Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2009 December 4

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December 4

Funny shapes in scanned images

Like many other scanned images I've seen, this picture (taken from a Google Books scan of an 1890s book) has funny shapes that presumably comes from the scanning process. Not all Google Books images have these shapes uniformly, as you can see at this image, but most seem to have them to some extent. What causes these shapes to appear? Nyttend (talk) 01:07, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It's Moiré fringing - cause by the beat frequency between the halftoning grid in the original image and the pixels in the camera/scanner. Scanning the image at much higher resolution - and using appropriate filtering to down-size the image can get rid of this - but sadly, it's a common artifact in amateur scanning. SteveBaker (talk) 02:23, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Some scanning software has an option called "Descreening" which is designed to reduce this effect. --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Anonymous

I don't know if this is the right sort of question for the reference desk, but what are your views on the internet group Anonymous, are they a serious threat, or are they like a little brother whining for attention? Thank you for your time.

Americanfreedom (talk) 05:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I would say that your suspicions are correct - it's not the right sort of question for the Reference Desk as any answer other than linking the Wikipedia article would be a forum discussion. And since you linked the relevant article yourself, you imply that you've already read it, meaning there's probably nothing else to do or say here, so let's just move along shall we? 218.25.32.210 (talk) 09:14, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Anonymous is a joke. A bunch of fake hackers pretending to exist in an unstructured collective, which is actually highly structured. Anonymous never was an never will be a part of the hacking scene. The war on Scientology is naive and immature —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.44.55.75 (talk) 22:09, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

@88.44.55.75 Anon: I have scored your comment out to avoid a debate, according to the guidelines, Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Guidelines#What_the_reference_desk_is_not. We're here to answer factual questions, not discuss. --81.101.121.181 (talk) 16:00, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Spell check in MS Word

I am proof checking a document of about 250 pages, created by someone else in Word 2003. I can see with the naked eye that it contains many spelling errors (not just matters of style such as labour/labor, but things like advnatage instead of advantage). Yet when I run spell check none of these errors are picked up. I get a message telling me that spell check is complete, but that text marked in some particular way (I forget the detail) has not been checked. How can I force Word to check ALL the document? I have spent ages with the online help routine and can't find any clue about this.

Thanks for any help. Maid Marion (talk) 08:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Try Tools, Language, Set Language and check that "Do not check spelling or grammar" isn't checked. --Phil Holmes (talk) 09:25, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Phil, but this made no difference - I still get the same result. Having done it again, I can now tell you all what the exact message is: Text marked with 'Do not check spelling or grammar' was skipped. But presumably there should not be any such text now that I have followed Phil's suggestion? Maid Marion (talk) 11:17, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I think you need to look for Tools, Spelling & Grammar, Options, Recheck Document ... this forces a recheck of words previously marked to be ignored - which may be your issue. It's worth double-checking all the options on the Options list, lest any of them have silly configurations. Also check the the language of the document is set appropriately - CTRL-A, Tools, Language, Set Language. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Should have said - select all the document before you set the checking options. --Phil Holmes (talk) 12:00, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks to both of you, but none of this seems to solve the problem. Not to worry - I guess I'll just have to rely on old-fashioned 'manual' proofreading. 86.146.15.100 (talk) 16:13, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Hey - don't give up! I think there are some "features" in the way Word allows you to change the language. On my system, either selecting all, or selecting more than about 5 pages mean that the change doesn't "stick". (You can check by selecting the "undo" down-arrow and see that you can't undo the change, since it hasn't been made). Try selecting less text (including some you know is wrong) and change the setting. I think this will work. --Phil Holmes (talk) 16:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you could create a new Microsoft Word document and copy/paste the entire contents of the first one into it? That might enable you to bypass oddities in the old document that are causing this problem. Do you have significant formatting in the document? If you simply have text, or if text formatting isn't used very much, you could copy the text into Notepad and then into a new Word document; while that would get rid of good formatting, it would guarantee that there was no odd formatting in the text itself. Nyttend (talk) 18:14, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

