On 03-09, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> At 09:29 AM 3/9/2004 -0500, Hal MacArgle wrote:
> >[...]
> >
> > Greetings Ray and thanks for the input.. I've fetched gocr
> >and noted the "text in graphic image" mentioned and should compile it
> >to see if it'll work for me, but it needs some dependencies I don't
> >have on this machine so thought I'd try the easy query way first.
> >
> > I was, hoping, to find a program that will convert the scan
> >to plain ordinary character generated text, rather than bit mapped..
> >I'm hazy about what all this means plus my quest for simplicity is
> >not the modern way to think.. I want to, merely, write the guy using
> >all my brain power to compose/answer his letter - not spend all my
> >time figuring out complicated manipulations for non significant
> >stuff.. <g>
>
> Yes, I got that from your earlier message. What confuses me is that you
> seem to think this process ... "convert the scan to plain ordinary
> character generated text, rather than bit mapped" involves something other
> than OCR software. The process you describe here *is* OCR (Optical
> Character Recognition), so looking for something other than OCR software to
> do it is an exercise in futility (or miscommunication).
Greetings: Mis-communication is my middle name methinks..
>
> You have two basic options:
>
> 1. Run a program that will scan to an image file, then a separate program
> that will do OCR on the scanned image.
Done - scan to PBM (P4) then run Gocr to get a bit mapped
file.. Trouble is; even using resolution 360, slow and a big PBM
file, the final copy is about 90% accurate and the original format of
the letter compromized losing paragraphs, offsets, indents, etc...
Taking the time to do all this plus fix up the immediate above would
take almost as long as manually re-typing the page..
I fetched Clara but could only find a .rpm file, no tarball
could for Slackware, etc.. Slack has a rpm program but the
dependencies needed to extract looked like they were mostly Red Hat's
filenames..
The PBM file was good - converting it to postscript and
printing on an ancient laser printer - the copy was very close to the
original.. So the problem is in the recognition phase, admittedly a
very tough nut according to the developers..
Very interesting though how it's done by "boxing" each
character, etc... I've learned a lot..
> In practice on Linux/Unix systems, any program of the second sort will
> probably be a wrapper for two separate apps that function as in (1) ...
> sort of the way "abcde" automates the process of CD ripping by serving as a
> frontend to about a half-dozen different applications.
I'm a CLI person so no front ends involved here..
> The only OCR programs I can find in the Debian package database are gocr
> and clara. Several other scanner apps refer to OCR, but they all seem to
> call gocr in the background actually to do it. Rwally, gocr seems like the
> consensus solution for Linux users.
>
> If neither gocr nor clara is suitable, your next option is to consider a
> commercial product. This article --
> http://www.linuxworld.com/story/32641.htm -- describes one called "OCR
> Shop" ... but its pricing appears to be way too high to make sense for the
> simple need you have.
Appreciate very much your comments and will look into non
open source but am not optimistic from what I've read and heard about
OCR in any platform.. I've read too many disclaimers on software
packages I guess. <grin>
Hal - in Terra Alta, WV - Slackware GNU/Linux 9.0 (2.4.20)
Utrum Per Hebdomadem Perveniam
.
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