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Ymgve
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 84 |
Converting C64 mags?
I've been thinking a bit and have wondered if there would be any interest in an effort to convert the text of old c64 mags into readable ascii that can be put on the web. This would make all the text of the old mags searchable and might provide a really valuable resource for the community. Does this sound like something viable or would it just be a waste of time? Comments please. |
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
i know there was some work done to convert one mag to ASCII form, i wrote a piss-poor conversion tool for that job and did some of the work myself, but haven't heard anything since.
i'd quite like to see online versions of some of the bigger mags, but it's not something i'd spend loads of time doing personally. =-) |
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Stryyker
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 466 |
Couldn't you start the project? There is no point doing any of my texts of the last 2 or 3 isues of The Beergarden though, they are created as ASCII text. It is not hard to do. |
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T.M.R
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 749 |
Who me...? |
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Seven
Registered: Jan 2002
Posts: 201 |
An online version of Domination is currently in the making, just don't ask me for a time frame =) |
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TDJ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1879 |
Quote: An online version of Domination is currently in the making, just don't ask me for a time frame =)
I don't care for a time frame, I just wanna know when it'll be finished :) |
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Ymgve
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 84 |
I've started converting some mags already, and so far I've encountered a few technical problems (Magazines like Newspress that unpack text on the fly, can't dump the text easily with a monitor - anybody want to help out with this?), but a far more pressing problem is with the content of these mags.
Like the address sections - they often contain the real names and addresses of a lot of sceners, and in some cases even phone numbers. Should such information be left out for the sake of privacy or should all chapters, no matter how revealing, be included to have a completeness in the archive?
Or, maybe somebody wrote something in a mag when they were in their teens ten years ago, things they'd rather have the world forget, but now there might be a possibility for it to resurface again. Would this project have the potential to hurt a lot of feelings and bring back things best forgotten?
What are your views on this? Any other things I should consider? Again, come with your comments :) |
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drake
Account closed
Registered: Dec 2002
Posts: 207 |
these magazines still can be read nowadays on a c64. so when you talk about privacy or ex-scene wars it doesn't matter. btw: who cares about that? addies became invalid and phonenumbers probably too!
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Ymgve
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 84 |
I was thinking more of that when it is put on the web, search engines like Google will have that information in a form that is 1000 times easier than finding some obscure diskmag, get the emulator, and look through there. I could of course prevent search engines from listing my site, but that does somewhat defy my goal for the project - to let the information be more accessible and searchable.
On a related note, why does CSDb exclude search engines from this site? Same reason?
Here's what I've done so far - there's no UI yet, so bear with me: http://www.dynedyr.org/c64mags/
(I hate Propaganda's custom character set, btw. Argh..) |
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cadaver
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 1159 |
Great work so far!
About on-the-fly depacking, I can think of 2 ways and neither are too pleasant:
1) OCR off emulator screenshots
2) Rip out or reverse-engineer the depack code |
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Ymgve
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 84 |
For the moment I will have to do neither of these things, and just leave out the magazines that do on-the fly depacking. If anybody else would try to reverse-engineer that code it would be great :) |
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