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[for the graphics wizards] Cleaning up original Burton "Kama Sutra" page scans -- need advice/help
by Jon Noring 26 May '05

26 May '05

[There are no doubt a few graphics wizards here who might have some good advice to share on the following message I've been posting on various forums and groups. Of course, let me know if PG would be interested in archiving the cleaned up page scans. As noted below, I've already started the process at DP to produce structured digital text of this book, which then will be fed back to PG. Thanks!] I'm now working to "clean up" the 182 page images from a recent scan of a very rare and noteworthy public domain book. The cleaned-up scans will be released to the public (such as given to the Internet Archive) for free access. [For those interested, the book is the 1885 second printing of the second edition of Sir Richard F. Burton's "Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana".] The scans were done at 600 dpi (optical) 256-color greyscale (there's no color in the book), to capture sufficient fine-detail to aid in the cleanup process. Of course, the book was chopped (the binding was falling apart anyway) and each page scanned on a flat-bed, so there's no page distortion caused by trying to scan a bound book. There are no illustrations -- it's all black and white text. I've already deskewed, cropped, centered and size-normalized all 182 pages. (For those interested, links to two sample partially-cleaned pages are given below.) In the cleanup process, I'd like to convert what I now have into 600-dpi *bitonal* (black and white) with uniform and nicely readable character density, removal of "pepper", cleanup of larger blotches, etc. I recognize there will be some handwork required, particularly to remove larger "pepper" and blotches, and repair a few characters, etc., but of course want to minimize handwork. [Note that the purpose of the cleanup is for direct human-use of the scans, and not solely for OCR purposes which doesn't require the planned level of cleanup. For example, I plan to produce a DjVu version for direct reading. For those who will probably ask, the raw page scans have already been uploaded to Distributed Proofreaders for conversion to structured digital text.] Unfortunately, what complicates the clean-up process is that the original book is in poor and variable condition. The paper is quite yellowed and darkened, and many pages are quite faded. Were the original in mint condition with good, uniform ink-to-paper contrast, I wouldn't be posting this request for advice. But the overall poor quality and page-to-page variation is taxing my graphics abilities to produce a clean finished product with reasonably readable and uniform character density (at 600-dpi bitonal.) Here are two sample pages, each about 4.5 megs in size (2550x3900 greyscale): http://www.openreader.org/kamasutra/page031.png (good condition) http://www.openreader.org/kamasutra/page106.png (poor condition) I would assume that others have had similar needs and have come up with various processing tricks and even built special tools to aid in the clean-up process (e.g., how to auto-remove small "pepper", the one to few pixel wide black spots on the white background?). I look forward to your advice and even help if you are interested (I will upload all the partially-cleaned images somewhere if you want to help with the actual clean-up process -- the whole set of images totals 680 megs.) [As a final note, I use Paint Shop Pro 9, but do not have Photoshop. But since PSP9 is fairly powerful, I assume that many, if not all, recommended Photoshop processes will map over to PSP9.] Thanks! Jon Noring

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re: [gutvol-d] [for the graphics wizards] Cleaning up original Burton "Kama Sutra" page scans -- need advice/help
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 25 May '05

25 May '05

jon said: > The paper is quite yellowed and darkened, > and many pages are quite faded. see a post from juliet on the d.p. forums about "gamma". -bowerbird

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Eldred denied once again
by Branko Collin 24 May '05

24 May '05

The DC District Court has ruled against Eric Eldred in Luck's Music Library v. Gonzalez. If Eldred had won, and if I understand this correctly, a number of works would have returned to the public domain. http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/2005/05/24/dc_circuit_rejec ts_challenge_to_congress_removing_works_from_the_public_domain.php (Or go to http://www.corante.com/importance/ and scroll down the page.) -- branko collin collin(a)xs4all.nl

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Da Vinci Code
by Juhana Sadeharju 24 May '05

24 May '05

Hello. The TV document "The Real Da Vinci Code" mentioned the book Le Conte du Graal by french author Chretien de Troyes as a first romance telling about the Holy Grail. Year was 1000+. In subsequent years 5 other major romances by other authors were written. What were they? The document also mentioned John Harding (1500+) as a Holy Grail author. I hope all these books ends up to PG archives! Juhana -- http://music.columbia.edu/mailman/listinfo/linux-graphics-dev for developers of open source graphics software

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Compliment
by Tony Baechler 24 May '05

