User manual NUANCE TEXTBRIDGE PRO - MILLENNIUM BUSINESS EDITION

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION Copyright © 1995­2000 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 the prior written consent of ScanSoft, Inc., 9 Centennial Drive, Peabody, Massachusetts 01960. 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. TextBridge is a registered trademark, and Smart Zones, Instant Access OCR, and Custom Proof are trademarks, of ScanSoft, Inc. Excel and Word are trademarks; Windows and FrontPage are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corp. WordPerfect is a registered trademark of WordPerfect Corp. Other terms used in this manual are the trademarks of their respective holders. Animated character designed by Dreamlight Incorporated. www.dreamlight.com. Portions of this product copyright © 1994­2000, Inso Corporation. Authors: Lois West and Beth Paddock © SCANSOFT, INC. 9 Centennial Drive Peabody, Massachusetts 01960 TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide Part Number 00­009733­00 April 2000 TRADEMARKS AND CREDITS CONTENTS PREFACE About This User's Guide ............................... vii Organization of this user's guide..................... viii Documentation conventions ......................... ix Related Documentation ................................ ix Technical Support ..................................... x 1 INTRODUCTION TO TEXTBRIDGE Basic OCR Concepts ................................. 1­1 Features and Benefits ................................ 1­3 New Features ................................... 1­3 Enhanced Features............................... 1­4 Other Features .................................. 1­7 Documents TextBridge Can Recognize ................ 1­8 Input Image File Formats ............................. 1­9 Output Text File Formats ............................ 1­10 Output Image File Formats ........................... 1­12 Where to Go From Here.............................. 1­13 TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide iii 2 INSTALLING AND SETTING UP TEXTBRIDGE What Comes with TextBridge .......................... 2­1 Supported Scanners.................................. 2­2 Installing and Testing Your Scanner ..................... 2­3 System Requirements ................................ 2­4 Before Installing TextBridge ........................... 2­4 Uninstalling a Previous Version of TextBridge .......... 2­4 Using TextBridge with Pagis ....................... 2­6 Learning about TextBridge before you install it ......... 2­6 Installing TextBridge ................................ 2­7 Scanner Setup ...................................... 2­8 Setting Up Instant Access to TextBridge .................. 2­9 Updating your TextBridge Software .................... 2­10 Uninstalling TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition ... 2­10 Where to Go From Here.............................. 2­11 3 OCR AND BASIC TEXTBRIDGE OPERATIONS What is TextBridge OCR? ............................. 3­1 Page types ..................................... 3­2 Page sources .................................... 3­3 Recomposition .................................. 3­4 Running TextBridge Standalone and Instant Access ......... 3­5 Standalone Program .............................. 3­5 Instant Access .................................. 3­6 Improving Page Recognition with Settings ................ 3­7 Page Type Settings ............................... 3­7 Text Document Settings .......................... 3­11 Recognizing Other Languages ......................... 3­13 Language Installation............................ 3­13 Language Processing ............................ 3­13 Where to Go From Here.............................. 3­15 iv TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide 4 LEARNING TO USE TEXTBRIDGE Before Beginning to Process a Document.................. 4­1 Using TextBridge to Process a Document ................. 4­2 Starting TextBridge.................................. 4­3 Using Automatic Processing ........................... 4­4 Using Manual Processing ............................. 4­6 Performing Basic Operations........................... 4­8 Selecting the Page Source.......................... 4­8 Selecting the Page Type ........................... 4­9 Previewing the Page ............................. 4­10 Zoning the Page ................................ 4­12 Proofreading the Document ....................... 4­14 Saving the Document ............................ 4­16 Getting Help While Using TextBridge ................... 4­17 Using the Welcome Window ....................... 4­18 Using the Show Me How Window ................... 4­18 Using Tips .................................... 4­20 Getting Information from Help ..................... 4­20 Using the TextBridge Web Site..................... 4­21 Where to Go From Here.............................. 4­22 5 SAMPLE SESSIONS WITH TEXTBRIDGE Using the Sample Documents .......................... 5­1 Session 1: Recognizing a Simple Document Using Auto Processing .............................. 5­6 Session 2: Using Instant Access to TextBridge ............ 5­12 Session 3: Recognizing a Complex Document Using Manual Processing........................... 5­17 Session 4: Processing Text, Pictures, and a Table .......... 5­25 Where to Go From Here.............................. 5­32 Table of Contents v 6 ADVANCED SAMPLE SESSIONS Session 1: Processing a Document to Use in a Database ...... 6­1 Session 2: Using Zone Templates and Page Types ........... 6­6 Session 3: Training TextBridge OCR .................... 