machfront
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
"Let's go dark!"
Posts: 2,147
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Post by machfront on Sept 8, 2009 6:05:31 GMT -5
So, after long being frustrated with nothing forthcoming in the pdf area (which should have been done years ago), I decided to see what I could do myself. Fail. So I plop one of my cheaply printed 1991 copies of 5th ed. onto muh scanner. Scan. Then it self-loads AbbySprint Reader and then proceeds to tell me that a part it needs no longer exists. It references OpenOffice 2.4. Well, gee, that makes sense, because I don't have that........nope....I have OpenOffice 3.1! Argh! 'K. So, then I check to see if AbbySprint needs to be updated. Nope. So, I load it up from scratch. Scan, then OCR. Loads up beautifully. I used the page on SRs as a test. First, it loads the page title "1.8 Saving Rolls" as an image. I change that to text and it comes out something like: "1.rss Save ^%@ ss *3" or similar. Hoorah. So, unable to edit it right there (which...why the heck not? I even have the proper font and everything..), I change it back to image. Still, it looks ok and all the text is right. Save time. Another great experience. Save. Hm. As text or "send to Adobe Acrobat". Right. People still use Acrobat? Sorry. Since I only view pdfs, I have no need for something as huge, insecure and ssllooww as Acrobat Reader, so I use Foxit for pdfs. Oh, well. Save as text. Wee! 'K. Rich text, huh? I load up what this things has saved in both AbiWord and OpenOffice and this one page has now been turned into two. My cup runeth over. Alright. Save as pdf. Fail. It saves the scanned image only turned into a pdf. What good is the d**n OCR program, then? I could have done that myself. Look. Turn it into an OCR doc, and then save that very same file as...whatever...then I'll save it as a pdf. I'm not asking for a miracle, here. In fact, shouldn't when it saves as a pdf, save as the new, OCR'ed pdf?!? Isn't that the whole F***in' point?!?!? AARGGHH!!! I've no idea if "sending to Adobe Acrobat" performs some magical function where it actually does what..ya know...programs like this are supposed to do in the first place. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe that scanning and OCRing a scan and then turning that same file into a pdf, or something that can be turned into a pdf isn't the point. Maybe...maybe the point is to lauch dud nuclear warheads at Howie Mandell's house or something and this is just a strange, roundabout way to do it. I coulda sworn that the purpose was to make a scanned image into a doc (that one can edit, if one wishes) that can be turned into a pdf file. Maybe asking for what the whole purpose was is nuts. Now, see...if the rtf file had been formatted similarly...or...ya know...at least on one page instead of two full pages, I could have seen how one may work with that. That would have been a starting point. As it is now, I'm darn sure not gonna scan almost a hundred pages, OCR them and save them as an rtf that ends up being two hundred pages. How in the **** would I deal with that (without taking hostages)?!?!? This. This is what I get for trying things.
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machfront
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
"Let's go dark!"
Posts: 2,147
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Post by machfront on Sept 8, 2009 6:14:45 GMT -5
*sigh* I made a huge step just now. I remembered that when it OCRed, it didn't recognize the lines both above and below the title text. I added them as images. Unfortunately, that somehow threw it off. Now, I deleted those lines from the rtf file and now it's formatted as one page. Exported as pdf from OpenOffice and viola. Now. How in the world could I keep those borders and still keep it formatted the same. I really hate to have to change things like that. For one, I want it to be exactly the same. Two, it makes me worry about other future formatting problems. What about tables like the weapon lists and spells and stuff like that. If those border lines are going to have to be left out...what else could go wrong that will really throw a monkey in the wrench? One thing is for certain... If I do this, everything that can go wrong, will.
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machfront
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
"Let's go dark!"
Posts: 2,147
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Post by machfront on Sept 8, 2009 6:21:54 GMT -5
And another thing. (sorry, I know...I'm jus' b****ing and b****ing)
This was only an off-shoot of something I wanted to do for myself, which was simply to transcribe the 5th ed. as text and format it myself with bigger font suitable as booklet size. Then I was distracted by the OCR thing. So all this anger and frustration stems from something I wasn't going to really attempt in the first place. What's more, I'm doing what others should have done. Others that should be paid for their knowledge, time and effort. All I'm getting right now is....well...angry. I don't have the patience (or expertise) to do this. I'll have to ride out the anger headache I've given myself, stop frothing and wanting to hit things and move on.......
