On the road…. again!

Afghanistan to Zambia

Chronicles of a Footloose Forester

By Dick Pellek

Reading The Fine Print

We all know that there is going to be fine print in contracts and agreements.  For the most part, the fine print protects the other party from unnecessary lawsuits, in the event that you, the potential plantiff, want to take issue with the terms of the contract or agreement, after the fact.  Most times we just don't read the fine print, but sometimes at our own peril.

In the case of the fine print we really wish to read, there are a few impediments in our way if the medium that displays the fine print as an attachment or an embed within a computer software program makes the job difficult or downright impossible.  In the present circumstances, the Footloose Forester is aware that not everyone who read his latest chronicle, "Not A Notebook....Exactly" will be able to read the embedded Newsletter December 1997.  And without being able to read the content of the Newsletter, the chronicle itself has little substance and holds little interest.   

Word processing software, computer picture viewers, and the like; make it easier to communicate across the world with words, streaming videos and with scanned photos; but if the finished product cannot be deciphered by the intended audience, the mission has not been accomplished.  In the re-sized and re-scanned embed from his own archive of old newsletters, the Footloose Forester learned that it is possible to enhance the orginal document and re-post it for its intended recipients.  He also learned that even at full enhancement to fit the whole page, most people will not be able to read anything more in its present form than they could in its original size.  Take heart, all of you who are dismayed at the limits of computer technology.  In the original scan that resides in his archives, the Footloose Forester can read everything clearly because the source document displays with sharp resolution. He thought that when he copied and pasted the source document into a blank page within the LegacyStories.org editor; that it would also be clear.  It was not.

There are other tricks and techniques that can be tried.  Here is one of them, thanks to the techies at Legacy Stories. Make a copy of the scanned document in pdf format and save it aside for insertion at the place in your story where you would normally insert a photograph.  Put the cursor at the place where you want the scanned document to go, click "insert photos";  choose the scanned document as your photo of choice, upload it into the internal editor, and then insert it.  The scanned document will then appear as a pdf document, highlighted in blue.  By then clicking on the blue hyperlink, you will be able to read the scanned document in its original resolution.                                                           

 Newsletter-1997.pdf

(click on the blue text above to see what was going on in 1997)

There are several social networks out there, with varying sophistication built into their internal editors, thus some systems allow for more contributor hands-on manipulation; and others with far less.  So keep the original source documents at hand; and someday we will be able to share virtually everything with sharp resolution. When that day comes, any determined computer user will be able to put solid evidence into the computer archives of others, anywhere; to do with it what they will.