[bksvol-discuss] Re: Quick processing of my book
- From: Mike Pietruk <pietruk@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Jim@xxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 23:52:51 -0400 (EDT)
Jim
I have no doubt that the stripper properly prepares the book for use and
navigation with the Daisy player as it was designed to.
Similarily, the .brf copy follows standards for that medium.
The issue, it would appear, is that a whole bunch of us read BookShare
books on hybrid equipment or programs which may or may not give
satisfactory results regardless of modifications made to the stripper.
What is particularly disappointing with Charlene's book is that she took
great pains in preserving headers which, using programs such as K1000,
could easily be used to find categories within the book.
What I would suggest as a solution to this dilemma is twofold:
(1) create a 3rd category of downloadable book in addition to .brf and
.daisy, calling it something like raw.
This would be the book in a form prior to stripping and massaging.
(2) As the stripper is essential to the preparation of books for Daisy
players, leave suggestions for changes to it solely to those who actually
use Daisy players.
As an experiment for testing the feasibility of (1) outlined above, would
it be possible to create a test sampling of titles in raw form so those of
us who would prefer unstripped books could test that idea out with some
actual BookShare material.
I believe that a lot of us didn't fully understand what the stripper does
because we were unfamiliar in how it was involved withDaisy production.
So abolishing the stripper or not using it is hardly a practical solution
as doing that would create its own set of headaches.
Perhaps if a third type of book, the raw book, were a downloadable option,
this might resolve many of the complaints.
If this solution proved satisfactory, it might be the cheapest one for
Benetech as it would require the least programmer time.
From your end, it might also prove useful to survey veteran (users with
the service for over 6 months) to find out what equippment they use for
reading BookShare users.
I, when I began with the service from almost day one, initially used the
supplied Daisy player.
Over time, I moved away from them to what I use now namely K1000 and my
Book Port.
I, as a matter of fact, don't even have a Daisy player on my pc system.
As noted above, if you could create a page giving us a handful of books in
their raw unstripped unprepared form, it would be an inexpensive test to
see if "we can live without the stripper".
Mike
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