... and you might just check that the mis-spelt words have not been accidentally included in a user dictionary (e.g. Custom.dic). Go to Tools --> Options --> Spelling & Grammar ... and tick the box "Suggest from main dictionary only". Dbfirs 13:46, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Isn't the 'Do not check spelling or grammar' setting a per-paragraph style setting? You might need to select all the text and flick that setting back and forth a few times to make it propogate the change across all the styles. However, copying it all to a new document is a good idea and will let you impose a consistant set of styles across the whole document; and it might reduce the size of the .doc file as well. Astronaut (talk) 16:20, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Apologies if this is obvious to you, but don't rely just on Spellcheck; it won't flag words that have been misspelled as another valid word, or some grammar mistakes - you really need to read the whole thing yourself line by line, paying attention to meaning, and possibly also to consistency of punctuation and layout (parts of what are sometimes called "house style"). As a former professional editor and proofreader, I can confirm that proof checking requires much more concentration and mental effort than ordinary reading. Checking on screen is strangely harder than on paper, so consider printing the material out if you haven't already. You may find it helps to hold a ruler under each line to deliberately slow your reading speed down and thus avoid accidentally skimming over mistakes without noticing them. Watch out for errors in larger-print, like chapter titles - they're easy to miss. Proof checking a 250-page document is not a trivial task - I'd guesstimate it to be at least 30 hours or so of hard work. Good luck! 87.81.230.195 (talk) 00:25, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Animation

To make an animation, I used Photoshop CS4 on a Macbook and created pictures frame by frame. Is there any software that can link all these images together to make a gif animation?--153.20.24.68 (talk) 09:03, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes. Photoshop CS4 can make animated GIFs: File --> Save for Web. That's assuming you used the animation palette to make the frames -- which you did, right?--Drknkn (talk) 09:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Put in a more helpful way: in CS4, go to Window > Animation. In the lower-right corner of the window created will be a button that, when you hover your mouse over it, says "Convert to Frame Animation." If you click that, it'll make a frame of animation with whatever you have visible, labeled "1". If you create a new frame (labeled "2"), whatever layers you enable in that will be the second frame. And so on. Once you have all of these frames set up (and the timings between the frames what you want them to be), then you can Save as Web, and save it as an Animated GIF. --Mr.98 (talk) 14:02, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

convert *.gif w00tpie.gif ¦ Reisio (talk) 05:30, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Google Search

Suppose there is a url as: "www.somesite.com\someDir1\someFile.jar". Now, suppose I need to find all the links from the web that point to the files located under someDir1. How do I do that (using google or any other engine)? 218.248.80.113 (talk) 12:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

First of all, the directory separator in Internet URLs is "/", not "\" as in Windows. To answer your question, I think that you can use "search terms link:www.somesite.com/someDir1" in Google, but I am not sure. Perhaps it will only find links to the exact page "www.somesite.com/someDir1". --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:30, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

The "link:<URL>" method appears not to be working very well in Google, I must say, though. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 13:33, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Font ID request

In this picture the font used for "THE 50 BEST Ice-cream parlours", as well as the bolded names of the winners below. A heavier weight can be seen here... I tried WhatTheFont to no avail! Thanks! ╟─TreasuryTag►senator─╢ 17:11, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It looks at first glance like something in the Myriad family. --Mr.98 (talk) 17:21, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Very close, but not quite: the tops of the 'y' slope differently, and the horizontal stroke of the 'n'... :( ╟─TreasuryTag►directorate─╢ 17:24, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It is very similar to both Congress Sans Light and PTL Maurea, although there are subtle differences (in at least the 'a' and 'e' and slightly in 'r'). -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 17:54, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, they're exactly the same two that MyFonts suggested for the first image :P ╟─TreasuryTag►UK EYES ONLY─╢ 17:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Closer still is Agilita Light. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:22, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Or Linotype Trade Gothic Roman. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 18:31, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Whitney ¦ Reisio (talk) 06:25, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

so, my laptop is completely destroyed, again.

The screen comes up as just lots of strange coloured lines, I think I can sort of see the desktop through them, and still open files on it, but in a strange blured and barely visible way, and many times over across the screen space. Is there any way of getting everything off? Can I plug it into another screen somehow and still use that, can I plug something in and copy all my files over onto that, and would I have to select everything on the desktop to copy over, as I can't see which is which, would that even work? Is there anything I can do to make it look better and easier to work with?

my sister's laptop, which is the same, had a grafics problem a few days ago, though I am not sure mine has the same problem, if it is, if the grafics driver has broken down, what do I do then? Would I have to send it to the mechanics, or can I fix it myself?

148.197.114.158 (talk) 18:38, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

My guess is that's its the connections between the body of the laptop and the screen. It'll probably work if you get a screen from a desktop and plug it into the VGA plug on your laptop.

