User manual SCANSOFT OMNIPAGE SE

L E G A L NO T I C E S Copyright © 2006 Nuance Communications, 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 Nuance Communications, Inc., 1 Wayside Road, Burlington, Massachusetts 01803-4609. Printed in the United States of America and in Ireland. 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. I M P O R T A N T NO T I C E Nuance Communications, 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. Nuance reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes from time to time in the content hereof without obligation of Nuance to notify any person of such revision or changes. TRA D E M A R K S A N D CR E D I T S Nuance, the Nuance logo, ScanSoft, OmniPage, PaperPort, True Page, Direct OCR, Logical Form Recognition, RealSpeak and ASR-1600 are registered trademarks or trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc., in the United States of America and/or other countries. All other company names or product names referenced herein may be the trademarks of their respective holders. T H I R D PA R T Y LICE N S E S / NO T I C E S Please see acknowledgements/notices at the end of this guide. Nuance Communications, Inc. 1 Wayside Road Burlington, MA 01803-4609 U.S.A. Nuance Belgium BVBA Guldensporenpark 32 BE-9820 Merelbeke Belgium C ONTENTS 5 7 New features in OmniPage 15 WE L C O M E IN S T A L L A T I O N AND SETUP 9 9 10 11 13 14 15 15 16 System requirements Installing OmniPage Setting up your scanner with OmniPage How to start the program Registering your software Activating OmniPage Uninstalling the software How to use OmniPage with PaperPort US I N G OM N I PA G E OmniPage Documents The OmniPage Desktop Basic Processing Steps 17 17 18 19 PROCESSING DOCUMENTS 21 21 23 25 25 26 28 29 31 32 33 35 37 37 38 Quick Start Guide Processing methods Manual processing Processing with workflows Processing from other applications Processing with the Batch Manager Defining the source of page images Document to document conversion Describing the layout of the document Preprocessing Images Image Enhancement Tools Using Image Enhancement History Saving and applying templates Image Enhancement in Workflows OmniPage SE User's Guide 3 Zones and backgrounds Table grids in the image Using zone templates 38 42 42 PROOFING AND EDITING 45 45 46 47 48 49 50 50 52 54 55 56 The editor display and views Proofreading OCR results Verifying text The Character Map User dictionaries Languages Training Text and image editing On-the-fly editing Reading text aloud Working with Forms SAVING AND EXPORTING Saving and Exporting Saving original images Saving recognition results Sending pages by mail Other export targets 59 59 60 61 65 65 WO R K F L O W S Workflow Assistant Batch Manager Creating new jobs Watched folders Watched mailboxes Barcode processing Voice recognition 67 69 73 74 78 79 80 81 TECHNICAL IN D E X 4 INFORMATION 83 83 Troubleshooting 89 Contents Welcome Welcome to this OmniPage® 15 text recognition program, and thank you for choosing our software! The following documentation has been provided to help you get started and give you an overview of the program. This User's Guide This guide introduces you to using OmniPage 15. It includes installation and setup instructions, a description of the program's commands and working areas, task-oriented instructions, ways to customize and control processing, and technical information. This guide is written with the assumption that you know how to work in the Microsoft Windows environment. Please refer to your Windows documentation if you have questions about how to use dialog boxes, menu commands, scroll bars, drag and drop functionality, shortcut menus, and so on. We also assume you are familiar with your scanner and its supporting software, and that the scanner is installed and working correctly before it is setup with OmniPage 15. Please refer to the scanner's own documentation as necessary. Online Help OmniPage online Help contains information on features, settings, and procedures. It also has a comprehensive glossary, with its own alphabetical index and a table of contents. The online Help is provided as HTML help, and has been designed for quick and easy information retrieval. Online Help is available after you install OmniPage. Press F1 as you are working with the program to see an online help topic relating to the current screen area, dialog box or warning message. Welcome 5 Comprehensive context-sensitive help aims to provide just enough assistance to let you keep working without delay. You can access the context-sensitive help in the following ways: Click the Help tool in the Standard toolbar to get the help cursor. Click with this on any item on the desktop outside a dialog box or warning message. Press Shift + F1 to get the same help cursor. Use Shift + F1 to get contextsensitive help for shortcut menu items. Click the question mark button in the upper right corner of a dialog box and then click an item in the dialog box to see the popup window. Some dialog boxes or warning messages have their own Help button, or a help text. Click the button or the text to get information on the dialog or message box. Click anywhere to remove a context-sensitive popup Help window. Readme File The Readme file contains last-minute information about the software. Please read it before using OmniPage. To open this HTML file, choose Readme in the OmniPage Installer or afterwards in the Help menu. Scanning and other information The Nuance® web site at www.nuance.com provides timely information on the program. The Scanner Guide (http://www.nuance.com/scannerguide/) contains up-dated information about supported scanners and related issues; Nuance tests the 25 most widely used scanner models. Access Nuance's web site from the OmniPage 15 Installer or afterwards from the Help menu. Tech Notes The web site at www.nuance.com contains Tech Notes on commonly reported issues using OmniPage 15. Web pages may also offer assistance on the installation process and troubleshooting. 