Complete Peerage CD

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Symonds

Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Symonds » 07 aug 2006 21:00:03

This CD arrived today, and using Adobe Acrobat Reader 7, I have been
unable to search the disk - using the Edit-Find method and/or the
binoculars button on the Adobe Reader menu bar. I have run a dozen
searches which produced nothing. I also did test searches for names that
I already know are on the CD: e.g. "Deincourt" on Volume VI.

Apparently this CD is either "different" from all the other PDF CD's or
it is damaged. Can anyone advise me as to whether there is another
method of searching?

Marilyn Symonds

Frank Johansen

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Frank Johansen » 07 aug 2006 21:00:04

Symonds wrote:
This CD arrived today, and using Adobe Acrobat Reader 7, I have been
unable to search the disk - using the Edit-Find method and/or the
binoculars button on the Adobe Reader menu bar. I have run a dozen
searches which produced nothing. I also did test searches for names that
I already know are on the CD: e.g. "Deincourt" on Volume VI.

Apparently this CD is either "different" from all the other PDF CD's or
it is damaged. Can anyone advise me as to whether there is another
method of searching?

There are at least two methods of making a PDF.

1:
- Edit a text-document in a standard word processor (e.g. OpenOffice.org
or MS Word).
- Print it to a PDF-file. This produces a searchable and editable PDF
text-document.

2:
- Scan printed pages to a PDF-file. This produces a PDF-file where the
pages actually are scanned images of printed text, and thus not searchable.

Regards
Frank H. Johansen

Tim Powys-Lybbe

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Tim Powys-Lybbe » 07 aug 2006 21:08:20

In message of 7 Aug, sysite@swbell.net (Symonds) wrote:

Thank you, Frank, but my problem centers around the problem of searching
the disk using the Adobe Reader 7 rather than creating a PDF file.

I think he was meanign that because there were these two methods of
creating PDF files, that is what you got. For, almost certainly what is
on your disc are PDF files.

However what the creator of the PDF files can do is to scan the images
with an OCR program to convert the images to text. While this is not
100% reliable it is usually at least 98% and would give you a useful
search facility.

The usual practice is to give you both versions: (a) the original images
and (b) the OCR'd text. Then you can always check that the OCR version
has found the right stuff.

Do you have any views on the copyright of this material?

Frank Johansen wrote:
Symonds wrote:
This CD arrived today, and using Adobe Acrobat Reader 7, I have been
unable to search the disk - using the Edit-Find method and/or the
binoculars button on the Adobe Reader menu bar. I have run a dozen
searches which produced nothing. I also did test searches for names
that I already know are on the CD: e.g. "Deincourt" on Volume VI.

Apparently this CD is either "different" from all the other PDF CD's
or it is damaged. Can anyone advise me as to whether there is another
method of searching?

There are at least two methods of making a PDF.

1:
- Edit a text-document in a standard word processor (e.g. OpenOffice.org
or MS Word).
- Print it to a PDF-file. This produces a searchable and editable
PDF text-document.

2:
- Scan printed pages to a PDF-file. This produces a PDF-file where the
pages actually are scanned images of printed text, and thus not
searchable.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim@powys.org
             For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/

Symonds

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Symonds » 07 aug 2006 21:56:02

Thank you, Frank, but my problem centers around the problem of searching
the disk using the Adobe Reader 7 rather than creating a PDF file.

Marilyn

Frank Johansen wrote:
Symonds wrote:
This CD arrived today, and using Adobe Acrobat Reader 7, I have been
unable to search the disk - using the Edit-Find method and/or the
binoculars button on the Adobe Reader menu bar. I have run a dozen
searches which produced nothing. I also did test searches for names
that I already know are on the CD: e.g. "Deincourt" on Volume VI.

Apparently this CD is either "different" from all the other PDF CD's
or it is damaged. Can anyone advise me as to whether there is another
method of searching?

There are at least two methods of making a PDF.

1:
- Edit a text-document in a standard word processor (e.g. OpenOffice.org
or MS Word).
- Print it to a PDF-file. This produces a searchable and editable PDF
text-document.

2:
- Scan printed pages to a PDF-file. This produces a PDF-file where the
pages actually are scanned images of printed text, and thus not searchable.

