[bksvol-discuss] Re: using machines for what they were meant to do

Hi Elizabeth,
I'll try and give you a bit more information. It's slightly techie. DAISY as a markup language is very rich. DAISY draws many of its tags from HTML, but adds many more of its own. A good example of a tag included in DAISY that is not included in HTML is the sidebar tag. This tag is intended to enclose information that represents a sidebar in the original. HTML has little use for such a tag. If you were to convert a book from HTML to DAISY, how would you know when it was appropriate to insert a sidebar tag? A human might be able to decide what becomes a sidebar, but a computer may have a much more difficult time. Keep this example in mind as I switch vectors to RTF.
RTF also has markup and like HTML's relationship to DAISY, its not a fully two way thing. It's also necessary to consider what RTF markup is generated by OCR? The markup generated is much less than what's available, usually because OCR is only so smart--its main goal is to get the text extracted.
So, the question becomes, how can we make a more meaningful DAISY book from RTF books that don't have a whole lot of markup after OCR?
There are different options available and we're considering which option(s) are best. We may be able to detect chapters and add appropriate markup by considering font size, or relative chunks of text, or by a code inserted by a volunteer....
We know not every volunteer will be able to give us beautifully marked up books, but that's okay--we'd like the technology to be in place for those who choose to go the extra mile.
And hey, I do have a hand coffee grinder--though I don't drink coffee, smile. 

Jake
I know I can grind coffee beans by hand and save electricity but do I want to? 

E.


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