you make some valid points, but in muy opinion when it comes to numbers and
computer code most all the o c r comes up short.
commercial and blind.
about accuracy, well omni page 8 is not the newest version of the program, i
suspect omni page 9 is more accurate.
the reason i say this is version 9 is probley the first engine to combine both
omni page with word scan technology.
omni page merged with word scan prior to the release of of version 8 but
probley not soon enough to be integrated.
one reason open booked picked word scan is because initially it really just
was designed to scan in text.
of course open book still uses the old word scan 3.1 engine which i have
trouble believeing is as accurate as the newer omni page engines.
in fact the next release of open book will use a omni page engine.
now omni 1000 is a high quality program and i applaud the fact one can use jfw
speech with it instead of its own speech.
with that said, i would gladly pay a couple of hundred for a speech friendly
interface with no speech.
but the 1000 price of the blind o c r is really going into the developement of
speech access.
seeing as how speech access in windows is best done with jfw, why should i
subsidize speech access in a single application.
the only advantage of the program provideing speech is that it allows it to
be used in stand alone reading machines.
if omni 1000 sold the program with no speech i might pay as much as 250 dollars
for it, of course if my job was on the line i would shell out 1200 dollars in
a heart beat.
to be honest i am no expert with omni page myself, but one thing i do know
about o c r software is that it is going to give better results when you play
with it.
so the quick scan option
is not really a fair compareson of omni page 8.
that is if you are compareing accuracy.
i suspect that a quick scan might not scan in at the highest resolution, which
would save time at the cost of accuracy.
one other point, many say this o c r program is better at this or at that.
in your case numerical accuracy is importan, so you picked the program for
that reason.
the majority of blind people that want to use o c r i suspect want to read
everything.
at least that is how i feel.
so it would seem to me that overall accuracy should be the measureing stick for
most blind users
of course job situation, as in your case may change this.
commercial software like omni page 9 and text bridge 98 cost about 100
dollars.
so if you have to have the very best o c r package for a specific document
type, it is far easier to do with commercial software than open book and omni
1000.
reason being that the average blind users is far more apt to come up with 200
dollars than 2000 dollars.
bill cameron
