We programmed this X-keys Professional to perform 95% of the tasks needed for the entire project. While PhotoShop and Dreamweaver shortcuts occupy a majority of the X-keys, we still had room for our custom Scan Utility, and some basic Windows shortcuts.

This allowed our operator to keep one hand on the X-keys, one hand on the mouse, and work efficiently and accurately through multiple steps on each of the 3200 pages of our RailDriver Locomotive Cyclopedias

PhotoShop Actions can be a tremendous time saving tool, but there are some functions they can't do, and sometimes what you really need is a series of actions interrupted by user input. This is precisely what we needed for cleaning up the 3200 tif files generated by the scanner -- a series of actions or functions, interwoven with input from the operator which was unique to every page -- and this is where the X-keys performs at its best.

With the X-keys, the action is always one key press away, clearly labeled, and in the same physical location. It puts 58 actions at your fingertips, the ease of programming makes them adaptable on the fly, and the X-keys programs in a language everyone understands -- keystrokes.

Automating the Scanning

Spreading the binding and holding a book against a scanner bed may be fine for a page or two, but this project demanded a new method. We considered cutting the binding off and handling the pages as separate sheets, until we actually bought the books and recoiled at the thought, not only of ruining the $600 investment, but of destroying a piece of history.

Our answer, the Scantastic 3000b (named tongue-in-cheek by it’s creators).

A salvaged wooden desk provides the base for a lever arm holding an inverted scanner. A plywood platform mounted on a pair of drawer guides holds the book in position and allows lateral movement to match the page with the scanning glass.

We modified an HP scanner with a powerful magnet to hold its runners in their tracks when the scanner is inverted. Cardboard shims are added or removed to keep the target page higher than the rest of the book and parallel to the scanner.

A screen door pneumatic closing cylinder dampens the arm motion and holds the scanner tightly against the page, while a cable, pulleys and a plywood treadle allow the operator to raise the scanner with his foot and position the book with both hands.

Rather than making our operator type a nine character title after each of the 3200 pages, we wrote a simple Visual Basic program to regenerate the file name stepping up to the next odd or even number in sequence. Scanning all even numbered pages first, and then all of the odd numbered pages proved to be more efficient, so the numbering program was set up to accommodate that.

The keys programmed to automate the scanning and saving procedure:
1. HP-Scan (Ctrl + Alt + 1) launches HP Precisionscan Pro, the software which came with our scanner with a Windows Shortcut.
2. Scan Utility (Ctrl + Alt +2) launches the visual basic program we wrote. Scan Utility runs concurrently with HP Precisionscan.
3. Pre-scan (Ctrl + N) uses Precisionscan's shortcut to perform the preliminary scan.
4. Scan (Ctrl + T) performs the scan after the operator has made his adjustments.
5. Save Odd and Save Even generate the appropriate file name from our Scan Utility.
6. Enter and Shift perform the same function as they do on the standard keyboard and reside here for convenience.

We installed a new 120 Gig hard drive to hold the scanned files and used almost 40 Gig for each cyclopedia. After the scanning had been completed (roughly, three weeks of work per book), we copied the entire contents of the drive, write protected the disk, and removed it from the machine for safe keeping.

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