If it wasn't the convenient OCR I don't know what it is, but I do think
Open Book should be able to handle a book size PDF and I am thinking
about taking a look to see if maybe I can teach myself to use it for
that. But here is the problem with PDF and me. Like I said, I am a self
taught computer user and a lot of that self teaching was through trial
and error. PDF seems to have been responsible for a lot of the error.
Back when I was doing most of that learning I was using whatever version
of JAWS was the latest in about 2003. That was a lot less versatile than
the versions now. I remember doing Google searches and results popped up
with links labeled PDF. I had no idea what the letters stood for and I
had no idea what a PDF was. So I clicked the link to see what would
happen. Every time I did that my computer would apparently lock up. All
speech stopped and no matter which key I pressed nothing happened as far
as I could tell. The only thing I could do was to turn off the computer
by cutting the power and then rebooting it. I now know that what was
probably happening was that the PDF was downloading and JAWS was not
telling me that. To me it just seemed like everything was freezing up.
So I developed the idea that PDF stood for something like powerful
damned fuckup and I learned to avoid clicking any link, button or
anything else with the label PDF. As things progressed I began to learn
a little bit more about what they were, but that PDF aversion stuck with
me and, besides, it seemed to me that they had no use for a blind person
anyway. So to this day I have never learned how to do anything with a
PDF. On numerous occasions I thought about it being time that I finally
got around to learning how to handle them, but I never did. For right
now let's see where this discussion about Pathfinder books in PDF format
goes. I think I might be able to make those books accessible if I just
figured out how to do it, but as of right now I haven't.
Carl Sagan
“Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys
it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and
findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics, Wait a minute; this is a really
good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s done you no harm; please leave it alone.
Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw
them away.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
On 12/2/2020 3:58 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Roger,
No, I wasn't talking about that convenient OCR. I know it's there, but I don't know how
to use it. What I meant was that I'd go to something that said it was in pdf format,
something longer, and press enter, and the thing would say that it was converting and
then I'd get this whole thing that I could listen to. And if I remember correctly, I
could go to a menu and convert it to a word document, if I wanted to. But then there were
other things that said they were in pdf format, and if I pressed enter on that kind of
pdf, jaws would say, "empty document". In other words, for some reason, it
wasn't convertible.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, December 2, 2020 3:43 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Growing the arsenal of revolutionary literature.
Miriam, I think you are talking about the convenient OCR that is built into
JAWS. That is exactly what I was suggesting to Maurice, but the one in JAWS
would not be any good for converting an entire book. It is more of a convenient
way to recognize short items as you come across it.
However, I think my Open Book software just might be up to the task. I just
don't know how. But Kurzweil would probably be a better choice anyway.
Carl Sagan
“Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys
it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and
findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics, Wait a minute; this is a really
good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s done you no harm; please leave it alone.
Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw
them away.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
On 12/2/2020 3:22 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Roger, Maurice,
From a technology ignoramus who can't do anything, I used to encounter two
different kinds of PDF files on my computer. Jaws would convert one of them to
something or other and I could read it. There was another kind that Jaws could
not convert and read. I don't know why. I haven't even attempted any PDF stuff
lately. But possibly, Maurice knows.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, December 2, 2020 3:11 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Growing the arsenal of revolutionary literature.
Maurice, I just sent a reply to Miriam in which I said that I would make a
suggestion to you in a separate email. So this the separate email. I just
thought of this while I was typing my reply to Miriam. First, let me say that I
am a technological ignoramus despite the fact that I have taught myself to use
so much of it, but I do have some understandings about this stuff much of which
may be entirely wrong understandings. I am fully prepared to have you tell me
that I don't know what I am talking about. As a Bookshare volunteer I scan
books using the Open Book software. I understand that Kurzweil is better, but I
did not know that when I bought Open Book and since this stuff is so expensive
I kind of got stuck with Open Book. But as I understand how it works it takes a
photograph of the page and then an Optical character recognition program that
is built into it converts it to computer text. Bookshare requires that
volunteers make all submissions in RTF format and that means that after I scan
the book I convert it into that format. Now, as I understand the PDF format it
is actually a picture of the text itself. I have had no experience with PDF, so
this is really only an understanding that I have surmised from reading banter
on email lists. But I was thinking that it might be possible to run these PDF
files through an OCR recognition system and thereby have it in a format that
could be converted to a format that Bookshare found acceptable for publisher
quality submissions. Or, if that won't work here is another idea. maybe you or
a comrade could register with Bookshare as a volunteer and then run these PDF
files through an OCR and then convert them to RTF format.
Then the registered volunteer could upload them to the checkout list where the
volunteer proofreaders get submitted books to proofread and then various
proofreaders could then download them for proofreading and then upload them for
a Bookshare administrator to approve and add to the collection. Now, it occurs
to me that I just admitted that I have a software with a built in OCR that you
could send them to me to recognize and convert. The trouble with that is that,
like I said, I have no experience with PDF files and so I don't know how to do
that. That's another reason that I admitted that I may well not know what I am
talking about. But if it is feasible and I can be taught I might very well be
willing to do that.
___
Carl Sagan
“Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no scientist enjoys
it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection for his or her ideas and
findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics, Wait a minute; this is a really
good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s done you no harm; please leave it alone.
Instead, the hard but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw
them away.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
On 12/2/2020 2:23 PM, Maurice Peret wrote:
Greetings Miriam et al,
Yes, I am definitely aware and am a subscriber to BookShare. Most of
the Pathfinder titles at present are in PDF format which BookShare
currently does not accept for conversion. Nonetheless, there is a
strong group of supporters who are hard at work at creating EPUB3
file versions to make them as broadly available as possible. There is
also a governmental agency in Canada which offers to assess any files
sent to them for accessibility and provide suggestions on how to make
them so. Roger has done a tremendous deed in scanning several
Pathfinder titles, somewhere in the neighborhood of 25, which are
already available on BookShare. One of the initial books that is
being reformatted is entitled "Are They Rich Because They're Smart?"
by Jack Barnes which explains the emergence over the past several
decades of an increasingly diverse and elitist meritocracy, as the
title suggests.
