Whoever scanned the one minute millionaire I rejected it. Sorry but here
is my reason. The book is set up so the left hand pages tell a fictional
story and the right hand pages are about finance. This made for messy
reasing and some chaos in identifying page numbers. I am careful to say
this but I think the format of this book needs a bit of re-thinking as
reading it was truly difficult.
E.
At 10:28 PM 10/8/2005, you wrote:
Just passing it on for a FYI
ABC News, Chicago Friday, October 07, 2005
ScanSoft's OmniPage Professional 15 takes OCR programs into new territory
By M. David Stone
ScanSoft's OmniPage Professional 15 does so much more than optical character recognition (OCR), we could spend this whole page delving into its new capabilities and then add that, oh by the way, it recognizes text nearly flawlessly, too.
Among the more significant new features is a set of image enhancement tools to improve scan quality (and thereby improve recognition results) without having to rescan; a form creation tool to let you turn paper forms into electronic versions that can be filled in on-screen; and the inclusion of Google Desktop Search, so you can find a file you've scanned in (as well as other files) by searching for words in the file. And this is only a partial list. You'll also find any number of other improvements, large and small, sprinkled throughout the program.
OmniPage still follows the same overall design as in earlier versions. The main working area is divided into three vertical sections, with thumbnails on the left, a graphic version of the currently selected page in the middle, and the recognized text for that page on the right. But despite the familiar layout, there are changes.
The most obvious is the new Character Map tool, a small convenience that takes up a single line in the text editor and shows a selection of characters, like copyright and trademark symbols, that you can't type easily at the keyboard. You can now easily enter these characters by clicking on them. Similarly, the spell-checker-like proofreading tool includes its own character map and a new window; this lets you zoom in on the graphic image of the text you're proofing to see it better. (Alas, the proofreader still lacks an undo button to let you back up to correct a mistake.)
Even some significant additions are tucked away as subtle changes in familiar commands. The default workflow in the OmniPage toolbox above the main working area, for example, shows the same familiar three steps: to get an image, recognize it, and then save or send it. But you'll find additional choices within those steps. The most notable is a new option to open a file not as a scanned image file but as a text-based document file (like .doc and RTF files). This small difference is actually a major new feature that lets you open documents and then seamlessly convert them to a new format simply by saving them.
ScanSoft claims a 25 percent accuracy improvement for Version 15, meaning that this version makes 25 percent fewer errors than Version 14. On our tests, it made no mistakes with documents printed at 10 and 12 points with any of the standard fonts we test, and no mistakes at sizes as small as 6 points with two. And as before, recognition of page formatting (columns, captions, and so on) is also excellent.
Some of the improvements have been made where you may not notice them right away. For example, when we scanned a page printed on color paper in Version 14, the scan was almost unreadable. Using the same settings in Version 15, the text stood out just as well as if it were on a white background, even without using the scan enhancement tools. Similarly, the newfound support for ISIS drivers (not just common Twain drivers) translates to far better support for high-end document scanners.
OmniPage Professional 15 also remains strong on automation features. Previous versions could watch for and automatically convert files sent to particular folders on a hard drive, using batch files to control the workflow. Version 15 adds the ability to watch for files sent to Outlook or Lotus mail folders. And it adds the ability to convert files to PDF format as part of a batch command. And the new Job wizard makes it easy for users to build these desired (and sometimes complex) workflows.
Two other features that demand mention are two bundled PDF-related tools: PDF Create!, for creating PDF files; and PDF Converter, for converting PDF files to Word format. We ran into a minor problem with PDF Converter, however, which works as both a standalone mini-application and a Word add-in. On two different computers, the add-in caused Word to nag us to save the Normal template every time we closed Word. ScanSoft is looking into the problem. In any case, this is a minor issue in a peripheral mini-app, and easily fixed by removing the add-in from Word.
The simple truth is that OmniPage Professional 15 is loaded with features that you won't find in the competition (at least not yet), which makes it the OCR (and more) program to beat. And if you don't need some of the advanced features (such as forms and document conversion, the PDF utilities, and advanced batch-processing management), you'll find the same deadly accurate OCR engine in the more affordable OmniPage 15 version ($149.99 direct).
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ZDM/story?id=1172935
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