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Subject:RE: dreaded part of the job - and OCR software Q From:dwiltshire -at- pnmt -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 29 Jan 2002 10:27:32 -0500
First, thanks to Kevin, Shauna, Donna, Tom, Monica and others for their
thoughtful replies, both on-list and off.
Regarding the handling of the scan jobs, I got some suggestions to move the
scanner and associated software to a PC at a central location for general use.
I've actually been planning to do this for a while now. I think this will be the
fairest solution for me and them. Procrastination has been my only obstacle on
this.
Regarding the OCR software, according to the ScanSoft website, about the only
thing the OmniPage 11.0 will give us, that we don't currently have, is the
ability to convert PDFs directly to text files. Even protected files. I've been
asked if we could do this in the past. If anyone else has any other experience
with OmniPage, please let me know.
[Follow-up:] This discussion has stimulated some neurons somehow. Since ~90%
of the scan jobs are from printouts of one user's proprietary software
application, I thought: Why not create the PDFs directly from it? Presently, the
only output from this app is hard copy printout. We're going to see whether it
also supports Acrobat, so we can also create E-Mailable output. If successful,
we'll buy another copy of Acrobat and the person generating the reports can make
his own PDFs. We'll be able to completely eliminate the
printout/scan/cleanup/PDF cycle. Problem solved. (at least 90%!)
It's amazing how a little discussion can make an unexpected solution appear
obvious.
Thanks again!
Dan
Dan Wiltshire
Senior Technical Writer
Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc.
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