I know it, but I assume there are listings not preserved yet if watching every magazine filelist. So there's still lot of work to do with them.
Of the 17 titles covered at TTFn (not counting Odds & Ends), it's Personal Computer News & Popular Computing Weekly which are the problem. For all the other titles I either have all the issues or have access to them, but for PCN & PCW there are about 300 issues which aren't even indexed. Then there's PCN's stupid "program file cards" system, which actually encouraged reader's to cut out the program listings! - so the magazines might often have pieces or whole pages missing.
Anyone else tried any other pdf to ebook converters? What were the results? I ideally want to convert to .epub format...
You're going to find it hard to find anything much better than Calibre, it really is the awesome for ebooks.
I think the main problem is with the pdf itself. I'm not an expert but to have any real chance of converting pdfs half decently they really need to be reflowable. I only had a quick look at the example Crash page and that is not going to be a reflowable document as the text is tied to the page layout.
I've converted a number of pdfs in the past using Calibre and had good success. But looking at the Crash example I wouldn't even try.
If you've got an iPhone then you could read it as a pdf using the GoodReader app. But you'd be doing a fair bit of scrolling.
If you copy and pasted each article into a single document and then converted that to epub using Calibre it'd work fine. But that's a fair bit of work of course.
BTW, I have already 86,7% torrent downloaded. It goes so well that probably tomorrow will be ready to save all files in two standard DVDs.
Cool. I'm going to give it a couple of days for the torrent to fully complete for most, and then I'll have Your Spectrum ready for download later this week, and Your Sinclair next week.
If you copy and pasted each article into a single document and then converted that to epub using Calibre it'd work fine. But that's a fair bit of work of course.
If you copy and pasted each article into a single document and then converted that to epub using Calibre it'd work fine. But that's a fair bit of work of course.
You're not kidding!!! About 7 years and counting thus far, though I've only done the reviews. Only 4 more issues left to do though. I'm in the process of creating a set of webservices to farm out the review text to anyone who wants it. If anyone's interested, PM or post on here and I'll get it ready sooner rather than later! :-)
Your Spectrum is now done and available for download :) It's probably my favourite Speccy mag; I loved the technical content, the sense of humour ("Escape from Castle Rathbone"), Nick Davies' cartoons … everything about it. Your Sinclair was great (especially in the early issues), but it was no Your Spectrum :(
OCRing has worked slightly better this time round; column formatting is pretty good. The file sizes are still too big for my liking, but no matter what I throw the files through I can't get them smaller without losing image quality. When viewing the PDF's, watch out for the page numbering: Your Spectrum seemed to ignore the front cover and inside cover when counting pages, so "page 1" in the magazine is usually page 3 in the PDF.
This file is only (!) just over 1Gb, so hopefully it should seed quickly.
Ramp up those routers and clear another 6-and-a-bit gig of space, the OCR'd PDFs of Your Sinclair are now available :) Similar sort of results to Crash - pretty good OCR'ing on the early issues, not so good later when they went bit mad with the layout and fonts. The cover pages of a few of the early issues haven't been OCR'd - the software locked onto the offset YS logo and aligned the whole page to the logo :D
Ramp up those routers and clear another 6-and-a-bit gig of space, the OCR'd PDFs of Your Sinclair are now available :) Similar sort of results to Crash - pretty good OCR'ing on the early issues, not so good later when they went bit mad with the layout and fonts. The cover pages of a few of the early issues haven't been OCR'd - the software locked onto the offset YS logo and aligned the whole page to the logo :D
Ramp up those routers and clear another 6-and-a-bit gig of space, the OCR'd PDFs of Your Sinclair are now available :) Similar sort of results to Crash - pretty good OCR'ing on the early issues, not so good later when they went bit mad with the layout and fonts. The cover pages of a few of the early issues haven't been OCR'd - the software locked onto the offset YS logo and aligned the whole page to the logo :D
Next: PCG, then Sinclair User. Advanced warning: Sinclair User will be *huge* :O
Thank you Ken for all your work you've put into this... I was able to reseed the Crash issues for about a week thanks to my partners broadband, altho im now stuck on slow old mobile broadband again... I'll reseed the YS issues as soon as I got a decent connection again.
