Help Coding Stamp Scans, Please!

Hi


According to the ISO 3 standard country codes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-3

Monaco ------ MCO
Mongolia ---- MNG
Montenegro -- MNE
Montserrat -- MSR

Jerry B

Thanks for the feedback Stampgal. At times I've wondered if I was talking to only myself and Jerry. Now I know others are finding it useful so will continue to update as the process continues.





A very good suggestion.

Pros:

• it is a standard so others may recognise it
  
• you don't need to reinvent it.
  
• Each code is unique

Cons:

• For a newby, some countries are not intuitive (ie, I don't read Equatorial Guinea and automatically think GNQ)
  
• it doesn't cater for dead countries or areas (eg, Rhodesia and Biafra)
  
• It changes the alphabetical order of the countries

This second one is a significant problem to me. If I'm to invent my own code for some places, I will need to do the others too for the code to be consistent.




What is your "common format" Rod? Please share more. I think you use a folder system with folders named after each country. I'll be putting all African scans in one folder at this stage.




Another possibility but not necessary at this stage as I use scans of whole pages. Thanks for the suggestion.




A good question. This is what prompted the thread. My problem was the British colonies. I've decided to go with a four letter code (5 letters when necessary to make the code unique), and use only the first two letters of the colonial power for colonies. So British East Africa becomes BrEA.

Country code at this stage:

• If the country name consists of 1 word, use the first 4 letters, the first one capital (eg, Angola = Ango)
  
• If the country name consists of 2 words, use the first 2 letters of each word, the first letter of each word being capital (eg, Cape Juby = CaJu)
  
• If the country name consists of 3 or more words, use the first 2 letters of the first word (first letter capital) and the first letter of each other word (capitals) (eg, British East Africa = BrEA, British South Africa Company = BrSAC - which is the only 5 letter code at this stage)
  
• Ignore words not usually capitalised such as 'the' and 'of' (eg, The Gambia = Gamb, Territory of the Afars and Issas = TeAI)
  

use a dash as a separator between the parts of the code

Problems of a non unique country code:

• Niger and Nigeria (Nige)
  
• Nyasaland and Nyassa (Nyas) (Solved by using 5 letters)
  
• Transkei amd Transvaal (Tran) (Solved by using 'Trak' and 'Trav' as the codes)
  

Problems of reversed alphabetical order:

• British Somaliland (BrSo) and British South Africa Company (BrSAC)
  
• Gunea (Guin) and Guinea Bissau (GuBi)
  
• Mozambique (Moza) and Mozambique Company (MoCo)
  
• Niger (Nige) and Niger Coast (NiCo)
  
• Port Said (PoSa), Portuguese Congo (PoCo) and Portuguese Guinea (PoGu)
  
• Rhodesia (Rhod) and Rhodesia & Nyasaland (RhNy)
  
• South West Afica (SoWA), Sothern Nigeria (SoNi) and Southern Rhodesia (SoRh)
  

Ideas anyone?

Hi Peter



Here's a method that might solve your problem:

1. Right justify the country code.
2. Sort country code.
3. Left justify country code.

If you are doing this with WORD tables I can write a VBA macro for you which will do the above steps. All you would do is put the cursor in the table and run the macro. If you have never done macros before I can help you via e-mail.

Jerry B

At the end of the day are you not just trying to create a new cataloging schema?

Rod: in using "opt" do you have a way of distinguishing between a textural overprint (e.g., vichy) and a numeric overprint such as a surcharge (e.g., 2c).

Hi Peter

Ignore my post. Right shifting would probably not give you the order you want. I sent you an e-mail that shows how to check a table sort option.

Come to think of it, why not use the entire country name, excluding ands, ifs or buts. I am assuming you are using XP or above.
Therefore, file names can contain 255 characters. As I said in an
e-mail, my wife's recipe files are the name of the recipe and some are pretty long.

Jerry B

Any suggestions as to coding stamps that fall into the British Offices Abroad: Offices in Africa: Middle East Forces: For use in Ethiopia, the Dodecanese and Somalia (stamps of Great Britain, 1937-42 overprinted in black or blue-black M.E.F).

Probably. I haven't come across one that does what I want it to do yet. If I had (or if anyone else has and is willing to share it) I'd use that. In their absence I'll keep working on one until it does what I want it to do.




