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Well that post started a lot of traffic.
As for the searchable text and OCR, I think this
would make the cost extremely high considering the limited sales.There are a few
factors pushing the cost of a CD version: 1.a scanner large enough to handle
even the owners manual prints, 2.Software needed to generate the images. 3.and
pirating of the disks.
I for one would not be very happy to spend say
$2000.00 (?) of time and money to create a CD which will generate limited sales
(I question if the sales would cover the costs)and then have it
copied.
Out of curiosity what would anyone expect to pay
for a searchable owners manual?
Walter
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, January 27, 2000 10:33
PM
Subject: (ET) Possible CD-ROM
In looking at the
purely technical side of the ElecTrak documentation on CDROM concept, I found
that Adobe has a product called "Adobe Acrobat Capture" which is used to
create Adobe documents from scanned text (like the Homeowner's Serive Manual,
for example). This contrasts to Adobe Acrobat which is used to create
Adobe documents from "editable text" - that is the files created by a word
processor like Microsoft Word. Since the ElecTrak documents are in
printed form and need to be scanned, Adobe Acrobat Capture would be the
appropriate choice. The pricing is confusing, but it appears the minimum
configuration is something like $600! Pricing needs more research. I
hope that someone out there has access to Capture at work.
I also found that
Access 2000 (part of the Microsoft Office Professional suite) has a document
imaging facility like Adobe, but very limited. Of course, each user of a
CDROM manual would have to own or buy Access, which is fairly expensive as a
stand alone, making this a poor choice (Adobe Acrobat Reader is
free).
And we haven't
even begun to address issues like copyright.
Pieter Litchfield
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