Logs for ShadowRN and Associated Mailing Lists

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 09 Oct 2006 15:57:41 +0200

Message no. 1 As I've got it in my head to perhaps buy a laptop, I've been looking at
the PDFs at DriveThruRPG and BattleCorps, but that last one leaves me
wondering whether their books are scans or searchable PDFs -- I can't
find it on their site anywhere. It says on the front page that they're
OCRed, but what does this mean for the way they end up looking compared
to the original hardcopy book?

I guess what I'm after is a list of which books are page scans, and an
opinion of the OCR quality of scanned ones that have been OCRed :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
"Executives can use it without reading manuals, which is sort
of our test of ease-of-use." --Steve Jobs
-> Former NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UB+ P(+) L++ E W++(--) N o? K w-- O
M+ PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	scott@**********.com (Scott Harrison)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:10:00 +0200

Message no. 2 ---------------------- multipart/signed attachment

On Oct 9, 2006, at 15:57 , Gurth wrote:

> As I've got it in my head to perhaps buy a laptop, I've been
> looking at the PDFs at DriveThruRPG and BattleCorps, but that last
> one leaves me wondering whether their books are scans or searchable
> PDFs -- I can't find it on their site anywhere. It says on the
> front page that they're OCRed, but what does this mean for the way
> they end up looking compared to the original hardcopy book?
>
> I guess what I'm after is a list of which books are page scans, and
> an opinion of the OCR quality of scanned ones that have been OCRed :)
>

I have purchased the ones from DriveThruRPG. The "modern" books are
all generated from their electronic sources, so are pristine. The
older books are scanned. When you look at the entry for the book the
older scanned books will have in their "File Information" section
"Scanned image book" while the modern ones will have "Original
electronic format" instead. Most of the scanning seems to have been
done pretty well. There are flaws here and there. Send me a private
message to get more information if you want.

--
Â·ð‘•ð‘’ð‘ªð‘‘
Â·ð‘£ð‘ºð‘¦ð‘•ð‘©ð‘¯ Scott
Harrison

---------------------- multipart/signed attachment--

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:19:17 +0200

Message no. 3 According to Scott Harrison, on 9-10-06 16:10 the word on the street was...

> I have purchased the ones from DriveThruRPG. The "modern" books are
> all generated from their electronic sources, so are pristine. The older
> books are scanned. When you look at the entry for the book the older
> scanned books will have in their "File Information" section "Scanned
> image book" while the modern ones will have "Original electronic
format"
> instead.

I'd found that already :) I was more asking about the BattleCorps ones,
as they don't list this information.

> Most of the scanning seems to have been done pretty well.
> There are flaws here and there.

Does this mean that the books that DriveThruRPG says are scans, are
OCRed as well? Or are they a collection of image files in a PDF, like
most of the illegal copies of game books I've seen?

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
"Executives can use it without reading manuals, which is sort
of our test of ease-of-use." --Steve Jobs
-> Former NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UB+ P(+) L++ E W++(--) N o? K w-- O
M+ PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	scott@**********.com (Scott Harrison)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:23:44 +0200

Message no. 4 On Oct 9, 2006, at 16:19 , Gurth wrote:

> According to Scott Harrison, on 9-10-06 16:10 the word on the
> street was...
>
>> I have purchased the ones from DriveThruRPG. The "modern"
>> books are all generated from their electronic sources, so are
>> pristine. The older books are scanned. When you look at the
>> entry for the book the older scanned books will have in their
>> "File Information" section "Scanned image book" while the
modern
>> ones will have "Original electronic format" instead.
>
> I'd found that already :) I was more asking about the BattleCorps
> ones, as they don't list this information.
>

Don't know about BattleCorps.

>> Most of the scanning seems to have been done pretty well. There
>> are flaws here and there.
>
> Does this mean that the books that DriveThruRPG says are scans, are
> OCRed as well? Or are they a collection of image files in a PDF,
> like most of the illegal copies of game books I've seen?

Assuming you still have a Mac it will not be a problem. I assume
they are OCRed because: (1) Spotlight can find words in them, and (2)
you can use the search feature in Preview to find words as well.

--
Â·ð‘•ð‘’ð‘ªð‘‘
Â·ð‘£ð‘ºð‘¦ð‘•ð‘©ð‘¯ Scott
Harrison

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:32:59 +0200

Message no. 5 According to Scott Harrison, on 9-10-06 16:23 the word on the street was...

> Assuming you still have a Mac it will not be a problem.

I can't think of any reason why I _wouldn't_ still have a Mac :)

> I assume
> they are OCRed because: (1) Spotlight can find words in them, and (2)
> you can use the search feature in Preview to find words as well.

Okay, that sounds good -- the web site left me with the impression they
were images, and my main reason for thinking about buying the PDFs is so
I can Spotlight-search them during game sessions if I do buy a laptop.

