CD question

[sartorias]

Thanks for your answers, those who responded to my previous question. I am at home now, on my computer, old as it is, I'm used to it. (I borrowed a nifty littke EEE but it was impossible to type on without constant error

Comments

[thistleingrey]

One thing that tends to help with multiple-person typing jobs (speaking as someone who has post-processed the results of such outsourced contract jobs a few times, professionally, whee!) is to have two or three people type the same content. If there's enough of us (and I'm willing to contribute some time as well--I go about 90 WPM), then we could probably manage two people for most/all of the book. Then someone "runs a diff"--compares the results against each other, and looks for disparities; it is unusual statistically for 2+ typists to make exactly the same errors if they're moderately careful typists. And then, ideally, someone reads the way a proofreader would, to catch things that typists might indeed fudge (period for a comma, e.g., on either Qwerty or Dvorak layouts).

Maybe we're too enthusiastic for the level of confidence that a reprint project would have, but rekeying is totally feasible. The one thing is that a publisher might want to have someone prepare a simple release for all typist-volunteers to sign, saying that we know we're doing this for free and expect no recompense, or whatever the terms are....

[thistleingrey]

That is, compares the results with computer aid. :P "diff" is actually a unix program that flags every single difference, including spaces; there are similar programs with easier-to-use interfaces. Anyhow.

[sartorias]

That is really an imposition on the generosity of friends--I think I need to find a way around it, or just retype it all myself. But thanks!