6 Welcome What's new in this release of OmniPage? The new generation of the OmniPage product family offers a number of improvements and innovations compared to the previous version. General improvements include: Faster OCR engine delivering higher accuracy Revised, intuitive user interface Improved character attributes and font matching Improved table conversion Better zoning and handling of colored backgrounds Better layout retention and document-level consolidation. Features available in all versions of OmniPage - OmniPage SE 4.0, OmniPage 15 and OmniPage Professional 15 Clearer and more precise suspect word and character display Ribbon Character map for easy insertion of non-keyboard characters during editing, and proofreading Image enhancement tools (SET tools) to improve OCR results and the quality of exported images. Features available in OmniPage 15 and OmniPage Professional 15 Workflow viewer enhancements make it easier to handle regular tasks. Extended PDF support up to version 1.5 New supported file types including RTF 2000 ExactWord Better Workflow/Job distinction. A Job Wizard guides you through the job creating process. Folder and sub-folder input for specified file types when loading files and for workflows. Computer or OmniPage shutdown can be specified when a workflow or a job is finished. What's new in this release of OmniPage? 7 OmniPage Search Indexer plug-in with its own installer and help. It supports the Google Desktop Search utility for indexing image and PDF files. Features unique to OmniPage Professional 15 Form recognition and handling: have form elements autodetected or use form drawing tools for manual editing. Batch Manager provides more choice for job type, easier input of timing information and more precise schematic information for each job occurrence. Mailbox watching in Batch Manager jobs. Convert to PDF step in Batch Manager, using PDF Create! for direct conversion inside jobs. Support for sub-folders in folder watching. Customized actions can be set for your scanner Start button. Integrated programs PDF Converter 3 and PDF Create! 3 to unlock and create PDF files. Supports tagged, signed, encrypted PDF files, and much more. See their own documentation. Document-to-Document conversion to and from a wide range of formats. New and streamlined support for SharePoint 2003. See Loading image files from SharePoint and Saving to SharePoint. This symbol denotes features not available in OmniPage SE, but available in OmniPage 15 and also in OmniPage Professional 15. This icon is used throughout the guide to denote features that are available only in OmniPage Professional 15. OmniPage 15 is supplied in Enterprise versions for network use. It is also supplied in Special Editions for selected scanner manufacturers and other resellers. The feature set in these editions may vary, in line with each vendor's requirements. 8 Welcome Installation and setup This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage. System requirements The minimum requirements to install and run OmniPage SE are: A computer with an Intel® Pentium® III processor or equivalent Microsoft® Windows® 98 (from second edition), Windows Me, Windows 2000 (from Service Pack 4), Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 128MB of memory (RAM), 256MB recommended 150MB of free hard disk space for application and sample files plus 60-65MB working space during installation. 5MB for Microsoft Installer (MSI) if not present (it is included in most Windows operating systems) Up to 5MB for system updates 800x600 pixel color monitor with 16-bit color or greater video card A CD-ROM drive for installation A Windows compatible pointing device A compatible scanner with its own scanner driver software, if you plan to scan documents. See the Scanner Guide at Nuance's web site (www.nuance.com) for a list of supported scanners Web access is needed for product registration, Scanner Wizard database updating and obtaining live updates for the program. Installation and setup 9 Installing OmniPage OmniPage 15's installation program takes you through installation with instructions on every screen. Before installing OmniPage: Close all other applications, especially anti-virus programs. Log into your computer with administrator privileges if you are installing on Windows 2000, XP or Server 2003. If you own a previous version of OmniPage, or if you are upgrading from demonstration software or an OmniPage Special Edition, the installer asks your consent to uninstall that product. To install OmniPage: 1. Insert the OmniPage CD-ROM in the CD-ROM drive. The installation program should start automatically. If it does not start, locate your CD-ROM drive in Windows Explorer and double-click the Autorun.exe program at the top-level of the CD-ROM. 2. Choose a language to use during installation. Accept the End-User License Agreement and enter the serial number shown on the CD envelope. 