Manual for Lattice C

[DrCoolZic]

Do not want to be pessimistic but seems like Bolle and the books are gone for long vacations !!!! I left a pm in early Nov and it was never picked up !

I am persuing an agreement with someone in UK. He may lend me the books so I can scan them. I'll keep you posted.

[FujiMan]

Hi all,

Well I could scan this in... But I don't really have the time to markup the PDF with links. We need to make this a team effort to do the markup. Its really not that hard, just too time consuming for one person to do it.

Hopefully someone is working on this. It would be nice to see it done. I hope to have all my docs on a DVD or CD sets with the software on there too.

FujiMan

Do not want to be pessimistic but seems like Bolle and the books are gone for long vacations !!!! I left a pm in early Nov and it was never picked up !

I am persuing an agreement with someone in UK. He may lend me the books so I can scan them. I'll keep you posted.

[DrCoolZic]

Hi all,

Well I could scan this in... But I don't really have the time to markup the PDF with links. We need to make this a team effort to do the markup. Its really not that hard, just too time consuming for one person to do it.

FujiMan

I am certainly willing to help on this matter (I have OmniPage 15). I have not tried to convert a book before and any advice will be welcome. My experience with OP15 is that it recognize the text pretty well but it generates very strange Word doc (lots and lots of styles) and needs a lot of cleanup. I have heard of technique to keep the original scan + a layer for text to be searched ??? But I have no idea how it works ?

By the way I am also on hold on getting a version to scan from guy in UK!

[Jammer]

I'm going to try and scan in this manual, so just checking no one has already done it ?
Its 300+ pages, ring bound and is difficult to scan.
I'm scanning at 200DPI and have put up a few pages here
http://www.mevagissey.net/lattice to get some feedback.

The pages look a bit rough and ready, but unless I dismantle the manual, thats the best I can do.

So, just let me know if its Ok and I'll start scanning the rest.
Any volunteers to make them into PDF files ?

Cheers
Jammer

[DrCoolZic]

This is not too bad and it converts relatively well under OP16.

As usual Omnipage produce a readable results but makes sometimes strange fonts and size selection. Therefore some cleanup needs to be apllied (actually lots of cleanup).

Here is the raw convertion with OP obtained in a few minutes.
Sorry pages are not in order

For pages with graphics I would recommend 300 dpi

Jean

[DrCoolZic]

Now the pdf versions
1) is with the original images on one layer (would need to cut the images to remove the ring bound) + text on an hidden layer (this allow to search with the find command in Acrobat - search for GST as an example).

2) One as edited text only (looks not bad)

And this time I reconverted with pages in correct order. Results much better than in Word!

Let me know what you think
Jean

Added comment
I am pretty sure lattice C compiler doc does not exist in electronic format (I have been looking for it for the last two years) and i would say GO FOR IT and many thanks in advance

[Lautreamont]

The text only document is very nice!

But the amount of work is ... Fuji

Scanning the 300 pages of this manual (vol 1 only!) would probably take a couple of months and loads of anti-depressors to the best of the die-hard librarians/archivists.

And I have no idea of how long it would take after that to set up a proper document from the scanned pages!

And for how many users ?

... Poor bolle.

[DrCoolZic]

Scanning the 300 pages of this manual (vol 1 only!) would probably take a couple of months and loads of anti-depressors to the best of the die-hard librarians/archivists.

I don't think so. For test purpose I have scanned the Devpac 2 doc (197 pages) in about 2-3 hours while doing other stuffs at same time. Really not too much of a pain.

And I have no idea of how long it would take after that to set up a proper document from the scanned pages!

This I can do. For the test case above without cleaning it took me about 5 minutes. I tested cleaning the doc to make it perfect (everything well aligned, consistent fonts, titles, etc...) and here I agree it takes much more time. This is mainly because I need a litttle bit of practice with OP editor.

And for how many users ?

Difficult to say. Lattice and Pure C are to my knowledge the best 2 C compilers and therefore I am sure many people are interested.

... Poor bolle.

I do not think he's still working on it. I posted several PM and it never replied. As I said before after all this time I think he's gone...

