[bookshare-discuss]
- From: Cindy <popularplace@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2005 11:39:11 -0800 (PST)
Hi, David,
The controversy about care in validating vs speed, is
ongoing. To some people, speed in getting the book
into the collection is paramount; to others of us,
quality is the most important.
I have asked some of your questions before. Because I
am sighted, I can see the book, and I try to duplicate
what I see as much as possible. I don't know about
conversion to Daisy, but I have been told, when I
asked here, that fonts larger than 36 can't be read
easily, whether it's by Daisy or Braille I don't
remember; so I never enlarge anything more than that.
Most people, when I asked, said that they prefer that
there be spaces between paragraphs, but that isn't
always possible, especially when there's a lot of
dialogue on the page, so sometimes I space and
sometimes I just indent, depending.
I've also been told that fancy fonts aren't easily
read. The only one I had on this computer to try to
imitate some of the fancier fonts was Apple Chancery,
but now I don't do anything more than bold or italics,
smaller font. If a book is in different fonts, like
Steven King's Misery or a couple of others I did, I
use different fonts and sizes.
I also try to make things easier for the reader in
some ways. For example. I always, or almost always,
put the page number in the left corner, top or bottom
depending on where it is in the book, and never in the
middle of the page, as was in a book I did recently
(middle of the page in the margin) or on the
right-hand side. It probably wouldn't make a
difference -- I never asked. I do put Chapter titles
in the middle, when that's where they appear, and
space four line spaces when that's in the book, but I
must admit I've wondered if that's a good thing. Maybe
I shouldn't do that.
Other than that, I'm one of those people who reads
carefully and makes changes as I go along. Then I do a
spell-check and a page number check. I've found that
sometimes i get so involved in the book I've numbered
twice, or forgotten to put in a page break, and it's
surprising the spelling/scanning errors I didn't
catch. Sometimes the brain sees that it wants to see
and what should be there, not what is. An Excellent
rating allows for some errors, so that last spell
check probably isn't necessary, but I do it anyway.
You know what the minimum requirements are. How much
more you want to do is up to do. I'm looking forward
to the replies you get about Daisy. Maybe they will
cause me to do some things differently.
Cindy
--- Captain357 <Captain357@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Bookshare's information on page format editing is
> pretty clear in the
> validation instructions sent to new volunteers: do
> what you can and details
> some specifics. I was looking for additional
> information on this however.
> Now, anyone who has done scanning knows that
> typically the finished scan can
> have spaces between letters on the title page, blank
> lines between lines of
> text, etc, and is most likely not a mirror image of
> the book. That has been
> my experience anyway. From my days when I could
> see, I remember how the
> average book is structured and formatted, and that
> is not how many of my
> scans turn out. Even when viewing in "exact view,"
> (with "keep exact view"
> set in scanning preferences and all options set to
> retain as much data as
> possible) this still tends to be the case. Okay,
> and let's assume that you
> do get a perfect duplicate scan of the book, the
> publishers in making things
> look their best (larger fonts and erratic spacing in
> titles and headers) are
> problems for screen readers and I would think,
> problematic in the transition
> from RTF to daisy. That said, does anyone know what
> the ideal balance
> between efficiency, speed of validating and quality,
> performance of the
> daisy file would be? In other words, how much can
> the automated RTF to
> daisy program Bookshare uses to process daisy files,
> compile and compensate
> formatting errors mentioned above into a great
> finished Book? Should we be
> striving in validation to keep spaces between
> sentences and letters to a
> minimal? Should paragraphs be indented? Should we
> rework fancy visual
> formats to a simpler, uniform style? Then of
> course, those of us who are
> blind can't look at the book to see how formatting
> appears so there is
> guessing and assumption involved. I've mentioned
> just a few specific
> questions here to get my point across and hopefully
> I've done that. Any
> information that will give me a better idea of what
> is best and suggestions
> for doing so is greatly appreciated!
>
> Thanks,
>
> David
>
>
>
>
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