3. Choose a complete or a custom installation. A complete installation installs all RealSpeakTM Text-to-Speech language modules (currently 9). In OmniPage Professional 15, up to 7 ASR-1600TM Speech Recognition modules are installed. Custom installation lets you exclude or add modules. To exclude a module, click its down arrow and select `This feature will be installed when required'. (Not applicable to OmniPage SE.) 10 Chapter 1 4. Follow the instructions on each screen to install the software. All files needed for scanning are copied automatically during installation. Setting up your scanner with OmniPage All files needed for scanner setup and support are copied automatically during the program's installation, but no scanner setup occurs at installation time. Before using OmniPage 15 for scanning, your scanner should be installed with its own scanner driver software and tested for correct functionality. Scanner driver software is not included with OmniPage. Scanner setup is done through the Scanner Setup Wizard. You can start this yourself, as described below. Otherwise, it appears when you first attempt to perform scanning. Proceed as follows: Choose Start All Programs ScanSoft OmniPage 15.0 Scanner Setup Wizard or click the Setup button in the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box. or choose Scan in the Get Page drop-down list in the OmniPage Toolbox and click the Get Page button. The Scanner Setup Wizard starts. If you have a web connection, the first panel invites you to update the scanner database supplied with the wizard. Choose Yes or No and click on Next. Choose `Select and test scanner or digital camera', then click Next. If you have a single installed scanner, it appears, along with any scanners previously set up with OmniPage. If the required scanner is not listed, click Add Scanner... . You see a list of all detected scanner drivers in the checkmarked categories. This can include network devices. Select one and click OK. To install a second device, you must run the Scanner Wizard again. Setting up your scanner with OmniPage 11 The wizard reports whether the chosen scanner model already has settings in the scanner database. If it does, you do not need to test it. If it does not, you should test it. Click on Next. If you chose not to test, click Finish. If you chose testing, click Next to have the scanner connection tested. If the connection is in order, you see a menu of further tests. Choose which testing steps you want to run. The Basic test scan is recommended. By default OmniPage uses its own scanning interface, located in the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box. If you want to use your scanner's own interface instead, choose Advanced settings... and select this. Click Hint editor... and choose Edit hints... only if you are experienced in configuring scanners or have been advised by Technical Support to do so. Click Next to start the tests. For the Basic scan test, insert a test page into your scanner. The wizard will scan using your scanner manufacturer's software. Click on Next. Your scanner's native user-interface will appear. Click on Scan to begin the sample scan. If necessary, click on Missing Image... or Improper Orientation... and make the appropriate selections. Once the image appears correctly in the window, click on Next. Move through the remaining requested tests, following the instructions on the screen. When all the requested tests have been completed successfully, the Scanner Wizard reports and invites you to click on Finish. You have successfully configured your scanner to work with OmniPage! To change the scanner settings at a later time, or to setup or remove a scanner, reopen the Scanner Setup Wizard from the Windows Start menu or from the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box. To test and repair an improperly functioning scanner, open the wizard and select `Test the current scanner or digital camera' in the second panel, then work through the procedure described above, maybe using advice received from Technical Support. 12 Chapter 1 To specify a different default scanner, open the wizard to reach the list of setup scanners. Move the highlight to the desired scanner and be sure to close the wizard with Finish. To get updated settings for your current scanner, open the wizard, request a fresh database download in the first screen, then choose `Use current settings with current device', click Next and then Finish. How to start the program To start OmniPage do one of the following: Click Start in the Windows taskbar and choose All Programs ScanSoft OmniPage SE 4.0 OmniPage SE 4.0. Double-click the OmniPage icon in the program's installation folder or on the Windows desktop if placed there. Double-click an OmniPage Document (OPD) icon or file name; the clicked document is loaded into the program. See "OmniPage Documents" on page 17. Right click one or more image file icons or file names for a shortcut menu. Select Open With... OmniPage application. The images are loaded into the program. On opening, OmniPage's title screen is displayed and then its desktop. See "The OmniPage Desktop" on page 18. It provides an introduction to the program's main working areas. How to start the program 13 There are several ways of running the program with a limited interface: Use the Batch Manager program. Click Start in the Windows taskbar and choose All Programs ScanSoft OmniPage 15.0 OmniPage Batch Manager. See page 28. (Not applicable to OmniPage SE.) Click Acquire Text from the File menu of an application registered with the Direct OCRTM facility. See "How to set up Direct OCR" on page 26. Right-click on one or more image file icons or file names for a shortcut menu. Select OmniPage 15 and choose a target format or a workflow from its sub-menu. The files will be processed according to the workflow instructions. See "Workflows" on page 67. (Not applicable to OmniPage SE.) Click the OmniPage Agent icon on the taskbar. Choose a workflow to start the program and run the workflow. In OmniPage Professional 15, voice selection of workflow is possible. (Not applicable to OmniPage SE.) Use OmniPage with Nuance's PaperPort® document management product, to add OCR services. See "How to use OmniPage with PaperPort" on page 16. Registering your software Nuance's online registration runs at the end of installation. Please ensure web access is available. We provide an easy electronic form that can be completed in less than five minutes. When the form is filled, click Submit. If you did not register the software during installation, you will be periodically invited to register later. You can go to www.nuance.