On 04/01/99 12:59:01 , [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote :
>debra i do not agree that omni page is harder to use, but do agree that
>the blind o c r programs do fill a void.
>if all you do is scan and read, omni page is easy as pie to use, click
>quick scan, then go to text hit enter and maximize the page.
It seems not to be so simple. A freind of mine lent me his copy of Omnipage
8.0 pro for a couple of days so I could try it. My wife, who is sighted , (so
she does not need special Windows software to work), installed it on her Win98
PC and tried to scan some docs for me. In order to scan with Omnipage, she
exactly did what you described. Then she put the resulting text into a shared
directory so I could read it with my Braille computer. The results were quite
good but less impressive than those I obtain at work with my OCR-machine.
Then, she tried to scan tables of numbers she wanted to put in an Excel
worksheet. The results were so disappointing that we decided to remove
Omnipage from her hard disk.
>where blind people need more control over the oc r, one of those programs
>designed for the blind may be a better choice, but 90 percent of the blind
>use o c r mainly to read manuals, instructions, and mail which omni page
>is well suitted for.
Sure, it seems to do a good job with such a use. Also, I noticed it had a good
treatment of columns in reviews and so on, even if those columns are separated
with drawings or photos. I was quite impressed by this feature. However, I
also need to read many numbers and that's why I had problems with Omnipage.
>just remember that omni 1000 and open book require the jfw user to learn
>much additional info about jfw to use them, one must put jfw to sleep, a
>step that is not required for omni page.
And so, they simply should be unusable with the software I'm using right now
because this software cannot be desactivated like jaws.
>by the way a friend who has both says he likes omni page better than text
>bridge.
It probably depends on what he wants to read. Kurzweil softwares seem to do
better with numbers and italics than omnipage but they do worse with complex
columns, (as long as I could try them).
Many thanks to the guy who pointed me to ABBYY FineReader 4.0 on this list. I
downloaded the trial version last saturday and I am testing it. As this user
said it to me, FineReader seems to be very Jaws friendly but it depends upon
your scanner driver. In my case, the driver is HP PrecisionScan so it is just
fine to configure even with Jaws but I think that some scanners are harder to
configure. The great thing I found with FineReader is that I can even correct
the text on the fly with its "check results" button. With Omnipage, there also
seems to be a training function but it seems to be more visual.
Many thanks to all for your writing. Chris
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