Re: VMs: New VMS pdf

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ken,

At 17:42 17/06/2004 -0500, Ken Walczak wrote:
> I'm hoping to recompile a pdf of the complete MS if there is interest and 
> it is not breaking any laws.
>
> What I hope to do is create a digital equivalent to the physical
> manuscript.  Here are some of the features I would love to include:
>
> -  The quires can be grouped as they exist, yet I would love the ability 
> for someone to easily rearrange the folios and quires to experiment. -
> Alignment (where possible) of recto and verso sides so a print out would 
> register as in the physical MS.

Going for the full MrSID resolution for this might be a scary download for 
most people: we're getting 60MB TIFFs per page from the decode utility, so 
even my favourite quire 9 (balneo, 5 bifolios, no fold-outs) could easily 
end up being 5 x 4 x 60 = 1200MB.

FWIW, to illustrate the how-to-fold-quire-9 discussion, I was thinking of 
using rather less hi-res images, and placing them 2-up within a PDF, so 
that people could print them out double-sided on A4 sheets (folded down the 
middle):-
        page 1:   | f75r | f84v |
        page 2:   | f75v | f84r |
        page 3:   | f76r | f83v |
        page 4:   | f76v | f83r |
        etc

This would be not quite the level of an unofficial facsimile edition (which 
Yale might get a little iffy about), but something useful as a practical tool.

> -  Recreation of the foldouts which could also be printed or viewed as 
> they exist.

Not so trivial for most of us with low-end A4 colour printers. :-(

> -  Imbedded page data (i.e.., Takahashi transcription, word counts, 
> distribution analysis, etc.).

Probably best in our Wikibook. :-)

> -  Ability for any user to insert notes and comments which can be 
> exchanged between researchers.

Definitely best in our Wikibook. :-)

> -  It may not be the most scientific approach but I do believe with the 
> features on Acrobat 6 and some simple programming, it is possible to do 
> OCR compiling from the pdf.  One possible use of this could be to create a 
> font breakdown (i.e., stroke based or an alternate letter definition) and 
> run an analysis on the text.  If there is any use for this, let me know.

Contrary to what you might think, our transcriptions aren't ~quite~ that 
robust. :-o

> My hope is to create a "physical" reference with as much of the compiled 
> knowledge already in existence.  I have a scaled, printed and bound 
> version of the previous pdf and I believe there is something intangibly 
> advantageous to holding and flipping through a reproduction of the MS 
> which one cannot get from piecemeal analysis of digital images alone.

The CopyFlo used to perform a rough approximation to that feeling for many 
of us here... but it fell so short so often. :-(  If the VMs is at all 
steganographic, the answer is staring us right in the face (but only if 
we're looking at the document, not at its transcription). :-o

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 

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