6­11 Where to Go From Here.............................. 6­16 INDEX vi TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide PREFACE ScanSoft, Inc. welcomes you to TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition for Windows® 95, 98, 2000, and Windows NT® 4.0. The documentation that comes with TextBridge provides you with the information you need to operate TextBridge. The documentation includes this user's guide, a Help system, and Release Notes. ScanSoft invites your comments about the information provided in the documentation. The documentation is part of an extensive user assistance program designed to provide you with information you may need to understand and use TextBridge. The section "Getting Help while using TextBridge" provides further information about user assistance. Before going on to find out more about TextBridge, please read this preface because it describes these important items: N N N About this user's guide Related documentation Technical support ABOUT THIS USER'S GUIDE This user's guide is a reference tool that provides information about TextBridge. It is for users with a wide range of computer experience. It assumes that you are familiar with the management and operation of your computer and Windows. This manual is provided both in print and electronic form. The entire user's guide is provided as a digital document in Adobe® Portable Document Format (PDF). TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide vii To view the user's guide in PDF format you need Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is installed with TextBridge, unless you already have it on your PC. You can access the user's guide from the installation menu and the TextBridge Help menu, or you can open it from Adobe Acrobat Reader. After you open it, you can view it on your PC and print all or part of it using Adobe Acrobat Reader. Organization of this user's guide The user's guide organization is as follows: The Table of Contents at the beginning of the user's guide describes the basic information in this book and helps you to find general information quickly. This Preface describes the documentation provided with TextBridge and technical support. Chapter 1 "Introduction to TextBridge" discusses TextBridge features. It also describes basic OCR concepts, documents TextBridge can recognize, supported scanners, and input file formats TextBridge can read and output file formats to which TextBridge can save the recognized text. Chapter 2 "Installing TextBridge" describes what comes with TextBridge; system requirements, installation, Instant Access set up, and TextBridge uninstall. Chapter 3 "OCR and TextBridge" explains the basic TextBridge functions that enable it to recognize and OCR your documents. Chapter 4 "Learning to Use TextBridge" describes the basic processes of using TextBridge. Chapter 5 "Sample Sessions with TextBridge" walks you through several practice sessions designed to help you to learn and use the important features of TextBridge. Chapter 6 "Advanced Sample Sessions" describes more complex and less frequent uses of TextBridge. The Index provides a comprehensive list of topics to assist you in quickly locating the specific information you need. viii TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide Documentation conventions TextBridge documentation uses certain graphical elements and formatting to emphasize information and give more meaning to text. Table 1: Documentation Conventions bold Introduces a new term or the first use of an important term in a chapter. It is sometimes used to denote strong emphasis. Denotes titles of other user's guides or books and generic representations of file name entries in examples; for example, filename Denotes text that appears on the computer screen such as examples, menu text, and messages plus actual file names. Denotes titles of chapters and sections in this user's guide. Introduces tips that provide useful information about a procedural step or system function. Introduces information of note about the current subject. italic monospace " " (quotes)  Note RELATED DOCUMENTATION TextBridge provides a comprehensive set of printed and digital documentation designed to assist you in learning and operating the product. The documentation provided with TextBridge covers all aspects of installation and operation. Note Information provided in individual documents is not duplicated in other documents except for basic information about TextBridge. If you do not find the information you want in a particular document, please check another. For example, if you do not find information you want in this user's guide, look for it in the Help system Preface ix Refer to the documentation in the following list for information: N Online Release Notes. Before or after you install TextBridge, read the Release Notes. These provide the most up-to-date information about TextBridge. They describe technical information, including specifics about using a particular scanner. Release Notes also include information unavailable at the time that the user's guide and Help were finalized. During installation you can access the Release Notes from the installation menu. After installation you can access the Release Notes from the TextBridge Program menu in the Start menu. Help. The Help system provides you with detailed information about using TextBridge. It includes instructions on how to get started in TextBridge, step-by-step procedures for most operations and user tips. Context-sensitive Help is always available by pressing F1 from any menu command or dialog box. Online User's Guide. An online version of the complete user's guide is provided in Adobe Acrobat format (.pdf). You can access the user's guide from the installation menu and the