I tried that, there doesn't seem to be anywhere the right shape for the plug though. I think my laptop is too new. Or the screen too old. 148.197.114.158 (talk) 19:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

If you told us the type of laptop it was, we could probably tell you what kind of plug it would be. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:56, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

It's... one of those ones that fold in half. It says Medion on the top, beyond that i don't know though. Whichever plug it might be though, it seems I don't have one, and if I did I'm not sure the other end of the wire would plug in anywhere. It seems incompatible for any wire from any screen I have ever seen. Perhaps there is some other way?148.197.114.158 (talk) 22:36, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Should be a model number on the bottom or someplace. You should have a Video Graphics Array or a Digital Visual Interface connector. If your display uses VGA, you can get an adapter from DVI. In the worst case, the hard drive can be removed and an adapter cable for USB attached to connect it to another PC so you can recover the data. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 02:54, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I think the problem could be a problem with the screen, a problem with the graphics card, or a problem with the graphics drivers. If you can see the BIOS screen before any sign of the operating system, then it is graphics drivers which are faulty (to test that theory further, try booting from a CD - perhaps a Linux Live CD - which will use a different graphics driver). Assuming you are using Windows, you can press F8 to force the computer to bring up a menu where you can select "safe mode" which will let you delete the existing graphics driver and install a new one.

The other two possibilities will require a repair. If you connect an external monitor (there is usually an external VGA interface on laptops) and the problem is gone it means the screen is faulty. If the problem is still there then graphics card is faulty. You can visit Medion Support if you click here, which provides various options including emailing them and calling their hotline (open 7 days a week). This page describes how to find your laptop (or notebook) ID number which you will need. If it is out of warranty, you will have to pay for a repair which could be very expensive.

One thing to note is that laptop repair usually make no guarantees about keeping your data, especially if sending it away. Ask their advice about whether you can simply remove the hard drive before sending it for repair, or whether you should back up your stuff. Btter still, try to get them to do a "on-site" repair (I had a similar sounding problem with my laptop about a year ago; the on-site repair was quick and efficient, and free because it was under warranty). Astronaut (talk) 14:20, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

That sounds like good advice, only trouble is I have no idea what a BIOS or a Linux live is, and I can't actually get into safe mode or back anything up, because I can't see the screen well enough to know what I am doing on it. And my laptop doesn't have a VGA interface. It seems to have one of those DVI things, though I have never seen a plug for one of those anywhere. I think I will take it back home, see what my parents think, we should be able to work something out, and at least everything on it seems to still be there, somewhere. It was a lot worse last time. 148.197.114.158 (talk) 13:06, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

The BIOS screen is the first thing the computer displays. Before windows starts, so if the problem exists from the moment you turn on your computer then it's likely that it's not the drivers that are at fault. [1] for a the live CD, you will also need a program for burning bootable CD's and a computer from which to burn CD's. DVI to VGA adaptors are availiable, ask at your local computer store. Taemyr (talk) 10:27, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

If anyone still cares, it suddenly started working properly again after a few days, but still no sign exactly what was wrong. 80.47.153.175 (talk) 19:02, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Excel Formula Help

 Done

I’m looking for some help with an Excel formula. I think I’m pretty savy with Excel, but just cannot seem to figure this one out. THANKS for any solutions.

In Column A, I have text in each row that’s one of: TR, Plunge, SW, Central, or KCM.

In Column B, I have a dollar amount in each row (i.e. $15.00). The amount varies.

I want a formula that does this:

If Column A contains TR or Plunge, then sum the amount for that row, found in Column B.

Example:

A	B
TR	$50
Plunge	$45
SW	$25
Central	$90
TR	$35

So with the formula, it would automatically scan Column A, see the Plunge and TR, then add the $50, $45 and $35 and show the total of $130.

Thanks for any suggestions! Rangermike (talk) 20:31, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I think SumIf is probably what you want. It only takes one criteria (annoying, of course), but since your criteria is so simple you could easily use two of them. e.g. =SumIf(A1:A5, "Plunge", B1:B5)+SumIf(A1:A5, "TR", B1:B5). --Mr.98 (talk) 20:49, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

An alternative would be to use column C and enter the formula =IF(OR(A2="TR",A2="Plunge"),B2,0) and then sum the resulting figures. --Phil Holmes (talk) 10:57, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for both suggestions! 64.85.199.27 (talk) 18:57, 8 December 2009 (UTC)