- Marginal Sunbeam content follows, but arguably of interest to websters
In article <37988790.4F459D92(at)sunbeamalpine.org>,
Ian Spencer <ian(at)sunbeamalpine.org> wrote:
>
> money for a 56K modem and can't even get the phone company to provide
> service to it. I used this as part of my argument, because the phone
> company (who at that time was my ISP)had advertised 56K service. Now,
> they no longer do.
Copper pairs (telephone line) can only handle 30kbps. The other 26k can
be had *if and only if* the modems at either end can negotiate a clean
30k connnection and speak a compatible encode/decode language to each
other. There are 3 56k standards, and modems only use one of the three.
Couple that with the fact that many phone company techs will just swap a
bad pair for the next good one, and leave the next Trouble Ticket to
sort it out, and you see that 56k is more marketing than reality.
And remember, that's k_b_ps, or bits. A bit is only 1/8 of a byte.
On a quiet (wee hours) 56k Frame Relay line (dedicated 56k) I get a max of
7kbps from anywhere.
> Any how, back to the point and some Alpine content. This is one problem
> I am having with the workshop manual on my website. I can't seem to scan
> all the pages at a happy resolution that gives me a small enough file
> size with a picture that everyone can still read and download quickly.
> Unless I type everypage by hand (Ugggghhhh) I'm not sure of the best way
> to acomplish the task and get the best results.
You could grunt it like I do for all my images. I do this because it
gives the reader (initially me) a lot of quick information, and lets
them choose their download "commitment." I figured that would give me
the widest range of viewing options, and make it easy for most people to
get something pretty decent regardless of their connection speed. I pick
at least three sizes: thumbnail, 600-wide and full size. Sometimes I
offer 300-wide. Thumbnail is usually 100 or 150 wide, because I can put
a row of three or four across on a 600-wide area. What's with 600? The
lowest-common-denominator screen is 640x480. Not only that, but a
640-wide browser window on a 1024x768 screen is about 8.5" wide, just
like the printed page. And 600 fits nice with most printers' 300/600dpi
resolution. Subtract 40 for controls (borders, sliders) and to give a
nice number: 600. That lets me have a half-screen (300) size for a quick
detailed-enough view, and for those poor souls with only 14.4 modems to
have a chance to see any useful volume of material before retirement,
600 for a 1:1 view (like the book), and 1200 (sometimes only 900) for
"zoomed."
Here's how I'd do it, off-hand. I did the first 3/4 of this for all the
Parts Manual images I grabbed from the TE/AE site.
Scan at full size, 100dpi. Remove smudges and marks. Re-sample down to
a 1200-wide for max size. Copy and re-sample down to 600-wide for
mid-size. Do again 100-wide for thumbnail. Resampling will maintain the
apparent sharpness and legibility of the text much better than simple
resizing. You might even get away with a 300-wide scan and still provide
a legible large thumbnail (like for quickly checking a large diagram).
For a project like this, go the extra step and reduce each image to 16
greys since they are that anyway. The files will be smaller. There are
tools that will do it (easily), and I would seek them out.
You will still use a lot of disk space. Don't forget a good naming
scheme: you will have n_pages X n_resolutions files. I segregate
resolutions by directory, so I can retain decent 8.3 names.
Enjoy.
--- J e r o m e Y u z y k | jerome(at)supernet.ab.ca - - BRIDGE Scientific Services | www.tgx.com/bridge - - Sunbeam Alpine Series II #9118636 | www.tgx.com/bridge/sunbeam - - I'm going to SUNI III... Are You? | www.newsource.net/suni3 -
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Sep 05 2000 - 10:56:06 CDT