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Post by ragnorakk on Sept 8, 2009 8:22:43 GMT -5
You're a trooper - hold the line! I've never tried OCR stuff, and I am afeared of it. I'd probably just hand-type the stuff I wanted and try it that way... primitive, yes. ugh.
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Hogscape
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
It's not the years, it's the mileage.
Posts: 2,126
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Post by Hogscape on Sept 8, 2009 9:20:35 GMT -5
I exalt thy efforts oh Mighty Mach of Front.
I suspect that what you need to do is slice off the spine, feed the pages into a duplex OCR scanner and voila! There you have it.
My company bought a new duplexing OCR scanner last year. $18,000.00.
Groovy.
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Post by ProfGremlin on Sept 8, 2009 9:32:13 GMT -5
My company bought a new duplexing OCR scanner last year. ::swoon:: As the office admin I'd dearly love to get my hands on something akin to that... Hey! There's an idea, Machfront, mail the pages to Hogscape so he can scan them for you
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Post by jongjungbu on Sept 8, 2009 9:33:40 GMT -5
I found OCR not to be that great, unless you are in the case as HS mentions and have $18k to spend on an OCR scanner. Otherwise, you're going back and proofing every page and fixing all the erroneous reads. So good luck to you, sounds like you know more about what you're doing than me anyway. I do wish they'd release a 5th edition PDF onto DriveThruRPG.com. They have 7.5 available completely as a watermarked PDF, but no 5.x edition.
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Hogscape
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
It's not the years, it's the mileage.
Posts: 2,126
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Post by Hogscape on Sept 8, 2009 9:38:42 GMT -5
I doubt the wonderful 5e exists as an electronic document (1979 folks) whereas 7e certainly would.
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machfront
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
"Let's go dark!"
Posts: 2,147
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Post by machfront on Sept 8, 2009 9:42:04 GMT -5
Yeah, I need to cut it up, but I wanted to see if I could do it and what needed to be done before I committed to that. Man, I hate to destroy a book. Especially a copy of T&T 5th ed., even if this is the one I own that some pages have already started to fall out of.
I just spent the last three hours trying to find out what font is used in the text of 5th ed. No luck.
Went through every font I own.
Answered a series of questions at Identifont.
Loaded up the most pertinent letters at the Adobe site and went through every...single...font...there... No joy. It's a sans font, but the lower-case "t" is very distinct, as is lower-case "e". The lower-case "x" has a one thin stroke and the other is the standard thickness of the rest of the letters. While some of the letters have a bit of ...err...flair... most are quite plain, like in Futura and similar fonts. I would fine the right "e" but everything else would be wrong. The "e" is pretty oval and the closed section is small, being in the uppermost part instead of halfway. The topmost part of the "e" is thinner than the rest. Many fonts have the plain, no-frills lower-case "l" and the "i" with the high dot, as high as the lower case "l". Some fonts would be close, but have a number of other things that would throw it off, like a "g" looking like it looks right here instead of the curly-twirly type that it actually is in the rulebook.
Why am I doing this?
The other big problem is, in my test, the art was really...rough. Not pixilated. It just looked bad. Like someone half-asleep traced Liz's art with a blunt crayon or something. I've no idea if it's my scanner, if I need to scan at a higher dpi...or...what. The header text being read as a pic causes the same problem. I can go in a tell it to recognize that as text, though. Even if it messes it up, I can go in and put the correct text in the Algerian font (what size though? ...ugh).
Well. At least I'm 95% certain that the text font size is 10 point. That's something. Or maybe 11. *sigh* -lol-
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machfront
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
"Let's go dark!"
