Just a few additional thoughts on the concept and realities of some
future Mechanical Music publications on CD ROM.  I love and applaud the
concept.  I think it would be truly marvellous.  But a little caution
is needed relative to whether we are looking into the future or also
the past.

If we are looking into the future, then all the contributing editors
would need to be using computers and software capable of not only
generating the great publications we receive today, but also extending
the output into some form compatible for CD-ROM useage.

Perhaps Julian Dyers might join in this discussion, as he has just
produced his first issue of the PPG Bulletin, totally by computer.
I presume Angelo Rulli and Robin Pratt are also producing their
respective journals with the use of a computer.

If we are looking into the past, then some very practical impediments
emerge.  If a complete issue of a journal is not available in some fully
computerized form, then we would be faced with the need for scanning
each and every page of each and every issue of every participating
journal.  From each scan, would be a need to separate text from
graphics, then merge them back together again in some display format.

Text scanning poses a huge grunt task, because OCR conversion is still
not 100% reliable.  I do a lot of scanning of documents for another
large web site I maintain, and some documents require a huge effort to
edit the resulting scan.  I did some quick scans of some of our early
AMICA Bulletins, with terrible results.  Current issues scan quite
well.  But in reality, the task is mammoth.

I do not disagree that Adobe Capture can accept a "page" or an
"article" and convert it into a .PDF file readable by Adobe Acrobat.
However, the resulting file size makes even CD-ROM disk storage
marginally effective.  For example, the single MBSI article on its home
page is 1.4 megs in size.  A typical CD-ROM capacity of 800-900 megs
begins to introduce a real limitation, unless future iterations of
CD-ROM storage technology (DVD?) opens up new possibilities.

A friend of mine in the UK publishes a company magazine, typically 25
pages big, and he publishes each bi-monthly issue on his company's web
page.  He's taking his current issue, passing it through some kind of
conversion utility that captures both the text and pictures into html
text and .gif images, and blending them all together into a document
readable through a web browser.

Each complete issue, both html and .gif graphics, typically consume
about 450-500 kbytes, about half the size of a single article in .pdf
Acrobat format.

The front end index is critical.  Gary Stevenson has graciously shown
us the way through his outstanding effort to build a complete index of
MBSI articles.  That too is a huge task, that is basically not possible
to automate through OCR conversion.

In the case of the AMICA Bulletin, the construction of an index
would require almost a page by page edit into some kind of database
structure, capturing title, author, page #, issue date, Vol and No.,
not unlike what I've done in a much more modest fashion, for the last
couple of issues of Technicalities.  I suspect this what Gary is going
through right now for MBSI, and he is to be commended.

A look into the future conversion, issue by issue, of complete journals
into CD-ROM format is doable, but only after some research by know-
ledgeable people, and likely some substantial investment in new
equipment and software.

A look into the past poses such huge obstacles, as to make such a
project very difficult.  Not impossible, but IMHO, very, very
difficult.

As a minimum, an index is possible, albeit extremely labour intensive
as I believe Gary will attest.  But without the index, the CD-ROM would
likely not be very useful.  Perhaps Gary would consider publishing on
MMD his specifications for the MBSI index, such that indexes for other
association journals might be similarly patterned.

Within our respective association memberships, we must certainly have
people very knowledgeable in how such things are done in major literary
collections such as the Library of Congress, or the federal government,
etc.  Perhaps some counsel and guidance might emerge from their
participation in such a long term co-operative endeavour.

I would be prepared to participate in such a project, although not from
an engineering perspective.  There would appear to be a number of
options, no doubt not unlike the array of options facing folks trying
hard worldwide to come up with ways of converting music roll data into
some computerized format universally useful into perpetuity, or at very
least into the foreseeable future.

Perhaps the Presidents of the various interlocking associations might
consider putting their respective heads together and come up with some
forward thinking goals, objectives and parallel strategies of achieving
this most commendable initiative.

Just my thoughts. ...

Regards,

Terry Smythe