Regards
Frank H. Johansen


Nathaniel Taylor

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Nathaniel Taylor » 07 aug 2006 22:05:20

In article <7e04d3524e.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk>,
Tim Powys-Lybbe <tim@powys.org> wrote:

In message of 7 Aug, sysite@swbell.net (Symonds) wrote:

Thank you, Frank, but my problem centers around the problem of searching
the disk using the Adobe Reader 7 rather than creating a PDF file.

I think he was meanign that because there were these two methods of
creating PDF files, that is what you got. For, almost certainly what is
on your disc are PDF files.

However what the creator of the PDF files can do is to scan the images
with an OCR program to convert the images to text. While this is not
100% reliable it is usually at least 98% and would give you a useful
search facility.

The newest generations of Acrobat (the full software, not the reader)
have a facility to apply OCR to a scanned-image pdf (a book, or
whatever), keeping the recreated text in an invisible layer under each
page image, and using that text only to return hits for word searches.
This is essentially what google books has done, showing the images and
keeping the OCRd behind the scenes so people couldn't extract complete
texts of books this way.

Unfortunately, perhaps the CD the original poster has bought was made as
images-only pdf, without this OCR searchable-text embedding, even though
it is a trivial step in the latest Acrobat (results of Acrobat's
built-in OCR can be pretty weak depending on the quality of the original
scan or photo, but perhaps one can pipe in better OCR packages as
plugins).

Is this CP CD from Rod Neep's outfit? Is it the second
edition--presumably minus the recent corrections vol.?

Nat Taylor
http://www.nltaylor.net

Diana Gale Matthiesen

RE: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Diana Gale Matthiesen » 07 aug 2006 22:26:01

I think his point was that *they* apparently created the PDF file by simply
scanning the book's pages, making them unsearchable by you. If so, I'd send
the CD back and ask for a refund...

An unfortunate lesson in always checking before you buy whether a book on CD
will be text searchable, or not.

Diana

-----Original Message-----
From: Symonds [mailto:sysite@swbell.net]
Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 2:52 PM
To: GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: Complete Peerage CD

Thank you, Frank, but my problem centers around the problem
of searching
the disk using the Adobe Reader 7 rather than creating a PDF file.

Marilyn

Symonds

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Symonds » 07 aug 2006 23:11:02

Tim Powys-Lybbe wrote:

I think he was meanign that because there were these two methods of
creating PDF files, that is what you got. For, almost certainly what is
on your disc are PDF files.

However what the creator of the PDF files can do is to scan the images
with an OCR program to convert the images to text. While this is not
100% reliable it is usually at least 98% and would give you a useful
search facility.

The usual practice is to give you both versions: (a) the original images
and (b) the OCR'd text. Then you can always check that the OCR version
has found the right stuff.

Do you have any views on the copyright of this material?

Yes - the files on the CD are PDF files, but there is no OCR version.
And, now that I understand his meaning, I think Frank is correct in that
these are scanned pages. I am not familiar with English copyright law
and so cannot comment on its relevance to any of these issues.

Marilyn




Frank Johansen wrote:
Symonds wrote:
This CD arrived today, and using Adobe Acrobat Reader 7, I have been
unable to search the disk - using the Edit-Find method and/or the
binoculars button on the Adobe Reader menu bar. I have run a dozen
searches which produced nothing. I also did test searches for names
that I already know are on the CD: e.g. "Deincourt" on Volume VI.

Apparently this CD is either "different" from all the other PDF CD's
or it is damaged. Can anyone advise me as to whether there is another
method of searching?
There are at least two methods of making a PDF.

1:
- Edit a text-document in a standard word processor (e.g. OpenOffice.org
or MS Word).
- Print it to a PDF-file. This produces a searchable and editable
PDF text-document.

2:
- Scan printed pages to a PDF-file. This produces a PDF-file where the
pages actually are scanned images of printed text, and thus not
searchable.

Guy Etchells

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Guy Etchells » 07 aug 2006 23:36:01

No the cd is from ABC Publications
http://www.abc-publications.co.uk/shop/ ... p?p=33931f

The blurb states
*The Complete Peerage by G. E. Cokayne (2nd Edition, 13 volumes in 14)*
....
'The Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain & the
United Kingdom, Extant & Extinct or Dormant' by G. E. Cokayne. 2nd
edition revised & enlarged by The Hon. Vicary Gibbs and others. 13
volumes in 14, which means that there is a Volume 12 Part 1 (the 12th
book), a Volume 12 Part 2 (the 13th book) and a Volume 13 (the 14th
book). Volume 13 (the 14th book) covers the period from 1901 to 1938. ...

