Message-Id: <20020817180930.MOCP11319.imf22bis.bellsouth.net@[209.214.149.159]>
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 14:09:37 -0400

Walt wrote:
   >As I said to another list member off-list, you have to understand
   >that the PDF format was never intended to be convertible to text.
   >It's first and foremost a print file format, so as a result, any
   >and all attempts that have been made to enable accessibility have
   >necessarily been attempts to retro-fit something that was never
   >intended on to a perfectly good system. Converting a PDF file to
   >text is not too far from converting a binary executable back into
   >understandable, human-readable code.  Anybody who can't cope with
   >the PDF format directly still has one option and in many cases,
   >it's probably a better one than a straight conversion of the file
   >into ASCII...print the document, then scan it using one of the best
   >technologies you can afford.  The chances are you'll get a better
   >document than is technically possible to get by means of a simple
   >PDF-to-text conversion. You can't really criticize a horse because
   >it's not a cow. --

Have noted this in the past as well, and that's a good point.  SUre a
lot of work, and at the moment I've an old jp Scanjet III in storage,
with the scsi connector.  ONly machine that I have that has the scsi
connector that could possibly run the ocr software I got at a good
price from another blind guy (not a ham) is a laptop which I need to
baby along and get running again here soon.  Have a little problem
wtih my external doubletalk and its stupid attached serial cable, as
soon as we solve that problem and kill that bear in the woods we might
have some kind of ocr around here <g>.

I inherited this laptop from a fellow about 30 hours before the truck
pulled out to move us south so really didn't get to play wtih it much,
but think it might have a pcmcia slot as well but own no pcmcia
synths.  Oh well.

73 de kb0ruu/5 (who gets tired of going through extra steps sometiems
to do a simple thing like read some darned doccumentation)




Richard Webb

Electric Spider Productions

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

--- Benjamin Franklin November 1755