[iBook] Off topic? Audio and OCR help wanted

[Anne Cartwright]

joe wrote:
>
> On Nov 12, 2006, at 2:54 PM, Brian Olesky wrote:
>
>>
>>>>
>>>> You can simply scan the recipes, and then use the Mac's built in .pdf
>>>> reader, Preview, to select and extract whatever text you want from
>>>> the scans
>>>> and import it into any other program you like, such as Word, and
>>>> then work
>>>> with it any way you choose. No extra tools, or expense required. It
>>>> works
>>>> extremely well (at least the way I use it).
>>> Thanks, Brian. Does the Mac OS have a built in OCR capability, to
>>> render a scan searchable? He wants to build a database (again, I'm
>>> not sure if this is possible) of these recipes, all searchable. Are
>>> we talking about FileMaker Pro or something else or something built
>>> into the Mac? With Spotlight, this function is kind of there, no?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> mark
>>>
>> 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.)
>
> Joe 
I use the OCR software from Readiris with my Epson scanner and while it 
takes some final polishing of the output, it works well for me in many 
different situations. I scan books, newspapers, scraps of printed text, 
even instructions from the inside of game boxes. Often I am scanning 
material that is in a foreign language; I just tell Readiris what 
language to expect. Sometimes I copy the results right from the scan and 
paste it into a translator on the Internet to find how the game is 
played. Suggest you have your friend look into Readiris.  
http://www.irislink.com

Anne