[blindlaw] New Scanning Option, and The Mystery is Solved

[Ford, Tim (CDPH-OLS)]

I just found the answer to the mystery of why one person's version of
Adobe had the text regonition option, and nobody else did.  

Today I took delivery of my new laptop from work.  They had
pre-installed the professional version of Adobe 8.  When I opened up the
first PDF document someone had sent me, I got prompts that were new.
Yes, I got the prompts about this document containing only an image, and
would I like to have it converted to text!  

so the simple answer is what one or more of you were proposing, that
this is only a feature of the Adobe professional version, not included
in the free reader-only version.

So the person who reported this feature somehow had a professional
version without knowing it.

Below I have deleted the now very long string of notes, leaving just my
original, for those who are just coming across this topic and want to
know what prompted this discussion.

Sincerely,
Tim Ford


  
In a message dated 1/6/2008 12:46:02 P.M. Central Standard  Time, 
Tim.Ford at cdph.ca.gov writes:

I  recently  discovered, quite by accident, a new scanning option that
May be   of interest.

My office recently installed Adobe Acrobat 8  Professional,  Version 
8.0.0, on the computer with the scanner  that I have been using to 
create PDF versions of briefs an other  material I need to send to 
others electronically.  I had my  assistant scan in a brief that I was
to file electronically.   

I pulled up the results, just   to print it and have my  assistant make
sure all the pages were there.   To my  surprise, JAWS started
automatically reading the document.   I  had my assistant check, and on
the screen, and what we printed,  was the  typical image only format, 
with my scrawled signature and  all.

so  apparently what this new version of Adobe has is the  capacity to 
add a  quite good optical character recognition of the  text.  The 
recognition quality was quite good, better than what I  am used to 
with

OpenBook.

So the advantages of this  is that:

1.  You  have a PDF file with the actual intact  original, so if there 
are any scan  errors to figure out, you have  the original there for a
sighted person to  review.   

2.  You also have the actual original that you can   print and/or send
electronically to others.  If the person you  send it  to does not use 
a screen reading program, then they will  not notice any  difference 
between what they see and any other  Adobe PDF image only  scan.

3.  If the recipient  has a screen reader installed,  then Adobe knows
that, and  automatically turns on the converted text   imbedded
information.

Oh yes, and there is yet another  neat  aspect.  Although the Adobe 
text conversion itself is  not something  you can edit, all you do is 
select whatever text  you want, including using  control plus a to
select all,
and paste  that in to a Word document.   That gives you everything
that
the Adobe text recognition picked  up.

For my  Adobe reader software, I have the typical free reader  version,
so  you do not need to have the Adobe Professional version   installed
except on the machine that has the scanner on  it.

I do not  know the cost of the Adobe Professional version  software.
However, this is  the typical software product that most  offices now 
use, and is certainly  something that would be  affordable by most any
office of any   size.


Sincerely,
Tim   Ford