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 Nuance's Privacy Policy. 14 Chapter 1 Activating OmniPage You will be invited to activate the product at the end of installation. Please ensure that web access is available. Provided your serial number is found at its storage location and has been correctly entered, no user interaction is required and no personal information is transmitted. If you do not activate the product at installation time, you will be invited to do this each time you invoke the program. OmniPage 15 can be launched only five times without activation. We recommend Automatic Activation. Activation is not applicable to OmniPage SE. Uninstalling the software Sometimes uninstalling and then reinstalling OmniPage will solve a problem. The OmniPage Uninstall program will not remove files containing recognition results or any of the following user-created files: Zone templates (*.zon) Training files (*.otn) (Not applicable to OmniPage SE.) User dictionaries (*.ud) OmniPage Documents (*.opd) Job files (*.opj) (Not applicable to OmniPage SE.) Workflow files (*.xwf) (Not applicable to OmniPage SE.) To uninstall from Windows 2000, XP or Windows Server 2003 you must be logged into your computer with administrator privileges. To uninstall or reinstall OmniPage: Close OmniPage. Click Start in the Windows taskbar and choose the Control Panel and then Add/Remove Programs. Select OmniPage SE 4.0 and click Remove. Click Yes in the dialog box that appears to confirm removal. Select Yes to restart your computer immediately, or No if you plan to restart later. Activating OmniPage 15 Follow instructions until the process is finished. When you uninstall OmniPage, the link to your scanner is also uninstalled. You must setup your scanner again with OmniPage if you reinstall the program. All RealSpeak and ASR modules and the that were installed with the program will also be uninstalled. (Not applicable to OmniPage SE.) ScanSoft PDF Create! 3 and ScanSoft PDF Converter 3 need to be uninstalled separately. (Not applicable to OmniPage SE.) How to use OmniPage with PaperPort The PaperPort® program is a paper management software product from Nuance. It lets you link pages with suitable applications. Pages can contain pictures, text or both. If PaperPort exists on a computer with OmniPage, its OCR services become available and amplify the power of PaperPort. You can choose an OCR program by right-clicking on a text application's PaperPort link, selecting Preferences and then selecting OmniPage as the OCR package. OCR settings can be specified, as with Direct OCR. PaperPort provides the easiest way to turn paper into organized digital documents that everybody in an office can quickly find and use. PaperPort works with scanners, multifunction printers, and networked digital copiers to turn paper documents into digital documents. It then helps you to manage them along with all other electronic documents in one convenient and easy-to-use filing system. PaperPort's large, clear item thumbnails allow you to visually organize, retrieve and use your scanned documents, including Word files, spreadsheets, PDF files and even digital photos. PaperPort's Scanner Enhancement Technology tools ensure that scanned documents will look great while the annotation tools let you add notes and highlights to any scanned image. 16 Chapter 1 Using OmniPage OmniPage 15 uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology to transform text from scanned pages or image files into editable text for use in your favorite computer applications. In addition to text recognition, OmniPage can retain the following elements and attributes of a document through the OCR process. Graphics (photos, logos) Form elements (checkboxes, radio buttons, text fields) - available in OmniPage Professional 15 only Text formatting (character and paragraph) Page formatting (column structures, table formats, headings, placing of graphics). Documents in OmniPage A document in OmniPage consists of one image for each document page. After you perform OCR, the document will also contain recognized text, displayed in the Text Editor, possibly along with graphics, tables and form elements. OmniPage Documents An OmniPage Document (.opd) contains the original page images (optionally pre-processed) with any zones placed on them. After recognition, the OPD also contains the recognition results. When saving, you have two file type choices: OmniPage Document or OmniPage Document (Extended). The latter allows you to embed a user dictionary, training file or zone template file in the OPD. This can increase file size considerably but makes the OPD more portable. OmniPage SE does not support Extended OmniPage Documents. Using OmniPage 17 When you open an OmniPage Document, its settings are applied, replacing those existing in the program. The OmniPage Desktop The OmniPage Desktop has three main working areas, separated by splitters: the Document Manager, the Image Panel and the Text Editor. The Image Panel has an Image toolbar and the Text Editor has a Formatting toolbar. OmniPage Toolbox Standard Toolbar Formatting toolbar Image toolbar Document Manager Image Panel Text Editor OmniPage toolbox: This Toolbox lets you drive the processing. Document Manager: This provides an overview of your document with a table. Each row represents one page. Columns present statistical or status information for each page, and (where appropriate) document totals. 