I've been seeding this and will continue to do so for a while. Thank you very much for your work. After seeing these mags in this format, I hoped I could have the other major mags in the same format as well.
Glad there's an interest in these mags, and I'm happy to keep sharing them. Thanks to everyone who's seeding the collection so far - Your Sinclair is already nearly 40% seeded, so hopefully everyone who's downloading will have the full set of files in a couple of days.
zxbruno: Let me know which mags you'd like OCR'd and I'll grab them and add them to the queue.
PCG is now done and available - it's a comparatively tiny 1.34Gb, but I'll make up for that soon with the Sinclair User collection :)
Not sure how much interest there will be in this chunk of retro mag goodness; PCG was my favourite multi-format mag of the time, so it's just my own preferences that led it to jump SU in the OCR'ing queue :) Apart from some cartoon-character daftness on the early issues, it had a nice editorial tone (the editor was Chris Anderson, who went on to found Future Publishing and is still an industry figure with the TED conferences). It disappeared after just 15 issues without any warning; the final issue even has a "coming next month" panel ... I remember searching the newsagents of Fife trying to find issue 16 :cry:
Next: Sinclair User, then C+VG. Requests welcome, and thanks to everyone still seeding the previous torrents.
Thanks Ken. Wow you have been busy :)
As for requests, has their been any work done on the Amiga Format series of mags. I can't find any complete set of scans whatsoever. Obviously if they were already scanned by somebody else, then it would be just a case of doing the OCR'ing...
As for requests, has their been any work done on the Amiga Format series of mags. I can't find any complete set of scans whatsoever. Obviously if they were already scanned by somebody else, then it would be just a case of doing the OCR'ing...
Yeah, I'd love to get them done, but can't find any scans either. I have dozens of Format's (and Amiga Shopper's too), but they'd be difficult to scan as they're "perfect bound" (i.e. with a spine) rather than staple-bound. Apart from cutting them, does anyone know the easiest way to scan perfect-bound mags?
Ken, make sure I am one of those (few?) chums interested on your OCR works and a devoted fan. You make it possible. ;)
BTW, PCG is one of those magazines I've never known until recent days when I was scrutinising magazines' archive. I'm not aware how much popularity had before but I don't care of it now.
Yeah, I'd love to get them done, but can't find any scans either. I have dozens of Format's (and Amiga Shopper's too), but they'd be difficult to scan as they're "perfect bound" (i.e. with a spine) rather than staple-bound. Apart from cutting them, does anyone know the easiest way to scan perfect-bound mags?
I have a whole load of Amiga Format magazines if anyone wants them to work on this project, and I mean *alot* ! Only condition is somebody picks them up from me. They currently are in the loft.
With regard to CU Amiga, Mort did the scans as jpegs, so it would save you some work with having to scan them, meaning the OCRing could be started.
Here we go again: Sinclair User is now available. Been an interesting one for me, I didn't hold SU in particularly high affection before, but the early issues are quite a good read; visually dull but nice content, especially as the magazine pre-dates the Spectrum. It went mad in the 90's of course, like most Speccy mags, especially with that ridiculous Kamakaze Bear - what WERE they thinking? :-?
Here's the torrent link: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5795304/Sinclair_User_magazine_Issues_01-134_Complete_OCR__d_PDF_.5795304.TPB.torrent
Magnet: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3943e03f6a3e948116010505f9bcbb915f43252f&dn=Sinclair+User+magazine+Issues+01-134+Complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDF+&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.prq.to%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3943e03f6a3e948116010505f9bcbb915f43252f&dn=Sinclair+User+magazine+Issues+01-134+Complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDF+&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.prq.to%2Fannounce[/URL]
Ken, is there any chance you can work on the Amstrad Magazines in the near future. Such as Amstrad Action and Amtix?
I'm happy to OCR anything I can; is there anywhere I can download the scans from?
Thanks to everyone who's seeding. Not sure why the SU links didn't work at first, but there's plenty of activity on the torrent right now, so I'm assuming it's working for someone :)
I'd like to add my thanks Ken; it's really great to be able to get all these mags in a searchable form. Really looking forward to the early SUs, as I never had all of these and they contained some fascinating articles.
