[Waverley ARS] Conversion of Radio Manuals to DjVu

[Simon Buxton]

Hi

I have come across a web site that converts certain types of documents
into DjVu format. Most of us have probably downloaded numerous equipment
manuals or circuits in various formats such as pdf, jpg or gif.

You can freely upload a file of one of these types (plus some others) to
this site which processes it and returns it to your browser window as a
DjVu file, which you can then save.

If you have not done so, you will need to install the appropriate DjVu
plug-in for your browser first.

Why do it?
DjVu, which is the preferred format for BAMA manuals, has two great
advantages over the other formats
1) The resulting file size is much smaller, less than half the original
size and often much smaller, depending on its content (pictures least
and text or drawings most)
2) The service includes an OCR scan of the content which means that any
text becomes searchable, even from jpg sources.

Why not do it?
1) Mainly because it is quite time consuming even with a broadband
service with a 10Mb pdf file taking 20 mins or more to be uploaded
(slow), converted (slowish) and returned (much faster) with a fast
connection (1500/256).
2) If your document is one that you want to update, you will need to
retain the original format.
3) It doesn't work for pdf files that require a password to open them
4) It appears to allow only a single file to be input (see below for
multiple files/pages)
5) Some files seem not to work

I expect many of you already use this service, but I hadn't seen it
before. It will certainly reduce the disk space for my radio manuals and
scanned circuits.

To use it, go to this link and follow instructions
http://any2djvu.djvuzone.org/index.html?title=Any2DjVu+Server

If you want to create your own DjVu format files from a series of
scanned pages, you can use the free DjVu Solo 3.1, but it does not have
the OCR function. To download Solo 3.1, go to
http://www.planetdjvu.com/resources.htm

Simon