TextBridge Help menu, or you can open it from Adobe Acrobat Reader. Printed User's Guide. A printed version of the user's guide is provided. The user's guide provides you with basic information about OCR and how TextBridge performs OCR, information about installing TextBridge, information about how to run TextBridge and improve its performance, and tutorials to help you learn the basic-to-advanced use of TextBridge. You may also need to refer to additional publications, such as the manufacturer's documentation for your scanner. N N N Note TECHNICAL SUPPORT If you should experience problems with TextBridge that you cannot resolve on your own using the documentation and software, contact TextBridge Technical Support at the following Web site: www.scansoft.com x TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide The ScanSoft Web site provides a link to TextBridge pages, including Technical Support with Frequently Asked Questions, technical information bulletins, and a problem report form. Before sending a problem report form to ScanSoft Technical Support, be sure to visit FastTrack, ScanSoft's electronic support system on the web site. Using an Intelligent Expert ReasoningTM methodology, FastTrack delivers intuitive self-service via the Internet and allows you to successfully resolve your problems online 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Software downloads, product upgrades and product updates are also available in FastTrack. Additional information about contacting TextBridge Technical Support is provided in the TextBridge Help menu. If you must contact ScanSoft Technical Support, the following information will help in solving the problem: N Your software version number (This is on the back of the CD envelope and in the Help menu under About TextBridge.) N Your software serial number (This is the serial number on the back of the TextBridge CD-ROM envelope and in the Help menu under About TextBridge.) N N N Your scanner make and model A description of the steps that led up to the problem If TextBridge generated an error message, a verbatim description of the error message or its number and when it appeared. Preface xi 1 INTRODUCTION TO TEXTBRIDGE Welcome to ScanSoft's TextBridge Pro Millennium, optical character recognition (OCR) software for Microsoft Windows® 95, 98, 2000 and Windows NT® 4.0. This chapter provides an introduction to TextBridge including: N N N N N N Basic OCR concepts Features and benefits Characteristics of documents TextBridge can recognize Input image file formats Output text file formats Output image file formats BASIC OCR CONCEPTS OCR technology enables you to convert paper documents into fully editable text with images on your computer. Originally, OCR technology performed simple character recognition of text characters, numbers, and symbols. Today, TextBridge OCR includes full document recognition including recognizing text plus formatting such as headlines, multiple columns, tables, and running headers and footers and capturing photographs and line drawings. TextBridge even retains the layout of the original document as much as possible. You can use TextBridge to scan and convert printed pages to text documents for your word processor, spreadsheet program, web browser, database program, or other text application. Pages may be from most sources, including computer printers, fax machines, photocopiers, magazines, and newspapers. Pages can be black and white or color. TextBridge can also recognize standard page image files from fax modems, image applications, and other sources. TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide 1­1 Using the latest document recognition technology from ScanSoft, TextBridge OCR uses its recomposition capability to produce a fully editable electronic document with the original pictures and document layout (Figure 1­1). Original document Recomposed document in word processor Figure 1­1. TextBridge document recomposition In most cases, TextBridge understands your original document's format and maintains the layout, including columns, headers, footers, pictures, and picture captions. Pictures can be black and white, grayscale, or color. 1­2 TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide Recomposition is possible only if your text program supports pictures and layout. For example, recomposition is supported in Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect but not in Notepad. Forms and documents created in desktop publishing programs are usually too complex for recomposition by TextBridge as well as your word processor. As a result, the text and pictures are retained but the full layout is not. FEATURES AND BENEFITS TextBridge offers many features designed to make it easy to use and increase your productivity. Whether you need to capture a simple one-page letter, a magazine article, a spreadsheet, or a long transcript, TextBridge can save you valuable time and effort. In addition, TextBridge provides all the capabilities that experienced OCR users expect. With TextBridge, you can import most paper documents or document image files to your computer. TextBridge attains the highest degree of OCR accuracy and provides the output in fully editable form in your favorite program. Many of these features and benefits are described in more detail in the user's guide and Help. New Features TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition offers these new features to increase your productivity: N Windows 2000 Certification. Makes use of latest Windows technology to assure a consistent user experience and a more reliable and manageable application. Updated scanner support. Includes latest Scanner Wizard hint file