[iBook] Off topic? Audio and OCR help wanted

[Brian Olesky]

>> 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
> 
Actually, to elaborate still further, here's the text from the Help file on
extracting text from .pdf's:

Selecting and copying text in a PDF file

You can select and copy text from a PDF file, then paste it into another
application, such as a word processor.
    €    To copy text, choose Tools > Text Tool and drag over the text as
you normally would. Then choose Edit > Copy. With some PDF files, line
breaks are not saved when you copy text, so when you paste the text, the
lines all run together.
    €    To select only a portion of text horizontally (for example, to
select only one column in a two-column document), choose Tools > Text Tool,
then press the Option key and select the text.
    €    To select a portion of the page and copy it as a graphic image,
choose Tools > Select Tool and select a portion of the page. Then choose
Edit > Copy.

Brian (again)