Another useful suggestion. Please keep them coming Jerry. I really appreciate the way we think differently. My computer is running Windows 7. I think the whole country (or area) name would make many of the files too long to see at a glance. For example, you'd see three files with "CentralAfrican..." rather than CeAR-Emp.jpg CeAR-Rep-din.jpg CeAR-Rep-spo.jpg. The second set will give more information.

Hi Peter




It is not as bad as you would think. You could make Central-Africa a folder which would reduce the file name characters. I don't know how much computer expertise you have but, a couple of things I did to make the folder look cleaner are:

1. Go to control panel and click on Folder options.

2. Click on the view tab.

3. Locate something like "do not cache thumbnails" and check it.

4. Click OK.

5. Now in each of your folders look for a little square box in the folder toolbar that says something like view when you hover the mouse over it.

6. Click the down pointing arrow to the right of the box.

7. In the drop down menu click on Thumbnails.

Doing this every image will be displayed with the name below it. This can also be done with folders. For a folder only 4 file images will be shown. Since you turned off caching Thumbnail files there isn't too much of a resource overhead.

In addition a technique would be to right click an image file and select properties. Once the properties dialog is shown select summary. Type a Title and whatever you want in the Comments Box (number of characters is limited and to get multiple lines use CTRL-Enter). Now whenever you hover the mouse over an image file these 2 fields will be displayed.

How did the sorting go?

Jerry B

I don't know enough about MEF stamps to comment, Cynical, however I found it useful to come up with a hierarchical list of areas first. I put a sample picture up in the first post. Before doing that, I had in my mind an idea of how I wanted to store these files. For this there were a number of options:

• Rod stores his files in folders within folders. He has commented on this in a number of topics. This avoids the need for a code.
  
• Others use a program like Ezstamps or a database (Jerry 'jbcev80' would be a great help with a database).
  
• I decided to store all the files in the same folder and so need a code to avoid having a folder full of files with names that don't mean much such as scan0001, scan0002, etc. or Africa0001, Africa0002, etc.
  

When or if you decide to work on this further (I suggest you start a new topic so we don't get confused about what we are discussing) please put a comment here. The comment will connect the two posts. That way we can gain from your experience and you can gain from ours.

Hi Peter

Rod's idea of using folders is the correct way to do it. Folders do not really take space. They are essentially recorded as a name. Also using folders makes a cleaner and less confusing system of storing images.

With my images I have main folders Colombia and Ecuador. Within those folders there is a folder for each issue year. Now within the issue year, if a stamp is a single item it gets a folder marked as SET-nn and in that is the single image file. If a set of stamps, a new SET-nn folder is created and all image files of the stamps within the set are stored. In addition I have added a keyword to the keyword property of each file. If I want to find something I use Windows Explorer search facility and search for an item.

Jerry B

i agree with everyone else.
Using custom folders is the best way to go.

Cynical,
taking advantage of the long file name, I can put in what I want, where I want it.

I do not want to re-invent the wheel, so simply
use Stanley Gibbons Cataloguing.
Then add what I want.
This gives it a unique code amongst 400,000 stamps

Example: lets take Germany and the Fanny Hensel stamp
SG2167 (1986) T0832 300pf fanny hensel [0m1] composer File522.jpg

When I require a "want list" of missing stamps
this stamp (if missing) would be

SG2167 (1986) T0832 300pf fanny hensel [missing] composer File522.jpg

Nigelc suggested he knew the lass as Mendellson (sp? cannot recall exactly) then I add that to the file name

Your only limiting parameter is the length of the long file name.

One advantage I have over the rest of you,
is all my code names are linked to a scan of the stamp

So, all I have to do is to give the basic code NAME
a "File number"
Lets say I have 26 varieties of the German Fanny Hensel stamp :)
perf
diecut
perf booklet
diecut booklet
missing colour
etc etc

all I have to do is give the basic code NAME
and add a different file number at the end.
The scan identifies the variety.

I do this when I have say 40 different scans of the
GB parcel postmarks on just one issue KG5

Hope that goes some way to explaining.

BTW:
when I print out a stamp list
the computer automatically gives it a country code
All I do is add the computer "path"
Being all in folders then the computer will
print out

C:/Stamps/Germany/Fed rep/SG2167 (1986) T0832 300pf fanny hensel [0m1]
composer File522.jpg