for easy setup of popular scanners. Live updates. Stay up-to-date with the latest product changes from the ScanSoft, Inc. web site. Instant AccessTM to FrontPage® 2000 and The Print Shop® ProPublisher 2000. Use TextBridge Instant Access to scan, recognize, and paste text and pictures directly into your FrontPage and Print Shop documents. N N N Introduction to TextBridge 1­3 Enhanced Features In addition to the new features, TextBridge offers enhanced features that were available in previous versions. These features were available before and are even better now. They are described in the following list: N Instant Access. Start TextBridge within most Windows text programs such as Word or Excel. After recognizing and converting the page, TextBridge then automatically pastes recognition data (text and pictures) directly into the program's open document. OCR accuracy. Dramatically save time and eliminate retyping. Color and grayscale pictures and text. Recognition and output of color and grayscale pictures. Recognition of color text and text on a color or shaded background and output of black on white or white on black. Table recomposition. Advanced analytical capability results in very accurate table reformatting. Ability to edit the entire table as well as individual cells for improved recognition. Cell table recomposition is supported even if you do not choose to retain layout. Flexible multi-page document handling. Ability to view and manipulate the pages of a document using the page thumbnails. Zone multiple pages before recognition. Process the pages of a document in any order. Delete, rearrange, and re-recognize individual pages. You can also control the output. Extensive language recognition. Ability to recognize many Eastern, Central, and Western European languages. Multiple language recognition. Ability to recognize multiple languages on the same page if all languages belong to the same language group. Usability and user assistance. Enhanced ease of use including a redesigned user interface and extensive user assistance. User assistance includes a multimedia assistant, information screens, context-sensitive tips, status area messages, Help system, and printed and online documentation. TextBridge Assistant. An easy-to-use assistant guides you through each step of the most common TextBridge activities, such as how to scan a page and send it to Word, recognize an image file, and recognize just part of a page. N N N N N N N N 1­4 TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide N Convenient batch processing. The ability to select multiple files and process each file separately plus the ability to schedule processing for a specific time in the future. Integration with e-mail programs. Input to popular programs such as Lotus cc:Mail, Microsoft Outlook, and America Online (AOL). Integration with the latest scanners. TextBridge works with the most recent scanners. The Release Notes and the ScanSoft Web site at www.scansoft.com provides the latest information about supported scanners and getting your scanner to work with TextBridge. HTML 4.0 output and WYSIWYG capability. Output files in the latest version of HTML and preserve the original look using cascading style sheets. Dual page scanning. Scan both pages of an open book at the same time but handle them as two separate pages. Easy database importing. Use of standard delimited text file output that allows you to import data into many databases. ToolTips and What's This? Help. Instant context-sensitive information about commands, dialog boxes, and buttons on the interface. Document recomposition. TextBridge offers true document recomposition to retain your original page layout. It reproduces multiple columns, tables, and pictures and keeps them in the same location as they are in your original document. For example, when you specify output to the Microsoft WordTM or Corel WordPerfect® format, TextBridge can retain the original document layout in fully-editable form, even for pages containing tables, line art, reverse video, drop caps, insets, and pictures. When you edit the document, the original text flow is maintained. When you specify output to the Microsoft ExcelTM or Lotus 1-2-3 format, spreadsheets and cell tables retain their original layout as cell tables, not tabbed columns. When you edit the table information, the lines move to fit. N N N N N N N Introduction to TextBridge 1­5 TextBridge supports formats for the programs that retain page layout in the following list: N N N N N Internet Explorer Netscape Word 6.0, 7.0, 97, and 2000 Word Perfect 6.0, 6.1, 7.0, 8.0, and 9.0 Any word processor that supports RTF Retaining pictures is independent of retaining layout. Some text programs retain pictures even though they do not retain layout. N Page Types. TextBridge provides many predesigned Page Types to make processing easier and more efficient. You do not have to go through a complicated process of determining and specifying settings for common types of pages. These Page Types automatically provide appropriate settings for the type of page you want to process. For example, there is a Letter page type and a Magazine page type that automatically activate settings for improved results for letters and pages from magazines. Automatic zoning. TextBridge automatically zones your page into text, picture, and table zones. You do not need to zone the page manually. Zone editing. You can edit the automatically recognized zones to further refine the zoning. Use zone editing to increase the accuracy and efficiency of page processing by reshaping zones, specifying the language, and renumbering zones. Built-in ProofreaderTM. After document recognition, you can