User manual NUANCE OMNIPAGE PRO X FOR MACINTOSH

LEGAL NOTICES ©2001 by ScanSoft, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted, transcribed, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or translated into any language or computer language in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, magnetic, optical, chemical, manual, or otherwise, without prior written consent from the Legal Department at ScanSoft, Inc., 9 Centennial Drive, Peabody, Massachusetts 01960. Printed in the United States of America and in the Netherlands. The software described in this book is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license. IMPORTANT NOTICE ScanSoft, Inc. provides this publication "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Some states or jurisdictions do not allow disclaimer of express or implied warranties in certain transactions; therefore, this statement may not apply to you. ScanSoft reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes from time to time in the content hereof without obligation of ScanSoft to notify any person of such revision or changes. TR A D E M A R K S AND CREDITS ScanSoft, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro, OmniPage Pro X, True Page, Direct OCR and Language Analyst are registered trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. Mac and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. in the U.S. and in other countries. All other trademarks and trade names mentioned herein are hereby acknowledged and recognized as property of their respective owners. ScanSoft Inc. 9 Centennial Drive Peabody, MA 01960 U.S.A. ScanSoft Europe BV Randstad 22-139 1316 BW Almere The Netherlands Part Number: 50-941001-00A C ONTENTS W e lc o me Chapter outline Using this Guide How to use online Help Other online resources New features in OmniPage Pro X 7 7 8 8 9 10 1 I n st a l la t io n a n d se t u p System requirements Installing the software Running the program under Mac OS 9 Starting OmniPage Pro Selecting your scanner Registering OmniPage Pro Removing OmniPage Pro 11 12 12 13 14 14 18 18 2 I n tr od u c ti on What is Optical Character Recognition? Beyond OCR Basic steps in the OCR process The OCR Toolbar The full OmniPage Pro interface The Document window The Thumbnail window The Zone Info and Tools palettes The Preferences dialog box 19 20 20 21 22 23 24 24 25 26 OmniPage Pro X User's Guide iii 3 P r o c es s i n g d o c u m e n ts Basic processing steps Automatic processing To prepare for automatic processing To process a new document automatically To process an existing document automatically Manual processing Steps for manual processing Using automatic and manual processing together Using the OCR Assistant Bringing page images into OmniPage Pro Scanning pages Loading image files Opening OmniPage Documents Using drag-and-drop Creating and modifying zones Creating zones automatically Specifying zone types Drawing zones manually Modifying zones Table zones Performing recognition Performing OCR Proofreading OCR results Verifying recognized text Color markers Getting page information Working with documents Resizing a page display Saving a document as you work Moving to other pages Reordering pages Deleting a page Undoing edits Modifying images Modifying text Printing a document 27 28 28 29 30 31 32 32 33 34 36 36 36 38 38 39 40 41 44 46 49 50 50 51 53 54 54 55 55 56 56 56 57 57 57 58 59 iv C o n t en t s Listening to a document Closing a document Quitting OmniPage Pro Exporting documents Saving an OmniPage Document Saving images Saving recognition results Saving to Portable Document Format (PDF) Copying a document to the Clipboard Using drag-and-drop functionality Direct OCR Using Direct OCR 60 60 60 61 61 61 62 64 64 65 66 67 4 S e tt in g s OCR Toolbar options Get Page options Original Layout options Style Set options OCR options Export options Preference settings Scanner settings OCR settings Spelling settings Miscellaneous settings 69 70 70 72 73 75 75 76 76 80 82 85 5 C u s to mi zi n g O C R Specifying the style set Specifying a global style set Creating style sets Applying and editing zone styles Font mapping Zone templates Training OCR User dictionaries Settings files 87 87 90 90 91 94 96 97 101 102 OmniPage Pro X User's Guide v 6 Te c h n i c a l i n fo r m a t io n Troubleshooting Solutions to try first Low memory situations Low disk space situations Improving accuracy Improving fax recognition Interface problems and solutions System failure during OCR Supported languages Supported saving formats Supported image file formats 103 104 104 104 105 105 108 109 109 110 111 112 Index 113 vi C o n t en t s Welcome Welcome to OmniPage Pro X TM, and thank you for buying our software! This User's Guide has been provided to help you get started and give you an overview of the program. Chapter outline Chapter 1, Installation