Candide - comments on presentation

[Paul Moews]

I have scanned an out of copyright version of Candide, converted it to
text, proofed and formatted it, and it is attached as a PDF file suitable for
viewing on the Iliad. A few pages, (Chapter I), of the scanned version, are
also attached for comparison.

Before I get too many comments I know that exactly the same book,
(the Modern Library version of Candide with comments by Littell, and
published in 1918 by Boni & Liveright), is available from Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg also has a well done HTML version. Patricia, a mobileread contributor,
has posted a nice lrf version:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...hlight=Candide

My aim was to make a version for the Iliad that preserved the look and feel of
the original, which is why I've included a few pages from the actual book for
comparison.

When the Iliad first came out I felt that it would be ideal for displaying
scanned books with page sizes up to about 4.5 by 6 inches. You can read my
earlier posts here:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ighlight=moews

The scanned books mentioned in the above thread are still available.

I chose Candide to convert as it is a favorite book, short, less than 200
pages, and the Modern Library version is approximately 4x6 inches.
I wanted to see how much of the look and feel of the book could be preserved. After
scanning I used an old copy of Typereader (version 1.01a for Windows) to convert to a Word rtf file.
Surprisingly the latest version of Typereader
(version 6.0 professional available from ExperVision as a trial with a limited number of writes)
seemed almost identical to the earlier version. I input the rtf output
into Word for Windows and printed the PDF version from Word using Adobe Acrobat.

I have scanned several hundred old books and find that it is not always
easy or comfortable to view them. There are many problems:
- difficulties with white space, poor or small fonts, the aspect ratio of the Iliad not designed for books, etc.
There are some small books that look ok on the Iliad, but it looks like scanned books
will not be important for the current readers. An automated way to remove white space
and center the type block on scanned pages would be helpful if someone knows of such a program.

I feel that books are often not well presented on the Iliad - lines of text are
too long or the fonts are too large - either problem makes reading less comfortable.

Comments?

Paul Moews