GrabText only extracts text from the screen, not files on disk. If a
file is displayed on the screen with some kind of viewer program,
then GrabText might work.
Since GrabText comes with the free, 2 week trial version of the commercial
library, let me encourage folks to give different things a try and report
their results. I'll try to add lessons learned to the documentation.
Jamal
On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Life My Way
wrote:
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 11:43:19 -0500
From: Life My Way <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Beta 0.8 of GrabText released
Ok, would this grab text be able to grab lets say text from scanned images
from a scanner, if they are purely text bassed?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jamal Mazrui" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2010 11:17 AM
Subject: Re: Beta 0.8 of GrabText released
I will not charge for GrabText, itself. However, it does depend on a
commercial library that costs $29 for a single-computer license or $699
for a single developer license. After a two week trial period, a user
would need to buy a license from
http://renovation-software.com
Alternatively, if enough people are interested in contributing to a
developer license, I think I could compile GrabText so that it is fully
and freely available to use on any Windows computer. I am not trying to
personally profit from this, but cannot afford the $699 expense myself. I
compared several screen OCR libraries during web research, and the
alternatives are considerably more expensive than these options.
If anyone is interested in helping to collect the cost of a developer
license by setting up a PayPal type of web form, please let us know. I
would rather someone else organized such a collection so the process is
transparent.
Jamal
On Thu, 1 Apr 2010, Life My Way wrote:
Date: Thu, 1 Apr 2010 01:31:50 -0500
From: Life My Way <[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Beta 0.8 of GrabText released
jamual, how much will this cost in the long run, if yu decide to charge
for
it?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Roy Shtupler" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 6:11 PM
Subject: Re: Beta 0.8 of GrabText released
can it extract text from a sindow that's totally bit-mapped?
best
Roy.
www.soundclick.com/tzackeek
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jamal Mazrui" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>;
<[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 11:44 PM
Subject: Beta 0.8 of GrabText released
http://EmpowermentZone.com/gtsetup.exe
Many bug fixes and feature enhancements have been made since the last
release. Besides the command line and dialog interfaces, GrabText is now
a COM server as well. It may be instantiated by almost any COM
automation
client using the "Grab.Text" ProgID. At the end of the installation
process, checkboxes offer options to install JAWS or Window-Eyes script
packages that demonstrate this COM server in Notepad. Another checkbox
will open Notepad with a demo file containing a few lines of text.
Position the caret and mouse pointer on different parts of the text.
Then
press F1 to initialize the GrabText object, and F2 through F8 to grab
different areas of text. F9 grabs them all and copies the result to the
clipboard so you can paste and examine it. Also try other dialogs of
Notepad that have more controls, e.g., the file open dialog. Press
Shift+F1 to close the GrabText object.
The GrabText installer puts a COM server in the Global Assembly Cache
(GAC) of the .NET Framework. To instantiate it as a COM object, pass
"Grab.Text" as a parameter to the CreateObject function, or equivalent,
of
the programming language you are using. Methods of the object are listed
in the documentation excerpt below, grouped into the following
categories:
grab, window handle, window coordinate, point coordinate, directory, and
miscellaneous. The initial letter of a variable name indicates its data
type: boolean, integer, string, or general variant.
Please note that, although the current demos use screen reader scripting
languages, the text is extracted from the screen in a manner completely
independent of the screen reader in use.
Grab methods:
sText = GetTopLevelWindowText(iHandle)
sText = GetActiveWindowText()
sText = GetFocusControlText()
sText = GetMouseControlText()
sText = GetControlTextFromHandle(iHandle)
sText = GetControlTextFromPoint(iX, iY)
sText = GetRectangleText(iLeft, iTop, iRight, iBottom)
sText = GetCaretClip()
sText = GetMouseClip()
sText = GetClip(iX, iY)
sText = GetCaretCharacter()
sText = GetMouseCharacter()
sText = GetCharacter(iX, iY)
Window handle methods:
iHandle = GetActiveWindow()
iHandle = GetFocusControl()
iHandle = GetOwnerWindow(iHandle)
iHandle = GetTopLevelWindow(iHandle)
iHandle = GetParentWindow(iHandle)
Window coordinate methods:
iX = GetWindowLeft(iHandle)
iY = GetWindowTop(iHandle)
iX = GetWindowRight(iHandle)
iY = GetWindowBottom(iHandle)
Point Coordinate methods:
iX = GetCaretX()
iY = GetCaretY()
iX = GetMouseX()
iY = GetMouseY()
Directory methods:
sDir = GetProgramDir()
sDir = GetDataDir()
sDir = GetNETDir()
Miscellaneous methods:
bValid = Init(sUserName, sLicenseKey)
sName = GetWindowName(iHandle)
bFound = IsScreenReaderActive()
bSpoke = Say(vText)
bResult = SetActiveWindow(iHandle)
Jamal