and setup, tells you how to install and start the program and select a scanner. It lists the system requirements and provides guidance on registering the product. Chapter 2, Introduction, explains the OCR process and how it forms part of the OmniPage Pro workflow. It also presents the program's main working areas and controls, starting with the OCR Toolbar. Chapter 3, Processing documents, tells you how to do automatic and manual processing and how to combine them. It details processing steps: acquiring pages, zoning, recognizing, proofing and exporting. Chapter 4, Settings, gives detailed information on each of the choices offered by the pop-up menus in the OCR Toolbar. It also guides you through the choices in the panels of the Preferences dialog box. Chapter 5, Customizing OCR, provides information on some more advanced features, such as style sets and their zone styles, zone templates, training, user dictionaries and settings files. Chapter 6, Technical information, gives troubleshooting advice and details the supported file formats and languages. OmniPage Pro X User's Guide 7 Using this Guide This Guide supposes that you know how to work in the Macintosh® environment. Please refer to your Macintosh help resources if you have questions about how to use dialog boxes, menus, scroll bars, and so on. The following conventions are used in this Guide. Convention Italicized text Purpose · Emphasizes menu commands, dialog box options, button and file names: "Choose Open... in the File menu." · Names sections in this Guide. · Emphasizes new terms the first time they are used. Illustrates keyboard shortcuts. For example: zC means hold the Command key down as you press the letter "c". Introduces a tip or an item of note. Command key symbol (z) Note or Tip How to use online Help OmniPage Pro X has an extensive HTML-based online Help system. Click Help Contents or Help Index in the program's Help menu to open it. The Help system provides you with three tabbed panels: u u Contents: A three-level table of contents. Click a topic. Index: A two-level, alphabetical index. Enter a keyword or scroll to the desired location and click an entry. Search: Search keywords through the whole text of all help topics. It lists all topics containing the specified word(s). u For advice on other Help facilities, please consult the documentation for your HTML viewer. Online help contains some topics not included in this User's Guide: an indexed glossary of terms, settings guidelines for a variety of document types, a Quick Start Guide for reading a sample image file, and documentation on Apple Event support and scripting. 8 Welcome t To get help on buttons and pop-up menus Brief help is available without opening the online Help system. Hover the cursor over any button or pop-up list in the OCR Toolbar or the palettes. A concise description of the control appears in the status line along the base of the OCR Toolbar. t To get help on topics and procedures Select Help Index in OmniPage Pro's Help menu. Begin to type in a keyword you want to find. As you type in the first letters of a keyword, the Help system automatically shows you the first top-level index entry beginning with the letters typed in. OmniPage Pro's structured index helps you to quickly find answers for your questions. Click an index entry to display its related topic. If an entry is linked to more than one topic, a pop-up list appears. Select the desired topic. t To browse through a series of topics Use the Previous and Next buttons top right of each topic. These allow you to view topics in the order they appear in the table of contents. t To view recently viewed pages Use the Back button to retrace your steps to your previously viewed topics. t To print a topic Select the Print button, specify a printer to be used and print settings. Other online resources Readme files, in plain text and PDF formats, are located on the installation CD. They contain last-minute information about OmniPage Pro X. Please read one of them before installing the application. ScanSoft's web site www.scansoft.com includes a Scanner Guide with regularly updated information about supported scanners and related issues. Access the site from the online Help topic Getting Help. How to use online Help 9 New features in OmniPage Pro X The family of OmniPage® products is now augmented by OmniPage Pro X for Macintosh. Here we summarize its most important new features compared to OmniPage Pro 8 for Macintosh. u A better recognition engine has been integrated, capable of delivering greater accuracy, particularly on degraded documents. Support for the Mac® OS X operating system. A revised user interface exploits the improved display techniques of the new system. Support is maintained for Mac OS 9. A new Assistant facility provides interactive step-by-step guidance for users new to the world of OCR