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@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Cristian Berrio Zapata Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2007 9:20 PM To: air-l@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@gmail.com] Enviado el: jueves, 11 de octubre de 2007 10:23 a.m. Para: air-l@listserv.aoir.org; cristian.berrio@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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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