18 Chapter 2 Image Panel: This is displaying the image of the current page, together with its zones. The image panel can display the current page, thumbnails, or both. When this displays the current page image, the Image toolbar is available. Text Editor: This is displaying the recognition results from the current page. The illustration shows True Page view. The Toolbars The program has five main toolbars. Use the View menu to show, hide or customize them. The status bar at the bottom edge of the OmniPage program window explains the purpose of all tools. Standard toolbar: Performs basic functions. Image toolbar: Performs image, zoning and table operations. Formatting toolbar: Formats recognized text in the Text Editor. Verifier toolbar: Controls the location and appearance of the verifier. Reorder toolbar: Modifies the order of elements in recognized pages. Form Drawing toolbar: Creates new form elements. Form Arrangement toolbar: Arranges and aligns form elements. The Form toolbars appear only in OmniPage Professional 15. Basic Processing Steps There are three ways of handling documents: with automatic, manual or workflow processing (latter not in SE). The basic steps for all processing methods are broadly the same: 1. Bring a set of images into OmniPage. You can scan a paper document with or without an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) or load one or more image files. Basic Processing Steps 19 2. Perform OCR to generate editable text. After OCR, you can check and correct errors in the document using the OCR Proofreader and edit the document in the Text Editor. 3. Export the document to the desired location. You can save your document to a specified file name and type, place it on the Clipboard, send it as a mail attachment or publish it. You can save the same document repeatedly to different destinations, different file types, with different settings and levels of formatting. Using OmniPage, you can choose from the following processing methods: Automatic, Manual, Combined, or Workflow. You can start recognition from other applications, using the Direct OCR feature of OmniPage; and can also schedule processing to run at a later time. Processing methods are detailed in the next chapter and in Online Help. Settings The Options dialog box is the central location for OmniPage settings. Access it from the Standard toolbar or the Tools menu. Context-sensitive help provides information on each setting. 20 Chapter 2 Processing documents This tutorial chapter describes different ways you can process a document and also provides information on key parts of this processing. Quick Start Guide This topic takes you step-by-step through the basic OCR process. You will process the document automatically and save the recognition results to a file. You will proof the document but will not edit it inside the Text Editor. What you do: 1. Set up your scanner using the Scanner Wizard, if this is not already done. Select Start All Programs ScanSoft OmniPage SE 4.0 OmniPage SE 4.0 Place the document correctly in your scanner. From the Get Page drop-down list, select a scan option for your document: black-and-white, grayscale or color. From the Layout Description drop-down list, check Automatic is selected. For a wide range of documents, this is the best choice. Allows you to determine how pictures or colored texts and backgrounds will look in the exported document. Color scanning needs a color scanner. Configures the program how to place zones on the page and decide their properties automatically. What happens: Configures OmniPage to work with your scanner. Opens OmniPage on your computer. 2. 3. 4. 5. Processing documents 21 What you do: 6. From the Export Results dropdown list, check that Save to File is selected. Make sure 1-2-3 is selected in the Workflow drop-down list. Click the Start button. Use the OCR Proofreader to modify words that the program suspects have not been recognized correctly. Click in the Text Editor. Select Text Editor views one after another, to see how the page appears in each view. Click Resume to restart proofing. When the message OCR Proofreading is complete appears, click on OK. Choose a file name, file type, path and a formatting level to save your recognized document. Click on OK. What happens: This means you will be able to name your export file after you have proofed the document. OmniPage will start to scan in your document. A thumbnail appears with a progress indicator. The OCR Proofreader appears. The OCR Proofreader operates like a spell checker in a word processing program, but with added OCR-specific features. It removes markings from words you proof. Each Text Editor view defines a formatting level. This guides you which level to choose at saving time. This ends the OCR Proofreader process. The Save to File dialog box will appear. By default, Save and Launch is enabled, so your document will be automatically opened in the word processing program associated with the file type that you selected. You have successfully used OmniPage to recognize your document and open it in your target application! 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Inspect the document in your word processing program. If you succeeded in getting good results from the sample image files, but not from the scanned page, check your scanner installation and settings: in particular brightness and image resolution. See "Input from scanner" on page 30. This provides a model of optimum brightness. See also the online Help topics Setting up your scanner and Scanner troubleshooting. 