ABBYY FineReader
Moderator: peterZ
Re: ABBYY FineReader
Spamsickle the problem with PDF's is that they were never designed to be reflowable, which means mixed content can be hit and miss. It is however much better when the content is purely text. ePUB is the preferred standard though, as its an open format and is supported by the widest range of software and hardware readers.
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spamsickle
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Re: ABBYY FineReader
I see. So instead of thinking image --> text --> PDF, I should be thinking image --> text --> ePub. And I will, about the time solar-powered PDAs (or book readers) come online.
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rob
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- E-book readers owned: iRex iLiad, Kindle 2
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Re: ABBYY FineReader
My Kindle 2 has kept me occupied with nightly reading (about an hour per night) for the past four weeks without needing to be recharged 
The Singularity is Near. ~ http://halfbakedmaker.org ~ Follow me as I build the world's first all-mechanical steam-powered computer.
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jradi
Re: ABBYY FineReader
I used ABBYY 5.0 express for years and was extremely happy with it. So much so that I just started sending the text straight to a text file without proofing. Sure, there were errors, but it was easy enough to figure out and when you get absorbed in a great book it's rea11y easy to flgure out what's going on. 
The even better news is that I recently purchased a copy of ABBYY Pro 5.0 off ebay for only $12, there were a bunch of unopened copies available last I checked. I highly recommend you give it a shot!
The even better news is that I recently purchased a copy of ABBYY Pro 5.0 off ebay for only $12, there were a bunch of unopened copies available last I checked. I highly recommend you give it a shot!
Re: ABBYY FineReader
You can actually post PDF's to this site http://www.cometdocs.com/ and it does OCR for free and pretty accurate as well. I have done it a couple of times and the results have been comparable to Omnipage Pro 16 and abby finereader 9. It outputs them into a .doc, .txt, .odf or any other format except for PDF unfortunately. But once you have the document if you want a PDF it is easily made with cutepdf writer if you want.
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spamsickle
- Posts: 596
- Joined: 06 Jun 2009, 23:57
Re: ABBYY FineReader
I actually bought one of these, and it arrived today, but it doesn't seem to run on my machines. It also requires a floppy drive to install, which is something that I only have on a couple of my machines now. Even after I installed it on one of those, starting it gave me a "Finereader shell has encountered an error and cannot continue."jradi wrote:I used ABBYY 5.0 express for years and was extremely happy with it. So much so that I just started sending the text straight to a text file without proofing. Sure, there were errors, but it was easy enough to figure out and when you get absorbed in a great book it's rea11y easy to flgure out what's going on.
The even better news is that I recently purchased a copy of ABBYY Pro 5.0 off ebay for only $12, there were a bunch of unopened copies available last I checked. I highly recommend you give it a shot!
On the plus side, the guy on eBay says he'll refund my money, so I'm only going to be out the shipping it costs to return it.
I've seen something called "Finereader Express" which seems to be a legitimate stripped-down version of the 9.0 product. I may give that a try; it can be had for about $50.
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rob
- Posts: 773
- Joined: 03 Jun 2009, 13:50
- E-book readers owned: iRex iLiad, Kindle 2
- Number of books owned: 4000
- Country: United States
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Re: ABBYY FineReader
Hmm, it looks like maybe FineReader 5 was released prior to 2002, just barely after XP was released. My guess is that FineReader 5 can't cope with a more modern operating system. Can you get FineReader 7 (2003) or 8 (2005)?
I've read nothing but bad things about the express version...
I've read nothing but bad things about the express version...
The Singularity is Near. ~ http://halfbakedmaker.org ~ Follow me as I build the world's first all-mechanical steam-powered computer.
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spamsickle
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Re: ABBYY FineReader
Yeah, the dates in the FineReader 5 that was installed are all 2000 and (January) 2001. I found a patch on the Abbyy site which listed a "FineReader shell" abend on startup, but applying that patch didn't fix the problem on either of the two machines I tried it on.
The funny thing is, one of those machines has a running version of "FineReader 5 Sprite" that I got with a scanner which I retired years ago. The dates on that seem to cluster around March 2001, but I'm sure whatever fix is in there is also in the patch. It doesn't invoke the "shell" apparently.
