Conference hydra::amiga_v1

    The same devices are sold on MSDOS machines.  The Ad I saw had a
    mouse with the scanner and crosshair aim on a clear plastic triangle
    attached to the mouse.  It was a text to Lotus spreadsheet device.
    
    The major action I've seen is in whole page scanners.  It is the
    attention of the Japanese in the FAX peripheral market that has
    re-heated this area.  AutoCAD has a video camera to CAD database
    object approach that might translate well to the AMIGA.
    
    A good article on video recognition of objects by an AMIGA appeared
    in a recent Byte Magazine article.  Maybe an AI project for object
    to font would be in order?  Anyway, It still looks like manual entry
    is here to stay.

    We have an A-size (8 1/2 x 11) scanner in our office area, soon
    to be used for scanning A-size documents to be stored as raster
    images.  Will will be looking at a hardware upgrade for character
    recognition; therefore any typed text will be recognized and outputed
    as character data.  Hand written data is still a dream...
    
    -drew
    
                                                              
    

    Hand written is not a dream!  A pen mouse working through the mouse
    port has been here some time.  I understand its works within the
    paint programs.  Last I saw, the price was stiff.

    re: .3
    
    But can it recognize the text?  This is what .2 meant (I think).
    You still can't scan a page of hand-written text and then go into
    ED or whatever and edit the text.  You really need some good AI
    software to translate a bitmap of handwritten text into ascii data.
    
    regards,
    
    steve mcafee
    
    

    Re: .4
    
    Exactly!  I meant hand written -> text that you could edit using
    and text editor such as EDT.
    
    -drew

    Almost 20 years ago I wrote software that reliably recognized
    handwritten input on a Rand Tablet ("reliably" means 95% of the
    characters were correctly recognized; the other 5% were *not*
    recognized rather than misrecognized.  This sounds good, but for
    bulk input it's really not that great.).  It used up most of PDP-9,
    but would comfortably fit in an Amiga today.  It required the time
    sequence of the input points, so it would take quite a bit of work
    to drive it off a raster of points, but given the time sequence
    the algorithms were surprisingly straightforward.  I moved on to
    another project after we got it working, so I never got the opportunity
    to try to tweak up its recognition rate.  It was not user sensitive
    within a particular penmanship style, and could accomodate other
    styles (within broad limits) by changing some tables.  It output
    ASCII character codes, and was part of an editing system that used
    proofreading marks made directly on the text to specify editing
    operations (i.e., it could recognize any cursive shape as well as
    cursive handwriting).
    
    len.
    

    
    Not one to put a damper on this line of discussion, but I was
    interested in the type of scanner that reads typed text. Most of
    what I need read is computer printouts, typed documents, etc.
    
    I am wondering what it would cost to get a simple scanner that would
    do this type of work. Has anyone had experience with the company
    referred to in .0? Does anyone know of a reliable source for a scanner
    that would be able to be used on the Amiga. I guess in order to
    simplify the process, the only interface it really needs is RS232.
    As long as it interprets the typed characters and sends them into
    the Amiga's serial port.
    
    Thanks for the responses so far,
    	Mark

    Mark,
    
    I'm also interested in such devices.  I'll preface my next remark
    with "I have never used ANY optical scanners on ANY microcomputer"
    although I have used a professional scanner at work (although it was
    only occasionally, and a few years ago).  I think that devices like
    the one produced by the company in .0 use the serial device to send
    something other than ASCII to some specially written software that
    they supply.  I don't think that the hardware device does anything
    other than digitizing the image.
    
    -jim

To add more rumor to this note-- I seem to recall that the Mac
had a peripheral called 'Thunderscan' (?) you replaced the print
head on your printer with this do-hicky, and it would scan the
documents you fed into the printer.  Sort of a neat idea to
bypass having to package the mechanical hardware needed to move
the scanner around on a page.

I don't remember if this digitized images or was an optical character
reader with ascii output (I think it was a digitizer.)

-dave

    Thunderscan is a digitizer...and works quite well.
    
    I remember seeing a thing that looked like a typist's copy stand
    used for scanning documents a line a time into a computer.  It had
    a sliding head that moved on a t-square like device.  You moved
    the head over each line of type to read it.  Don't know much more
    about it.  It looked a little cumbersome.
    
    

    The one we currently have in our lab is:
    
    	MS-300A Intelligent Image Scanner with built-in parallel
    	interface (also supports RS-232C or RS-422)  300 dots per
    	inch (dpi) resoulution.
    
    From:
    
    	Microtek Lab, Inc.
    	16901 South Western Avenue
    	Gardena, CA  90247
    
    	(213) 321-2121
    
    	Microtek has an office in Taiwan, no doubt where the unit is
    	built.  This product is made to use on the IBM PC line as well
    	as the VAX mate (Our PC clone).
    
    We are using this unit to scan images to hopefully be converted
    to ASCII text, I have heard there is a hardware option for recognizing
    computer generated text, but havn't found any mention of this in
    the owners manual.  The approximate cost is $2,000.00, can't confirm
    this price.
    
    -drew