22 Chapter 3 Processing methods Using OmniPage, you can choose from the following processing methods: Automatic A fast and easy way to process documents is to let OmniPage do it automatically for you. Select settings in the Options dialog box and in the OmniPage Toolbox drop-down lists and then click Start. It will take each page through the whole process from beginning to end, when possible running in parallel. It will typically autozone the pages. Manual Manual processing gives you more precise control over the way your pages are handled. You can process the document page-by-page with different settings for each page. The program also stops between each step: acquiring images, performing recognition, exporting. This lets you, for instance, draw zones manually or change recognition language(s). You start each step by clicking the three buttons on the OmniPage Toolbox. Combined You can process a document automatically and view results in the Text Editor. If most pages are in order, but a few have not turned out as expected, you can switch to manual processing to adjust settings and rerecognize just those problem pages. Alternatively, you can acquire images with manual processing, draw zones on some or all of them, and then send all pages to automatic processing. Processing methods 23 Workflow A workflow consists of a series of steps and their settings. Typically it will include a recognition step, but it does not have to. Workflows are listed in the Workflow drop-down list ­ sample workflows plus any you create. You can choose to place the OmniPage Agent icon on your taskbar. Its shortcut menu lists your workflows. Click a workflow to launch OmniPage and have it run. Let the Workflow Assistant guide you in creating new workflows. It provides a choice of steps and the settings they need. After each step icon is selected and its settings defined, you get a new set of step icons to choose from. You can use the Assistant just to get more guidance when doing automatic processing. See "Workflow Assistant" on page 70. Workflows, Workflow Assistant and Workflow Viewer are supplied only with OmniPage 15. In other applications You can use the Direct OCR feature to call on the recognition services of OmniPage while working in your usual word-processor or similar application. See "How to set up Direct OCR" on page 26. OmniPage is automatically linked to the PaperPort document management program. At a later time You can schedule OCR jobs or other processing jobs in OmniPage Batch Manager to be performed automatically at a later time, when you may not even be present at your computer. This is done through the Batch Manager. When you choose New Job, first the Job Wizard, and then the Workflow Assistant appears - the latter with a slightly modified set of choices and settings. In the first panel of the Job Wizard, you define your job type and name your job; next you are to specify a starting time, a recurring job or watched folder instructions. A job incorporates a workflow with timing instructions added. See "Batch Manager" on page 74. Batch Manager is only available in OmniPage 15 and its advanced features are offered only in OmniPage Professional 15. 24 Chapter 3 Manual processing 1. Manually zone pages where you want to process only part of the page or if you want to give precise zoning instructions. Use ignore backgrounds or zones to exclude areas from processing. Use process backgrounds or zones to specify areas to be auto-zoned. 2. Click the Start button, then choose Finish Processing Existing Pages in the Automatic Processing dialog box. 3. After proofing (if requested) you can save or export the document. The default for manual processing is to have all entered pages automatically selected. This way you can have all new pages recognized by a single mouse click. You can remove this default in the Process panel of the Options dialog box. Processing with workflows A workflow consists of a series of steps and their settings. It does not have to conform to the 1-2-3 pattern of traditional processing. Workflows allow you to handle recurring tasks more efficiently, because all the steps and their settings are pre-defined. Workflows, Workflow Assistant and Workflow Viewer are supplied only with OmniPage 15. To run a workflow with OmniPage closed Right-click on the OmniPage Agent icon in your taskbar. Select a workflow from its shortcut menu. OmniPage will start and immediately run the workflow. If you do not see the icon, enable it in the General panel of the Options dialog box. The taskbar icon is not available in OmniPage SE. Manual processing 25 To run a workflow with OmniPage open You can use the taskbar icon as described above, or you can select the workflow in the Workflow drop-down list and click Start. When a workflow is running, program settings are not accessible. To modify a workflow Select the workflow in the Workflow drop-down list and press the Workflow Assistant button on the Standard toolbar, or choose Workflows... in the Tools menu, select the workflow and click Modify. To make a new workflow There are sample workflows supplied with the program. You can modify these, or use them as the source for new workflows. New workflows are made with the Workflow Assistant. See page 70. Processing from other applications You can use the Direct OCRTM feature to call on the recognition services of OmniPage while you work in your usual word-processor or other application. First you must establish the direct connection with the application. Then, two items in its File Menu open the door to OCR facilities. How to set up Direct OCR 1. Start the application you want connected to OmniPage. Start OmniPage, open the Options dialog box at the Direct OCR panel and select Enable Direct OCR. 2. Select process options for proofing and zoning. These function for future Direct OCR work until you change them again; they are not applied when OmniPage is used on its own. 26 Chapter 3 3. The Unregistered panel displays running or previously unregistered applications. Select the desired one(s) and click Add. You can browse for an unlisted application. How to use Direct OCR 1. Open your registered application and work in a document. To acquire recognition results from scanned pages, place them correctly in the scanner. 