Re: j Macarty, could use your assistance! was: Re: Introducing PDF2OCR and seeking testers

  • From: "inthaneelf" <inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2007 13:41:50 -0700

thank you for the additional information, this should clear it up nicely for Jamal and anyone else who was/is interested.


one note, the version on my site is the 4.X version you stated was the last free version so grab it up if you want it folks!

I'll take this, my message and the previous notes and put them together into a help document and wrap the whole thing up in one of my "crazy but it works" WinZip self installer packages.

thanks much for the clarifications and additional information!
inthane
. For Blind Programming assistance, Information, Useful Programs, and Links to Jamal Mazrui's Text tutorial packages and Applications, visit me at:
http://grabbag.alacorncomputer.com
. to be able to view a simple programming project in several programming languages, visit the Fruit basket demo site at:
http://fruitbasketdemo.alacorncomputer.com

----- Original Message ----- From: "Macarty, Jay {PBSG}" <Jay.Macarty@xxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 5:48 AM
Subject: RE: j Macarty, could use your assistance! was: Re: Introducing PDF2OCR and seeking testers


inthane,
You have summarized the features of PrintKey nicely; thanks. Just a
couple of additional notes.

1. The most recent version of PrintKey is a licensed software package (I
don't recall the cost at this point). The latest free version was
version 4.0 which is the one I posted about originally.

2. My most common method for invoking PrintKey to capture a window is to
launch the software by selecting the printkey.exe program in Windows
Explorer or FileDir.  Then, I normally use the keystroke to capture only
the specific window with focus; the key is alt+printscreen. That way I
only get the window I am interested in and not everything around it.

3. Once you press printscreen or alt+printscreen, you will hear a sound
like a camera and then the PrintKey window will pop up. I then select
the print button and my printer dialog is set to go to a .MDI document
instead of a regular printer. It should be noted that one other useful
action when the PrintKey dialog comes up is to press ctrl+c to send the
window image to the clipboard. Then, you can paste it into a document or
an e-mail.

4. When the print selection creates the .MDI document, you will
automatically be placed in the Microsoft image viewer program. You then
select the Tools menu and press enter on Send this image to a Word
document. You will then be asked if you want to perform OCR on the
image. I am not sure if you can override the OCR program the viewer
invokes at this point but it would be worth researching.

I'm thinking that, if PrintKey has the ability to save the image in
another format such as tif, it might be possible to try running the
image through the tool included in Jamal's PDF2OCR package to compare.
My general impression is that the OCR included with Office Tools isn't
the greatest. PrintKey gives you the ability to play with some aspects
of the image in order to get it like you want and some of those setting
may allow for better OCR translation. I just haven't been able to find
what might improve it.



-----Original Message-----
From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of inthaneelf
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 1:58 AM
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: j Macarty, could use your assistance! was: Re: Introducing
PDF2OCR and seeking testers

Jamal,

all I have at this time is the information that j Macarty's E mail gave,

which I included in the text around the link. its a stand alone
application,
and if I remember right, one starts the application by entering on it,
then
uses the screen print key on the image one is trying to OCR and I
believe
the application will open then to ask what you want to do with this
captured
image.  and I believe that you save it as a .MDI document, then you open

that file which should start the correct Microsoft  program to OCR the
file
and render it for your reading.

if j catches this post maybe he can clarify this whole thing further
than
this, and I'll nab his explanation and put it with the application for
folks
to get with it.

I set it up and ran through it once, found that it seemed to be working
alright, and haven't put it back on my newly reloaded machine yet due to
the
fact that I rarely deal with screen images, the old "once in a harvest
moon"
scenario.

there is stuff on the web about it though, I found the app in a Google
search after J's post on the list about it and its value to him.

sorry I can't be of more help at this point, but if he doesn't have, or
he
misses this post and doesn't expand on it, I will see what I can find.

inthane
----- Original Message ----- From: "Jamal Mazrui" <empower@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 8:21 PM
Subject: Re: Introducing PDF2OCR and seeking testers


Thanks for the info.  Can you distribute more documentation with it?
I
guess PrintKey.exe is the utility, itself, rather than an installer.
When I ran it, there were no messages, either from a GUI or a command
prompt.  I tried typical help command-line parameters to no avail.
What
is .mdi format (I have not heard of it before)?  Can any version of
Microsoft Word read it?  How does one do this with Word?

Assuming the program works as you have described (though I need to
learn
specific steps of invocation), it seems considerably different in
purpose
than PDF2OCR.  It seems that PrintKey is for learning about a screen
image, whereas PDF2OCR is for learning about a PDF file.  Both involve
OCR
(though PrintKey does not do this, itself), but the types of
information
to be accessed in a typically temporarl, static screen image are
usually
different than the content of a potentially large or formal piece of
writing in a PDF.

