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Message no. 1
From: scott@**********.com (Scott Harrison)
Subject: Three new books...
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 20:46:59 +0100
Hi all,

I just noticed there are three new books on DriveThruRPG -- Harlequin
and the two Tir books. However, they are scanned images. I can
understand not having an electronic copy of the book and therefore
needing to have a scanned image. What I would like to know is peoples'
opinions of scanned image books in general, and these specifically. In
other words, I do not want to be the guinea pig with these books. I do
have them in physical form and really do not need them to GM an SR3
campaign.

More PDF books! More PDF books!

Cannon Companion anyone? :-)

--
·𐑕𐑒𐑪𐑑
·𐑣𐑺𐑦𐑕𐑩𐑯 Scott
Harrison PGP Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86
Message no. 2
From: graht1@*****.com (Graht)
Subject: Three new books...
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 13:35:24 -0700
On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 20:46:59 +0100, Scott Harrison <scott@**********.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I just noticed there are three new books on DriveThruRPG -- Harlequin
> and the two Tir books. However, they are scanned images. I can
> understand not having an electronic copy of the book and therefore
> needing to have a scanned image. What I would like to know is peoples'
> opinions of scanned image books in general, and these specifically. In
> other words, I do not want to be the guinea pig with these books. I do
> have them in physical form and really do not need them to GM an SR3
> campaign.

My first experience with purchasing a scanned image book from
DriveThru wasn't very good, but I "complained" and they worked hard to
improve the product, even sending me trial versions for feedback.
After they got it all straightened out I ended up with a pretty good
PDF :)

It isn't perfect. Everything suffers a little from jpg compression
(why they didn't scan the pages at 600 dpi, and then do a batch
conversion to .gif before they PDFed them still boggles my mind), but
its readable, and most importantly for me it's searchable. The
scanned image PDFs are not high enough quality to make printing
worthwhile (unless you don't have any other option). Please note that
they don't guarantee that a scanned image product will be searchable,
so my advice would be to email them and ask them whether a specific
product is searchable *before* you buy it.

Would I buy a scanned image PDF from them again? It depends. If it's
the only way I can get Universal Brotherhood, without a second thought
;) I.e., if it's a must have then yes. But if I already own the
printed version, no. I would only buy a scanned image PDF if it was
something hard to get, and if I *really* wanted it. But not for a
casual purchase.

--
-Graht
Message no. 3
From: adamj@*********.com (Adam Jury)
Subject: Three new books...
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 17:07:04 -0700
On 18-Mar-05, at 1:35 PM, Graht wrote:

> My first experience with purchasing a scanned image book from
> DriveThru wasn't very good, but I "complained" and they worked hard to
> improve the product, even sending me trial versions for feedback.
> After they got it all straightened out I ended up with a pretty good
> PDF :)

One thing to note -- our PDF files are being scanned by InMediaRes
Productions, the same guys that run the BattleCorps site for
BattleTech. From what I've seen of our scans compared to a typical
DTRPG scan, ours are higher quality, but not not perfect.

They are OCRed and have bookmarks, as well.

Cheers,
Adam

--
Adam Jury
http://www.shadowrunrpg.com
Message no. 4
From: paul@*********.demon.co.uk (Paul Squires)
Subject: Three new books...
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 01:34:22 +0000
Adam Jury wrote:
>
> On 18-Mar-05, at 1:35 PM, Graht wrote:
>
>> My first experience with purchasing a scanned image book from
>> DriveThru wasn't very good, but I "complained" and they worked hard to
>> improve the product, even sending me trial versions for feedback.
>> After they got it all straightened out I ended up with a pretty good
>> PDF :)
>
>
> One thing to note -- our PDF files are being scanned by InMediaRes
> Productions, the same guys that run the BattleCorps site for BattleTech.
> From what I've seen of our scans compared to a typical DTRPG scan, ours
> are higher quality, but not not perfect.
>
> They are OCRed and have bookmarks, as well.
>
> Cheers,
> Adam
>
> --
> Adam Jury
> http://www.shadowrunrpg.com
>
>
Since I'm trying desperately hard not to spit out my dummy and throw out
my toys over SR4 (I've had 5 or 6 draft messages that could easily be
surmised with WTF?...) I'll reply to this one instead...

I've had a few of the PDFs so far (guess that serves me right for not
waiting until SR4 and saving my money) and some have been excellent, but
the odd one has had definite visual flaws due to, I'd guess, scanning.
Specifically Matrix (guess I won't need that one once System Error and
SR4 are released) was poor (noticably more than others).

Not that I'm bitter. At all.

:)

--
Paul Squires
paul@*********.demon.co.uk | OpenPGP Key ID: 0x423003E0
Support the campaign against UK ID cards - www.no2id.net
-=-=-
To hell with the Prime Directive; let's kill something!
Message no. 5
From: gurth@******.nl (Gurth)
Subject: Three new books...
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 11:16:00 +0100
According to Graht, on 18-03-2005 21:35 the word on the street was...

