This works for me. As a bonus I got two opportunities to save the file rather than open it! Clive Essery -----Original Message----- From: Dave Mayall [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 01 July 2004 16:02 To: [email protected] Subject: Addressing the TIFF file problem and a new initiative Going by the early feedback on the public access to the images, there are five main gripes; 1) Problems with XP and tiff files 2) Some people have no tiff viewer 3) People want to resize etc images 4) Filename when saving 5) "?" in dropdowns 1 and 2 are major issues, whilst 3 and 4 are more a case of "does sir want the moon on a stick", but hey-ho, if the masses don't get what they want, they write in with endless suggestions as to how it could be done differently, and we get no peace. Point 5 is a poor bit of HCI. I got some way down the track with doing on the fly tiff>jpg conversions to resolve 1 and 2 and added the code to fix 4 and 5. Unfortunately, it seems that all TIFF files are not equal, and some of ours are not standards compliant :-( They cause no problems until you try to convert them to jpgs, where they upset our conversion routines. So, a re-think was in order, and I'd like people to take a look at the prototype of a revised version, which converts all files on the public interface (but not the transcriber interface) to pdf files. This resolves file format problems, and provides a viewer that allows re- sizing, so might even keep the punters happy. It allso allows us to embed a "provided by FreeBMD" into the file, to catch naughty people trying to sell the images. Other enhancements; "?" replaced by "A-Z" in menus better handling of letter ranges in menus file name embedded in output user presented with open/save option box Can people have a play! http://images2.freebmd.org.uk/cgi/choose4.pl And the New Initiative.... Is something that I can claim absolutely no credit whatsoever for. Bob Phillips has set up a mini project to deal with the very worst scans, in particular those scans which are so poor on the film that a conventional re- scan won't help. Bob's project is described at http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robert.phillips40/rescans.htm Basically we get volunteers with digital cameras to go to the FRC and photograph the particularly bad pages from the books. It's an idea which is breathtakingly simple, but it needed someone to think it and to drive it forward, and a big round of applause to Bob for that. I know that Bob would like to take the project further, so if you live in London, have a digital camera, and fancy having a go, please get in touch with Bod. -- Dave Mayall - -------------------------------------------- This mail sent through http://www.ukonline.net ______________________________ ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify our Help Desk. Email [email protected] immediately. You should not copy or use this email or attachment(s) for any purpose nor disclose their contents to any other person. NATS computer systems may be monitored and communications carried on them recorded, to secure the effective operation of the system and for other lawful purposes. ********************************************************************************************************************************************

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 09:17:26 +0100 , you wrote: >This works for me. As a bonus I got two opportunities to save the file >rather than open it! Yes, I don't get why it does that either! I've done some work on refining the conversion routines today, and *hopefully* sorted some of the excessive file sizes on gif/jpg files. Next week I will be looking at giving people the choice of download formats :-) -- Dave Mayall