More Time With Acrobat
byI just finished scanning my first textbook for this semester and I thought I’d share a few things I came across.
First, I’m now convinced the method I outlined in the Acrobat article is a great way to scan books. Not only did I get great quality scans, but it was super easy and I now have a 600 page book with searchable text and bookmarks taking up a minor 17MB of space. Sweetness.
About the bookmarks. Wow, this is awesome, y’all. Once the book is swept with OCR, all I have to do it go through and mark what I want to have at my fingertips by highlighting and clicking "Add Bookmark." The OCR was even picking up things like, "Fig. 2-30. Pseudoternary phase diagram of mixtures of a synthetic oil with carbon dioxide," so I hardly had to correct anything.
If you really want to get obsessive about it, y0u can bookmark the tables and figures along with the sections, then (when crunch time comes) you’re all ready to study. After doing one chapter like that, personally I think I’m just going to stick to sections though because it takea a little more than a minute. Acrobat’s also cool because it lets you change the color and emphasis of each bookmark, so I now have my chapters bold and exercises in green so those bookmarks stand out.
Sorry for the lack of posting, by the way. I just finished my internship last week and so I’ve had the fun of moving again to deal with, but maybe things will start to pick up as I get bored again. It’s sad, but when school starts I might have more free time then the summer…maybe…*sigh*
Other posts that may interest you:
Tracy,
I just finished my 1st year of law school and I scanned every book, thousands of pages. I agree, Adobe does a great job of OCR and crisp scans coupled with small file sizes. However, do you find that highlighting in Acrobat isn’t quite there yet? Currently, I split my books into chapters and import them into GoBinder. Highlighting in GoBinder is great. So is the ability to type comments next to the text. But, and this is a big but, the search functions in GoBinder stink. The word processing side of the note taking application stinks. The fact that it can’t handle much over 50 pages of imported Acrobat files stinks. Maybe this will be fixed in the rumored 2006 version, but assuming it is not, I would love to be able to move to an Acrobat solution for my scanned books.
August 18th, 2005 at 5:30 amTracy,
Which version of Acrobat are you using? I find that with Acrobat 7, due to changes in the OCR structure, that it’s damn near impossible to correct OCR mistakes. Rather than being invisible text behind the image, it’s pulling it into a series of markers or something. Can’t get any answer from Adobe on how to make it work properly, either.
August 18th, 2005 at 6:13 pmI’m a High School student and I will be implementing a completely paperless system for all my work. All notes, homework, anything produced by me will be done on the tablet; no more killing trees for a research paper. Literature books will be purchased online as eBooks. Textbooks will all probably have to be scanned in manually (first few weekends after I recieve all mt books are going to be spent infront of the scanner) unless I get lucky and McGraw Hill suddenly goes digital with their texts. All paper material I recieve (handouts, notes, syllibi, even reciepts) go into an accordion folder in my tablet’s bag. There, they are temporarily organized as “To be Scanned.” I get home and all the day’s loose papers in the “To be Scanned” folder get scanned and then filed in my 4″ binder for the purpose of archiving. The digital copy goes in my digital binder (Which I believe will be OneNote: like Tracy I think I’ll take a fling and go without GoBinder until v.2006) or sent to PDF for storage in “My Documents”. Eventually I’d like to skip the step with the accordion folder and use a device like the plustek OpticSlim M12 (http://www.plustek.com/products/slimM12.htm) to scan all recieved material immediately. If all goes accordingly, the only material I’ll ever have to bring to each class is a 6 lb. case which include my tablet, power adapter and usb scanner. Having such a light load should also allow me to ride my bike to school. (I used to carry well over 50 lbs. with a laptop, camera bag [i'm a photographer for the school newspaper], and text books with binders) (I was actually using 4 bags for it all: a laptop case for the tablet, messenger bag for binders, backpack for books and camera bag for (of course) the camera.)Now all those books should stay most the year stored permanently in my school locker and the Binder will stay at home where I’ll spend two minutes at the end of the school day to put all my recieved papers in their respective section dividers.
I just wish I could convince my teachers to take all of my homework by e-mail. But most of them like to have hard copies. I’d rather just generate less paper to be honest.
Bu let me just say this: I look forward to true mobility.