24 May '05

Hello volunteers. I mentioned PG to this person some time ago. I wasn't sure if she would be interested or not. She is in Finland and I know many books in non-English languages had been posted and mentioned that she could probably find something in which she was interested. Here is her response. Hi, >Last time that I wrote to you I promised to go to teh Gutenbert site >later. Now I did, and what I think is fine about it is that they don't >have only books in text but also audio books - I'm sure you've known this >before. Wel, didn't find what I was looking for but it was delightful to >learn about audio books - read both by humans and synthetic voice. Haven't >downloaded any of them yet so I don't know what they sound like. >I really think that kind of project is really a precious thing. >Thanks for giving me a hint. >Regards, Marianne Näränen > Tony Baechler Maintainer, goldenaudio.net (TM) online archives http://goldenaudio.net/

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re: [gutvol-d] PG for Mac users
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 24 May '05

24 May '05

jeffrey said: > Mac OS 7.6 wow. i'm impressed! :+) *** dick said: > Thanks for the helpful advice. > I'm trying to apply it to Mac OS 8.6 and FineReader 5. > Microsoft Word 4.0 seems to be a possibility. More later. i've got some software that can help you guys out. (at least i hope my stuff will run on 7.6, not sure. and it will also run on the windows 2000 machine.) i'll get in touch with you backchannel in a few days. -bowerbird

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PG for Mac users
by Dick Adicks 24 May '05

24 May '05

Is there a sub-group to help Mac users to create e-texts that will communicate successfully with PCs? Are there individual volunteers who use Macs and can advise others? Dick Adicks

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PG and Creative Commons
by Tony Baechler 24 May '05

24 May '05

Hi. Is there any kind of official statement or PG policy concerning works licensed under a Creative Commons license? Are such works acceptable? Also, is there anyone maintaining the PG music archive? I am asking because I know of several composers of classic MIDI files. I am planning to ask them to consider licensing their works under a Creative Commons type license. I can also mention Project Gutenberg and/or drop a name of someone for them to contact if they want or will allow PG to distribute their works. This would be good for PG because some composers have done a lot of classical music from a number of pre-1922 compositions. I don't think I can help with sheet music, and of course I have no way of knowing that the sheet music sources they used are in the public domain. I know that some of them also make various files available in mp3, but I don't think they offer other formats. Is this something I should consider on behalf of PG or not? If PG is interested in something like this, I would also ask them to consider just releasing their files into the public domain, but I doubt if that will happen. Thanks, and feel free to write me off list if it's easier. Tony Baechler Maintainer, goldenaudio.net (TM) online archives http://goldenaudio.net/

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re: [gutvol-d] so, jim, please tell me what it is that you do
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 24 May '05

24 May '05

dick said: > As a writer of local histories, I endorse this proposal. The day > will come when somebody will want to write a history of PG. the historians will have a field-day with _that_! :+) but yes, everyone's contributions should be documented thoroughly, for the simple and correct sake of giving credit where credit is due. and inclusion in the newsletter should be just the first step. i think a wiki would be the best way to go, so anyone who felt that they had been left out could write themselves in, with plenty of people on hand to go right back in and restore a sense of proportion if any one individual got out of hand... -bowerbird

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so, jim, please tell me what it is that you do
by Bowerbird＠aol.com 23 May '05

23 May '05

jim said: > And please note, by "regulars" I mean > people who were actually contributing to PG, > who knew what they were talking about from experience, > and who had a stake in the outcome. > Monday-morning Quarterbacks weren't really in evidence. well, jim, since you have said that i am one of the people who don't know what it is that y'all _do_ here, perhaps you would like to explain to us all what it is that you think i fail to comprehend in sufficient detail? because i think i understand it just fine. i even believe i can provide some solutions that you've been unable to provide yourself, such as the he/be thing discussed recently, just to give one concrete example. or, since this thread was talking about the promo boards, a few of the "challenges" that you laid out there, years ago, if you haven't gotten them solved yet. i fully realize that a lot of the people who criticize you and your processes do not fully understand what you're doing, and that wears a person down after a while. but when you put me in that category, i think you are making a big mistake... like the far-too-numerous false-alarms in gutcheck, which cause you to ignore the alarms entirely and therefore miss the times when the alarm was true, i think you've come to ignore everybody's criticism, chalking it up to "you don't know what we do here, and you certainly don't know as much about it as i do", and therefore miss out on some poignant feedback... so by all means, tell me what it is that you do that is so difficult to grasp that i don't get it... -bowerbird

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