processing. Improved parsing of page elements to retain the formatting and layout of the original pages, in particular better retention of color graphics and smarter text/graphics detection. Better auto-detection and handling of tables and spreadsheets. Detection and recognition of reverse text (white or pale letters on black or dark backgrounds). Portable Document Format (PDF) files can be opened and their contents transformed to editable text. Recognized pages can be saved to Portable Document Format (PDF) files, ready for display, use on the Web or for file transfer. Export support added for MS Word 98, 2001 and X and MS Excel 98. Improved export support for HTML (upgraded to HTML 4.0). Voice read-back facility for texts in English and Spanish. u u u u u u u u u u 10 Welcome Chapter 1 Installation and setup This chapter provides information on installing OmniPage Pro X and selecting a scanner to use with it. Please consult the Readme file which provides the most up-to-date information on installing and running the program. Readme is supplied in plain text and PDF formats. These files are copied from the CD to the OmniPage Pro X folder during installation. This User's Guide is also supplied in PDF format. It is copied to the sub-folder User's Guide. The Mac OS X operating system includes a PDF viewer. Under Mac OS 9, please use Adobe Acrobat. The PDF files can be navigated easily using the bookmarks (table of contents), page thumbnails and hyperlinks on cross references and index entries. Please continue reading this chapter for the following information: u u u u u u u System requirements Installing the software Running the program under Mac OS 9 Starting OmniPage Pro Selecting your scanner Registering OmniPage Pro Removing OmniPage Pro OmniPage Pro X User's Guide 11 System requirements The minimum system requirements for OmniPage Pro X are: u iMac, iBook, PowerBook, Power Macintosh or PowerPC compatible computers with at least a G3 processor Mac OS 9.0 or later, Mac OS X (10.1 or above) and QuickTime 4.1 or later (this is normally included in OS X) 128 MB of memory (RAM) on Mac OS X; 64MB on Mac OS 9 with 32 MB allocated to OmniPage Pro (or 64 MB allocated to handle full-page color images with more than 256 colors) 80 to 100 MB of free hard disk space A color monitor with at least 256 colors and 800x600 pixel resolution A Macintosh-compatible pointing device A supported and correctly installed scanner, if you plan to scan documents. u u u u u u Performance and speed will be enhanced if your computer's processor, memory and available disk space exceed minimum requirements. Installing the software t To install OmniPage Pro X: Insert the OmniPage Pro CD in the CD-ROM drive. Double-click OmniPage Pro X Setup. Select a language and then click Continue. This language will be used for installation and also as the program's interface language. Read the license agreement. If you click I Agree, you can continue installation. 12 Installation and setup Chapter 1 Personalize your copy in the dialog box that appears. Type in your name, the name of your company and the serial number. You will find the serial number on the CD case. Click OK. Click Install in the next dialog box to proceed. A further dialog box lets you choose where the OmniPage Pro files will be installed. Select a drive and optionally a folder location (using Open or New) and click Choose. The program will be installed in a folder named OmniPage Pro X. If you want to keep a previous OmniPage version, install your new version to a different location. All the program files will be copied to the chosen drive and location. Some sub-folders will be created, including Components, Help, Sample Files, Training Files, User Dictionaries, User's Guide, and Zone Templates. Note Under Mac OS 9 you may get a warning message if you have no CarbonLib installed on your machine. In this case double-click the CarbonLib Setup. The required CarbonLib will be installed, the computer will then restart and the OmniPage Pro installation will start automatically. Running the program under Mac OS 9 This User's Guide and the online help describe the use of the program under the Mac OS X operating system. Some dialog boxes have a slightly different appearance under Mac OS 9. Mac OS X supports an Application menu: it includes Preferences... which is in the Edit menu under Mac OS 9 and Quit which is in the File menu in Mac OS 9. Online Help highlights all differences between Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 with an OS 9 icon. The Help menu under Mac OS 9 allows you to show or hide balloon help. This relates to system-wide balloon help, which can appear within OmniPage Pro X under OS 9. Running the program under Mac OS 9 13 Starting OmniPage Pro There are several ways of starting OmniPage Pro®: u Open the OmniPage Pro X folder and double-click the OmniPage Pro