Ian inorman@sageridge.org
August 19th, 2005 at 12:30 amYour post about paperless and scanning are great, I want to know about the time you spend scanning a book, how much pages had the book and what scanner you use. I´m looking the plustek opticbook3600 to do the task. About a scanner for movile computing that Ian is talking, i want to direct to the docupen scanner from planon http://www.planon.com/docupen.php, it´s great becouse you don´t need to connect to the pc to scan with it, you can keep 100 pages in he memory and then donwload to the pc. thank you
August 19th, 2005 at 11:35 amI’d avoid the docupen. It only scans at 200 dPi max.
August 19th, 2005 at 3:45 pmGreat comments, everyone.
Yeah, highlighting’s not exactly like Journal in Acrobat, but it’s there and usable. An option to consider is PDF Annotator. It’s a little lacking in features (no bookmarks, for example) but for mark-up it’s fine, with standard ink functions. I can’t wait for standard programs to have regular ink though.
I’ve used the text editor in Acrobat, and what’s frustrating is I can’t tell what the text is that I’m changing, just the picture. When I highlight I can see the new text, but all I can ever see is the picture. We’ll have to investigate this to see if there’s a better way.
a portable scanner would be nice, but really, I can’t think of many reasons I’d need anything scanned in on the job as a student. Maybe if the teacher hands out an outline and you’re suppose to take notes on it, but then you’d have to pull out a scanner in class, draw attention, transfer the file, open it in the program of choice, and by then you’ve missed at least five minutes or so when you could have just used a pen. Is it worth it? I don’t know. Not for me. The type of papers I get can wait until I get home for quick and quality scanning. Might want to consider that.
Oh yeah, you can probably get away with 200dpi but what worries me is it’s 200dpi MAX. If you have some small print or if you want something high quality, I’d personally want 300dpi. 200 is very decent though.
Oh, I thought of a use for the portable scanner. If you have a friend who has notes or something from a class you missed, you can scan them in during a break and hand them right back. That’d be cool.
Or if you have to hand something in (like a lab) but you want to be able to study from it, a quick scan would do the job. This would work for something which you were forced to use paper and pen for (like a lab or homework).
August 19th, 2005 at 4:35 pmHi Tracy (Chamberbell),
I’ve read some of the stuff you are doing with Acrobat. I too would do the bookmarking, linking and all that other time consuming stuff in the past, but Adobe Capture does it for me now. It’s a little expensive, yet worth the price when taking into account the years spent earning a few degrees. Dictionary options make capturing nonstandard English a reality, so Math and some other majors are not left out.
Just thought you might want to look into Adobe Capture since you are treading the same evolution path I took towards becoming “bookless”.
Frank…:)
August 19th, 2005 at 11:02 pmFor students looking to go paperless it seems this year there are a lot more ebooks available. However, sometimes you really have to dig to find them. Your school bookstore or site store may not even be aware that an electronic version is available. What I have been doing the last few years is to check with the publisher of the book. If there is a ebook they will have it. Then its just a matter of how to procure it.
August 20th, 2005 at 6:05 amScanning. When I have to scan a book I too go the Adobe way. I really haven’t found anything better. I have a HP 4670 (see through) model. It’s great because I can just lay the panel over the book, see that the page is strait, and scan away. I also have a docupen scanner, which I carry with me in my bag. That way if I’m in the library and find something that I need, I pull out my little wand and scan away. It’s great in that it can hold a dozen or so pages before I have to off load it via the USB cable to my tablet.
August 20th, 2005 at 6:13 amI’ve posted here before regarding a software product called RecallPlus. If you’re a student, and going paperless, you will find this sofware the best investment that you’ll ever make. Even if you’re not going paperless you should get this study aide. In a nutshell, it’s like a flashcard program on steriods. One of my greatest frustrations is trying to study and being overwhelmed by the amount of information between ebook text, electronic notes, and other stuff. I can tell you it is hard to make the transition to paperless. You’ll understand what I mean when you try it. RecallPlus (RP) has helped me. I cut and paste the material that I need to learn and retain for testing. I also create hyperlinks in RP back to the text, note or web site with additional information. Then I let RP do it’s thing and schedule out how often I need to review so that I don’t forget the information. Finally, when its test time I set the mode to count down to test. RP evaluates the amount of information that I need to know for testing and sets up a schedule from there.
August 20th, 2005 at 8:17 amI can’t believe it, my co-worker just bought a car for $60738. Isn’t that crazy!
May 16th, 2006 at 8:04 pmI can’t believe it, my co-worker just bought a car for $60738. Isn’t that crazy!
May 17th, 2006 at 7:14 pm