Re: An improved method for scanning documents

["Shawn B." <leabre@html.com>]

For a while I was assisting Mike Harvey to OCR source code from his Nibble 
scans.  Anything less than 600 DPI was a major headache.  For example, I 
must have easily spent over 20 hours of time converting just one program (in 
failed attempts) scanned at 300 DPI.  When we tried at 600 DPI, the quality 
of the OCR (using OmniPage Pro 14/15 Acrobat 7) was very good, but the shear 
number of fixups... when started over and tried at 600 DPI took only about 6 
hours or so to get 200 lines of AppleSoftt BASIC tested and running.

For text and manuscript, there'd be very little effort for the human.  But 
for source code (HEX especially and ASM doubly and BASIC last) it is a huge 
pain to verify the sometimes confused "B" for "8" (vise versa) and "0" 
(zero) for "O" (capital O) and "l" (small L) for "1" (number 1).  Sometimes 
the $ would get messed up and the paranetheses are always a pain.  In all, 
you have to hand very each and every line of code and without special help 
(a special mono-spaced font) that more clearly defines the differences 
(underlining numbers for example) you're in for a treat.

I had intended to help Mike convert 25 of his programs, but only turned 1 in 
to him and I have 3 more 95% complete waiting to be turned in (which I'll do 
soon) and have consumed massive amounts of time in fixups to get it right. 
For now, I have way too much homework and with each passing semester, the 
homework load increases.

So, if you want to preserver (or search) the source code, good luck.  If you 
want to preserve or search the manuscripts, that's a great thing to do.

Or perhaps I was just using the wrong tools and the process is much easier 
for you.  If you do have it easier than I did, please let me know how.  I'd 
like to complete the task but as it is, its too time consuming for me.


Thanks,
Shawn