'move' around the image you're viewing from left to right, top to bottom. It moves each time when you press the spacebar or mouse button.

True, a CBR viewer would have to be written for the Amiga, but there are a number of open source CBR viewers, not to mention that there are already lots of JPG & GIF viewers for the Amiga, as well as PKZIP support. There is the possibility of a CBR viewer for the Amiga even supporting down to a basic A500 with Kickstart 1.2/1.3 - so then EVERY Amiga owner can download and read the manuals.

Sounds like quite a good idea for low-end Amiga users, but it will be quite challengiing to find someone to port one of the CBR viewers and optimise the code. Also, I think most newbies to computers (and perhaps emulation) are quite lazy nowadays. They want to be able to d/l and view a document automatically without having to do anything with the file. They know that this will happen with PDF docs, but have little idea that they can do this with other doc readers (by making associations or otherwise). It's similar to the mentality that some newbies had when Win95 was released.......that only PCs could be used to get on the internet. Confusion among users certainly played a part in deciding against use of the djvu format for HOL, despite it being much less bloated than PDF and reasonable quality.

[logix]

Hi all.

I'm not a big fan of PDF, either.
But come on People, it's THE Standard for Years now.

I have scanned lots of Manuals for the last 2 Years and saved them as PDF. But i also kept the all the single files, so i can 're-complie' them easliy. (wich I won't do)

Recently I've uploaded lots of these Manuals for HOL. All in PDF.
I also tested the CBR format. My conclusion is, that the viewing is'nt any faster as with the PDF-Reader. On the contrary. It was painfully slow, with several CBR-Readers!
Since I save all the Black&White and Greyscaled Pages as 8Bit-PNG's, insead of Big JPG's, the 'viewing-speed' is really good with the Acrobat-Reader.

I think each Method has it's Pros and Cons.
But what really Matters is, to get those Manuals in HOL, no Matter in what format.

I talked to Cody a few days ago, and he thinks too, that PDF is the Standard.
Besides, I won't 'recompile' all my scanned Manuals.

[Marcuz]

Originally Posted by logix

My conclusion is, that the viewing is'nt any faster as with the PDF-Reader. On the contrary. It was painfully slow, with several CBR-Readers!

I talked to Cody a few days ago, and he thinks too, that PDF is the Standard.
Besides, I won't 'recompile' all my scanned Manuals.

hi, good to see you around;

1) while i think your speed test is ok and meant well, consider these things: cbr and cbz rely on two different compression formats, rar and zip, and the rar should be considerably slower (empyrical results on my computer at least) while giving a better compression rate;
i'm not sure on how PDFs with only images in are managed by the reader, if one by one are opened etc; but cbr/cbz readers do kind of this: check the integrity of the archive, checking for eventually missing files, display an eventual text .txt in the archive as info if any; load a number of pages ahead for display. in case of long archives, like more than 60, 100 pages, the jumping to a certain page takes a couple of seconds.
having download a 25Mb of Ikea PDF catalogue, 187 pages, little images with selectable text also, i would tell that the results are comparable in term of speed of a 160Mb, 80 full colour A3 pages cbr, with quality of image in complete favour of the latter.
the speed of scroll from one page to the next is in favour of pdf in this case but the jump from one to the next is equal, while with a image only PDF, same quality CBR wins hands down.
also the display is better configured and customizable in cbr/cbz, with a nice full screen and selectable floating manifier, but that it's more a matter of taste.

2) Cody has not yet expressed himself, i would like to listen him, even if i bet he would go for PDF

3) recompiling: hey that's ok, noone forces nobody doing anything!

[gizmomelb]

ok, seems some people might still be missing the idea - FORGET all mention of the CBR standard or format, or that I mentioned it ok?

Instead I should have phrased it like this:

if possible - could we please have the manuals archived in the ZIP format? That way people using the CBR Reader can view them directly (as can people using ACDsee and other image viewers) without having to un-archive them. ZIP is still compatible with the Amiga and if we're lucky someone will port the CDisplay program to the Amiga as well - which would seem to have less overhead than the buggy and resource hungry Amiga APDF viewer.

The advantage of ZIP archived (GIF/JPG/PNG) image files is that they can always be converted to PDF on the fly by the server, should the host decide to offer that service - also they can be watermarked (again, should the host decide to do it). ZIP archived files can also have images easily REPLACED or ADDED to - if better source material, higher DPI images or alternate images are found (not to mention .TXT files with background information about the product etc. can be included and automatically displayed by the viewer).

If you've already uploaded docs in PDF then there is no hassle for you to recompile and upload in another format, unless you want to.

[Marcuz]

Originally Posted by gizmomelb

ok, seems some people might still be missing the idea - FORGET all mention of the CBR standard or format, or that I mentioned it ok?

sorry i was carried on the stuff

[Photon]

Pdf is good, because the stuff you scan can be made immediately available on the internet.That is, you can click on the PDF in the browser and start reading and when you're done you can click back, choose another issue or mag, and read that instead.

So, you don't have to download the zip/cbr file and open it, double-click a jpg (if zipped), zoom in, scroll, and so on (if your viewer allows it).

If preservation is you goal, then PDF or zipped JPGs are the only choices. There are enough PDFs to be sure there will be software that can read this stuff 15 years from now.

[Dan]

I dont like PDF too

That is, you can click on the PDF in the browser and start reading and when you're done you can click back, choose another issue or mag, and read that instead.

Then i would use Plain HTML for docs - as it doesnt need any plugins (except for png images).

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by gizmomelb

You can't easily extract images from a PDF, nor can you replace a low quality (or missing page) back into a PDF unless you have the original files.

for example: the Australian Commodore and Amiga Review magazine scans on http://www.deadwoodinc.net/amigan/acar/ - the ones in purple with the missing pages. Say someone scans in the missing pages, they cannot easily insert the new scans into the original document so there is a 100% complete scan of the magazine.

Of course, I made the PDFs in question free of any kind of Digital Restrictions Management crap. So, it's pretty trivial to insert pages with Acrobat 5.0, I suppose could also be done with a more recent version. If you have any scans of such pages you could just email them to me and I can insert the pages for you, I'd be happy to do this.

BTW the scans have moved to http://www.racevb6.com/acar/

[asymetrix]

For now, I think PDF is the correct Original Display format. Aslong as the scan quality is 300 dpi.
Most PDF editors can easily insert pages.

In the future, someone will OCR the PDFs into an editable document format with full layout, to allow searchable, indexable content.

Right now HTML / Open Office ODF text format would be the format of choice.

I hope HOL increase the requirement quality of scans to min 200 dpi.