300 pages should not take more than a couple of days to scan (doing only that) and convertion in images plus text should take less than one day.
Converting to text only can be done at the same time as above and cleaning can be done slowly and incrementally ...

If I am getting the scan I can take care of the conversion

[DrCoolZic]

Its 300+ pages, ring bound and is difficult to scan.
The pages look a bit rough and ready, but unless I dismantle the manual, thats the best I can do.

One thing you can try to speed up is to scan two pages at the same time if your scanner is big enough. Should be feasible on a ring bound manual and should divide by two the time to scan.
No problem for convertion

[Jammer]

I've added a few more pages at 300dpi, and one double page.
If you think they are Ok, I'll carry on with the rest.
Cheers
Jammer

[DrCoolZic]

I've added a few more pages at 300dpi, and one double page.
If you think they are Ok, I'll carry on with the rest.
Cheers
Jammer

Sorry not to reply before but I was out of town ....

OK I have proceeded with your new test pages.
Text recognition is almost perfect (asking very very few questions during recognition) and graphics are good. So if 300 is acceptable in term of scan time it is definitively easier.

As before I did images+text (looking as original and offering search capability) and text only. Text only is nicer but as already mentioned will require proof reading as errors are introduced.

Double pages: feasible but more work. In image+text would require processing in an image processing program, and text only has also some problem. So if acceptable single page preferred.

For image+text one problem is obviously the fact that we see the ring + plus images not perfectly vertical. Therefore for test I have processed one page (used paint shop pro) with cropping and rotation
Would need to do that on all pages for image+text. Result is nice but not as clean as text only but does not require extra post processing effort.

Remember that image+text allow to search for specific term in the document: For example in Acrobat reader search for GEM

-------

In summary if you are willing to do the scan preferred solution is one page at a time and in 300 dpi (at least for pages with graphics)

Note that none of the produced files has been post processed (cleaned) and are direct from recognition. Real life would require proof reading possibly from you as you have original.

Jean

[DrCoolZic]

Cropped /Rotated Intro - Images + Text
Search for GEM in Acrobat as test

Looks not too bad

[DrCoolZic]

Relatively clean version !!!!

[DrCoolZic]

Ok
Here is the superclean version !!!

Only thing that might need improvement is graphics ...

I did proof reading and error should be gone ?

[Mug UK]

I'll need some pointers from you as I scanned in using a Fujitsu SnapScan (or ScanSnap) the whole Devpac ST 2 manual. 186 pages are now sat in a 5MB PDF file but my first attempt at OCR'ing it came out not too good. Will upload it somewhere for you to find and let me know how I go about editing it / cleaning it up.

Good work on the manual you've been doing though. The ST coders out there will be very appreciative

[DrCoolZic]

I'll need some pointers from you as I scanned in using a Fujitsu SnapScan (or ScanSnap) the whole Devpac ST 2 manual. 186 pages are now sat in a 5MB PDF file but my first attempt at OCR'ing it came out not too good. Will upload it somewhere for you to find and let me know how I go about editing it / cleaning it up.

As mentioned I have also scanned Devpac 2. Mine is 40MB !!! But I have not yet tried to OCR. Not sure what you are asking me to do? But if I can help you are welcome

Good work on the manual you've been doing though. The ST coders out there will be very appreciative

I think there is alot of people that would like to get doc on Lattice C. But I just realized that apparently the doc from Jammer is for Lattice C 5.0 ans several program like EDC are gone from 5.5.
As far as I know latest version of the program is 5.6 and latest version of the doc is 5.5 !!!
As it is a lot of work would be great to get scan on 5.5.
But seems difficult to find someone ready to scan 5.5 ... so 5.0 will be better than nothing ....

ANYONE with 5.5 and ready to scan ?????

[Mug UK]

Have a look .. all done in a few minutes using a Fujitsu ScanSnap in work:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mike.mee/atari/manuals/ - 5.7M in size.

The most editing I've done to it is to remove a few blank pages.

[DrCoolZic]

Have a look .. all done in a few minutes using a Fujitsu ScanSnap in work:

I have looked at the document and it has a very good quatilty and better contrast than my scan!
I am using an Epson perfection 4490 Photo. I did not have it for long and I still need to play with the settings. I did the scan using 300 dpi so graphics are nice but again contrast and thickness of characters is less than yours.

