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PDF or ePub for hobby scans

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italwars:
Hello
I m a totally (and uneducated/lazy) newcomer when I have to use IT with our hobby..but recently I began to scan my paper archive (uniform plates, some few Maps, old articlrs ecc) and above all to download OOP, antiquarian books from Gallica, Scribd (somebody suggest me also to try Google) i find Great 1900’ s texts on French Colonial, NWF ecc..the purpose being to use them as sources for wargame projects but also for entertaimment reading. I have a MAC PC and a tablet..which i suppose could Be useful also for painting reference over my table instead of books...untill now i downloaded and saved everything in PDF..but i noticed that also An EPUB option is available...so please which is your experience and what do you suggest me?
Thanks in advance

fred:
I’d go with PDF. Especially if you are including images.

italwars:
thanks Fred for your suggestion
in fact being my sources mainly scans of antiquarian books with images and maps PDF allow me to copy a map and enlarge/modify it...toady i made some first tries with already downloaded materila from my PC to a tablet..as to read something before sleeping..but i noticed that download to the tablet is very slow if not impossible for a pair of heavy books

fred:
As you have found the downside of PDF can be that you end up with a large file size, which can be slow on a tablet.

You may want to scan the words and the maps separately - keeping the maps at a high resolution, so that you can see lots of detail. But for the text either scan at a lower resolution, or use some OCR (optical character recognition) software to convert the scanned image into text, which will be much smaller in file size - although you are likely to loose the formatting and fonts etc of the original.

Daeothar:

--- Quote from: fred on April 08, 2018, 05:28:30 PM ---As you have found the downside of PDF can be that you end up with a large file size, which can be slow on a tablet.

You may want to scan the words and the maps separately - keeping the maps at a high resolution, so that you can see lots of detail. But for the text either scan at a lower resolution, or use some OCR (optical character recognition) software to convert the scanned image into text, which will be much smaller in file size - although you are likely to loose the formatting and fonts etc of the original.

--- End quote ---

This can work, but bear in mind that OCR software is everything but perfect, even the high end products. Which means you get a lot of typo's and misreads, especially if the original font has serifs or is in any other way elaborate. Most OCR software I've seen tends to struggle with the more exotic or old fonts (especially when the ink has bled a bit on/in the paper).

I've found that reading texts like that ranges from mildly annoying to wildly infuriating. Especially since, as fred pointed out already, usually all interpunction and other formatting will be lost. And I'm sure that you're willing to correct and fix everything before reading.

Epub files are vastly superior to PDF's for reading, as they can be searched, bookmarked etc, and the file size is minimal. You can change the font size and type any way you like as well, which greatly enhances readability.

On the downside, it has to be fed either the original digital text files (usually by the publisher) or through the aforementioned OCR software. But when this has already been done, it is highly likely that the text will have been cleaned up and formatted again for it to be readable.

Then there are the PDF's. They will basically provide you with a copy of the original books. These cannot be searched, as the text will be in an image, but bookmarking a page will usually still be possible. When looking at book repositories online, most older books will be in a very low res PDF format. A single page will be in the 20Kb to 100Kb range, which is acceptable even on tablets, but beat in mind that hefty books will still translate to hefty files. If you have a 500 page book, it can still amount to about 50Mb worth of file.

The plus though, is that you'll basically be reading the original book; the original pictures, font, layout etc will all be there.

In the end, there is no best way of reading a book; it's up to personal preference and the capabilities of your devices.

But to avoid irritation, I'd personally suggest not putting the time and effort into OCR-ing entire books... ::)

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