Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!rutgers!ames!oliveb!sun!plaid!chuq From: chuq%plaid@Sun.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) Newsgroups: comp.text.desktop Subject: Re: Multi-font OCR scanners Message-ID: <19207@sun.uucp> Date: Tue, 19-May-87 12:10:25 EDT Article-I.D.: sun.19207 Posted: Tue May 19 12:10:25 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 20-May-87 05:53:58 EDT Sender: news@sun.uucp Distribution: comp Lines: 38 Approved: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com Date: Tue, 19 May 87 09:53:50 CDT From: James Peterson > From: hoptoad!gnu@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (John Gilmore) > I tried to scan in the draft ANSI C Standard a few months ago on that > machine, and while I am not an experienced operator, it had too many > troubles to be useful. We have a Palantir that I have been using for several months to see how well it works. It is a 300 dpi scanner with built-in ASCII conversion. It comes complete with software to run on a SUN, but I found it easier to write my own programs to interpret the scanner output than to use theirs (personal taste -- their programs run under SunWindows, and I don't). Over all I've found that they do a pretty good job on most input, but that the input that I want to scan is close to the margin of acceptable input -- tables tend to be too small or on poor contrast paper or ... I can scan, for example, the Zip code directory for Austin in about an hour, but it then takes me two weeks of evening work to format it and correct the scanning errors. So far I have only scanned stuff that should have built in redundancy that I can check by program. For example, with the Zip codes, all scanned zip codes should be in a small range of legal values, the street names should all be alphabetic, and in order. And so on. This allows me to catch a lot of scanner errors without having to read and compare every entry. It also tends to expose errors in the printed input -- no multi-page reference table that I have scanned has been without printed errors. ---------------------------------------- Submissions to: desktop%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop Administrivia to: desktop-request%plaid@sun.com -OR- sun!plaid!desktop-request Paths: {ihnp4,decwrl,hplabs,seismo,ucbvax}!sun Chuq Von Rospach chuq@sun.COM [I don't read flames] There is no statute of limitations on stupidity