use the built-in proofreader to view and accept or correct any words that TextBridge suspects may not be recognized accurately. The proofreader provides suggestions from which you may choose. Dynamic OCR training. You can train TextBridge's OCR to improve recognition accuracy as the job progresses. Use dynamic training with difficult documents, such as faxes or multigeneration photocopies. TextBridge enables you to interact with the OCR process by viewing then accepting or correcting its automatic recognition decisions. The software actually learns special symbols and words. N N N N 1­6 TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide N Output files to the latest version of programs. These include Microsoft Word 2000, Excel 2000, FrontPage 2000, WordPerfect 9.0, and Adobe FrameMaker 5.0. Custom dictionaries. To improve recognition accuracy further, you can create specialized word lists (scientific terminology, proper names, acronyms, and so on) within TextBridge or in ASCII text files and load them into TextBridge. You can also use your Microsoft Word or Office custom dictionary with TextBridge. N Other Features In addition to the features listed in the previous sections TextBridge provides these other features. N Broad scanner support. TextBridge supports most popular desktop scanners with TWAIN (technology without an important name) device interface standard. Image processing. TextBridge accepts a wide range of images from a variety of sources for processing. Specifically, the program imports and recognizes online document images in BMP, PCX, DCX, TIFF, and XIF formats that originate from fax modems and other sources. For more information, see the "Input Image File Formats" section in this chapter. Deferred processing. TextBridge enables you to scan all the pages of a document to a TIFF or XIF file, then later open the image file for document recognition. You can also save all the pages to a multi-page image file or save each page as a separate file. Output text file formats including HTML. TextBridge supports a number of output text file formats, including word processor, desktop publishing, spreadsheet, HTML, and database formats. Now you can process your text for publication on the Web. Preview of page images. TextBridge provides a set of tools for previewing page images before processing them. You can manually define areas of page images as zones to be processed and capture only the text, tables, or pictures you want. You can also edit the automatic zoning by adjusting the text, table, and picture zones. N N N N Introduction to TextBridge 1­7 N Zone templates. After you create a set of zones, TextBridge lets you save and reload zone templates for new jobs. In this way you can consistently process or ignore specific areas on the same type of pages and save time without rezoning each page. Re-usable training data. After you interactively train OCR, you can save the training data in a file. You can reload this training file for similar documents of the same page type. Using this training file assures the highest recognition accuracy without your having to repeat the training. Two-sided document processing. If your scanner has a sheet feeder, you can scan the fronts (odd sides) of the pages first, then flip the stack, and scan the reverse (even) sides. When scanning and recognition are complete, TextBridge automatically collates the text and keeps it in the original order. N N Documents TextBridge Can Recognize TextBridge includes a number of advances developed by ScanSoft, Inc. and at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Consequently, TextBridge provides highly accurate OCR and format retention on the widest range of documents. TextBridge can recognize documents with the characteristics in the following list: N N N N N N N N N Documents printed on typewriters, phototypesetters, and impact, ink-jet, dot-matrix, and laser printers Photocopied, degraded, or dirty documents Documents with single- or multiple-column layouts Spreadsheets and cell tables Paper documents with black and white, grayscale, and color pictures including photos and line art Page image files with black and white, grayscale, and color pictures Dual page documents, such as bound books Multi-page documents Single- or multiple-page images from fax modems and other sources 1­8 TextBridge Pro Millennium Business Edition User's Guide N N N Hard-copy faxes Documents with point sizes ranging from 5-point to 72-point type in practically any typeface Documents composed in any of many Eastern, Central, or Western European languages as well as one or more of the languages within one of these groups in the same document INPUT IMAGE FILE FORMATS The source of page images for TextBridge can be your scanner or it can be image files. TextBridge can recognize the following types of image file formats: Image File Format Windows bitmap PCX Multi-page PCX used in some fax programs Tag image file format (including Alacrity TIFF) Delrina WinFax fax image files File Name Extension .bmp .pcx .dcx .tif, .ala .fxr, .fxd, .fxm, .fxs .xif eXtended image file Image files can be black and white (binary), grayscale, or color. TextBridge can process images in resolutions from 72 to 900 dots per inch (dpi). Recognition results are generally better from grayscale images than binary images. For the most accurate results, we recommend scanning grayscale images at 200 dpi. For better results on difficult documents, we recommend scanning grayscale images at 300 dpi; however, this requires more processing time. Note Refer to the ScanSoft Web site at www.scansoft.com for the latest list of supported input image file formats. Introduction to TextBridge 1­9