See attached page 13 with graphics.

Question: Latest DEvpac is v3 but never heard of v3 doc?

For the Lattice C manuals
Jammer hold on. As I mentioned above it looks like you have the manuals for V5.0. I have contacted two guys from this forum that have V5.5.
Potentially one might scan his doc (slim chance ...) ...
... and the other one is willing to send me the 3 manuals and addendum from UK for me to scan and to send it back to him ...

However we are both nervous about sending the doc over the channel ...

So if we scan Lattice doc we definitively want to scan 5.5

Note: For fun I have redone some of the graphics of the Lattice C documentation using snapshots from steem and it is of course much better than scan and probably than original manual!!!

[DrCoolZic]

More info on Lattice C manuals

Seems like manuals 5.5 and 5.6 are not the same. Easy to recognize the 5.5 is ring bounded and 5.6 is plain book.

How different are they ???? Don't know.
I should b able to get my hands on 5.5 manuals for me to scan.
If any volonteer to scan 5.6 let me know.

I also tried to take pictures with a camera of manuals.
I tested with camera on a "foot" and manuals as close as possible to minimize deformations ... light is also a problem

On a ring bounded manuals like devpacST results are acceptable with 1280*960 definition OCR did work perfectly.

Unfortunately on a regular book results are bad specially because of the deformations close to the middle bound of the book.

[FujiMan]

Hi,

yes, the scansnap is a great scanner...

fwiw, the scansnap is the only way to go. It a PDF with searchable text. The PDF to text is nearly perfect, So you could extract the text, but you would have to proofread and correct the text.

It takes a small amount of time to scan, but the editing is the real time killer. If there was a CVS type of document editing would be great. Big manuals need several people to work in tandem.

I had several copies of the MWC docs with one literally falling apart from the binding and held together by duct tape. I sacrificed the duct tape version to scan in for Atari Forum users. It is available as a PDF (with pdf links from the TOC) on a ftp server.

Sometimes sacrifice is required for others to enjoy...

FujiMan

Have a look .. all done in a few minutes using a Fujitsu ScanSnap in work:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mike.mee/atari/manuals/ - 5.7M in size.

The most editing I've done to it is to remove a few blank pages.

[Mug UK]

Yep .. certainly will miss it when I move to the new job in 2.5 weeks time

http://www.tradescanners.com/fujitsu/scansnaps500.php?adwords=1&gclid=CMiyuZ-UxYsCFQHtlAodMwSUAg

[DrCoolZic]

Here is the information I have got from 'belboz' on 5.5 & 5.6 differences:

Well the 5.5 manuals are better quality (besides just the spiral bound issue). 5.5 does a better job with the layout. For instance when describing function calls the 5.5 manual starts each function description on a new page. 5.6 crams everything together so if you only have a few lines left after describing a function, they go ahead and start the next definition on that same page. So it is harder to see separation in the 5.6 manual.

However 5.6 is the better manual since it describes lots of new stuff that takes advantage of the newer TOS's, machines, etc.

5.5 is a good manual (5.0 isn't worth scanning). 5.6 is just better and newer, but they cheaped out on the bindings and layout.

The intent is to perform OCR after scan so layout can be arranged the way we want. My experience is that the text directly out of the OCR is not usable due to usage of multiple fonts/size ...
Usually I also use standard format like letter or A4 to optimize printing...

As 5.5 seems definitively easier to scan we can start with this one. Not sure if 5.6 is a complete rewrite or has new sections with new layout. If someone is willing to scan the added/changed sections in 5.6 (if not too many) then we can update 5.5 latter on ????

[Jammer]

Ok I'll put Lattice C5 on hold for now.

I've also got Hisoft Basic 2, is it worth scanning that in ?
I've just uploaded the disks http://www.mevagissey.net/lattice

Cheers
Jammer

[bladeomega]

Has anyone the Lattice C documentation as pdf? Because the previous links are all dead. Thx for help.

[DrCoolZic]

Unfortunately there has never been any documentation for Lattice C 5.x available on the net