[posthumanus]

hi:

i’ve done a search and people only seem to talk about scanning photos. basically i’m only interested in scanning text (ie: an open book laid flat), saving as MS word, or preferably Appleworks, then editing the text for personal use. i can’t think why this should be impossible. but i know nothing.

if it is possible, i’d be happy with a brand name & model number of something cheap if anyone cares to recommend. i can make an easy short list and go from there.

my specs are: iMac DV 400/OS 9.1/Appleworks 6/MS Office 2001.

thanks.

posthumanus.

[Hörnchen]

You can use every scanner. What you need is the software for recognizing the characters; so called OCR (optical character recognition); it comes with some scanners. I have good experience with Abbyy Fine Reader, there are others, like Omnipage or ReadIris, but I don't know them (look at versiontracker for OCR).
With Fine Reader you can load a TIFF image (thats why you can use every scanner, you scan your text as b&w image) and it find's out any text; given it has a good contrast.

[MikeM32]

Hörnchen is dead on. You'll need some sort of OCR software. I've used OmniPage Pro and it's not too bad (but it's not free either). The only problems I've run into is when the original copy isn't very clear. The OCR software will attempt to interpret things that aren't very clear and you usually wind-up with "gobbledy gook".

Another thing I've noted is that generally OCR-ing isn't an exact science and usually it's good to run a spellcheck and proofread the text after the OCR is performed.

Mike

[Mr Heliums]

Originally posted by posthumanus:
<STRONG>
if it is possible, i’d be happy with a brand name & model number of something cheap if anyone cares to recommend. i can make an easy short list and go from there.

my specs are: iMac DV 400/OS 9.1/Appleworks 6/MS Office 2001.

thanks.

posthumanus.</STRONG>

You'll need a scanner, which might come with OCR software. But if not (or if its a limited version), an proper off-the-shelf solution isn't expensive.
You can download a trial version of Abby's Finereader, the best recognition that I've seen. Saves directly to AppleWorks.

Avoid ReadIris.

[ 01-20-2002: Message edited by: Mr Heliums ]

[posthumanus]

thanks for your help people.

posthumanus out.

[FXWizard]

Originally posted by Mr Heliums:
<STRONG>

Avoid ReadIris.

[ 01-20-2002: Message edited by: Mr Heliums ]</STRONG>

What problems have you had with ReadIris? It's worked fine for me with my AGFA SnapScan e50...

[Mr Heliums]

Originally posted by FXWizard:
<STRONG>

What problems have you had with ReadIris? It's worked fine for me with my AGFA SnapScan e50...</STRONG>

I found its software clunky and its recognition poor compared to the others - there's no autoskew feature, so if your scan is even slightly skewed, recognition is almost worthless.

But YMMV

[Evan Evanson]

Originally posted by MikeM32:
<STRONG>Hörnchen is dead on. You'll need some sort of OCR software. I've used OmniPage Pro and it's not too bad (but it's not free either). </STRONG>

Until February 10th, Scansoft is selling their newly-updated (after years of stagnation) version of OmniPage Pro for only $100. Works in both OS 9 and X, and it seems to have some genuinely nice new features. You can read about it here, and the special price is here.

Evan Evanson

[ 01-27-2002: Message edited by: Evan Evanson ]