X icon. The program launches and the OCR Toolbar will be displayed. For quicker access, place an alias program icon on your Desktop. u Drag and drop one or more image files onto the OmniPage Pro X icon. The program launches and loads the dropped image files. It does not immediately recognize them. u Drag and drop an OmniPage Document icon onto the OmniPage Pro X icon or double-click an OmniPage Document icon. The program launches and opens the previously created OmniPage Document. See page 56 and Saving an OmniPage Document on page 61. u Use the Direct OCR feature. See Direct OCR on page 66. Selecting your scanner Before you can select a scanner in OmniPage Pro X, its driver must already be installed on your system. It should also be tested, to be sure it is working properly with the scanning software supplied by its manufacturer. Consult the documentation supplied with your scanner. You can either let OmniPage Pro auto-detect your scanner or you can select a scanner type manually in the Select Scanner dialog box. If you cannot find your scanner model in the scanner list in this dialog box, OmniPage Pro allows you to select a driver from one of the two 14 Installation and setup Chapter 1 general scanner driver types supported by the program. You can select either a Photoshop plug-in or a TWAIN driver depending on your scanner. For specific scanner types which work with a TWAIN driver, you can choose whether to use their own interface or use OmniPage Pro's interface. For scanners using a Photoshop plug-in driver, its interface is always displayed while scanning. Each scanner driver provides a different user interface, so the available options may vary. Tip See an overview table in the online Help topic Selecting a scanner. This summarizes the user interface differences depending on which type of scanner driver is chosen. t To auto-select a scanner for OmniPage Pro: Switch on your scanner and start OmniPage Pro. Choose Preferences... from the Application menu (Mac OS 9: Edit menu) then click the Scanner icon to display the Scanner panel. Click the Select... button to get the Select Scanner dialog box. Click the Auto-Select Scanner button. Click Verify to be sure the auto-detected scanner is correctly configured. If an auto-detected scanner has a TWAIN driver, you can select the option Show TWAIN User Interface. For more detail see point 6 in the section To access a scanner through a TWAIN driver. Click OK, then Save. If OmniPage Pro cannot recognize your scanner automatically, select it manually as described in the next section. Selecting your scanner 15 t To select a scanner manually: Follow instructions 1-3 listed above. Select a scanner manufacturer under Manufacturer in the Select Scanner dialog box. Select a scanner model under Scanner. Check the driver name under Driver. If you have more than one driver, select the one you want to use. Click Verify to be sure the selected scanner is correctly configured. Click OK to close the Select Scanner dialog box. Click Save in the Preferences dialog box. If the displayed scanner list does not contain the manufacturer or type of your scanner, you have two more choices under Manufacturer (Photoshop plug-in) and (TWAIN driver). To decide which of these general scanner drivers your scanner supports, refer to the documentation supplied with your scanner. See the next two sections for more details on selecting (TWAIN driver) or (Photoshop plug-in). Tip If you do not have a scanner at all, you can select (Test) under Manufacturer in the Select Scanner dialog box to simulate scanning. t To access a scanner through a TWAIN driver: Follow instructions 1-3 from the section To auto-select a scanner for OmniPage Pro. Select (TWAIN driver) under Manufacturer. Select a driver name under Scanner. Check that your scanner driver delivered by the manufacturer has appeared under Driver and select it, if it is not already selected. Click Verify to check the functioning of your scanner. 16 Installation and setup Chapter 1 Decide which user interface you want to use for your scanner: the driver's own interface or OmniPage Pro's interface. See the overview table in the online Help topic Selecting a scanner which summarizes the user interface functioning for different scanner drivers. · Select Show TWAIN User Interface if you want to use the user interface of your scanner driver. · Deselect Show TWAIN User Interface if you want to start scanning from OmniPage Pro using the scanner settings in the Scanner panel of the OmniPage Pro Preferences dialog box. Click OK to close the Select Scanner dialog box. Click Save in the Preferences dialog box. t To access a scanner through a Photoshop plug-in: Copy your scanner driver from the Plug-Ins folder of the Adobe Photoshop program to the OmniPage Pro X: Components: Scanner Support: Plug-Ins folder. It is assumed that the scanner driver