[iBook] Off topic? Audio and OCR help wanted

[Angus Wallace]

Joe is correct. Text can be present in a pdf either as text, or as an image
(imaging taking a photo of a page, and putting a jpg of that in a pdf). In the
case that the text is stored as an image, you cannot use the text tool to
select and copy the text. You will need to use OCR.

Can't suggest a program, but a quick google shows two GNU OCR packages (these
are Free Software).
http://www.gnu.org/software/ocrad/ocrad.html
http://jocr.sourceforge.net/download.html
These might not be particularly user-friendly - especially on Mac.. you might
need to shell out some $$$.

Have fun!
-Gus

Quoting joe <joe at joethejuggler.com>:

> 
> On Nov 12, 2006, at 5:11 PM, Brian Olesky wrote:
> 
> > On 11/12/06 2:33 PM, "joe" <joe at joethejuggler.com> wrote:
> >
> >>> Not sure about that. All I ever do in the area you're discussing is
> >>> scan
> >>> documents and select sections for inputting their text into my Word
> >>> docs. I
> >>> don't even use database softwear.
> >> Sounds like Brian is using some kind of OCR that's part of his
> >> scanner software.  I'm pretty sure there's nothing in Preview that
> >> could take text out of a PDF if said text is just an embedded image.
> >> Mark is right--you need some OCR software somewhere to make the
> >> scanned recipes into text.  It sounds like the recipe project won't
> >> be something you can fully automate--I'm guessing the recipes aren't
> >> in a standard format, so you'll have do some copy and pasting of text
> >> into whatever db you set up.  (Filemaker would work fine for that--or
> >> a dedicated recipe program.  Or you could probably find a nice recipe
> >> template for Filemaker.)
> >
> > Not true, Joe. I actually am talking about extracting text  
> > from .pdf files.
> > And these are usually .pdf files someone's emailed to me.
> 
> Yes--that is text that is already text in the PDF files that were e- 
> mailed to you.  Mark asked about scanning recipes.  At some point, he  
> will need to use OCR software to make the scanned recipes into text.
> 
> I'm pretty certain you're mistaken, Brian.  What you describe is  
> merely copying and pasting text that is already text from a PDF file.
> 
> 
> Joe
> 
> 
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