There's Textbridge 9.0 now. more features. Came with the new scanner I bought to replace my old one which had Textbridge 5.0 Can buy stand alone direct from http://www.textbridge.com/ same company also sell Paper Port If you have Visioneer brand scanner - they are automatically included in new models. I got model 8920 USB "One Touch" hint, don't use "one touch" feature in this model. Use the ones in computer instead. I use it to scan digitalized scan images from microfilms. Not all scans will come good. Some are so horrible that typing is only way to deal with that. Newspapers - they are worst due to yellowing and interesting font styles. David Samuelsen, FM New York, USGenWeb Archives "Daniel H. Weiskotten" wrote: > > I do text scaning all the time, but the main problem is not with the > software, but with what is being scanned. > > It is called OCR, or Optical Character Recognition, and there a literally > scores of programs and scanners that can do this for you. Almost any > scanner nowadays comes with decent OCR software, although they tend to make > you go an extra step to set it up. Once done and running, it all depends > upon the quality of what you are scanning. > > The software does not work like your eyes and brain. It looks for > patterns, and when all it sees is smudges and grey, then you get > gibberish. The copy needs to be exceptionally clean (any dots will get > interpreted as characters, letters, numbers or punctuation) and if it is > fancy lettering or even regular text with tails it will not know what to do > with it. The letter M will scan as "ni" and S will be an 8. That s > typical even in a good scan. > > I have not worked with scanning of digital images of text, but know that > the same problems will result if things are not sharp and clear. I have > not found a way to scan newspaper clippings as the color and texture of the > paper will knock out any chance you have of scanning just the letters. I > have had success in photocopying and enlarging the clipping (lighter and > 200%) which allows for clearer reading of the letters, but often there is > little that can be done to clean it up enough to OCR scan it. The time > that you spend cleaning it up would be as well spent just retyping it. > > For many years I have been using TextBridge by ScanSoft, but it came with > my scanner 6 or 7 years ago and I can't find a decent modern version that > is not expensive and buried in with a package of other programs that I > don't need. I have another program at work, but it is also buried in the > scanning software and I'm not sure what it is. Our HP printer has OCR > scanning capabilites but you had to load it all seperately and then it is > not a flat bed scanner and when it feeds the document it skews (or shreds) > the original and can't read it. > > One of our volunteers just paid a small fortune for a small hand-held > scanner that was touted as being great for scanning newsprint, but all it > does is make a fuzzy .JPG image that is useless. It wasn't even good as a > glorified copier. > > If you can, make a photocopy and clean up and enlarge the original, set the > dots per inch (dpi) high (300 or more) and make sure everything is > perfectly square on the scanning bed. Then there is still no guarantee > that it will do what you want. > > One of my recent projects is to scan a 1901 local history. I tried again > and again to scan a reprint of it as I did not have an original and I > didn't want to do it to the local library's original copy. Although the > reprint was quite clean, the lettering had darkedend and blured in the copy > process, so I got nothing but garbage each time. I did luck out recently > when the very book I needed came up on e-bay and I wa able to get it for a > mere $7.50 (dealer value of over $100.00!) and I have carefully been > scanning with incredible success for the past few weeks. > > I am also having some of my volunteers retype a lot of the old newspaper > and newsletter articles in our verticle files, so that we can reprint them > and also do searches and use them iun research. OCR scanning just didn't > work so they are having to type them manually. I am lucky to have > recruited a number of people who love to type and learn history! Bless > their hearts and fingers! > > Dan W. > http://www.rootsweb.com/~nyccazen/