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Originally Posted by TuxGirl
Out of curiosity, why ocr'd PDFs over epub/mobi? I get sticking with PDF if you don't want to deal with OCR, but once you've done the OCR work, it seems silly (to me) to stick with PDF. What is the advantage of PDF at that point?
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It's not really about advantages, but about necessity within my limited skills. I need and read a lot of scholarly books, so I'm pretty much used to buying anything I can get my hands on, so that I can use them comfortably during my research, in the comfort of my home, and under my terms. What I can't find to purchase in print (severely limited here, sadly) I have to borrow from public libraries. And that is a drag, with hunting down the one available example, having it shipped over to you from the other side of the country, only to have a week to do whatever it is you want. Some libraries do offer digital lending, but again, pdf is basically it. Most of it is either of worse quality than I can make at home, or insanely good quality that no one really needs. Go figure.
Now, the best I've drummed up so far is to use my camera and make as good pictures as I possibly can, then process the images through Scan Kromstator or Scan Tailor, which nets me readable and uniform, but still below average quality images as compared to what the pros are doing. Basically, I use OCR as a kind of search index, overlaying the scanned image text. That way, I'm able to actually read what I've scanned, and have search capabilities without compromising legibility.
Adobe seems to accomplish this nicely out of the box, and I can OCR a larger book in that fashion in a few hours. ABBYY, in the last version I tried awhile back, would have me go page by page correcting all the errors it had found while doing its pure text conversion. I don't know if it's something they've improved, or if I was doing something wrong, or what I'd have to do to not get that problem? I've always presumed that it's because I do not use a real scanner which would produce truly even images and proper letter separation.
I've got nothing against doing it in epub, in fact, I'd prefer it if it were not so time-consuming. Ultimately, I'm not going to publish the scans, I need them for me, and to read, and I just can't put in double the time formatting than the time needed to read the book, in order to make it perfect, that sort of defeats the purpose.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
You have to remember when speaking about the H2O, you have to specify the original H2O or someone could end up buying the new H2O Edition 2. And currently, KOReader doesn't run on the new H2O Edition 2.
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The Edition 2 seems like a real downgrade to me. I've seen it available here along with the original, but I simply never even included it in my considerations, as it didn't seem much of an upgrade?
As far as PDF support is concerned, while I can agree that it's not ideal, what I really care about is reading comfort. For a more demanding use, I have no problem sitting at my PC reading from the monitor, as I've been able to set it up to be comfortable-ish for reading during longer periods of time, which is not something I can get with modern screens.
There's all manner of tablets available here, and I have been able to test those in-store myself. While they look nice and all, there's a piercing quality and colour intensity to them, especially the higher quality ones, that doesn't seem to go away with the screen brightness. I don't know if that makes sense? Heck, I've even tried my phone, and long before the small letters start bothering me, the screen lighting begins to.
So I figured, an E-Ink would give me some portability (ie. go to a chair or bed and sit and read), with the proper eye support. Now, I've just seen a little
show-and-tell on Youtube with the Kobo Aura One and PDF and comics operation with KOReader installed. If that's consistent, I wouldn't mind that amount of speed trade-off for the ability to read for a long while.
Right now, I'm leaning towards the Kobo, simply because it seems that there is a lot of positive feedback all around the net, and because of the Carta technology. I really haven't seen or heard any useful hands-on experience with the InkPad 2 beyond a few videos. I realise the software is great, which is why I'm in a dilemma to begin with, but just how much lag/ghosting, etc. in overall operation stems from the Pearl screen is just something I've not been able to figure out.