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
"Executives can use it without reading manuals, which is sort
of our test of ease-of-use." --Steve Jobs
-> Former NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UB+ P(+) L++ E W++(--) N o? K w-- O
M+ PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	derek@***************.com (Derek Hyde)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 09 Oct 2006 09:33:06 -0500

Message no. 6 > Don't know about BattleCorps.
>
It was my understanding that the scan/ocr/oef comes directly from fanpro, so
if the PDF comes from a legit source, it should be the same pdf no matter
which source you get it from other than the fact that drivethru watermarks
every page (or at least used to) whereas battlecorps doesn't.

> Assuming you still have a Mac it will not be a problem. I assume
> they are OCRed because: (1) Spotlight can find words in them, and (2)
> you can use the search feature in Preview to find words as well.
>
This isn't the case on all of them, because I've got many purchased ones and
spotlight won't even look at them, but that may be a setting I've not
changed. Regardless, Acrobat 7 won't search a few of them, don't know about
preview, haven't tried it.

> --
>
Â·ð‘•ð‘’ð‘ªð‘‘
Â·ð‘£ð‘ºð‘¦ð‘•ð‘©ð‘¯
Scott Harrison
>
>
>
>
>

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:40:07 +0200

Message no. 7 According to Derek Hyde, on 9-10-06 16:33 the word on the street was...

> It was my understanding that the scan/ocr/oef comes directly from fanpro, so
> if the PDF comes from a legit source, it should be the same pdf no matter
> which source you get it from other than the fact that drivethru watermarks
> every page (or at least used to) whereas battlecorps doesn't.

FYI, DriveThru indicates whether they watermark the PDF :)

> This isn't the case on all of them, because I've got many purchased ones and
> spotlight won't even look at them, but that may be a setting I've not
> changed. Regardless, Acrobat 7 won't search a few of them, don't know about
> preview, haven't tried it.

The easy way to check is to click on the text selection tool (in Acrobat
or Preview) and try to select text. If it doesn't work, it's an image :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
"Executives can use it without reading manuals, which is sort
of our test of ease-of-use." --Steve Jobs
-> Former NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UB+ P(+) L++ E W++(--) N o? K w-- O
M+ PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	scott@**********.com (Scott Harrison)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:42:03 +0200

Message no. 8 On Oct 9, 2006, at 16:33 , Derek Hyde wrote:

>> Don't know about BattleCorps.
>>
> It was my understanding that the scan/ocr/oef comes directly from
> fanpro, so
> if the PDF comes from a legit source, it should be the same pdf no
> matter
> which source you get it from other than the fact that drivethru
> watermarks
> every page (or at least used to) whereas battlecorps doesn't.
>

Yes, DriveThruRPG does watermark.

>> Assuming you still have a Mac it will not be a problem. I assume
>> they are OCRed because: (1) Spotlight can find words in them, and (2)
>> you can use the search feature in Preview to find words as well.
>>
> This isn't the case on all of them, because I've got many purchased
> ones and
> spotlight won't even look at them, but that may be a setting I've not
> changed. Regardless, Acrobat 7 won't search a few of them, don't
> know about
> preview, haven't tried it.
>

I am not sure why Spotlight is not indexing them for you. I have
bought them all. I use a laptop for gaming (SRDiceRoller, PDF books,
& RTF character sheets (for now)). I can use Spotlight for (dunk --
gets me the modern ones and the classic will, tir -- both Tir scans
come in, slog -- gets me modern Shadows of Asia as well as the NAGRL,
etc.) I find that it does find everything that I expect.

Note that there are still books from the SR3 timeframe that are not
available in PDF form and the lack of these are cramping my GMing
style. Please let's get the entire collection available in PDF
form. :-)

--
Â·ð‘•ð‘’ð‘ªð‘‘
Â·ð‘£ð‘ºð‘¦ð‘•ð‘©ð‘¯ Scott
Harrison

From:	weberm@*******.net (Michael Weber)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 9 Oct 2006 10:48:45 -0400

Message no. 9 Gurth <gurth@******.nl> wrote:

>Does this mean that the books that DriveThruRPG says are scans, are
>OCRed as well? Or are they a collection of image files in a PDF, like
>most of the illegal copies of game books I've seen?

The DriveThru ones, IIRC, are OCR scans.

From:	scott@**********.com (Scott Harrison)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:49:54 +0200

Message no. 10 Hi,

I just did a search for "blood" and it even brought up the Aztlan
color plate pages that have the word "blood" on them. :-)

--
Â·ð‘•ð‘’ð‘ªð‘‘
Â·ð‘£ð‘ºð‘¦ð‘•ð‘©ð‘¯ Scott
Harrison

From:	graht1@*****.com (Graht)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 9 Oct 2006 08:50:10 -0600

Message no. 11 Just a quick fwiw.

I've had horrible experience purchasing scanned PDFs from DriveThru.
However, the purchases that were from the original electronic format
have been very good.

--
-Graht

From:	pasquires@*****.com (Paul Squires)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:10:07 +0100

Message no. 12 On 10/9/06, Graht <graht1@*****.com> wrote:
> Just a quick fwiw.
>
> I've had horrible experience purchasing scanned PDFs from DriveThru.
> However, the purchases that were from the original electronic format
> have been very good.
>

I bought a load of PDFs from both BattleCorps and DriveThru. I started
buying from DriveThru, but swtiched to BattleCorps as I got slightly
better service from them.

