I've taken the plunge and decided to create an HTML based eASLRB. Thoughts of adding in some JavaScript have entered my mind, but only briefly, since that is a whole other topic. Though there are rumours of many eASLRB being created out there, I have started from scratch. I went with HTML due to the ease, barring isms with various browsers, of being able to display, scale and move the content to different devices and operating systems. Since I've had some hiccups and issues along the way I am starting this thread to assist others who have recently made the "choice" to go down the eASLRB road. Or, maybe assist them in adding in new modules to their existing eALSRB.
It all started with just scanning everything into PDF. Reading the PDFs on tablets was a hassle due to the columns. To fix that I created two copies of say chapter A. Cropped the LHS on the first copy to 3.75" wide columns and the second copy the RHS column at 3.75". Then used a collate plugin in Acrobat to merge the two documents. It was a pain as the columns shifted slightly on different pages. That resulted in learning that scanning the pages manually made for a better scan. The sheet feeder would sometime put a slight twist on the page, maybe a 0.25-0.5 degree that screwed up the page cropping. BTW, this was on a large Minolta commercial copier/scanner, not a small home printer. A bit of tweaking here and there made the continuous scroll work well with minimal jumping left or right between pages. Had to adjust some two-column portions back to full width, but it worked ok. That worked well for reading but not searching and the file sizes were substantial. Added in hyperlinks to each section to make the navigation easier. A-G in one PDF, Chapter H in another, and the remainder in a 3rd.
After a bit, I took the next step, using the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in Acrobat and convert the document to a text file. From Adobe, I saved the document as a Word document, then from Word, saved it as an HTML. The text conversion was ok, say 95%, but the OCR really struggled to extract the graphics and text in italics. What an F'in mess. Just ended up saving the mess to a text file, read through the sections, rule book on one half of the screen and the text document on the other. Did corrections and search/replace as I went, and after many hours had an accurate text version of Chapter A. When you did a search and replace and had 100 hits, it was great, when there was 1 or 2, not so much. Figured out after a bit what was likely a big issue and what wasn't. BTW, Used Notepad++ as the text editor.
Next up, the joys of converting the text document to HTML.
Colin
It all started with just scanning everything into PDF. Reading the PDFs on tablets was a hassle due to the columns. To fix that I created two copies of say chapter A. Cropped the LHS on the first copy to 3.75" wide columns and the second copy the RHS column at 3.75". Then used a collate plugin in Acrobat to merge the two documents. It was a pain as the columns shifted slightly on different pages. That resulted in learning that scanning the pages manually made for a better scan. The sheet feeder would sometime put a slight twist on the page, maybe a 0.25-0.5 degree that screwed up the page cropping. BTW, this was on a large Minolta commercial copier/scanner, not a small home printer. A bit of tweaking here and there made the continuous scroll work well with minimal jumping left or right between pages. Had to adjust some two-column portions back to full width, but it worked ok. That worked well for reading but not searching and the file sizes were substantial. Added in hyperlinks to each section to make the navigation easier. A-G in one PDF, Chapter H in another, and the remainder in a 3rd.
After a bit, I took the next step, using the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in Acrobat and convert the document to a text file. From Adobe, I saved the document as a Word document, then from Word, saved it as an HTML. The text conversion was ok, say 95%, but the OCR really struggled to extract the graphics and text in italics. What an F'in mess. Just ended up saving the mess to a text file, read through the sections, rule book on one half of the screen and the text document on the other. Did corrections and search/replace as I went, and after many hours had an accurate text version of Chapter A. When you did a search and replace and had 100 hits, it was great, when there was 1 or 2, not so much. Figured out after a bit what was likely a big issue and what wasn't. BTW, Used Notepad++ as the text editor.
Next up, the joys of converting the text document to HTML.
Colin