If you're after any more suggestions, I'd recommend ZX Computing, which had some great series of articles from the legendary Toni Baker. Also Your Computer is a good source of nostalgia, full of reviews of long-forgotten micros of the early 80s, and some rather good articles and listings as well.
I'm happy to OCR anything I can; is there anywhere I can download the scans from?
Thanks to everyone who's seeding. Not sure why the SU links didn't work at first, but there's plenty of activity on the torrent right now, so I'm assuming it's working for someone :)
Most of them can be downloadable via megaupload. It would be nice of you can OCR/PDF Amstrad Action and Amtix. Amstrad Action are in jpeg but Amtix are in PDF but they have not been OCRd.
Comments
Of the 17 titles covered at TTFn (not counting Odds & Ends), it's Personal Computer News & Popular Computing Weekly which are the problem. For all the other titles I either have all the issues or have access to them, but for PCN & PCW there are about 300 issues which aren't even indexed. Then there's PCN's stupid "program file cards" system, which actually encouraged reader's to cut out the program listings! - so the magazines might often have pieces or whole pages missing.
You're going to find it hard to find anything much better than Calibre, it really is the awesome for ebooks.
I think the main problem is with the pdf itself. I'm not an expert but to have any real chance of converting pdfs half decently they really need to be reflowable. I only had a quick look at the example Crash page and that is not going to be a reflowable document as the text is tied to the page layout.
I've converted a number of pdfs in the past using Calibre and had good success. But looking at the Crash example I wouldn't even try.
If you've got an iPhone then you could read it as a pdf using the GoodReader app. But you'd be doing a fair bit of scrolling.
If you copy and pasted each article into a single document and then converted that to epub using Calibre it'd work fine. But that's a fair bit of work of course.
Oh well, back to the Crash viewer..:)
Cool. I'm going to give it a couple of days for the torrent to fully complete for most, and then I'll have Your Spectrum ready for download later this week, and Your Sinclair next week.
Thanks for info... I got pdf reader on my htc handset, so I'll probably just use that...
If only I had the time....
You're not kidding!!! About 7 years and counting thus far, though I've only done the reviews. Only 4 more issues left to do though. I'm in the process of creating a set of webservices to farm out the review text to anyone who wants it. If anyone's interested, PM or post on here and I'll get it ready sooner rather than later! :-)
OCRing has worked slightly better this time round; column formatting is pretty good. The file sizes are still too big for my liking, but no matter what I throw the files through I can't get them smaller without losing image quality. When viewing the PDF's, watch out for the page numbering: Your Spectrum seemed to ignore the front cover and inside cover when counting pages, so "page 1" in the magazine is usually page 3 in the PDF.
This file is only (!) just over 1Gb, so hopefully it should seed quickly.
Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5745046/Your_Spectrum_magazine_issues_01-21_complete_OCRd_PDFs.5745046.TPB.torrent
Magnet link: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:27169b99449b4fb55b4a4ee39cf832fce703fa65&dn=Your+Spectrum+magazine+issues+01-21+complete+OCRd+PDFs&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:27169b99449b4fb55b4a4ee39cf832fce703fa65&dn=Your+Spectrum+magazine+issues+01-21+complete+OCRd+PDFs&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.publicbt.com%2Fannounce[/URL]
Next: Your Sinclair, then PCG.
Good job made.
Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5762568/Your_Sinclair_magazine_complete_issues_01-93_OCR_PDF.5762568.TPB.torrent
Magnet link: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:24937888beec5f7d57ddbf1e31e840f7b37ac420&dn=Your+Sinclair+magazine+complete+issues+01-93+OCR+PDF&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fdenis.stalker.h3q.com%3A6969%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:24937888beec5f7d57ddbf1e31e840f7b37ac420&dn=Your+Sinclair+magazine+complete+issues+01-93+OCR+PDF&tr=http%3A%2F%2Fdenis.stalker.h3q.com%3A6969%2Fannounce[/URL]
Next: PCG, then Sinclair User. Advanced warning: Sinclair User will be *huge* :O
Thanks again for doing this.
Thank you Ken for all your work you've put into this... I was able to reseed the Crash issues for about a week thanks to my partners broadband, altho im now stuck on slow old mobile broadband again... I'll reseed the YS issues as soon as I got a decent connection again.
zxbruno: Let me know which mags you'd like OCR'd and I'll grab them and add them to the queue.
