Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!linac!midway!chsun1!kusumoto From: kusumoto@chsun1.uchicago.edu (Bob Kusumoto) Newsgroups: comp.periphs Subject: PC OCR programs (was: Re: Scanner & OCR info wanted) Message-ID: Date: 30 Jan 91 18:21:50 GMT References: <1991Jan19.003247.23600@techbook.com> <4f660f8c.20b6d@apollo.HP.COM> <1991Jan25.215244.27779@techbook.com> Sender: news@midway.uchicago.edu (News Administrator) Distribution: usa Organization: University of Chicago Lines: 41 Calera makes WordScan (and WordScan Plus, WordScan/AT, WordScan/MCA), which is a nice program (we picked it up). It got a decent review in a past Infoworld article (did fairly well in accuracy, not as well as Omnipage though) and got an editors choice from PC Week (against HP's AccuScan and some other lame OCR program). It's a nice program that works in Windows 3.0 and does a decent job of doing OCR. It's my opinion that it handles cleaner documents swimmingly but doing something like scanning in the sports page stats or handwriting is tough. It's slow (according to Infoworld), but it converts the OCR into the widest range of text and graphics formats (definate plus) and does deferred processing (so you can do those complex scanning of 20 pages with your HP Scanjet Plus with an automatic document feeder, without having to be around). The AT and MCA versions is a hardware card that speeds up processing but costs a hell of a lot more. Caere makes Omnipage, which is another great OCR program (if you can afford it). Infoworld reviewed the Windows 386 2.11 version and it was the most accurate program against the others. It also commented that it was relatively speedy. They've since come out with a Windows 3.0 version (which supposedly works in 32-bit mode or something or other) and repackaged it somewhat into Omnipage and Omnipage Pro (competes better with WordScan and WordScan plus). I just wished that it was out when I bought WordScan Plus, since it is faster and it can deal with handwriting a bit better (WordScan can be pretty awful with handwriting, but in any case, it has to be pretty neat handwriting to begin with, so take this with a grain of salt). Caere seems to be OEM versions of their product to hand scanner makers but I'd get a demo from a sales rep from your local store and bring samples of what you intend to scan in a lot so you can see which OCR program will suit your needs. It seems that this is pretty sound advice since some programs tend to deal with certain types of documents better than others (reference the Infoworld article, they did samples from a double spaced, monotype document, a magazine article, a newspaper article, and some other sample for their speed and accuracy tests), that way you have the best program and scanner for the types of things you're going to be dealing with. Bob -- Bob Kusumoto | I just come from the land of Internet: kusumoto@chsun1.uchicago.edu | the sun/ from a war that must Bitnet: kusumoto%chsun1@uchicago[.bitnet] | be won in the name of truth. UUCP: ...!{oddjob,gargoyle}!chsun1!kusumoto | - New Order, "Love Vigilantes"