Screw Drivers and PDF Files

[Randy McLaughlin]

From: "der Mouse" <mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca>
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2005 2:34 PM


> >>> If you don't like PDF's I recommend that you start a monastery to
> >>> copy by hand any documents you want archived.
> >> That's a rather peculiar suggestion.  Now you have me curious - why
> >> would you think that I'd consider hand copying the best of the
> >> available non-PDF alternatives?
> > If you want to share via the internet a document where the value is
> > in the information it contains and no longer have anything but
> > printed sheets you can either retype the documents or scan them.
>
> There is a third alternative, that being to copy the paper documents
> directly onto paper, as a traditional photocopier does, and distribute
> the copies.

How do you share photocopied paper over the internet?

> > Obviously people would normally want to use current technology in
> > this case and scan them.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > Once you have scanned documents the question is how to keep them
> > packaged.
>
> Well, first there's the question of *whether* to keep them packaged,
> but I'll grant you this one.  (There are some uses for scans of
> isolated pages or other small fractions of the whole document, but
> they're limited.)
>
> > Obviously using the only currently recognized format makes sense.
>
> And here we are at the crux of the matter: it appears you inhabit an
> alternative universe in which all the other methods of keeping page
> scans packaged have been forgotten.  (What other methods?  To name just
> three, (1) put the files in the same directory; (2) a zip file; (3) a
> tar file, optionally compressed.)
>
> Thank you.  That cleared up my puzzlement effectively.

There are only a very few methods that are currently accepted as packaged
scanned documents.  Only one method is considered universal, PDF's.

By packing the image files in zip files much of the organization can be
lost, PDF's organize the images and allow for "universal" support.  Once the
PDF package is created there is no question of order, size, viewer
compatibility, text search where applicable, etc.

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Randy
www.s100-manuals.com