The Secretary story supports my initial hunch

[Must_B_Free]

"I typed memos that had this information in them, but I did not type these memos. "

Rove cleanses originals but in fear that copies exist, he muddies the waters with what can be judged fakes, thereby casting doubt on all allegations of * failure to perform his service.

I am not going with MS word, I think they were typed, but there has certainly been doubt cast on their authenticity.

Tthis satisfies all - CBS's information is all accurate, because the contents are authentic.

The rightist conspiracy theorists can believe what they wish to about the authenticity of the docs.

Rove does his predictable thing.

Bottom line, W doesn't have a record to demonstrate his service.

[babylonsister]

1. He Had

but it's being covered up.

[dweller]

2. Ever scanned an item (ie. handwritten letter)

and save it as a word doc?

what does it save?

dp

[hexola]

3. Is that a leading question?

or are you genuinely curious?

[dweller]

4. i can't replicate it here

but i was trying to scan some Chinese characters and save them to file, and one of the choices was a word doc.

I have also scanned pages from books (don't remember the fonts) and saved them as text in word, and the fonts changed.

So, would a typewritten page, scanned and saved as word, look like a word doc?

it was a genuine curiousity.
dp

[Paulie]

5. Yes it would look like a Word doc

When you scan something, it's a "picture". To convert the "text", you need to have it translated from a picture back into text via OCR (optical character recognition).

I convert documents, either scanned or PDF files, at work. Either copy/paste from Acrobat Reader into Word (better, it treats it as text), or scanning the doc into Acrobat (not as good since it has to guess what the picture of the letter is and then put that letter as text) whatever you copy it into, AS TEXT, is the format of the program you just pasted into.

[hexola]

6. Well - it would probably appear as a graphic...

In most peoples setup it would likely appear as a large graphic embedded in a Word Doc...not as raw text...

Very little chance that OCR was in play...

- As far as OCR goes (optical character recognition) Many scanners come with software for it...I'm not sure Word itself can do this - unless newer versions can? And it's never quite perfect - I usually had to edit a bit after scanning...

The fonts may have changed - but I bet they changed to whatever the default font is...

Its been a long time since I've done a lot of OCR-ing - so maybe it works better these days...

[dweller]

7. it was several years ago, and OCR

i believe was the option.

I was just curious if the conflict about these documents could have come about from scanning the originals, and then some change came about that were not in the original (fonts, spacing etc.)

dp

[Must_B_Free]

8. Omnipage would try to match the original fonts and sizes

but I think it would be clear that these were not original; i.e. it would look more obviously messed with.

The problem I have with the docs is that I don't see someone using a booksetting typewriter. I don't see someone taking all the time to do difficult things.

That being said, I think the roving baseline is a problem for calling it a WP.

So I am torn on this issue. The simplest explanation would be that there is a typewriter out there that has not been identified, but can reproduce the document easily and it would be an exact match. Then the WH is simply lying their ass off as a defense, like they do with everything.

That would be the easiest explanation to believe.

I haven't seem any analysis of Olivetti, Olympia, Brother and the other typewriter companies and models; everyone has focused solely on IBM.

[hexola]

9. You would think the military would order special "gov spec" machines?

and have a paper trail of the specs...just like any govt contract...

I think - if the memos were reproduced - it was done years and years ago for a more benign purpose...

Everybody is assuming typed documents...

What about Microfiche - can you make a copy off that stuff - any noteable artifacts...

What about Mimeograph? - that blurry, purple stinky stuff...

[hexola]

10. Unlikely...

most scans would really be "pictures of text" - not really text...OCR looks at the picture and decides what the words are...

Your scanner software may have had OCR and it may have worked with Word - but I'm pretty sure Word has no built in OCR...