2. Use the target application's File Menu item Acquire Text Settings... to specify settings to be used during recognition. Any settings not offered take their values from those last used in OmniPage. Settings changed for Direct OCR are also changed in OmniPage. 3. Use the File Menu item Acquire Text to acquire images from scanner or file. 4. If you selected Draw zones automatically in the Direct OCR panel of the Options dialog box, or under Acquire Text Settings..., recognition proceeds immediately. Processing from other applications 27 5. If Draw zones automatically is not selected, each page image will be presented to you, allowing you to draw zones manually. Click the Perform OCR button to continue with recognition. 6. If proofing was specified, this follows recognition. Then the recognized text is placed at the cursor position in your application, with the formatting level specified by Acquire Text Settings... . Processing with the Batch Manager Batch Manager is only available in OmniPage 15 and its advanced features are offered only in OmniPage Professional 15. You can schedule processing jobs to be performed automatically at a specified time in the future. Unscheduled jobs can be activated manually. The job pages can come from a scanner with an ADF or from image files. You do not have to be present at your computer at job start time, nor does OmniPage have to be running. It does not matter if your computer is turned off after the job is set up, so long as it is running at job start time. If you are scanning pages, your scanner must be functioning at job start time, with the pages loaded in the ADF. Here is how to set up your first job: 1. Click Batch Manager... in the Process menu or in the Windows Start menu: select All Programs ScanSoft OmniPage 15.0 OmniPage Batch Manager. The Batch Manager window appears. Click the Create Job button to start the Job Wizard. 2. Select the type of your job in the next panel: Normal, Barcode driven, Folder Watching, Outlook mailbox watching, or Lotus Notes mailbox watching. The mailbox watching job types are only available if you have the given mail system configured properly on your computer. 3. Name your job in the same panel. Click Next. 4. Use the Start and Stop Options panel to specify your job timing and schedule. When the job is complete, you can choose to have the 28 Chapter 3 input image file deleted or an e-mail notification sent to a given address (latter available in OmniPage Professional 15 only). 5. Define a starting point for the new job. This can be a fresh start, or an existing workflow. Click Next to finish each step. 6. The upcoming panels allow you to build the workflow for the job, as described in Chapter 6. 7. Click Finish to confirm job creation. For more information, please see Batch Manager in the online Help and "Batch Manager" on page 74. Defining the source of page images There are two possible image sources: from image files and from a scanner. There are two main types of scanners: flatbed or sheetfed. A scanner may have a built-in or added Automatic Document Feeder (ADF), which makes it easier to scan multi-page documents. The images from scanned documents can be input directly into OmniPage or may be saved with the scanner's own software to an image file, which OmniPage can later open. Input from image files You can create image files from your own scanner, or receive them by e-mail or as fax files. OmniPage can open a wide range of image file types. Select Load Files in the Get Pages drop-down list. Files are specified in the Load Files dialog box. This appears when you start automatic processing. In manual processing, click the Get Page button or use the Process menu. The lower part of the dialog box provides advanced settings, and can be shown or hidden. The minimum width or height for an image file is 16 by 16 pixels; the maximum is 8400 pixels (71cm; 28 inches at the resolution 201 to 600 dpi). See online Help for pixel limits. Defining the source of page images 29 In OmniPage Professional 15, files can also be imported from FTP locations, Microsoft SharePoint, SharePoint 2003, or ODMA sources. Input from scanner You must have a functioning, supported scanner correctly installed with OmniPage. You have a choice of scanning modes. In making your choice, there are two main considerations: Which type of output do you want in your export document? Which mode will yield best OCR accuracy? Scan black and white Select this to scan in black-and-white. Black-and-white images can be scanned and handled quicker than others and occupy less disk space. Scan grayscale Select this to use grayscale scanning. For best OCR accuracy, use this for pages with varying or low contrast (not much difference between light and dark) and with text on colored or shaded backgrounds. Scan color Select this to scan in color. This will function only with color scanners. Choose this if you want colored graphics, texts or backgrounds in the output document. For OCR accuracy, it offers no more benefit than grayscale scanning, but will require much more time, memory resources and disk space. Brightness and contrast Good brightness and