How to Train a User Pattern
- Make sure the Train user pattern radio button on the Recognition
tab (Tools>Options menu) in the Training group is
enabled.
- Click the 2-Read button. FineReader will start recognition.
Whenever it comes across an unknown character, the Pattern
Training
dialog will open, and the character image displayed within it.
Training to recognize a character:
The frame in the top dialog window should enclose a single character,
and this character must be fully enclosed by the frame. If the frame
encloses only part of a character or more than one character, click the frame
borders and move them so that the above-stated requirements are met. The 
and 
buttons move the frame border as well (and are useful for training
italic symbols - see below). Once you have positioned the frame correctly, type
in the character and click the Train button.
Note:
- You may only train the system to read characters included in the
alphabet. If you wish to train FineReader to read characters that cannot
be entered from the keyboard, use a combination of two characters to
denote these non-existent characters or copy the required character from
the Character Table (click the
button in the Pattern
Training dialog to open the Character Table).
- If you wish to train the system to retain character formatting, select
the corresponding Italic or Bold item in the Pattern
Training dialog before clicking the Train button.
- Make sure that only uppercase/lowercase characters are entered when
training uppercase/lowercase character images respectively.
If you make a mistake during training, click the Back button to return the
frame to its previous position. The last "image-character" pair to be
entered will automatically be removed from the pattern. Note that this
"undo" function is limited to the last word trained.
Training
to recognize ligatures
A ligature is a combination of two or three "glued" characters, for
example, fi, fl, ffi, etc. These characters are difficult to separate because
they are "glued" as part of the printing process. In fact, better
results can be obtained by treating them as "single" compound
characters.
Training ligatures is no different to training separate characters:
- Type the necessary character combination
and click the Train button.
- The frame in the top dialog window should enclose the entire
ligature. You can move the frame border using the mouse or by
clicking the
and
buttons.
Each pattern may contain up to 1000 new characters. However, you should
not create too many ligatures, as it may affect the recognition quality negatively.
You should also take the following limitations into account when you train
FineReader:
- FineReader doesn't differentiate between certain characters which are usually
considered different. Such
images are recognized as one and the same character. For example, the
straight ('), right (’) and left (‘) apostrophes are kept in the pattern
as one character - the straight apostrophe. Thus, you'll never see the right and left apostrophes in the recognized text, even
if you try to train them.
- In some cases a certain image is recognized as a certain character depends
on their environment.