ABBYY ANNOUNCES THE NEW RELEASE OF ABBYY FINE READER 4.0 HANDPRINT

ABBYY announces the new release of ABBYY FineReader 4.0 Handprint, allowing users to recognize flexible forms, new types of handprinted texts and more.

Las Vegas, COMDEX, November 15, 1999 ù ABBYY USA (a member of the ABBYY Group) today announced the release of ABBYY FineReader 4.0 Handprint, a forms processing system that captures handprinted data and sends recognition results to a database. FineReader Handprint recognizes handprint (ICR), machine print (OCR), check marks (OMR), and barcodes from questionnaires, registration cards, bulletins, and other forms that are filled in with block handprinted letters.

FineReader Handprint is ten times faster than a professional typist, achieving over 99.5% accuracy (making a maximum of 5* errors over 1000 symbols) without requiring fine-tuning for hand-printed characters. It allows users to input any amount of pages per day, and includes a unique system of automatic field validation to avoid proofreading most forms after recognition.

ABBYY FineReader 4.0 Handprint is a complete form processing system that performs all tasks, from the scanning of paper originals to the saving of verified and edited recognition results in a database. FineReader 4.0 Handprint automatically identifies existing forms, includes enhanced image pre-processing features, dynamically locates fields for floating data, and verifies entries using databases, rules and dictionaries. 

The State Pension Fund of the Russian Federation, the Tax Ministry of Russia, the Moscow City Government and others use ABBYY FineReader 4.0 Handprint. ôOur department uses ABBYY FineReader Handprint to input ôPersonal dataö questionnaires. We have already input thousands of questionnaires, and we are completely satisfied with both the quality of the system and ABBYY's technical support staff," said Anatoly V. Miklashevich, Deputy manager, Moscow Region department, Russian Federation Pension Fund. 

The new release of FineReader 4.0 Handprint has all the features of previous releases plus the following features: flexible form recognition (forms with floating fields location); recognition of new types of handprinted text (in boxes, and combs); the ability to auto-detect text types (handprinted, typewriter, matrix printer) and the ability to recognize black & white forms with bordered fields, allowing recognition of photocopies and fax copies.

FineReader 4.0 Handprint Features:

• Recognition of handprinted text in 6 languages, including - English, German, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian. Recognition of machined printed text in 53 languages.
• Interface languages in English and Russian
• Built-in automatic validation rules are used to check the consistency of the recognized data. The program also allows user to specify custom validation rules, which can be written in any language supporting Automation, such as Visual Basic, C++, Delphi etc.
• Ergonomic text verifier to streamline the post-recognition verification process.
• Ability to process of several types of forms in one batch and automatic selection of a form template.
• Recognition of flexible forms
• Recognition of existing machine-readable forms, using a number of different field removal techniques.
• Ability to export recognition results to databases through ODBC
• Ability to export recognition results to external applications through a custom export procedure, which can be written in any language supporting Automation, such as Visual Basic, Visual C++, Delphi etc.
• Export of original images to databases
• And moreà.

FineReader's powerful OCR engine is more accurate then competing OCR products. The softwareÆs Integral Purposeful Adaptive (IPA) perception technology combines serial and parallel character recognition techniques to increase recognition on even poor quality documents created by dot-matrix printers, typewriters, photocopiers, and fax machines. 

The use of advanced syntactic and semantic natural language expert systems raises FineReader's recognition accuracy to an unprecedented level. The expertise in the morphology of major languages further increases the recognition quality. For more product information, visit their web-site at www.finereader.com. 

Pricing and System Requirements

* when the form contains no corrections and filled in accurately

ABBYY USA is a member of the ABBYY Group, which publishes and distributes ABBYYÆs products in North America. 

ABBYY (ABBYY Software House) specializes in the development of software for optical character recognition (OCR), Intelligent character recognition (ICR), linguistics, semantics, and electronic lexicography. ABBYY's products include: the FineReader line of OCR/ICR/OMR software, which allows the automatic input of texts, tables and forms into a computer; FineReader Development Tools, which allows developers to integrate OCR into their solutions and more... Companies that license ABBYY OCR/ICR technologies include Siemens Nixdorf, Samsung Electronics, Sumitomo Electric Systems, L&H/Kurzweil, Banctec (Japan), Visionshape, Jet Fax, NewSoft, and Primax. For more information about ABBYY, visit web-site at www.abbyy.com.

Contacts: 

Nastasya Savina
Head of Information, 
PR and Advertisement Service
ABBYY Software House
+7 095 234-4400 (Tel)
+7 095 263-6278 (Fax)
Nastasya@abbyy.ru

Ding Tang 
President
ABBYY USA 
510-226-6717 (Tel)
510-226-6069 (Fax)
dtang@abbyyusa.com