New books, I thought. are created directly from the files that go to
the printers and not scanned from paper. The older ones are scanned
and are therefore huge (nearly 30MB compared to the others at 5-8),
but are OCR'd to allow searching.

I might be wrong though!

Now all I need to do is work out how to get new copies of all the ones
I lost in a recent laptop disk wipe. :)

--
Paul Squires
pasquires@*****.com | OpenPGP Key ID: 0x423003E0
http://pasquires.net

From:	gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 09 Oct 2006 17:19:22 +0200

Message no. 13 According to Paul Squires, on 9-10-06 17:10 the word on the street was...

> I bought a load of PDFs from both BattleCorps and DriveThru. I started
> buying from DriveThru, but swtiched to BattleCorps as I got slightly
> better service from them.

That is also good to know.

> Now all I need to do is work out how to get new copies of all the ones
> I lost in a recent laptop disk wipe. :)

That is why I recently bought myself a 300 GB FireWire drive ;)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
"Executives can use it without reading manuals, which is sort
of our test of ease-of-use." --Steve Jobs
-> Former NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UB+ P(+) L++ E W++(--) N o? K w-- O
M+ PS+ PE@ Y PGP- t- 5++ X(+) R+++$ tv+(++) b++@ DI- D G+ e h! !r y?
Incubated into the First Church of the Sqooshy Ball, 21-05-1998

From:	adam@************.com (Adam Jury)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:34:01 -0600

Message no. 14 On 9-Oct-06, at 8:50 AM, Graht wrote:

> Just a quick fwiw.
>
> I've had horrible experience purchasing scanned PDFs from DriveThru.
> However, the purchases that were from the original electronic format
> have been very good.

FanPro titles at DriveThru are scanned by a third party -- they're
generally higher quality than a lot of the early books that DriveThru
scanned themselves scanned for other publishers.

The FanPro titles are scanned, OCRed, and bookmarked.

cheers,
Adam
--
Adam Jury :: adam@************.com
Shadowrun Information, News & Previews: www.shadowrunrpg.com
FanPro Information & News: www.fanprogames.com

From:	graht1@*****.com (Graht)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 9 Oct 2006 13:27:06 -0600

Message no. 15 On 10/9/06, Adam Jury <adam@************.com> wrote:
>
> On 9-Oct-06, at 8:50 AM, Graht wrote:
>
> > Just a quick fwiw.
> >
> > I've had horrible experience purchasing scanned PDFs from DriveThru.
> > However, the purchases that were from the original electronic format
> > have been very good.
>
> FanPro titles at DriveThru are scanned by a third party -- they're
> generally higher quality than a lot of the early books that DriveThru
> scanned themselves scanned for other publishers.
>
> The FanPro titles are scanned, OCRed, and bookmarked.

I'm glad to hear that they are treating the FanPro titles well :)

--
-Graht

From:	n.kobschaetzki@**********.com (Niels Kobschaetzki)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 9 Oct 2006 21:51:20 +0200

Message no. 16 On Oct 9, 2006, at 5:10 PM, Paul Squires wrote:

> On 10/9/06, Graht <graht1@*****.com> wrote:

<snip>

> Now all I need to do is work out how to get new copies of all the ones
> I lost in a recent laptop disk wipe. :)

With Battlecorps it should work that you log into your account. I've
got 7 downloads for each book I bought through them

Niels

--
Jack Sparrow: A wedding? I love weddings. Drinks all around.
-- Pirates of the Carribean: The Secret of the Black Pearl

From:	pasquires@*****.com (Paul Squires)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 9 Oct 2006 21:18:25 +0100

Message no. 17 On 10/9/06, Niels Kobschaetzki <n.kobschaetzki@**********.com> wrote:
> > Now all I need to do is work out how to get new copies of all the ones
> > I lost in a recent laptop disk wipe. :)
>
> With Battlecorps it should work that you log into your account. I've
> got 7 downloads for each book I bought through them
>

That's what I thought too, but the download links are only valid for
one week (IIRC) after the purchase, which doesn't do me much good!

--
Paul Squires
pasquires@*****.com | OpenPGP Key ID: 0x423003E0
http://pasquires.net

From:	adam@************.com (Adam Jury)
Subject:	SR PDFs
Date:	Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:26:17 -0600

Message no. 18 On 9-Oct-06, at 2:18 PM, Paul Squires wrote:

>> With Battlecorps it should work that you log into your account. I've
>> got 7 downloads for each book I bought through them
>>
>
> That's what I thought too, but the download links are only valid for
> one week (IIRC) after the purchase, which doesn't do me much good!

Send them an email -- contact@***********.com -- they'll almost
certainly re-enable them for you.

cheers,
Adam
--
Adam Jury :: adam@************.com
Shadowrun Information, News & Previews: www.shadowrunrpg.com
FanPro Information & News: www.fanprogames.com

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