Not sure how much interest there will be in this chunk of retro mag goodness; PCG was my favourite multi-format mag of the time, so it's just my own preferences that led it to jump SU in the OCR'ing queue :) Apart from some cartoon-character daftness on the early issues, it had a nice editorial tone (the editor was Chris Anderson, who went on to found Future Publishing and is still an industry figure with the TED conferences). It disappeared after just 15 issues without any warning; the final issue even has a "coming next month" panel ... I remember searching the newsagents of Fife trying to find issue 16 :cry:
Torrent: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5777669/Personal_Computer_Games_magazine_issues_1-15_complete_OCR__d_PDF.5777669.TPB.torrent
Magnet link: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:89426a5bfa7b37a4fb967b6da35af4624d5ae536&dn=Personal+Computer+Games+magazine+issues+1-15+complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDF"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:89426a5bfa7b37a4fb967b6da35af4624d5ae536&dn=Personal+Computer+Games+magazine+issues+1-15+complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDF[/URL]
Next: Sinclair User, then C+VG. Requests welcome, and thanks to everyone still seeding the previous torrents.
Thanks Ken. Wow you have been busy :)
As for requests, has their been any work done on the Amiga Format series of mags. I can't find any complete set of scans whatsoever. Obviously if they were already scanned by somebody else, then it would be just a case of doing the OCR'ing...
Oh, and CU Amiga too would be nice too :D
... Those two were my fave 16 bit mags :)
Yeah, I'd love to get them done, but can't find any scans either. I have dozens of Format's (and Amiga Shopper's too), but they'd be difficult to scan as they're "perfect bound" (i.e. with a spine) rather than staple-bound. Apart from cutting them, does anyone know the easiest way to scan perfect-bound mags?
BTW, PCG is one of those magazines I've never known until recent days when I was scrutinising magazines' archive. I'm not aware how much popularity had before but I don't care of it now.
I have a whole load of Amiga Format magazines if anyone wants them to work on this project, and I mean *alot* ! Only condition is somebody picks them up from me. They currently are in the loft.
With regard to CU Amiga, Mort did the scans as jpegs, so it would save you some work with having to scan them, meaning the OCRing could be started.
Here's the torrent link: http://torrents.thepiratebay.org/5795304/Sinclair_User_magazine_Issues_01-134_Complete_OCR__d_PDF_.5795304.TPB.torrent
Magnet: [URL="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3943e03f6a3e948116010505f9bcbb915f43252f&dn=Sinclair+User+magazine+Issues+01-134+Complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDF+&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.prq.to%2Fannounce"]magnet:?xt=urn:btih:3943e03f6a3e948116010505f9bcbb915f43252f&dn=Sinclair+User+magazine+Issues+01-134+Complete+OCR%5C%27d+PDF+&tr=http%3A%2F%2Ftracker.prq.to%2Fannounce[/URL]
Next: C+VG probably.
It's also interesting to see that the Your Sinclair torrent has a lot more activity than the Your Spectrum one. I've been seeding both for weeks now.
Another interesting fact is that many of the IPs are from the U.S (last time I checked).
Ken, is there any chance you can work on the Amstrad Magazines in the near future. Such as Amstrad Action and Amtix?
Doing the same, what is present and what is to be... :-)
Many thanks, KenD.
I'm happy to OCR anything I can; is there anywhere I can download the scans from?
Thanks to everyone who's seeding. Not sure why the SU links didn't work at first, but there's plenty of activity on the torrent right now, so I'm assuming it's working for someone :)
If you're after any more suggestions, I'd recommend ZX Computing, which had some great series of articles from the legendary Toni Baker. Also Your Computer is a good source of nostalgia, full of reviews of long-forgotten micros of the early 80s, and some rather good articles and listings as well.
You can get the Amstrad magazines from here
http://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Magazines
Most of them can be downloadable via megaupload. It would be nice of you can OCR/PDF Amstrad Action and Amtix. Amstrad Action are in jpeg but Amtix are in PDF but they have not been OCRd.
If you could do that, it would be great.