Harold Fuchs wrote: > 2009/4/23 John Jason Jordan <[email protected]> > > >> On Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:52:29 -0600 >> Walter Hildebrandt <[email protected]> dijo: >> >> >>> Does anyone know if there is a hand held copying device that can copy >>> >> text >> >>> and paste that text into a Writer text file and be able to edit that text >>> >> in >> >>> the Writer text file? >>> >> There used to exist such items a long time ago. I don't know of any >> still being manufactured. The problem was not the scanning technology >> but, rather, the unreliability of the human operators. It turns out >> that it is very hard to hold the device steady enough. >> >> Note that there are two functions involved to achieve the results you >> desire. The first is scanning, which converts the reflected image from >> the page of text to a bitmap image. The second is the optical character >> recognition (OCR) function. OCR is a process where software looks at >> the bitmap image and recognizes letterforms. >> >> The scanning function today is extremely accurate with modern scanners. >> The OCR function is where things fall apart a bit. Think about those >> web sites where you have to enter the distorted characters from a >> bitmap image into a box to be sure you are a human and not a spambot. >> That's the problem the designers of OCR software face, and it's not >> trivial. OCR software typically trips up on distinguishing a zero from >> an o, an s from a 5, and so on. Even the best OCR software used on the >> cleanest text misses quite a bit. Plan on having to clean it up. >> >> > > In addition to the above there's a third issue. By far the majority of > scanners and OCR "engines" on the market produce documents that are designed > for MS Office. Many will even invoke MS Word or Outlook automatically once > the OCR process is complete. Of course that's a problem if you don't have > either of those installed - which I don't. My scanner wanted to produce a > ".doc" file and then automatically invoke Word. I can't separate those two > functions. In other words I can't make my scanner produce a ".doc" file and > then *not* invoke Word. I certainly can't get it to invoke Writer. The best > I can do with my scanner (HP 3770) is to make it scan to an RTF file and > then not invoke anything automatically. This is OK but RTF is a lot > feature-poorer than ".doc" so my results look a lot less like the original > than they could and therefore I have a lot more work to do. > >
I assume you're running Windows. Perhaps you could create a batch file called "word", which in turn launches Writer. -- Use OpenOffice.org <http://www.openoffice.org> --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
