DjVu and its connection to Deep Learning (2023)

Oh, my favourite format during my undergraduate time! Most books in mathematics and physics (some old and niche) were available in the "Russian library".

At the same time, I haven't yet seen DjVu used in a legit way.

Really hate that archive abandoned it. djvu files are much smaller, faster, and high quality than pdf. Real reason for abandoning it was probably to allow for the DRM needed for controlled access lending, because it’s a garbage choice otherwise.

DjVu is excellent format for e-Comics and e-Magazines.

Check out the Amazing Science Fiction Stories, Amazing Stories, Planet Stories, Weird Tales and more.. in DjVu format: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Scanned_English_...

Another reason why I think it failed (TIL Yann LeCun was the coauthor) is the connotation with the pirate books/articles community.

When I came across this format in college days, when handling lots of scanned material, it always triggered the mental “don’t install suspicious software” block. Which is a shame as the article points out it was the superior format.

I don’t know how relevant the samples are, but while the details are lost, the essence seems well preserved. It seems it would be really useful for performing OCR on.

Ironically, because of poor software support and lack of knowledge about the format, most DjVus are slowly being converted to PDFs.