Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!usc!cs.utexas.edu!asuvax!ncar!tank!gargoyle!ddsw1!hammen
From: hammen@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Robert Hammen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: OCR software for the Mac !
Message-ID: <1990Mar12.043220.26598@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Date: 12 Mar 90 04:32:20 GMT
References: <7129@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: hammen@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Robert Hammen)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Personal Publishing Magazine
Lines: 25

In article <7129@ubc-cs.UUCP> Sundar_Prasad@mtsg.ubc.ca (Sundar) writes:
>I would like to hear from people using OCR software on the Macintosh. 

I've just spent the last two weeks working with 10 different OCR packages for
the Mac and PC (it's going to be in an upcoming article in Personal Publishing).

OCR packages (generally) come in two flavors: trainable (you teach it how to
read characters in specific fonts) or omnifont (recognizes all kinds of
different fonts). Programs in the first category are Read-It (Olduvai),
TextScan (Prism), TextPert (CTA), and Readstar II Plus (Inovatic). The big
contenders in the non-trainable realm are OmniPage (Caere) and AccuText (Xerox).

The omnifont programs are pretty good, if you're not doing trying to read 
funky stuff. They do require heavy resources (68020 or greater, and 5 MB
RAM or more), however, so if you've got a Plus or SE, you may want to stick
with Read-It! or TextScan.

What kind of documents are you interested in reading? What kind of scanner
do you have?

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/ Robert Hammen | Technical Editor | Personal Publishing Magazine             /
/ hammen@ddsw1.mcs.com | 76702.1135@compuserve.com | GEnie: R.HAMMEN          /
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