> It isn't perfect. Everything suffers a little from jpg compression
> (why they didn't scan the pages at 600 dpi, and then do a batch
> conversion to .gif before they PDFed them still boggles my mind)

PDF normally uses JPEG compression for bitmap images, so using GIF as an
intermediate step wouldn't make much difference (not to mention that PNG
would be better than GIF :)

--
Gurth@******.nl - Stone Age: http://www.xs4all.nl/~gurth/index.html
Kemen (keemde, h gekeemd): het spelen van computerspelletjes
-> Possibly NAGEE Editor & ShadowRN GridSec * Triangle Virtuoso <-
-> The Plastic Warriors Site: http://plastic.dumpshock.com <-

GC3.12: GAT/! d- s:- !a>? C++(---) UL+ P(+) L++ E W--(++) N o? K w(--)
O V? 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
Message no. 6
From: weberm@*******.net (Michael Weber)
Subject: Three new books...
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 08:09:57 -0500
Hmm, I thought DriveThruRPG's books were all going to be OCR.


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Scott Harrison <scott@**********.com>
Reply-To: Shadowrun Discussion <shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com>
Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2005 20:46:59 +0100

>Hi all,
>
> I just noticed there are three new books on DriveThruRPG --> Harlequin
>and the two Tir books. However, they are scanned images. I can>
>understand not having an electronic copy of the book and> therefore
>needing to have a scanned image. What I would like to know is> peoples'
>opinions of scanned image books in general, and these> specifically. In
>other words, I do not want to be the guinea pig with these books.> I do
>have them in physical form and really do not need them to GM an> SR3
>campaign.
>
> More PDF books! More PDF books!
>
> Cannon Companion anyone? :-)
>
>--
>·𐑕𐑒𐑪𐑑
·𐑣𐑺𐑦𐑕𐑩𐑯 Scott
Harrison PGP> Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86
>
>
>
Message no. 7
From: scott@**********.com (Scott Harrison)
Subject: Three new books...
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 18:10:45 +0100
On Mar 19, 2005, at 14:09, Michael Weber wrote:

> Hmm, I thought DriveThruRPG's books were all going to be OCR.
>
I am just going by the more in depth description where it says in the
top part under the file size "Original electronic format" versus
"Scanned image book." I assume the first means no OCR involved, but
taking some electronic format -- Word document, Framemaker file,
whatever, and converting that to PDF. These first types will probably
be a lot better because the images can be the original images and not
ones that are derived from scans. Note there are still problems with
the "Original electronic format" books -- like The Matrix, as, for
example, on page 63 the "Matrix 63" are not in the box on the bottom of
the page, but shifted to be centered along the bottom edge of the box.
Perhaps an original electronic format problem? Can we say update? :-)

--
·𐑕𐑒𐑪𐑑
·𐑣𐑺𐑦𐑕𐑩𐑯 Scott
Harrison PGP Key ID: 0x0f0b5b86
Message no. 8
From: adam@************.com (Adam Jury)
Subject: Three new books...
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 10:39:34 -0700
On 19-Mar-05, at 6:09 AM, Michael Weber wrote:

> Hmm, I thought DriveThruRPG's books were all going to be OCR.

Only three of our books so far -- Tir Tairngire, Tir na nOg, and
Harlequin -- are scanned and OCRed. All the rest are created from the
original layout files, and are thus much smaller, better quality, and
searchable. Also, please note that our scanned books are scanned by
InMediaRes Productions/BattleCorps, not DriveThruRPG -- so any
complaints or praise you may hear about typical DriveThruRPG scanning
quality are *not* relevant to our files.

All our Shadowrun files -- scanned or from original electronic files --
have bookmarks.

We'll have a mini-FAQ about this on ShadowrunRPG.com shortly.

Adam

--
Adam Jury
http://www.shadowrunrpg.com
Message no. 9
From: weberm@*******.net (Michael Weber)
Subject: Three new books...
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 16:36:33 -0500
Ahhh, I thought those three were image only scans, but it's text scannable, I'll be buying
some in the near future. :-)


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Adam Jury <adam@************.com>
Reply-To: Shadowrun Discussion <shadowrn@*****.dumpshock.com>
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 10:39:34 -0700

>
>On 19-Mar-05, at 6:09 AM, Michael Weber wrote:
>
>> Hmm, I thought DriveThruRPG's books were all going to be OCR.
>
>Only three of our books so far -- Tir Tairngire, Tir na nOg, and
>Harlequin -- are scanned and OCRed. All the rest are created from the
>original layout files, and are thus much smaller, better quality, and
>searchable. Also, please note that our scanned books are scanned by
>InMediaRes Productions/BattleCorps, not DriveThruRPG -- so any
>complaints or praise you may hear about typical DriveThruRPG scanning
>quality are *not* relevant to our files.

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