Jamal
On Fri, 14 Sep 2007,
inthaneelf wrote:

Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:03:32 -0700
From: inthaneelf <inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Introducing PDF2OCR and seeking testers

you can google for it, but I have put it up on my grab bag site for
download, and the text that accompanies the link tells you how to use
it
for
this purpose.

its a self contained executable, that you generally would go and
click on
to
use, I put it in a folder in my programs files folder and generally
put a
shortcut to it in CO:\Documents and Settings\[my user named
folder]\Start
Menu\Programs\Startup
or for a universal (all users of the computer run on it:
CO:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Startup

this loads it at start up and makes it available by just hitting the
old
"print screen" button on your keyboard.  but you can just make a
shortcut
to
it anywhere, and start it if you need it, so your not loading
unneeded
items
at boot up.

HTH,
Inthane
. For Blind Programming assistance, Information, Useful Programs, and

Links
to Jamal Mazrui's Text tutorial packages and Applications, visit me
at:
http://grabbag.alacorncomputer.com
. to be able to view a simple programming project in several
programming
languages, visit the Fruit basket demo site at:
http://fruitbasketdemo.alacorncomputer.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eileen Lafond" <Eileen.Lafond@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: Introducing PDF2OCR and seeking testers


Where do you get print screen?

Eileen La Fond
Phone (206) 386-0011
e.mail Eileen.LaFond@xxxxxxxxxxx

>>> "inthaneelf" <inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 9/14/2007 2:29 PM >>>
I understand, print screen is a small utility that Jay Macarty , put
out
as
a interim solution for folks that had to deal with screen images sent
to
them by clients, to OCR them, so I thought in the spirit of seeing
how
this
free OCR module that your using did compared to other scanners that
are
free
also I would run it through it.

and yes, the setup I am talking about is for OCRing a completely
graphic
image and attempting to render it into a text version.

I wasn't trying to be offensive Jamal, but testing your program
against
some
others isn't a bad idea, to give you an idea of how well it, and this
freebee OCR module does compared to other things out here, that are
free,
or
included in suite's that a lot of us have?

inthane
. For Blind Programming assistance, Information, Useful Programs, and

Links
to Jamal Mazrui's Text tutorial packages and Applications, visit me
at:
http://grabbag.alacorncomputer.com
. to be able to view a simple programming project in several
programming
languages, visit the Fruit basket demo site at:
http://fruitbasketdemo.alacorncomputer.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jamal Mazrui" <empower@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 5:29 AM
Subject: Re: Introducing PDF2OCR and seeking testers


> FYI -- the 1.0 release version is considerably better than the beta
> version due to performing OCR on a page-by-page basis and to the
> convenience of converting any number of PDFs in a directory with a
> single command.  PDF2OCR does work on text-based as well as
image-based
> PDFs, but the results on text-based ones are generally not as good
as
> with other utilities that extract the text directly rather than
> analyzing the picture of each page.
>
> Jamal
> On Thu, 13 Sep 2007, inthaneelf wrote:
>
>> Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2007 15:52:12 -0700
>> From: inthaneelf <inthaneelf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Reply-To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Subject: Re: Introducing PDF2OCR and seeking testers
>>
>> and print screen, lets see how this freebee works out, smile
>>
>> and Jamal, I appreciate what your working on, just want to make
sure
>> your
>> getting at least 60% of what your hoping for out of it.
>>
>> inthane
>> . For Blind Programming assistance, Information, Useful Programs,
and
>> Links
>> to Jamal Mazrui's Text tutorial packages and Applications, visit
me
>> at:
>> http://grabbag.alacorncomputer.com
>> . to be able to view a simple programming project in several
>> programming
>> languages, visit the Fruit basket demo site at:
>> http://fruitbasketdemo.alacorncomputer.com
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Lloyd Rasmussen" <lras@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 3:47 AM
>> Subject: RE: Introducing PDF2OCR and seeking testers
>>
>>
>> > If someone wants to submit a sample, I can run it through the
PDF
>> > tools
>> > that
>> > come with OmniPage 15.  Also, someone else should run the sample
>> > through
>> > the
>> > image printer and OCR built into MS Word.
>> >
>> >
>> > Lloyd Rasmussen, Kensington, Maryland
>> > Home:  http://lras.home.sprynet.com
>> > Work:  http://www.loc.gov/nls
>> >
>> >> -----Original Message-----
>> >> From: programmingblind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> >> [mailto:programmingblind-
>> >> bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jamal Mazrui
>> >> Sent: Thursday, September 13, 2007 5:42 AM
>> >> To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> >> Subject: Re: Introducing PDF2OCR and seeking testers
>> >>
>> >> I would expect better results from Kurzweil 1000, which uses
>> >> arguably
>> >> the highest grade commercial OCR technology.  The free Adobe
Reader
>> >> does
>> >> not do OCR, so would not make the sample file accessible.
>> >>
>> >> Jamal
>> >
>> > __________
>> > View the list's information and change your settings at
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>> >
>> >
>>
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