Re: InWords

[ag471@yfn.ysu.edu (Eric S. Ford)]

Inwords version 1.0 is at best a novelty.  The program is too
sensitive to non-text characters (ie. underlines, vertical bars,
paragraph separators, etc).  In the column scan mode it is overly
sensitive to spaces and frequently incorrectly declares spaces
as column delimiters resulting in a bad scan.  The merge scan
frequently misaligns text, repeats fragments of lines and
generally screws up the text.  Character recognition is only
fair.  The default definitions occasionally intrude after new
text is 'learned' resulting in 8's becoming 0's, e's becoming
c's and many more.  The lowercase i seems to be the hardest to
capture; along with lowercase t.  I usually end up with 15-20
'variations' learned before I get a reasonable assurance of
recognition.  But even after that many versions it seems the
program only references the last two or three (I say that only
on the basis of observation of subsequent character
recognition).  The program is prone to hang, usuallyd
recoverable with a Control-Reset, but I have developed a habit
of saving each page full of text under a separate name and
never using the Append to file mode.  The text editor is far
too limited and could benefit greatly from even some
rudimentary Appleworks capabilities.  But by far the biggest
complaint I have is the limited support Westcode has given
this product.  I received my first 'advertisement' that an
update was in the works more than 18 months ago.  Since then I
have called repeatedly and been told it was in final beta test
and would be shipping by the end of the month (each time I
called it was predicted for the end of the month).
I was told about the most recent update when I called in to
get my Pointless 2.01 update (which I was never notified of
but only found out about on this net).  I said 'great' and
asked to order it on the spot but for some reason they told me
I had to wait until I received the announcement card (which,
but the way, they said had already been mailed) and could only
order the update by mailing the card back in.  The card
arrived, two weeks later, and in fine print says to expect a
two - four week delay for delivery.  To me this is just
another "be ready by the end of the month" except that now
they have my $5 shipping charge (for the free update) tied up
while I wait.  On top of this, the update is only supposed to
be a 'maintenance' update correcting a few bugs and adding
little new capability.
 
Now, having vented my spleen, let me add this.  Inwords is the
best (read ONLY) character recognition software available to
us.  If I didn't think it had potential I wouldn't have spent
so much effort asking about updates.  However, for a new
buyer, I'd caution you to wait until the update is shipping
and a few reviews have shown up here.
 
Eric S. Ford
forde@uvg.eglin.af.mil
-- 
Eric S. Ford
forde@uvg.eglin.af.mil
forde@tecnet1.jcte.jcs.mil
ag471@yfn.ysu.edu