delivered by the manufacturer has already been copied to the Adobe Photoshop program's PlugIns folder during scanner installation. Follow instructions 1-3 from the section To auto-select a scanner for OmniPage Pro. Select (Photoshop plug-in) under Manufacturer. Select the driver just copied under Scanner. Check the driver name under Driver. Click the Verify button if you want to display the info panels. The driver's info panel will appear first, then the Scanner Info panel. Inspect and then close them. Click OK to close the Select Scanner dialog box. Click Save in the Preferences dialog box. Selecting your scanner 17 t To scan in the Classic Environment: · Select Scan in Classic Mode in the Select Scanner dialog box if it is not already selected. Please wait while the program compiles a scanner list. This option enables you to scan pages even if your scanner has a driver for Mac OS 9 only. If the option is selected, scanning will be performed in the Classic Environment. If the option is deselected, scanning can only be performed with a scanner driver developed for Mac OS X. The Scan in Classic Mode option is not selectable under Mac OS 9. Registering OmniPage Pro ScanSoft's registration Wizard runs at the end of installation. We provide an easy electronic form that can be completed in less than five minutes. You are asked to enter OmniPage Pro's serial number, which appears on a sticker on the CD sleeve. When the form is filled and you click Send, the program will search an Internet connection to immediately perform the registration online. If you did not register the software during installation, you will be periodically invited to register later. You can go to www.scansoft.com to register online. Click on Support and from the main support screen choose Register in the left-hand column. For a statement on the use of your registration data, please see ScanSoft's Privacy Policy. Removing OmniPage Pro Move or copy any files you want to keep from the OmniPage Pro X folder. These might be settings, training, template, user dictiorary, export or OmniPage Document files. Then drag the folder to the Trash. 18 Installation and setup Chapter 2 Introduction You probably do business correspondence and other written projects on your computer. However, certain sources of information may not be immediately available for use. For example, if you want to incorporate part of a magazine article into a document in your word processor, you somehow have to get its text into your computer. Painstakingly retyping the article is not an appealing solution. OmniPage Pro X offers a smart solution to increase your productivity. Its optical character recognition (OCR) technology accurately and easily converts text from scanned pages and image files into editable form for use in your favorite computer applications. You do not have to retype whole texts -- OmniPage Pro does it for you. Please continue reading this chapter for information on these topics: u u u u What is Optical Character Recognition? Basic steps in the OCR process The OCR Toolbar The full OmniPage Pro interface The OCR Toolbar is the control center for the program. The other main working areas appear when a document is started: u u u Thumbnail view: this displays small images of each page. Image view: this displays an image of the current page. Text view: this displays the recognition results of the current page. OmniPage Pro X User's Guide 19 What is Optical Character Recognition? Optical character recognition (OCR) is the process of extracting text from images. Images can result from scanning paper documents or opening image files. Images do not have editable text characters; they have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form character shapes. These present a picture of the text on a page. During OCR, OmniPage Pro analyzes the character shapes in an image and determines character solutions to produce editable text. In other words, the OCR program `reads' the page. After OCR, you can export the recognized text to a variety of wordprocessing, desktop publishing, and spreadsheet applications. Beyond OCR In addition to text, OmniPage Pro X can retain the following elements in a document after OCR for display and export. t Graphics Photos, logos and drawings are examples of graphics. The program cannot recognize handwriting, but signatures can be saved as graphics. t Text formatting Font types, sizes, and styles (such as bold or italic) are examples of character formatting. Indents, tabs, margins and line spacing are examples of paragraph formatting. t Page formatting Column structure, paragraph spacing, and placement of graphics are examples of page formatting. The elements that are retained depend on settings you select before OCR and on the capabilities of the saving format you choose. See chapter 4, Settings, for more information. 20 Introduction