Hi,
I have just been playing with Text Grabber and Prizmo in conjunction with
my StandScan Pro. I decided to try them with a book that I attempted to scan
many years ago using a flat-bed scanner and Kurtzweil. My results, possibly,
ten or more years ago, were less than satisfactory. In fact, you couldn't
follow the recipes because the quantities were illegible. Now, in many ways,
the apps we have available to us on the iPhone, are in their infancy.
obviously, they are a fraction of the size of, say, Kurtzweil and, also
obviously, a fraction of the price. plus, now we are dealing with a portable
solution. When you want to read a letter, something simple with no columns etc,
both Prizmo and Text Grabber will do the job, especially when using the
StandScan Pro. However, imbedded columns and symbols for
grammes/ounces/fractions etc can prove daunting for these pocket sized OCR
packages. Now that we have a way to position the phone exactly, and we can
ensure perfect lighting conditions, when things go wrong it is more to do with
the scanning/OCR capability of a given app rather than the physicality of
scanning. Also, there is one other variable: to wit, when we use a flat-bed
scanner, the book we are scanning is facing down onto a flat surface and
gravity alone will heple with ensuring the flatness of the text. Now and again,
we may use pressure on that book to make sure that the text nearest to the
spine is readable. This we cannot do when the book is facing up toward the
phone. So, until apps such as Prizmo or Text Grabber get really clever and
learn to deal with distorted text, we aill always have trouble scanning two
pages of a book, apart from when we are scanning roughly half way through,
because only half way through will allow you to hold the pages equally flat.
With all this in mind, I tried both Text Grabber and prizmo on my "The Big
Book of Tomatoes". I wanted results that would mean I could follow the recipes
with ease. In the end, for good enough results, I had to use only single page
shots. These pages all have paragraphs of text plus columns of ingredients.
Below is my best result, there are two significant mistakes, where you will
hear 'tilda" it should read "half" (so half a lemon). Also, when it says "s
minutes" it should read 5.
The rest is perfect, it starts wheE. half way through a sentence and
finishes at the bottom, half way through a sentence.
We are getting there, these results are much, much better than those
obtained by me and my expensive Kurtzweil and flat-bed scanner all those years
ago. I do know that kurtzwiel ahs improved since then, but our phones and OCR
apps are catching up fast. The point of all this is to draw people's attention
to the fact that not everything is about the right position of the phone and
the lighting, it is also about software.
So, here it is!
"f Tomato Soups ~ in the yoghurt. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt,
Tabasco, lemon juice and possibly, depending on the ripeness of the fruit, a
little sugar.
Pick the mint leaves from the stalks and chop very finely. Stir into the soup.
Serve very cold.
HOT SOUPS BLACK BEAN SOUP WITH TOMATO AND
Serves 6-8 AVOCADO RELISH
Black beans, not to be confused with black-eyed beans, are small, shiny and
kidney-shaped. Their slightly sweet flavour is complemented by onions and
garlic, goes well with coriander, cumin and tomatoes, and needs to be pepped up
with chilli. This soup combines all those flavours and the result is an
intriguingly aromatic, thick and chunky soup, freshened with a 'salad' of raw
tomato and avocado seasoned with lemon juice.
4 tbsp vegetable oil
2 large onions, diced 4 garlic c(oves, chopped 1 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp ground
coriander 1 tsp dried oregano 1 bay leaf
250 g dried black beans, soaked in water for at least 4 hours and drained
2 x 400 g tins italian tomatoes for ~he garnish
1 firm but ripe avocado, diced 1 tbsp lemon juice
2 plum tomatoes, cored, peeled, 1 tbsp tomato purde
1 scant tsp Tabasco a large bunch coriander (approximately 75 g), leaves only,
chopped
1.75 litres hot water or vegetable stock
salt and freshly ground black pepper
~,~ lemon
seeded and diced 100 g soured cream
a few coriander leaves Heat the oil in a large pan and saut6 the onion and
garlic for several minutes until slippery but not coloured. Stir in the cumin,
ground coriander, oregano and bay leaf, then add the beans. Cook, stirring
constantly, for S minutes.
Run a sharp knife through the tomatoes a few times while still in the tin and
add them, with their liquid, the tomato pur~e, Tabasco and chopped coriander
and the hot water or stock. Bring to the boil, turn down immediately and simmer
very gently for 3 hours.
Discard the bay leaf. Put& half the soup in a food-processor or mouli-legumes.
Pass the soup through a sieve, pressing down hard, into
Sent from my iPhone
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