software for handwritten manuscript?

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visualeyes
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Joined: 07 Mar 2013, 13:27
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Country: usa

software for handwritten manuscript?

Post by visualeyes »

The question is can I use book scanner to copy about 300 handwritten pages on early California beekeeping or should I read it into Dragon speaks? time is of the essence here.
thanks- KO
tresho
Posts: 29
Joined: 14 Dec 2009, 04:51

Re: software for handwritten manuscript?

Post by tresho »

I know of no programming that will read handwriting. You might have better luck using voice recognition software. In the past I have found the time it takes to proofread voice recognition results might be better used to simply type the document in by hand. It would still be useful to have digital copies of anything handwritten, just for the purpose of preserving it.
spamsickle
Posts: 596
Joined: 06 Jun 2009, 23:57

Re: software for handwritten manuscript?

Post by spamsickle »

If you just need the material in a form you can move from one machine to another, then yes, just take pictures of the handwritten pages and bundle up the JPEGs or convert them into a PDF. I'd use ImageMagick to convert the JPEGs into PDFs, and PDFTK to combine the individual one-page PDFs into a single 300-page PDF.

If you need searchable text for some reason, this is probably not the way to go. You say time is of the essence, but you don't say money is tight. Mechanical Turk might be one solution for converting your handwritten pages to searchable text. If you're getting good results with Dragonspeak, that might be the best solution, since you already have all the pieces in place.
visualeyes
Posts: 2
Joined: 07 Mar 2013, 13:27
E-book readers owned: 0
Number of books owned: 0
Country: usa

Re: software for handwritten manuscript?

Post by visualeyes »

oh thank you! but money is tight, money is tight!
I think I will go with dragonspeak after all, but thanks for a great comparison!!
I will get something to that book machine in the future though!
KO
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