| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 07 Oct 2013 : 19:35:49
I'm waiting for 3 god related sourcebooks to appear on the dndclassics website (faiths and avatars, powers and pantheons and demihuman deities).
Primarily I want them so I can finally copy and paste all the lovely lore in those books into word documents that I can then cross reference with everything else I have collected.
However I have never bought a pdf from the dndclassics website before and so I have no idea if they have OCR on the pdfs and so have text that I can highlight and copy.
Has anyone bought anything from dndclassics yet, are the pdfs of high quality, with OCR and index, maybe even a table of contents? |
| 11 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Xnella Moonblade-Thann |
Posted - 13 Mar 2014 : 04:53:15
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
quote:
Originally posted by Xnella Moonblade-Thann
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
quote:
Originally posted by Xnella Moonblade-Thann
However...my pdf copy of the original Oriental Adventures for AD&D has a page missing which was replaced with a carbon-copy of the page before it...
What page? I recently bought that pdf, myself, when I suddenly became obsessed with the idea of a hengeyokai NPC.
It would be page 139 of my 1e Oriental Adventures...but I'm not too worried as it only details life in Kara-Tur and I do have a hard copy of the book. The only part that bothers me is that the text is not OCR'd. But I can read it so it's a minor thing.
Weird... My copy is free of that flaw, and is OCR'ed...
Wooly, I'd like a copy of your AD&D Oriental Adventures if'n ya don't mind? 
And @SirUrza, I could send you a copy of my Temple of Elemental Evil pdf if you'd like an OCR'd one? |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 10 Mar 2014 : 09:55:27
quote:
Originally posted by Xnella Moonblade-Thann
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
quote:
Originally posted by Xnella Moonblade-Thann
However...my pdf copy of the original Oriental Adventures for AD&D has a page missing which was replaced with a carbon-copy of the page before it...
What page? I recently bought that pdf, myself, when I suddenly became obsessed with the idea of a hengeyokai NPC.
It would be page 139 of my 1e Oriental Adventures...but I'm not too worried as it only details life in Kara-Tur and I do have a hard copy of the book. The only part that bothers me is that the text is not OCR'd. But I can read it so it's a minor thing.
Weird... My copy is free of that flaw, and is OCR'ed... |
| Xnella Moonblade-Thann |
Posted - 10 Mar 2014 : 06:44:05
quote:
Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
quote:
Originally posted by Xnella Moonblade-Thann
However...my pdf copy of the original Oriental Adventures for AD&D has a page missing which was replaced with a carbon-copy of the page before it...
What page? I recently bought that pdf, myself, when I suddenly became obsessed with the idea of a hengeyokai NPC.
It would be page 139 of my 1e Oriental Adventures...but I'm not too worried as it only details life in Kara-Tur and I do have a hard copy of the book. The only part that bothers me is that the text is not OCR'd. But I can read it so it's a minor thing.
As for the messed-up page of my Al-Qadim pdf, it was only a page of artwork near the begining (before the table of contents) and since I have a hard copy of that one as well, again I'm not too worried/bothered by it. On this one the text is selectable and after pasting into a word document and with a little fixing I can make it readable and formatted properly for printing. |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 10 Mar 2014 : 04:34:15
quote:
Originally posted by Xnella Moonblade-Thann
However...my pdf copy of the original Oriental Adventures for AD&D has a page missing which was replaced with a carbon-copy of the page before it...
What page? I recently bought that pdf, myself, when I suddenly became obsessed with the idea of a hengeyokai NPC. |
| Xnella Moonblade-Thann |
Posted - 02 Feb 2014 : 03:59:37
hmm...I seem to have a very nice version of the Temple of Elemental Evil pdf with which I am able to copy and paste what I want from it into a word/text document and only have to make minor adjustments to the copied text (things like replacing a wrong letter with the proper one or fixing the font/emphasis on a word or two)...and mine was free too...
However...my pdf copy of the original Oriental Adventures for AD&D has a page missing which was replaced with a carbon-copy of the page before it...and my pdf copy of Al-Qadim has a messed-up page which started out as a page in the book and somehow became crossed with a page from one of the Volo guides...mayhaps a few gremlins had a field day with the files before I got them? |
| SirUrza |
Posted - 10 Oct 2013 : 18:49:02
*nods*
I was very excited when Temple of Elemental Evil was made available for free.
See, 2 years ago I got to meet Frank Mentzer and had him sign my copy. On top of that, I really don't want it to fall apart should I ever use it again.
So I get the pdf when it's free... open it.. and disappointment.
Sure it's free.. so I shouldn't complain.. but if this is like this.. why the heck would I buy any of pdf. The images and maps not being crystal clear and sharp I can understand, but there's no in a PDF that the "page" itself isn't white. It shouldn't show aging, dirt, or stains. This is furthered by the fact that the text itself isn't clear. They didn't extract any of the text, reformat it, set it to the proper fonts, and then lay each page out again properly.
Sure this takes time.. but now you have a product people would be willing to buy because not only is it a clean digital copy, but it's a copy they can selectively print things out of and be able to read!
I'd pay money for that.. but not for the quality I've seen. |
| Gary Dallison |
Posted - 08 Oct 2013 : 11:24:26
Well i dont think it would be piracy since i already own the content in hardback, i just want it in electronic format and my poor fingers are too old and riddled with RSI to type it out myself (and im only 32 today).
I doubt i could afford a full version of acrobat reader, and i have tried other free OCR's but with no success.
But thanks for the info everyone |
| Derulbaskul |
Posted - 08 Oct 2013 : 09:05:41
There are several websites that have copied and posted the text of those three books. (BTW, I'm not advocating piracy of these books: I am simply pointing out that the text is already online.)
Like Wooly, I bought a lot of the PDFs the first time around and some have good OCR and some do not. There seems to have been no quality control in place (not surprising for a company that still struggles with posting content to its website). However, I have had some success using a full version of Adobe Acrobat to convert the text to OCR in those PDFs that did not have it. I do stress "some"; sometimes the quality of the scan is so poor that even the human eye struggles to make out the details! :) |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 07 Oct 2013 : 22:48:36
I have those pdfs from when they were first available. A couple of them were good and were OCR'ed, but the other one was not. |
| Kentinal |
Posted - 07 Oct 2013 : 20:25:35
The book of "Vile Darkness" first Edition was reported to be in poor condition.
I clearly would believe content for 3rd, 4th and soon 5th would be files as high in quality as the print or ebooks released. File saving and conversions has improved greatly. |
| Ashe Ravenheart |
Posted - 07 Oct 2013 : 20:00:22
It very much depends on the specific book. Most of the older books are scanned in manually from physical copies, so the OCR and index may not be there (or may not be the best quality). |