As stated by the disclaimer on the web site it is not machine searchable.
Cheers
Guy

Nathaniel Taylor wrote:
In article <7e04d3524e.tim@south-frm.demon.co.uk>,
Tim Powys-Lybbe <tim@powys.org> wrote:


In message of 7 Aug, sysite@swbell.net (Symonds) wrote:


Thank you, Frank, but my problem centers around the problem of searching
the disk using the Adobe Reader 7 rather than creating a PDF file.

I think he was meanign that because there were these two methods of
creating PDF files, that is what you got. For, almost certainly what is
on your disc are PDF files.

However what the creator of the PDF files can do is to scan the images
with an OCR program to convert the images to text. While this is not
100% reliable it is usually at least 98% and would give you a useful
search facility.


The newest generations of Acrobat (the full software, not the reader)
have a facility to apply OCR to a scanned-image pdf (a book, or
whatever), keeping the recreated text in an invisible layer under each
page image, and using that text only to return hits for word searches.
This is essentially what google books has done, showing the images and
keeping the OCRd behind the scenes so people couldn't extract complete
texts of books this way.

Unfortunately, perhaps the CD the original poster has bought was made as
images-only pdf, without this OCR searchable-text embedding, even though
it is a trivial step in the latest Acrobat (results of Acrobat's
built-in OCR can be pretty weak depending on the quality of the original
scan or photo, but perhaps one can pipe in better OCR packages as
plugins).

Is this CP CD from Rod Neep's outfit? Is it the second
edition--presumably minus the recent corrections vol.?

Nat Taylor
http://www.nltaylor.net





--
Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England.
http://freespace.virgin.net/guy.etchells The site that gives you facts
not promises!
http://anguline.co.uk/ Anguline Research Archives

Tim Powys-Lybbe

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Tim Powys-Lybbe » 08 aug 2006 11:41:11

In message of 8 Aug, sysite@swbell.net (Symonds) wrote:

As stated by the disclaimer on the web site it is not machine
searchable.
Cheers
Guy
The disclaimer on the web site is located at the bottom of a page
*under* an Acrobat Reader icon, and thus is "hidden" from the
attention of most would-be purchasers. In order to be fair notice, the
disclaimer should be located within the description of the Complete
Peerage CD. If it had been, I would not have been a purchaser. Of
course, all of the above is the reason that the disclaimer is placed
under the Acrobat icon which is so commonly used to convey an offer to
download the reader.

The CD permits printing; it does *not* permit document assembly, content
copying or extraction, content extraction for accessibility, commenting,
filing of form fields, signing, creation of template pages, or
submitting forms.

The CD I received has no bookmarking in evidence on the first four
volumes. Its 3000+ pages are generally useless to me. It seems to me
that it would have been a better strategy if the company had had the wit
to produce a usable product at a fair price.

Are the books much different to this? They have no index and no
bookmarks. (The set is a lot of work to get useful data out of it: I
remember it took me between three and four years to go through all the
volumes when I was adding to my database - and now I reckon I could
usefully start again.)

I still suspect they did this on the cheap in case they fell foul of
copyright. Volume 12/2 was published in 1959. Copyright lasts for 50
years after the death of the author, though this is now 70 years; not
sure what applies to a commissioned/edited series. Anyhow the last
author might have died in 1980 (no idea), leaving copyright lasting
until 2050. So Sutton, the latest (re-)publishers, lose out on their
income from the occasional reprints; they might have authorised the
CDROMs, though.

--
Tim Powys-Lybbe                                          tim@powys.org
             For a miscellany of bygones: http://powys.org/

Symonds

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Symonds » 08 aug 2006 12:15:05

As stated by the disclaimer on the web site it is not machine searchable.
Cheers
Guy
The disclaimer on the web site is located at the bottom of a page

*under* an Acrobat Reader icon, and thus is "hidden" from the attention
of most would-be purchasers. In order to be fair notice, the disclaimer
should be located within the description of the Complete Peerage CD. If
it had been, I would not have been a purchaser. Of course, all of the
above is the reason that the disclaimer is placed under the Acrobat icon
which is so commonly used to convey an offer to download the reader.

