gmac Posted October 2, 2003 Report Share Posted October 2, 2003 I need to be able to scan large numbers of documents. Ideally I want a format that can be switched between windows and linux. It also needs to be a format that most people would be able to open. PDF files seemed to be ideal in that i can save in linux or windows and also most people would be able to read them as a common format, however they are large. I know I can scan to ms word, however I don't have microsoft office on my computer and my scanner won't save to star office writer but uses the picture format as a default which means that I can't save it as a starwriter document. The problem is the scanner software I think rather than so. At this point I am using a lexmark scanner printer which is not compatable with Linux, which i didn't realise at the time. I have kodak photoeditor which came with the printer which allows me to save as a tiff file which is considerably smaller than pdf. Unfortunately so does not read this file format. my computer is dual booted with win98 and mandrake so i can experiment with linux and i can save from the windows to mandrake without any problem. Actually I haven't tried going the other way yet. I have adobe reader rather than the full blown application. I will have to get a multi page scanner at some poinmt but not yet. Two questions. Is there any open source pdf writer that works on both winows and linux. I can find several alternatives to adobe but they don't seem to apply to linux? I have a md box set that came with the adobe reader but not the full suite. What make of scanner do you find works best with Linux? I haven't had a chance to try sane yet because of the scanner. Lexmark say they have no intention of producing drivers for linux. Any suggestions? If the above seems kind of rambling and incoherent it probably is. I shouldn't do this when I'm tired. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theYinYeti Posted October 3, 2003 Report Share Posted October 3, 2003 For your choice of a scanner, I think you should go to Sane's homepage (something like mostang.org/sane). Creating PDF is very easy in Linux. Just create a PS file the way you want after scanning, either via Gimp, or OpenOffice, or..., and then create the PDF out of the PS with this command: ps2pdf thepsfileyouhave.ps thepdffileyouwant.pdf Yves. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gmac Posted October 6, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2003 Thanks for that. I've discovered that i can use so to scan to tif file format, but it still looks as if pdf is the best compromise. Do youy knpw of any way to compress them. Some of the files I want to keep are pretty large easily filling an ordinary cd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Qchem Posted October 6, 2003 Report Share Posted October 6, 2003 pdf is actually reasonably compressed, compare a pdf to a ps and you can often find it is much smaller. If you're simply wanting the documents backed up somewhere you could always archive them with tar and then bzip the lot of them. I've a sneaky suspicion this isn't what you want however. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gmac Posted October 6, 2003 Author Report Share Posted October 6, 2003 TIF format seems even smaller. I have been looking at two options one called scansoft the other scan to disc that are commercially available data management systems designes to interact with other databases. The more I look at it the more I come to the concluscion that i can probably do a lot of this myself, its just the time it takes. I do not want to turn in to a systems expert and quite frankly I don't understand the differences between the different formats. I need to keep the image not just the information on the documents. In the industry I work in a lot of the software packages available are quite frankly a rip off. Just how big a rip off I realise due to footering about with linux which has enhanced my natural disposition to shop around anyway. Its also made me realise that a little experimentation on my part saves rather a lot of money and will give me a more reliable system. To give you an example one scanning option recommend and supplies a multi page scanner that they retail for £1200. A few minutes on the manifactirers website and you can buy the same scanner for £450. I don't mind companies making a profit but thats a rip off. It makes me suspect the software is also a comparable rip off. Actually its windows based so it probable is. Had a look at the webpage you suggested thanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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