LSD Grapevine #05 - #21 the index

[DH]

As I've had some time this last month, I have created a user friendly index in excel that can be filtered in either the Article, Author, Sub Category, Article No., Issue, Boot Disk (Where you need to boot more than one disk) or even the page number.

Now, I know Stone Oakvalley has these lists here http://www.stone-oakvalley-studios.c.../?page_id=2428. He used his own OCR program called 'PointTracer-OCR v0.1' and cleverly ripped the index from the images/screenshots

Obviously there were a few problems with this method, most zeros '0' were recognised as a capital 'O', which was already noted by Stone Oakvalley (although I must say 'there were far more than even he expected' ), so if you were searching for A1200 or 68020 the search wouldn't find it, which was not good. Taking this into account, I have painstakingly corrected this error (hopefully), also, in order to get everything into sensible columns in excel, I have also had to remove quite a lot of blank spaces, replacing them with a delimiter of my choice, so as not to interfere with the characters in the document.

Of course, I already knew that the articles could be saved out from GV#08 onwards, but didn't realise the index could also be saved out, which would of given me accurate text (when it worked correctly, as some saved indexes were missing pages :s ) So in all honesty, Stone Oakvalley's rips were invaluable

Anyway, I now have a tab for each Issue from GV#05-#21 and finally a full and complete index of all issues in another tab (Shown below), which is fully searchable and filterable.

I have also created a few pdf's of the original index trying to keep to the same look (1 Issue/pdf), but obviously with clearer and editable text (shown below)


image has been scaled down

Now the big questions are, is the excel index something that could be valued, also, is it worth creating these lookalike pdf's?

[lordofchaos]

Very nice indeed, this is one of my favorite disk mags on the Miggy. Look forward to reading these again

[wilshy]

One of the early Grapevines was what got me into the demoscene. Fond memories, even if the later ones weren't very good.

If you can get the music from the disks embedded into the PDFs, I'm sold

I think it's a very worthy project mate. Keep it up!

[DH]

@wilshy

Now there's a thought, although I'm just a tad concerned about the massive increase in file size by adding the mp3's, and before you ask, yes I do have them all + a breakdown of all the songs in the early mixes too

Maybe I'll add the two title images at the beginning and add the radio buttons in them, depending on the file size of course. After all, this was only meant to be for quick access to the indexes and not a fully re-assembled LSD Grapevine diskmag in pdf, but it is a thought though, but not really practical.

EDIT: Just added one of the mp3's to the pdf and the file size jumped from 280kb (approx) to over 5Mb, so by the time I get to either the mixes or the 3x mp3's to add, the size will probablt be around the 15Mb mark, which could be a tad too large.

[DH]

Firstly, sorry for the double post GM's

Right, here we have Grapevine's Index Issue #09 with the original music embedded within the .pdf. Read the note on the first page and you'll be away

http://www.sendspace.com/file/gbvgb5 << It's 6.66Mb Which almost certainly will increase as later issues became larger with additional text and music.

All I need now is some input to as whether it's worth continuing with this project, regarding creating pdf's of the index's

EDIT: OK, I am now in the process of re-formatting all of the articles from GV#09 to implement in the pdf. Although there may be some automation processes that can be used, there is still more that needs doing manually It ain't going to be easy and it WILL take a long time, which will require plenty of coffee, food, crisps, alcohol, patience and an understanding wife

[StoneOakvalley]

Hi DemonHellraiser,

This is nice progress from my auto index attempt :-)

If you can manage to reconstruct the entire Grapevines into PDF with all the articles I wanna inject that text database into my new Search Engine project here: http://www.stone-oakvalley-studios.c.../?page_id=3012

[DH]

Hi StoneOakvalley

If you want I can pm you the excel file and maybe you could bash out something a bit neater

Also regarding the pdf's, I've already started to add each article, however this is going to be a huge task because of the..... Look here, I'm sure you'll understand http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=829997#post829997

[DH]

Right, the PDF creation is now offline, due to lack of interest, however, for your enjoyment I have uploaded the Excel index file to Google Docs, which is now displayed in post #1, thanks to RCK for adding the special bbcode.

So now you can troll through all the articles, find out which disk/s they're on and even the sub category or page number. If you can remember what the article is called, then you should find it as it's all in alphabetical order by the article.