Screencast on basic Scan Tailor usage - help wanted

[Tulon]

The current English version of the user guide is not too good. It was created by someone using machine translation with little to no editing. It's been like that for ages, so I have little hope on it improving. I am not going to do it either, as I hate writing essays since high school. So, I came up with the idea of making a screencast instead. That doesn't sound too bad - I suppose I could do it. I am going to be talking about various aspects and cases, so I need a variety of source material:
* Shots from DIY hardware.
* Scans from a flatbed scanner: one/two pages per scan, different orientations, etc.

It's highly desirable for the source material to be copyright-clean. If any of you can help, please reply to this thread.

[Tim]

I'd be happy to help write documentation so you can focus on the code. If you'd like to point us to a page on the Wiki or a file to get started putting the guide together, I can start helping. Was http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/s ... User_Guide what you meant as the old version? If it's not bad material, I can copyedit it and add new screenshots in English.

I don't think I have any public domain books at home, but I can try to get some so that I can contribute perfectly copyright free images.

[Tulon]

I'd be happy to help write documentation so you can focus on the code. If you'd like to point us to a page on the Wiki or a file to get started putting the guide together, I can start helping. Was http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/s ... User_Guide what you meant as the old version? If it's not bad material, I can copyedit it and add new screenshots in English.

That would be helpful. For me to be able to give you editing permissions, visit above Wiki while being logged in to SourceForge. That will make the Wiki engine create an account for you, and then I'll be able to give you editing permissions. And of course you'll need to tell me your SourceForge username.

I don't think I have any public domain books at home, but I can try to get some so that I can contribute perfectly copyright free images.

That would be very nice.

[phaedrus]

The current English version of the user guide is not too good. It was created by someone using machine translation with little to no editing.

That was me, actually there was quite a bit of editing as the Wiki history will show - you should have seen the result before I played with it! I used both the fish & Google but part of my problem was trying to understand what was being said when I wasn't all that familiar with ST, and with zero language skills.

I had hoped someone else would help and improve (a lot) on what I'd done but that never seemed to happen despite the odd suggestion. Since i couldn't help with any coding this meagre effort was my way of contributing to ST, if there's anything else I can do then I'm happy to help out if I'm able. Not entirely sure what a screencast consists of but I'll google it & find out I'm sure

Cheers, P.

[phaedrus]

Ok, so I think I understand now. I can scan/photograph a few pages from something that's no longer in copyright (in New Zealand at least) if you'd like. I assume you won't need more than half a dozen or thereabouts for this? I guess I'll need someones email address to send them to...

Cheers, P.

[Tulon]

That was me, actually there was quite a bit of editing as the Wiki history will show - you should have seen the result before I played with it!

Oh, I am sorry then. Now I see you did put lots of effort into it. It seems no matter how much you edit machine translated text, it still looks like machine translation.

Ok, so I think I understand now. I can scan/photograph a few pages from something that's no longer in copyright (in New Zealand at least) if you'd like. I assume you won't need more than half a dozen or thereabouts for this? I guess I'll need someones email address to send them to...

I don't need many of them, though I do need different variations, as described above.
They probably wouldn't fit in an email, so you probably should upload them to some filesharing site (depositfiles.com for instance) and PM me the link.

[phaedrus]

I don't need many of them, though I do need different variations, as described above.
They probably wouldn't fit in an email, so you probably should upload them to some filesharing site (depositfiles.com for instance) and PM me the link.

Ok, I've put some on my little NSLU2 server, I'll PM the URL for you.

If you're looking for different examples these should be good - they're photographed in situ at a reference library without the benefit of a 'proper' copy stand (I used a tripod with the camera mounted 'upside down' so to speak). I've already used ST with them and it has done a marvelous job. Incidentally the books are from 1920's-30's and the authors passed away more than 50yrs ago which means the copyright has expired here in NZ (http://www.copyright.org.nz/basics.php).

FYI I also tried 0.9.9pre4 today briefly (just a few pages of an instruction manual) and it performed faultlessly for me (sorry, I'm sure there's something wrong with it but it just wouldn't break! I would have to say I've never had much issue with the page splitting that I see others have problems with...

Cheers, P.

[Tim]

Alright, I updated all of the images in the first User Guide page except for those that need a scan or picture of a public domain text, which I don't have yet, and replaced them with screenshots of the English version of the software. I also edited for grammar and updated a bit for changes in the software.

That page is in decent shape and it didn't really take too much effort to remove most of the rest of the evidence of machine translation. Phaedrus you really had done a lot of work. Feel free to keep improving what I did, and if you can get a screenshot of the software using one of the public domain books you have (the oldest is most likely to be public domain in all Bern convention countries.), that would help. If you check the page you can see the screenshots that have a book image in them and those are the one's I need help with.

https://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/ ... User_Guide

Update: I've replaced basically all of the images with screenshots in English except the one that shows the whole main window of the software with a page being previewed. That one's not that critical, but it would be nice to replace as well. I've also edited, at least a little, each of the other pages in the guide.

[daniel_reetz]

I just want to thank you guys for the excellent work you are doing, and to offer to host images if you need them hosted. Just email me whatever images, and I'll host them here at DIYBookScanner.

[Antoha-spb]

The current English version of the user guide is not too good.
It's highly desirable for the source material to be copyright-clean.

I got tons of Marine reference books dated up to late XIX century that i can share. They are copyright-free for sure. The only issue it that none of them are in English... And I can help with RU->EN translation to the extent of my English, i.e. to replace a machine, but not a native speaker.