Readings Week 3

Computer Typesetting
Document preperation- one of the most successful aspects of computing technology
Machine readable form-widespread and easy to reuse
-the advent of document preparation technology resulted in virtually no one uses typewriters anymore
Process of computer typesetting over years
---evolved from film strips to laser printers
The evolution of printing technology tied with development of software to format documents
Two models of printing software--some is the exact appearance of text, other is describes the doc in terms
Documents and material are now available in immense amounts online due to technology
Text Formats
Numerous types of text formats-characters, symbols, etc.
Also important, how each characters are handled
3 Standards of text formats-MARC,SGML,HTML
Ways of Searching
Linear search, inverted files, hash tables
Linear Searching
algorithm that searches a file from beginning to end looking for a string
Document Conversion
Two ways to convert old docs, scanning them in or keying them in
Scanning - Optical Character Regonition
Scanning cheaper option
OCR has become more and more reliable over the years

My Thoughts
This chapter has described in great detail the evolution and development of computer typesetting, text formatting and printing. Technology that was once unimaginable has created an industry where vast amounts of documents and information can be stored, searched and retrieved. It is overwhelming to think (and read!) about the amount of technology that has developed to achieve documents available in the digital form that are able to be printed, stored, searched for or are even just viewable! It is hard to think of a time when information was just not available from a desktop and this article has given me an appreciation of all the work that has gone on to create the way documents and information are available digitally.