The commitment of supporters of Pathfinder to make these
revolutionary books more broadly available is in direct response to
what we have seen as a growing interest in reading and studying the
lessons that connect us with our historic line of march as the only
class capable of seizing power from the capitalists and building a
new society based not upon private profits but on human solidarity.
I welcome anyone to join me in becoming part of this worthy project.
Thanks for your suggestion.
Regards,
Maurice
On 12/2/20, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes, Carl, I know the writer. This is Maurice. He is a new
subscriber to this list and is a member of the Socialist Workers Party.
Carl Sagan
“Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No, no
scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection
for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t reply to
critics, Wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I’m very fond of
it; it’s done you no harm; please leave it alone. Instead, the hard
but just rule is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the
Dark
On 12/2/2020 11:03 AM, Carl Jarvis wrote:
On 12/2/20, Maurice Peret <mauriceperet@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear List Members:A strong, clear and concise presentation.
For those of us who are blind or otherwise print disabled, the
greatest obstacle that remains is access to information and
infrastructure. Amidst a rapidly declining capitalist system and
worldwide pandemic, our access to public facilities,
transportation, quality education and employment, material and
intellectual resources, and access to print and digital content
remain obstacles that require much of our effort and attention to
overcome. I submit that we are not alone in having been
traumatically disconnected and detached from our rich history and
ideals. It is well worth further examination of the parallel
developments of the disability rights movement and the embattled
tradition of revolutionary resistance to state and corporate repression.
In the wake of massive uprisings around the country and indeed
around the world to routinized racist and state sanctioned
murderous assaults on working people, disproportionately of
oppressed nationalities, there has been a rigorous distraction
from revolutionary class-conscious politics packaged in
guilt-baiting identity politics in the name of race, politics,
history, and institutionally responsible historical revisionism.
The past several years has inspired me to reconnect with a
revolutionary continuity that is every bit as much a part of our
national fabric as anything, useless or otherwise, not taught to
us in academia.
I must credit the early years of my political training for
inspiring in me a passion and commitment to master Braille as my primary medium.
It instilled in me a discipline of study and reading to absorb the
lessons of how progress was achieved in an otherwise repressive
society. I will not expound here upon the mountains of evidence of
such repression but instead focus my energy and hopefully your
interest in engaging in a project to make available revolutionary
literature for which there is a growing hunger.
I will begin by describing my motivation to engage in this project.
The Teamster series is a book compilation of four volumes that
chronicle the over-the-road organizing campaign and union strike
actions which became national in scope beginning in 1934. This
occurred in a fascinating historic period in our nation in the
depths of a worldwide economic depression, the recent 1917
victorious Bolshevik revolution in Russia that instilled terror in
the capitalist classes, and enormous class struggle battles in
Europe which gave way to rising fascist movements. The series
begins with a book entitled “Teamster Rebellion,” the second is
“Teamster Power,” the third in the series is called “Teamster
Politics,” and finally, the fourth is titled “Teamster
Bureaucracy.” This occurred during a time of powerful
working-class organizations inspired by international revolutionary
developments.
AT the very center of these powerful union battles, in fact, was
an incredibly strong cadre of revolutionary socialists who worked,
organized, and struggled shoulder to shoulder with workers in
skilled trades and specialized crafts, unskilled laborers, and even those among
the vast army of the unemployed.
It is often said that history is written from the point of view of
the victors. History is not stagnant but dynamic. The Victors in
the case of the US capitalists, their government, and their media
have indisputably written many of the past few chapters but we are
by no means at the end of the story, which brings me to the point.
The Teamsters series is only a small portion of the catalog of
international and multilingual literature that documents the
continuity of resistance in the United States and around the world
from the French to the Russian revolution, to the combined
international strength of South African freedom fighters and their
Cuban allies, and to anticolonial and revolutionary struggles from
Vietnam to Burkina Faso in Africa.
Among these powerful books include
Three books to be read as one...
...about building the only kind of party worthy of the name
“revolutionary”
in the imperialist epoch.
• A party that’s working class in program, composition, and action.
• A party that recognizes, in word and deed, the most
revolutionary fact of our time:
That working people—those the bosses and privileged layers who
serve them fear as “deplorables,” “criminals,” or just plain
“trash”—have the power to create a different world as we organize
and act together to defend our own interests, not those of the
class that grows rich off exploiting our labor. That as we advance
along that revolutionary course, we’ll transform ourselves and
awaken to our capacities—to our own worth.
Three books about building such a party in the US and worldwide.
Distributors of revolutionary books such as these along with a
newspaper that has been in circulation since 1928 called “The
Militant; a Socialist newspaper published in the interest of
working people” cannot keep their shelves adequately stocked. When
I was among these revolutionaries years ago, it was a painstaking
effort for me to find ways to get these books recorded but with a
renewed interest and with technology providing the possibility for
digital access to these books, I have re-engaged in the
revolutionary workers movement. I am working with a group of
supporters of Pathfinder Press whose main project is to produce,
digitize and keep books like these in circulation. Blind and
otherwise print disabled people should have access to these books,
as well. If there is sufficient interest among us, then
collectively we can help by sharing our knowledge and skills to guide the means
to make it available.
Please contact me off list to discuss in more detail at
MauricePeret@xxxxxxxxx.
In Solidarity,
--
Maurice Peret
MOBILE/TEXT: 804.928.4015
I'm wondering if Roger knows the writer?
Carl Jarvis
