#Need Lo-$ Authoring Pkg
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I'm helping a small museum write a grant application. They want to
scan and OCR a 19th century professional journal, and then set it up
for free-text search and retreival.
There are a lot of authoring packages out there that can do this, but
the problem is that they are treating this as if it was an *academic
microfilm* project. Their initial disk order might be only 100 ea.
The packages I know something about … Dataware, KAware, Folios …
have license fees that may be prohibitive for such a small "press
run". I need an authoring package that either allows a hundred or so
discs to be pressed as part of it's "title" charge, or has a very low
title and per-disc fee. Anybody have any suggestions?
Microsoft Viewer SDK is quite cheap, no royalties. It has a search
engine and whatever else they needed for the Encarta encyclopedia
built in.
"Microsoft Viewer SDK", hmmm? Never heard of it, but I've been waiting
for MS to send me one of their "$99 Special" coupons before I buy the
Encarta.
I checked the OPA Software list in the DL, but there is no entry for
Microsoft. Do you have a contact out there in Belleview?
ps: I might have overdosed on Mimazene, but Folio Corp told me that
View 3.0's commercial developer's kit is now only $2,000.
Furthermore, there is *no* per-title royality, and the per-disc
royality is either 8% of gross or $36.00 per disc. That would put the
total SW charge for this project at $5,600 for 100 discs, or $56 /ea.
How does MS's SDK compare?
If you get in touch with Microsoft Developer Services, either here on
Compuserve, or via telephone, they will tell you how to get the
Microsoft Multimedia Viewer Development Kit. Version 2.0 was in
Beta, it probably is shipping by now. I'm not sure of the price —
something like $495 — and no royalties. It's actually a pretty good
deal.
Another approach might be to subcontract to someone else who
already has the license. Even if there are ongoing royalties, those
are probably affordable compared to the upfront cost.
BTW, I would be very leery of bidding on OCRing 19th century
material: We find the quality of anything before about 1935 to be
_quite_ variable. And if you get back to the hand set type….