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wastewater · 01-14-2012, 11:52 AM

I had an idea of taking a textbook for work and converting it to an eBook and then perhaps into an audio book. Of course this is not as easy as I had hoped it would be (the learning curve is steep) but I am having fun learning how to do it.

I first scanned the pages with the zerox copier at work to tiff files with a resolution of 400. I think this is a good format to use however; I can also scan the pages into JPEG, XPS or PDF. Which format would you recommend? Keep in mind that I don't have the adobe acrobat editing software nor any XPS editing software just the viewers and any freeware I might be able to use. However the PDF and XPS formats in the copier does have an option for OCR output which would eliminate that extra step later on
I scanned the first chapter as a test in the Tiff format and used Scan Tailor to split and align the pages. I tried to use Cuneiform OCR software on the tiff files and it seems to work well.
I have also learned that I can combine the single Tiff files into one multiple tiff file using the IrfanView software if I need to do so.
However, if I should use the Cuneiform OCR software at all, what format should the OCR output be in to make the process as simple as possible
The choices are formatted text (*.txt), HTML (*.htm), Interior Format (*.fed), Rich Text Format (*.rtf), table Text of DBF format (*.dbf), table text (*.txt) or finally unformatted text (*.txt)
How do I combine the many pages of output text regardless of the format into a usable eBook?
Epub format would be a nice final choice but any format that I could convert to other formats using Calibrie would be good.
Please keep in mind that the text book has some photos and a few graphs and tables but mostly text, my O.S. is Windows 7, I am fairly tech savvy but software programming is beyond my realm of knowledge (I am a wastewater treatment plant operator by profession) and this is a low budget protect so I don't want to buy any expensive software like Adobe Acrobat to get this accomplished.

I am sure there are many paths I could take to get this accomplished. Any thoughts or advice that would make my process as simple as possible would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Life is good!

01-14-2012, 11:52 AM	#1
wastewater Junior Member Posts: 6 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2012 Device: android	ebook workflow advice please I had an idea of taking a textbook for work and converting it to an eBook and then perhaps into an audio book. Of course this is not as easy as I had hoped it would be (the learning curve is steep) but I am having fun learning how to do it. I first scanned the pages with the zerox copier at work to tiff files with a resolution of 400. I think this is a good format to use however; I can also scan the pages into JPEG, XPS or PDF. Which format would you recommend? Keep in mind that I don't have the adobe acrobat editing software nor any XPS editing software just the viewers and any freeware I might be able to use. However the PDF and XPS formats in the copier does have an option for OCR output which would eliminate that extra step later on I scanned the first chapter as a test in the Tiff format and used Scan Tailor to split and align the pages. I tried to use Cuneiform OCR software on the tiff files and it seems to work well. I have also learned that I can combine the single Tiff files into one multiple tiff file using the IrfanView software if I need to do so. However, if I should use the Cuneiform OCR software at all, what format should the OCR output be in to make the process as simple as possible The choices are formatted text (.txt), HTML (.htm), Interior Format (.fed), Rich Text Format (.rtf), table Text of DBF format (.dbf), table text (.txt) or finally unformatted text (*.txt) How do I combine the many pages of output text regardless of the format into a usable eBook? Epub format would be a nice final choice but any format that I could convert to other formats using Calibrie would be good. Please keep in mind that the text book has some photos and a few graphs and tables but mostly text, my O.S. is Windows 7, I am fairly tech savvy but software programming is beyond my realm of knowledge (I am a wastewater treatment plant operator by profession) and this is a low budget protect so I don't want to buy any expensive software like Adobe Acrobat to get this accomplished. I am sure there are many paths I could take to get this accomplished. Any thoughts or advice that would make my process as simple as possible would be much appreciated. Thanks Life is good!