Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!ucdavis!deneb.ucdavis.edu!roddyprep
From: roddyprep@deneb.ucdavis.edu (0000;0000090825;420;755;401;)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.misc
Subject: Re: Document Scanners
Message-ID: <2466@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu>
Date: 19 Jul 88 15:12:32 GMT
References: <11536@steinmetz.ge.com> <12415307818.26.WMARTIN@SIMTEL20>
Sender: uucp@ucdavis.ucdavis.edu
Reply-To: roddyprep@deneb.ucdavis.edu.UUCP (Earl H. Kinmonth)
Organization: University of California, Davis
Lines: 32

In article <12415307818.26.WMARTIN@SIMTEL20> WMartin@SIMTEL20.ARPA (William G. Martin) writes:
>paper, but the ads don't go into detail on fonts it can read, or state
>it can pull data from sources like newspaper clippings or magazine
>articles. (The price is $1250 qty 1, if anyone cares.)

Handheld scanners are rather popular in Japan for use with Japanese language
word processors.  They are in the $300 range as accessories to specific
machines.  Judging by the references in my NEC Word Processor manual, these
units treat scanned text as a "picture" -- as bit-mapped graphics.  You
can manipulate the picture (rotate, crop, reverse, etc.) but you can not
edit it as text.

>I recently got an ad from Palantir on their line and they claim their 
>systems can read thousands of fonts, and they show a newspaper clipping
>in the ad's illustration of possible input. But it also looks like they
>are machines which want sheets fed in, so how would you input text from a
>book or newspaper? (I DON'T want to have to photocopy eveything first onto
>standard-sized paper!)

Apparently these units were designed by engineers from the same school of
design as those who did the first Xerox machines.  Their philosophy - nobody
but a dweeb what want to use anything other than 8.5 x 11 paper.

One of my colleagues reports high error rates on reads even with clean
copy.  Moreover, the software on the Palantir lacks easy provision for
"training" to get consistent misreads (mm -> rm, for example) to translate
properly.

Scanning is an area where the Japanese are likely to make substantial
progress simply because once you've come up with a scanner for even
printed Japanese everything else is simple.  However, until they do,
the choices are pretty grim unless you have 8.5 x 11 sheet copy in a clear,
simple typeface....