March 19, 1998. CeBIT '98, Hannover, Germany

FINE READER 4.0: OCR technology on the cutting edge

Unsurpassed recognition quality of FineReader thanks to ôfontain image transformationö technology.

ABBYY introduces for the first time in Europe the family of OCR systems FineReader 4.0 including the whole spectrum of automatic input technologies: recognition of printed and handprinted characters (OCR and ICR), checkmarks (OMR) and bar-codes. New features of FineReader include improved recognition quality, support of 40 languages, recognition of handprinted characters, background recognition, etc. The 4.0 family includes the following programs: FineReader Light, FineReader Standard, FineReader Professional, FineReader Handprint, FineReader Toolkit.

Quality of recognition

FineReader is distinguished by its recognition quality especially of poor print quality documents (output from matrix printers, typewriters, photocopies, faxes). Since the launch of FineReader 2.0 in April 1995 the system was the winner of all official Russian tests in the recognition quality, including the tests of such respectable editions as PC World/RE Magazine, Izvestiya, CompuTerra, Hard&Soft, etc. In last 4 months FineReader became one of the three best OCR systems in the world and was awarded with EditorÆs Choice of Internet Computing (ZD Internet Magazine) and Personal Computer World Magazine.

40 languages of recognition

There are 40 languages in FineReader 4.0: Albanian, Afrikaans, Basque, Bulgarian, Byelorussian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch (Standard, Belgian), English (UK, US), Finnish, French, Hungarian, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian (Bokmal, Nynorsk), Polish, Portuguese (Standard, Brazilian), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Turkish, Ukrainian, Estonian.

For eleven languages of the above list (Danish, Dutch (Standard, Belgian), English (UK, US), French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish) FineReader has a full-working spell-checking module Lingvo Corrector, which allows checking spelling in multi-lingual documents.

Recognition of forms

FineReader automatically inputs machine-readable forms (blanks, bulletins, payment drafts, etc.) into information systems and databases converting printed information into database entries. The program can be tuned to recognition of particular blanks (template editor), allows checking recognition results automatically (validation rules: e.g., value in digits û value in writing, check against database, etc.) and edit recognized forms, and so on.

FineReader Handprint performs all operations ù from scanning of paper documents to saving the checked and edited recognition results to database. Industrial versions FineReader allow to input up to 100 000 documents in 24 hours in the client-server mode.

Handprint recognition

FineReader Handprint recognizes English, German, Russian and Ukrainian texts written by hand in block letters, and does not require prior tuning to a particular handwriting.

Background recognition

Background recognition supported in the new version of FineReader allows performing editing and recognition at one and the same time, that considerable speeds up the input.

ôWe use the most up-to-date OCR technologies to create programs for broad circles of users. Now FineReader is used for home input and for bulk input of thousands and millions of documents,ö ù says David Yang, president of ABBYY.

Licensing of FineReader OCR Engine

The companyÆs OCR and ICR technologies are highly esteemed by the world market. FineReader OCR Engine was licensed by three international companies to create their own recognition systems under the following trademarks: AnyPage (Samsung Electronics), Presto! OCR Pro (NewSoft), OKReader (Sumitomo Electric).

Dealers

Germany MitCom Neue Medien GmbH, 49 89 500332049, http://www.mitcom.de

USA NewSoft, 510 445-8600, http://www.tophat.com

Australia ABT Communications, 61 2 9 723 1958, http://www.topsoft.com.au

Finland Trantor Ku 358 9 825811

India Vikmans Multimedia (India), 91 11 6212325

You can get aquatinted with FineReader 4.0 at CeBIT (Germany, Hannover, March 19-25, 1998, hall 5, stand B49) and Comtek (Russia, Moscow, April 20-24, 1998, exhibition hall 2 (room 1), stand 2057).

Further information:
Information Service, ABBYY:
+7 095 263 6658, +7 095 263 6659, fax +7 095 263 6278

ABBYY specializes in development of software for linguistics, semantics, electronic lexicography, and optical character recognition. The results of a company survey by Dator agency since 1995 placed ABBYY among the three most professional software development firms in Russia, and in 1997 ABBYY the first system and applied software in Russia.

ABBYYÆs products include: the FINE READER line of OCR/ICR/OMR software that allows the automatic input of texts, tables, forms into computer, FINE READER TOOLKIT that allows developers to integrate OCR into their solutions; LINGVO CORRECTOR 11 language spell checker; LINGVO - English-Russian/Russian-English electronic dictionaries; LINGVO MORPHOLOGY and LINGVO FULLTEXT RETRIEVAL - 7 language full-text and fuzzy retrieval system, index and search system LINGVO INTERNET INDEX SERVER, etc.

Trademark References: ABBYY, BIT Software, Lingvo, FineReader, Scan&Read, Scan&Translate are registered trademarks and DOCFLOW, Try&Buy are trademarks of ABBYY - BIT Software. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.