On the basis of having that FineReader 5 Sprite, though, I went with the "Upgrade" version of FineReader 9. A bit pricier, but still under $200, and it has (or at least advertises -- I haven't tried it yet) the ability to split pages in books that were scanned "2-up" on a flatbed scanner. Since I already have quite a few of those which I'd prefer not to re-scan, I thought that feature (which Express didn't offer) would probably justify the extra money. And, since I could download it, I got it installed last night.
I've only converted one page from my "DIY-Scanner" series, but I'm very impressed with the results. Only one real failure on the whole page in the OCR recognition, though (being somewhat technical) several words had to be added to the Abbyy dictionary to pass the spell check. When I have time, I'm going to look into automating the conversion as much as possible. I think there is some batch capability in this software, and it claims to de-skew text.
The funny thing is, one of those machines has a running version of "FineReader 5 Sprite" that I got with a scanner which I retired years ago. The dates on that seem to cluster around March 2001, but I'm sure whatever fix is in there is also in the patch. It doesn't invoke the "shell" apparently.
On the basis of having that FineReader 5 Sprite, though, I went with the "Upgrade" version of FineReader 9. A bit pricier, but still under $200, and it has (or at least advertises -- I haven't tried it yet) the ability to split pages in books that were scanned "2-up" on a flatbed scanner. Since I already have quite a few of those which I'd prefer not to re-scan, I thought that feature (which Express didn't offer) would probably justify the extra money. And, since I could download it, I got it installed last night.
I've only converted one page from my "DIY-Scanner" series, but I'm very impressed with the results. Only one real failure on the whole page in the OCR recognition, though (being somewhat technical) several words had to be added to the Abbyy dictionary to pass the spell check. When I have time, I'm going to look into automating the conversion as much as possible. I think there is some batch capability in this software, and it claims to de-skew text.
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jradi
Re: ABBYY FineReader
I had the same problem the other night. I ended up buying Express 9.0 for $50 (express 5.0 worked great for me). I couldn't get it to install on one laptop, but luckily it installed on my newer computer. The OCR engine on this one is actually pretty accurate, if you let it go wild, it will output a page that looks just like the original. The problem is that it recognizes some text on the opposing page and it tries to figure it out.
If I can get the postprocessor to work out, then that will automatically crop my pages to eliminate the opposing page. Then, I can use the output from postprocessor in abbyy express and I think I'll be pretty happy with the end result. For now, I'm still experimenting on the software side.
Unfortunately, my pages don't seem to be consistent enough to build an autocropping script. That's a hardware problem on my part. I had a new design for the camera arms and unfortunately it slowly moves over the course of the scanning. Only by a millimeter or two, but that's enough to introduce a significant skew from start to finish... Once I get the software part figured out, I'll move back to designing scanner 2.0.
If I can get the postprocessor to work out, then that will automatically crop my pages to eliminate the opposing page. Then, I can use the output from postprocessor in abbyy express and I think I'll be pretty happy with the end result. For now, I'm still experimenting on the software side.
Unfortunately, my pages don't seem to be consistent enough to build an autocropping script. That's a hardware problem on my part. I had a new design for the camera arms and unfortunately it slowly moves over the course of the scanning. Only by a millimeter or two, but that's enough to introduce a significant skew from start to finish... Once I get the software part figured out, I'll move back to designing scanner 2.0.
Re: ABBYY FineReader
Wasn't sure where to post this.
I found this listing on ebay for abbyy pro 9.0 for 6.95 GBP or $11.49 US. Maybe a bit sketch as the seller has a few negative feedbacks & looking at their other items for sale. But there's a chance it might have been a listing error...maybe. let me know if you caught something i didn't.
Anyway, if anyone feels like taking a chance:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ABBYY-FineReader-9- ... .m63.l1177
I found this listing on ebay for abbyy pro 9.0 for 6.95 GBP or $11.49 US. Maybe a bit sketch as the seller has a few negative feedbacks & looking at their other items for sale. But there's a chance it might have been a listing error...maybe. let me know if you caught something i didn't.
Anyway, if anyone feels like taking a chance:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ABBYY-FineReader-9- ... .m63.l1177