SCANNING TIPS MESSAGE 2 OF 3
- From: Catherine Thomas <braille@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: optacon-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 23:43:37 -0400 (EDT)
As I explained in a previous message, I am a Braille transcriber. I use
the Optacon all the time in conjunction with a scanner. Here are some more
of the ways the two can work together.
PROBLEM: The scanner keeps leaving out punctuation is my documents
and putting in capital letters where they shouldn't be.
REASON: If this is happening, it's usually the print typeface
being used that is the cause. Some typefaces print the punctuation awfully
close to other characters. The scanner cannot make out that there are
actually two separate characters. It just adds the dot of a period or
comma to the previous character. Sometimes the closeness of the
punctuation makes the scanner think a letter is capitalized when it is
not. The letter Y and sometimes the letter S are the ones usually effected
by this.
SOLUTION: Usually we have no control over what typeface is used to
print a document. The only solution to the above is in the correction and
editing phase. Carefully look for a pattern of errors. Once you know what
errors are being made, then you can use search capabilities to correct
them. Be careful not to use global search and replace unless you are sure
that the error is all that will be corrected. Example: Words are ending in
a capital Y. If there are sections in the document that are in alll caps,
globally correcting this error will make changes you don't want.
PROBLEM: Scanner is capitalizing letters it shouldn't and changing
some letters to numbers. Example the word "so" is being scanned as the
number 50.
REASON: As in the problem above, this is a typeface problem. This
time it is that there is too much space between characters or between
words. The scanner doesn't know from context. It takes a picture of what
it thinks it sees. This is the reason why the Optacon can be so useful.
SOLUTION: See the first problem. The Optacon is particularly
helpful here in determining where the scanner made an error and where the
print actually is capitalized for some reason.
PROBLEM: Some pages have multiple columns. The scanner is sticking
pieces of one column into another column where they don't belong.
REASON: Sometimes there are big blank spaces in a given column.
The scanner simply fills the space with text from somewhere else. The
other reason is that sometimes the columns are not very well-separated in
the print. The scanner can sometimes have trouble deciding which text
belongs to which columns.
SOLUTION: The Optacon is invaluable to sort out a mess like that.
If the mess is just too much to correct, the page can be re-scanned one
column at a time. There are two ways of doing that. You can place white
paper on the scanner glass so that only one column at a time is exposed to
be scanned. Or, you can photocopy the page and then cut it apart so that
each column can be scanned separately. A third alternative is to make
several copies of the page in your word processor so that you can take
pieces from each one and eventually get the whole page in the right order.
No matter what choice you make, the Optacon is essential to help with this
problem.
NOTE: The last message in this group wil discuss scanner settings.
I hope that these tips are helpful. Please share them with your friends
who are not Optacon users also.
Catherine
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-Catherine Thomas
braille@xxxxxxxxx /
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