[gui-talk] Yesterday's announcement from the RFB&D

[taraprakash]

I spoke to the guy taking care of the NLS pilot project about providing 
various navigation levels in their books. He said it wouldn't be possible at 
that time as it would require a lot of extra space and more manpower then 
they could afford. I guess the situation is still the same.

For a student of, say,  English literature any kind of book can be an object 
of serious study. So you can't always distinguish between text books and 
books for pleasure reading. But the number of patrons who read all books as 
a serious study is too little.
To NLS's credit, they are producing high quality audio and they are doing it 
much rapidly than I was expecting. If the choice is between 5000 books a 
month with all possible daisy mark ups and 7000 with minimal heading levels, 
I will choose the latter.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "albert griffith" <albertgriffith at sbcglobal.net>
To: "'NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List'" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 11:41 AM
Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Yesterday's announcement from the RFB&D


> When comparing the amount of daisy formatting used in NLS VS. RFB and D
> books you have to take in to account the difference, generally, in the 
> kind
> of material they're recording.  NLS primarily produces books for pleasure
> reading while RFB And D records text books where there's a greater need 
> for
> higher levels of navigation.  It would be a waste of resources for NLS to
> place the same number of markers in their recordings.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:gui-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On
> Behalf Of David Andrews
> Sent: Sunday, May 03, 2009 2:41 PM
> To: NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Yesterday's announcement from the RFB&D
>
> Hi:
>
> Some of your thoughts about DAISY books, why they are the way they
> are etc. are possibly logical, but wrong.
>
> NLS does not put in less navigation levels then RFB&D because it
> takes up more space.  It takes a trivial amount of space, when
> compared to the whole book.  They put in less partly because most of
> the books they read have little navigation info, and people read them
> straight through.  Remember the nav points reflect something in a
> book chapter, section, sub-section etc.
>
> the main difference in NLS and RFB&D books, size wise is because they
> use different codec's.  This is the software that compresses the
> audio of the reading of the book, so it takes less space.  RFB&D uses
> MP3 files, and NLS uses 3GP files produced by the AMRWB Plus
> codec.  These files are about half the size of MP3 files for the same
> quality.
>
> However, AMR Wideband Plus isn't as widely used.
>
> Finally a .zip file is actually an archive, that is it compresses a
> group of files, and combines them under one file name.  NLS uses it
> for convenience, it keeps all the files together under one file
> name.  You download it and unzip it to extract the individual files.
>
> I don't exactly know how RFB&D is distributing its files, since I
> haven't used new service yet, but whether or not they are zipped, one
> of their books contains the same kinds of files as does a NLS book,
> compressed audio, structure files, and .smil files linking structure and
> audio.
>
> Dave
>
> At 08:47 PM 5/1/2009, you wrote:
>>I guess because of 2 reasons:
>>
>>Firstly NLS doesn't provide navigations on that many levels as RFB&D
>>does. NLS saves space in that process.
>>Secondly, many people will still use RFBD books on their CD players
>>which is not the case with NLS books. To be able to put RFBD books
>>on to CD's they have no option except dividing large books in to several
> books.
>>
>>They can follow your suggestion and make the entire book as single
>>zip file as in the case of NLS books, in that case they will have to
>>make 2 different versions of the book available: 1 for CD users and
>>other for non-CD, VR Stream etc users.
>>
>>I myself second this approach.
>>
>>Regards
>>----- Original Message ----- From: "Rick Roderick" <rickrod at insightbb.com>
>>To: "NFBnet GUI Talk Mailing List" <gui-talk at nfbnet.org>
>>Sent: Friday, May 01, 2009 7:12 PM
>>Subject: Re: [gui-talk] Yesterday's announcement from the RFB&D
>>
>>
>>>I wonder why they don't use the NLS system.
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>gui-talk mailing list
>>>gui-talk at nfbnet.org
>>>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/gui-talk_nfbnet.org
>>>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>>for gui-talk:
>>>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/gui-talk_nfbnet.org/taraprakash%40gm
> ail.com
>>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>gui-talk mailing list
>>gui-talk at nfbnet.org
>>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/gui-talk_nfbnet.org
>>To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info
>>for gui-talk:
>>http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/gui-talk_nfbnet.org/dandrews%40visi.c
> om
>>
>>
>>__________ Information from ESET Smart Security, version of virus
>>signature database 4049 (20090501) __________
>>
>>The message was checked by ESET Smart Security.
>>
>>http://www.eset.com
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gui-talk mailing list
> gui-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/gui-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for
> gui-talk:
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/gui-talk_nfbnet.org/albertgriffith%40s
> bcglobal.net
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> gui-talk mailing list
> gui-talk at nfbnet.org
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/gui-talk_nfbnet.org
> To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for 
> gui-talk:
> http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/gui-talk_nfbnet.org/taraprakash%40gmail.com