Re: An improved method for scanning documents

[pausch@saaf.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <AumdnSzXTeg3Iq3ZnZ2dnUVZ_v6dnZ2d@comcast.com>,
Michael J. Mahon <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:
>Shawn B. wrote:
>> 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.
>
>It would take a lot less than 6 hours to type in a 200 line Applesoft
>program, so I'd say that OCR is worse than useless in this case.

Indeed!  200 lines in 6 hours will give you 1.8 minutes per line.  This is
plenty of time for typing e.g.:

   3200 RETURN

:-) ....but to be fair, a lot of lines are of course much longer than that.
And one will also need time for proofreading, no matter if the text has been
typed or OCR'ed.

High resolution of the scans is essential for low error rates in the subsequent
OCR.  The human eye is much better than OCR software at correctly recognizing
letters and digits in low resolution.

>-michael
>
>Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's!
>Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/
>
>"The wastebasket is our most important design
>tool--and it is seriously underused."


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