pln@egret1.stanford.edu (Patrick L. Nolan) (05/10/91)
I would like to impose on the net for advice about scanners and associated software. I'm thinking of getting a scanner for my Mac. I have two applications in mind: A. Reading tables of numbers, names, etc. and putting them in machine-readable form. B. Copying line drawings and graphs to be used in computer-published documents. Neither of these requires color or much grey-scale capability. My questions relate to three different areas: 1. Hardware. There seem to be two different types of scanners that might do the job: hand-held ones for about $300 and flat beds for about $1400. A hand-held model should work OK for application A, but what about B? If the figure I want to work on is too big, can software patch it back together from two pieces? Would it be OK to reduce large originals with a copying machine? If my hand shakes while using a hand-held scanner, can the machine compensate? 2. OCR software. What's the state of Mac OCR software? What's the probability that I'll be able to recognize the text from a randomly-chosen book or journal article? Can programs be trained? Do scanners generally come bundled with OCR? Is there one program that is clearly better than the rest? 3. raster-to-vector software. To make the best use of the drawings (application B), I would like to have software to convert the scanned bitmaps to a vector representation. What programs are there to do this sort of thing? -- * Patrick L. Nolan (415)723-0133 * * W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory (HEPL) * * Stanford University * * Bitnet: PLN@SLACVM Internet: pln@egret1.stanford.edu *
Patrick.L..Nolan@p0.f13.n391.z1.fidonet.org (Patrick L. Nolan) (05/11/91)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics I would like to impose on the net for advice about scanners and associated software. I'm thinking of getting a scanner for my Mac. I have two applications in mind: A. Reading tables of numbers, names, etc. and putting them in machine-readable form. B. Copying line drawings and graphs to be used in computer-published documents. Neither of these requires color or much grey-scale capability. My questions relate to three different areas: 1. Hardware. There seem to be two different types of scanners that might do the job: hand-held ones for about $300 and flat beds for about $1400. A hand-held model should work OK for application A, but what about B? If the figure I want to work on is too big, can software patch it back together from two pieces? Would it be OK to reduce large originals with a copying machine? If my hand shakes while using a hand-held scanner, can the machine compensate? 2. OCR software. What's the state of Mac OCR software? What's the probability that I'll be able to recognize the text from a randomly-chosen book or journal article? Can programs be trained? Do scanners generally come bundled with OCR? Is there one program that is clearly better than the rest? 3. raster-to-vector software. To make the best use of the drawings (application B), I would like to have software to convert the scanned bitmaps to a vector representation. What programs are there to do this sort of thing? -- * Patrick L. Nolan (415)723-0133 * * W. W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory (HEPL) * * Stanford University * * Bitnet: PLN@SLACVM Internet: pln@egret1.stanford.edu *