The CD permits printing; it does *not* permit document assembly, content
copying or extraction, content extraction for accessibility, commenting,
filing of form fields, signing, creation of template pages, or
submitting forms.

The CD I received has no bookmarking in evidence on the first four
volumes. Its 3000+ pages are generally useless to me. It seems to me
that it would have been a better strategy if the company had had the wit
to produce a usable product at a fair price.

Marilyn

Gjest

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Gjest » 08 aug 2006 12:40:51

On Mon, 7 Aug 2006 18:57:02 +0000 (UTC), Symonds wrote:

This CD arrived today, and using Adobe Acrobat Reader 7, I have been
unable to search the disk - using the Edit-Find method and/or the
binoculars button on the Adobe Reader menu bar. I have run a dozen
searches which produced nothing. I also did test searches for names that
I already know are on the CD: e.g. "Deincourt" on Volume VI.

Apparently this CD is either "different" from all the other PDF CD's or
it is damaged. Can anyone advise me as to whether there is another
method of searching?


Dear Marilyn Symonds

I wondered about that, and checked with the people selling the CD when
wondering whether to buy it.

They told me it wasn't searchable, so I didn't buy it.

In any case, I was worried about the copyright issue.

Symonds

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Symonds » 08 aug 2006 14:06:02

Tim Powys-Lybbe wrote,
Are the books much different to this? They have no index and no
bookmarks. (The set is a lot of work to get useful data out of it: I
remember it took me between three and four years to go through all the
volumes when I was adding to my database - and now I reckon I could
usefully start again.)

I still suspect they did this on the cheap in case they fell foul of
copyright. Volume 12/2 was published in 1959. Copyright lasts for 50
years after the death of the author, though this is now 70 years; not
sure what applies to a commissioned/edited series. Anyhow the last
author might have died in 1980 (no idea), leaving copyright lasting
until 2050. So Sutton, the latest (re-)publishers, lose out on their
income from the occasional reprints; they might have authorised the
CDROMs, though.

I have had an answer from Graham Senior-Milne regarding my request for a
refund : Denied. His allegation is that there have been only two
complaints on this point in "recent years". Oh well...sometimes the
tutorial is worth more than the product itself. I think I will give it
to the genealogical library here. Although with a user time limit on
each of their computers, I don't know if they will even be interested in
accepting it.

Marilyn

Diana Gale Matthiesen

RE: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Diana Gale Matthiesen » 08 aug 2006 14:46:01

There is reason to hang on to the CD, even it you get minimal use out of it. If
someone references a page in the book, at least you can look it up and get the
full quote. And the entries are, after all, alphabetical across the 12
volumes, so it's not impossible to find what you want by browsing, at least
sometimes. There's an interesting article on the hurdles of indexing the CP,
even by computer:

http://www.users.waitrose.com/~cabanas/ ... L20-15.htm

Diana

-----Original Message-----
From: Symonds [mailto:sysite@swbell.net]
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 7:03 AM
To: GEN-MEDIEVAL-L@rootsweb.com
Subject: Re: Complete Peerage CD
snip

I have had an answer from Graham Senior-Milne regarding my
request for a
refund : Denied. His allegation is that there have been only two
complaints on this point in "recent years". Oh well...sometimes the
tutorial is worth more than the product itself. I think I
will give it
to the genealogical library here. Although with a user time limit on
each of their computers, I don't know if they will even be
interested in accepting it.

Marilyn



Symonds

Re: Complete Peerage CD

Legg inn av Symonds » 08 aug 2006 15:55:02

Diana Gale Matthiesen wrote:
There is reason to hang on to the CD, even it you get minimal use out of it. If
someone references a page in the book, at least you can look it up and get the
full quote. And the entries are, after all, alphabetical across the 12
volumes, so it's not impossible to find what you want by browsing, at least
sometimes. There's an interesting article on the hurdles of indexing the CP,
even by computer:

http://www.users.waitrose.com/~cabanas/ ... L20-15.htm

Thank you for sending me the article. I will read it with a new interest
in indexing.

Marilyn

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