WT Bookshelf CD - I need your help!

by observador 19 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  observador

  hello folks,

  I saw here and downloaded the other day the WT Bookshelf CD (I think it was Englishman who posted it?) but couldn't find the thread.

  It had been a while since I wanted to do something similar with the books in the Portuguese language. Me and a couple of friends are in the process of gatherings the books to do just that. The problem is that we are facing a few technical challenges (OCR, for example) So I just would like to get in touch with whoever made that CD or knows how to do it, to give me some guidelines.

  Typical question: I have Acrobat (maker) and Photoshop 7. Are these the best software to do the job? Is there any other software to do the Optical Caracter Recognition bether than Acrobat itself?

  I believe I have the basic skills to do it, but some guidance would be very helpful and appreciated. Brazil is the second country in the world in number of JWs and we think that looking at the "old truths" will help a lot of people. Also researchers would love it.

  Thanks a lot in advance for your help.

  Observador.
• 

  Faraon

  Sorry, I can't help you there.

  I do share your feelings. Mexico is one of the countries with the largest JW growth. I wish we had the information resources we are having in the net translated into Spanish. Some sites are translating their work to Spanish.

  I think that the largest JW growth here is America is due to the gullibility of the Spanish-Speaking people. Most are Catholics and are not well informed about their beliefs or religion.

  I sometimes distribute anti-JW literature outside of Spanish churches or leave it in their cars. We are a very family-oriented culture. I confront them about shunning when I see them talking to people about shunning their close families. They usually point out the verses about leaving your family for him, or hating their family and loving Jesus. I tell them they have been brainwashed. God's commandment about honoring your parents takes precedence. etc.

  Faraon
• 

  onacruse

  Hi observador! I use Adobe Reader 6.0.1 (they just came out with an upgrade), and it works just fine. All I know about PhotoShop is that guys like seven006 and Valis use it to make fun with perfectly good pictures of people.

  Craig
• 

  Lady Lee

  Photoshop is a fabulous program and will do great on the creating images.

  Acrobat Writer is THE program to use to make pdf files.

  Now you are talking about ocr programs and that is a different thing.

  OCR takes a scanned page and turns it into a document file so that it can be edited. You don't want to do that. The problem with it becoming a text file is that some people will claim that the text has been edited by the maker of the CD. You need a picture of the page so they can see it is an original copy.

  Ideally the pages should be scanned images (pictures) with at least a 200 dpi and 100% size. Send them from the scanner to Photoshop to save as images (tif files would be great because they don't deteriorate when being compressed and saved the way jpg files do but any non-lossy compression would be OK. Try saving it first as a tiff file and then try others from that to see how you can compress it without losing image quality).

  Once the pages are all saved you would need to upload them into a Word doc as image files - one image per page. Create your book as either the entire book or as chapters. Send the file to Acrobat to convert to pdf
• 

  drwtsn32

  Lady Lee:

  But how does one make these files searchable? I am impressed with the PDF files on the Bookshelf CD because they are scanned images of the pages yet they are completely searchable.
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  Lady Lee

  Now that is something I haven't been able to figure out yet. I just learn as I go so if someone wants to offer up that info I'd be thrilled
• 

  Gozz

  Seems some special software is required to make pdf files searchable; you could contact the Adobe people for a version of the program (other than the freely available one); or visit pdfcreation.com
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  Lady Lee

  Well I just discovered something I didn't know. I opened the cookbook pdf file that was made for JWD. And I asked it to search for a word "beef" and dang - it found it. I didn't do anything to the file to make it searchable when I made it. But it was a text file (.doc)

  So I still am not sure how that works for image files put into a book but it seems that is is recognizable
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  onacruse

  The only problem with the 'search' feature of .pdf files is that ocr recognition of the text depends on the quality of the original documents. The 20s Watchtowers (Research Applications Institute, available from freeminds.org) are so degraded that they aren't even searchable. The 30s Watchtowers are better, but even then some of the issues show up as pure goobledeegook. The 40s are pretty good, and the BS CD is great. "Rutherford's Rainbow" is also 99%.

  Craig
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  Lady Lee

  I wonder how much of the problem with the older ones is that they may have used an older version of Acrobat to create them or perhaps the scanning was done with a lower dpi - 72 dpt - perhaps which doesn't do text very well.

  When scanning anything with text on both sides of the page it helps to use a black or dark sheet of paper on the back side (the side not being scanned) to reduce bleedthrough of the text to the opposite side being scanned)