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ART7
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1993-03-27
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OCR X 2
Calera WordScan Plus
ExperVision TypeReader
by Tony Curro
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software has been around for a
long time. In its early days you would have to spend hours
"training" fonts. You could have manually typed in a document in
less time. It was not cost-effective. However, that has all changed.
This month we look at the two products named above.
WordScan Plus and TypeReader work right out of the box. Both are
Windows-based programs. You run the installation program from DOS
for WordScan Plus. It will ask you for the type of scanner you
intend to use; you pick the name from a list. If you are not using a
scanner you can select that also. In that case you would only be
able to read in TIF or PCX files from a disk file and convert them.
I had one problem with installation that I would like to mention. I
have a very long PATH= line in my AUTOEXEC.BAT file. When running
the install, it balked at this long line. I got around it by
deleting most of the line, and then just incorporating the changes
CALERA made into a copy of that file. Installation requires about
6MB of hard disk space. TypeReader is installed from within Windows,
and requires about 8MB hard disk space.
Both products support many of the scanners on the market. Both
include AccuPage for use with HP scanners. For those scanners not
supported, they will read in, and convert a saved TIF or PCX file.
I used WordScan Plus with: The Complete Page Scanner, HP ScanJet
IIc, Umax UC-630, and even a hand scanner. The first three were
directly supported by the software, while I had to import the file
from the hand scanner. TypeReader does not support The Complete Page
Scanner, but work well with the other two scanners.
Both will output to many formats: ASCII, Ami Pro, Lotus 1-2-3, MS
Excel, MS Word, WordPerfect, WordStar, PageMaker, Ventura and many
others. It will handle landscape or portrait; intermixed text and
graphics; typewritten, typeset, laser print, draft quality dot
matrix, and other fonts both monospaced and proportional.
No software is perfect. It is more evident with OCR software. But,
when a program can do better than 95% accuracy, it is as close to
perfect as you can get. There are many variables involved that
effect this process. I have come across letters that have: very
light text; very small text; text that is bold to the extreme that
letters seem to be connected, and so on. All these play a major part
in how the software can recognize the input.
Both products support multiple pages and will handle multiple
documents.
Calera uses the same engine in all of their products. There is also
FaxGrabber, which will handle a fax. For those who do not need the
added features of WordScan Plus, there is the cheaper WordScan.
Macintosh users also have these two options. Besides the English
edition they have French and German versions available. TypeReader
has universal character recognition capability. ExperVision's unique
recognition technology can accurately recognize the thousands of
characters in complex writing systems like Japanese, Chinese, and
Korean and thousands of typefaces in English, French, German,
Italian, Russian, and other languages.
I was impressed with both products, and gave them a CTM Editor's
Choice Award. It is tough to make a call on these products. Both are
excellent. I do lean toward WordScan Plus. One reason is that it
does support the scanner I had, and it is a bit faster in automatic
mode. Both products, though, did about the same as far as
recognition of text.
Product Information
WordScan Plus
List Price -- $695
295 (WordScan)
Calera Recognition Systems
475 Potrero Ave.
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
408-720-0999
408-720-1330 (FAX)
---------------------------------
TypeReader
List Price -- $695
ExperVision, Inc.
3590 North First St
San Jose, CA 95134
800-732-3897
408-428-0660
408-456-0823 (FAX)