Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Sun, 16 Jun 91 19:10:12 GMT From: mnc@css.itd.umich.edu (Miguel Cruz) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Easy Fax to ASCII? (And Back Again, And...) Message-ID: Organization: Univ. of Michigan ITD Consulting & Support Services Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 462, Message 6 of 7 Lines: 25 In article , learn@piroska.uchicago.edu (William Vajk) writes: > There was another fax related message here the other day, and I was in > process of responding when the computer went bye-bye. It was a request > for an easy conversion to ascii from fax. Because of the graphic > nature of fax, and the fact that there is no assurance of the style > and pitch of type received, one would actually have to be at the edge > of some serious AI to achieve the goal requested. Anyone who has used > an optical scanner and worked to convert a long document to ascii from > typed sheets can attest to the difficulties of accurate conversion > given only one character set to decipher. I think "edge of some serious AI" is a bit of an overstatement. With OmniPage running on a lowly Mac I can supply a TIFF of printed text in any combination of sizes and typefaces and in a minute or two I get a text file, generally with no mistakes at all. Granted, it's not so hot with handwritten text (pretty lousy, actually, but they never claimed otherwise). But with some chips optimized for the calculations used in character recognition, and software intelligent enough to give you text when it can, and graphic data otherwise, a fax-ASCII receiver isn't so far-fetched. With a few macros and a fax modem I could basically have that now.