>>94

My offhand attempt at a meta-FAQ, copied largely from unknown authors elsewhere ;)

(I) Destructive scanning - generally necessary only if it is a tight binding and you don't have a book edge scanner or an overhead scanner (DIY or manufactured).

(II) Non-destructive scanning - most books can be done this way, even with conventional (not book edge) flatbed scanners.

***If you don't read anything else, please bear these uppermost in mind:

A) don't scan-stoopid, as in scanning a book with b&w text in TruColor and 72dpi or for that matter anything less than 300dpi (or in general more than 400dpi or max. 600dpi). And don't scan a normal b&w text in color because the resultant images size will be prohibitive. Scan b&w text in grayscale which you can then process in the likes of ScanTailor and even turn into b&w but nicer than a scanner's b&w.

B) unless you are an expert with limitless time available, don't scan to OCR only. In other words set images (tiff, png etc) as your scanner's output and bind these into pdf or djvu, preferably after tidying up. If you know how, you can add hidden searchable text layer. If you don't, or you want flowable text as in epub etc, then if you are a novice you will likely mess up so do the page images route as outlined above and some nice person out there who knows how, has time to spare and thinks it worth it, might just do the conversion...

What follows imo gives the basics, and this should help you NOT mess up. Bear in mind that for more detailed info if you really need it, specialist webpages exist as in DIY bookscanner, Scanning FAQ etc etc. ***

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