[Air-L] Possible Foreign Spam: Re: e-reading limitations

[Charlie Balch]

I'm not sure that I'm completely following the message below but there are a
number of free alternatives for creating PDFs in the MS Windows environment.
OpenOffice SaveAs PDF natively. I've used CutePDF for years as well. 

The free Irfanview program allows viewing of almost any format of media.

Charlie Balch
Professor of CIS 
Arizona Western College

-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Cristian Berrio Zapata
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 9:20 PM
To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
Subject: Possible Foreign Spam: Re: [Air-L] e-reading limitations

Thanks for your input. You are right, TIF and TIFF are the same. This format
has something that I have not found in adobe acrobat (version 6.0): the
possibility of editing part of the text as image (i.e. to eliminate steins
or blank spaces within a single scanned page or picture). MS Document
Imaging includes OCR so it is possible to turn image into characters and
produce search. This format was supposed to be Microsoft's avatar against
Adobe but if failed to become the market standard (although some data bases
like JSTOR offer this format additional to PDF). I suspect that this is why
they deleted from MSOffice 2007.

Readers are a magnificent tool for knowledge exchange and sharing, but I
have found that (at least for developing countries), the costs of licenses
make them not as popular as required. This means that academic communities
in Latin America (my case) do not master the tool and worst, have no access
to it due to cost (Acrobat Reader is free but does not let you work the text
with comments and marks; for that you require adobe acrobat or acrobat pro
at a rate of USD$ 449 ).

A little sample of digital divide where we need a free software solution
(yeah, as in FREE or at least not expensive. Why des not Adobe produce
something like Microsoft's Campus Agreement so we can access legally their
products at competitive price. A Vista Pro copy under this license is around
USD $20).

-----Mensaje original-----
De: Conor Schaefer [mailto:conor.schaefer at gmail.com] 
Enviado el: jueves, 11 de octubre de 2007 10:23 a.m.
Para: air-l at listserv.aoir.org; cristian.berrio at gmail.com
Asunto: Re: [Air-L] e-reading limitations


Hm, I usually write the file format "TIFF," but I think we're talking 
about the same thing. And oddly, according to Wikpedia, at least, Adobe 
now owns TIFF. From Wikipedia:


Tagged Image File Format (abbreviated TIFF) is a container format for 
storing images, including photographs and line art. It is now under the 
ownership of Adobe. Originally created by the company Aldus[1] for use 
with what was then called "desktop publishing," TIFF is a popular format 
for color and black and white images. The TIFF format is widely 
supported by image-manipulation applications, by publishing and page 
layout applications, by scanning, faxing, word processing, optical 
character recognition and other applications. [2] Adobe Systems, which 
acquired Aldus, now holds the copyright to the TIFF specification.


So it would seem to me that Microsoft was not allowed to include the 
TIFF reader functionality, or decided to exclude it out of animosity 
toward Adobe. Either way, something political, I'm sure.

A quick google for "tiff reader" yielded this page, for a Windows-based 
TIFF viewer called "Brava."

http://www.tiffviewer.com/download.htm

Good luck, and I look forward to others' suggestions.

Conor

Cristian Berrio Zapata wrote:
> Dear all:
>  
> I use to digitalize documents to facilitate my students access to 
> information. It is also quite useful when working with virtual 
> classrooms (i.e. Moodle or Blackboard). Unfortunatelly I have found an 
> unexpected
> problem:
>  
> With MSOffice suite 2003, Microsoft used to include a program called 
> MS Document Imaging produced under licensce of Scan Soft Inc. It is a 
> *.tif reader which is quite useful (pro versions include tools like 
> underline and notes). Big trouble is that MS decided to exclude it 
> from MSOffice suite 2007, so many of my students are blocked when 
> getting to read.
>  
> Does anyone of you know about a TIF document reader which is free and 
> has a decent quality?
>  
> NOTE: Adobe reader does not reconise TIF as it is the competitors' 
> format.
>  
> Thanks for your help.
>  
>  
> Cristian Berrio Zapata _______________________________________________
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