Posts: 2,147
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Post by machfront on Sept 8, 2009 9:46:55 GMT -5
I do wish they'd release a 5th edition PDF onto DriveThruRPG.com. They have 7.5 available completely as a watermarked PDF, but no 5.x edition. So do I. I think it's long, long overdue. But see, if this is doable, and can be done even remotely by a dummy like me, then I can have a sorta...rough draft of the pdf. Write a letter to Rick Loomis of Flying Buffalo with the pdf in an attachment and show him. Then, depending on the quality and so on of the pdf, he could use that as an inspiration, starting point, or itself to load up to RPGNow and/or Lulu. MMmmmmm. Hardback Fifth Edition that would be forever more. How wonderful it would be.
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Hogscape
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
It's not the years, it's the mileage.
Posts: 2,126
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Post by Hogscape on Sept 8, 2009 9:47:44 GMT -5
Pretty sure it's an 11-point font and one that does not exist in electronic form. I'm glad I read this post though Mach, I was about to ask if anyone knew the font name... D'oh!
Hey, do you have the version of Algerian that looks exactly like the T&T title font or the one that looks 'a bit like it'? ;D
I have the one that doesn't look like it at all...
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Post by jongjungbu on Sept 8, 2009 9:49:38 GMT -5
Yeah see the best I could do is have adobe recognize the text as text and then go back and fix hundreds of pages and it still wouldn't look right. So really the best I can or have tried is scanning the book.
So, I ended up buying the Corgi version of 5th edition because it was so easy to flip through, since I didn't have the benefit of computerized search of a PDF. And now it's a very worn copy, but it works. I've been thinking about ordering a hopefully fresher copy of 5.5 (rulebook only) from FBI direct, but its not gonna be pocketsize like the Corgi though.
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machfront
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
"Let's go dark!"
Posts: 2,147
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Post by machfront on Sept 8, 2009 10:02:20 GMT -5
Pretty sure it's an 11-point font and one that does not exist in electronic form. That's highly likely. Pity. I'd like to make it exactly the same (though I've still no idea how in the heck to include the dividing lines on the headers...). The font has been exactly the same in all printings (well, all that I own at least. I'm missing I think the 3rd printing.). I wonder if Rick knows or if he could ask his printer? Or if he would even do such a thing?... Hey, do you have the version of Algerian that looks exactly like the T&T title font or the one that looks 'a bit like it'? ;D I have the one that doesn't look like it at all... Oh, no. I've never done a direct, closely examined comparison before. I eyeballed it and it looked good. Guess I should scrutinize it. I don't even know from where I grabbed it.
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machfront
11th level Troll
Stalwart of the Trollbridge
"Let's go dark!"
Posts: 2,147
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Post by machfront on Sept 8, 2009 10:06:17 GMT -5
Yeah see the best I could do is have adobe recognize the text as text and then go back and fix hundreds of pages and it still wouldn't look right. So really the best I can or have tried is scanning the book. So, I ended up buying the Corgi version of 5th edition because it was so easy to flip through, since I didn't have the benefit of computerized search of a PDF. And now it's a very worn copy, but it works. I've been thinking about ordering a hopefully fresher copy of 5.5 (rulebook only) from FBI direct, but its not gonna be pocketsize like the Corgi though. So you tried with Adobe and the formatting was all off? Oh, I love the Corgi book. That one would probably be easier to deal with OCR-wise. At least there I know and have the text font. If you want a nice copy of 5th ed., there's a perfect-lookin' condition 7th printing for sale right now on eBay. The 7th print is by far the toughest in terms of paper and cover strength. I highly recommend it. Having said that, older perfect-bound books are notorious for having some cheap glue and they all fall to pieces eventually, so it pays to have a copy that's as new as new can be (in this case a copy of 5.5).
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Post by ProfGremlin on Sept 8, 2009 10:36:34 GMT -5
Oh, that one's easy to answer - It's a mild expression of obsession/compulsion. Don't worry, I think most hobbyists experiance this in relation to their hobby in some manner. The other big problem is, in my test, the art was really...rough. Hmm... I wonder if there's an option in your scanner software to scan as text, scan as text with picture and scan as photo? I'm not sure where or how to modify those settings but I know on the scanner here that text will come out fine on the text setting but images come out nasty. Everything shows up fine on the text with picture setting and then the photo setting looks great.
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