scanner optimization and usage

[Billie Walsh]

chuck adams wrote:
> I am in the process of converting a number of high-end math
> and physics texts to PDF.  I want to be able to sit with a laptop
> and not have to run back and forth to the bookcases lugging
> heavy books and winding up with a pile of them in the floor.
>
> Using Kubuntu 8.04.1 with xsane and a Canon LiDE 25 scanner.
>
> I scan in pages at 300DPI to PS files, i.e. 001.ps, 002.ps, ...
> I need the 300DPI (I think) to see clean crisp text and images
> at 400% zoom factors.  
>
> After I generate the book in many files of PS, I have a script page_txt
> with the line
>
> gs -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -sDEVICE=pnmraw -r300 -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sOutputFile=- -q \ 
> $1 | ocrad  > `basename $1 .ps`.txt
>
> and I then, from the command line in the directory:
>
> for i in *ps
> do
> page_txt $i
> done
>
> This gives me pages with the OCR text.  I tried gocr and tesseract and
> did not get as good results as with ocrad.  
>
> Then I run the following
>
> gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH  -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=out.pdf *.ps
>
> to consolidate all the .ps files into one PDF file.  I can live with this.
> I can NFS mount several TB of disc space, so that is not an issue at
> this time.  :-)
>
> Is there a way to further compress the file sizes at any point and still
> not lose the desired resolution?  Using only software that comes with
> Kubuntu or available from the Kubuntu repos.  Inquiring minds want
> to know.
>
> I may have reinvented the wheel or gone about this all wrong, but
> education is expensive no matter how you get it.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> chuck
>   

I've slowly been converting all my genealogy notes and copies of papers 
to PDF files as a back up. I used a program called "gscan2pdf". Scan the 
papers and directly exports to PDF files.

-- 
Life is what happens while your busy making other plans.