Keith's Weblog: Comments on "Amazon.com: The C.S. Lewis Index: A Comprehensive Guide to Lewis's Writings and Ideas"

by Lincoln

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 23:42:22 +0000

word highlighting is easy. highlighting on a phrase is not so easy unless you have the exact phrase. Google build the "image" on the fly?

by Keith

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 01:18:29 +0000

Google build the "image" on the fly?

Doesn't seem so. They seem to be direct scans. They have the original pagination and formatting and even any original art that's in the book. I'm really at a loss as to how they did it.

by Elling

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 17:19:28 +0000

It's OCR, man....

They scan the pages, apply OCR, and remember the position of the different words.

Probably all there is to it, I think.

by Keith

Sat, 12 Nov 2005 18:07:17 +0000

You're probably right. It just seems so much like magic to me I guess they could remember the coordinates of every single word. They even manage to highlight phrases across punctuation and such. One thing I did notice -- in that link, the word "analogical" is split across two lines as "ana-", "logical". The search picks it up as "analogical", but the highlighter catches "ana-" on one line, but not "logical" on the next.

by DJ Hannibal

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 04:05:40 +0000

It just seems so much like magic to me

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
---Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961