contrast settings play an important role in OCR accuracy. Set these in the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box or in your scanner's interface. After loading an image, check its appearance. If characters are thick and touching, lighten the brightness. If characters are thin and broken, darken it. Then rescan the page. 30 Chapter 3 If your scanning results are still not satisfactory, open the scanned image in the Image Enhancement window to edit it using a range of different tools. Scanning with an ADF The best way to scan multi-page documents is with an Automatic Document Feeder (ADF). Simply load pages in the correct order into the ADF. You can scan double-sided documents with an ADF. A duplex scanner will manage this automatically. Scanning without an ADF Using OmniPage's scanner interface, you can scan multi-page documents efficiently from a flatbed scanner, even without an ADF. Select Automatically scan pages in the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box, and define a pause value in seconds. Then the scanner will make scanning passes automatically, pausing between each scan by the defined number of seconds, giving you time to place the next page. Document to document conversion A major new feature of OmniPage Professional 15 is that it can open not only image files, but also documents created in word-processing and similar applications. Supported file types include .doc, .xls, .ppt, .rtf, .wpd and others. Click the Load Files button in the OmniPage Toolbox or select the Load Files command under Get Page, in the File menu. In the Load Files dialog box, choose Documents. When you are finished, you can use a variety of document file formats to save your files in. Document to document conversion 31 Describing the layout of the document Before starting recognition you are requested to describe the layout of the incoming pages to assist the auto-zoning process. When you do automatic processing, auto-zoning always runs unless you specify a template that does not contain a process zone or background. When you do manual processing, auto-zoning sometimes runs. See online Help: When does auto-zoning run? Here are your input description choices: Automatic Choose this to let the program make all auto-zoning decisions. It decides whether text is in columns or not, whether an item is a graphic or text to be recognized and whether to place tables or not. Single column, no table Choose this setting if your pages contain only one column of text and no table. Business letters or pages from a book are normally like this. Multiple columns, no table Choose this if some of your pages contain text in columns and you want this decolumnized or kept in separate columns, similar to the original layout. Single column with table Choose this if your page contains only one column of text and a table. Spreadsheet Choose this if your whole page consists of a table which you want to export to a spreadsheet program, or have treated as single table. 32 Chapter 3 Form Choose this if your whole page consists of a form and you want form elements auto-recognized. After recognition, you can modify form element properties, create new ones, or edit form layout. This option is available in OmniPage Professional 15 only. Custom Choose this for maximum control over auto-zoning. You can prevent or encourage the detection of columns, graphics and tables. Make your settings in the OCR panel of the Options dialog box. Template Choose a zone template file if you wish to have its background value, zones and properties applied to all acquired pages from now on. The template zones are also applied to the current page, replacing any existing zones. If auto-zoning yielded unexpected recognition results, use manual processing to rezone individual pages and re-recognize them. Preprocessing Images To improve OCR results, you can enhance your images before zoning and recognition using the Image Enhancement tools. To open the Image Enhancement window, click the Enhance Image button in the Image Toolbar, or click Tools and choose Enhance Image. You can also build Image Enhancement steps into your workflows by choosing the Enhance Images step.Workflows, Workflow Assistant and Workflow Viewer are supplied only with OmniPage 15. The input for Image Enhancement is the Primary image. We must distinguish three types of image: Original image: The image created by your scanner or contained in a file before it enters the program. Preprocessing Images 33 Primary image: The state of the original image after it has been loaded into OmniPage, possibly modified by automatic or manual pre-processing operations. OCR image: A black-and-white image derived from the primary image, optimized for good OCR results. Some tools affect the Primary image, others the OCR image. Be sure you know which image you are editing. Good brightness and contrast settings play an important role in OCR accuracy. Set these in the Scanner panel of the Options dialog box or in your scanner's interface. The diagram illustrates an optimum brightness setting. After loading an image, check its appearance. If characters are thick and touching, lighten the brightness. If characters are thin and broken, darken it. Use the OCR Brightness tool to optimize the image. Unsuitable Tolerable Good Best Good Tolerable Unsuitable 34 Chapter 3 Image Enhancement Tools The Image Enhancement tools can also be used to edit images to save and use them as image files. Note that some tools of OmniPage work only on this, so-called Primary image, others on the one used for OCR (OCR image). Click the Primary/OCR Image button in the Image Enhancement window, to see the current state of either image. The Image Enhancement window has two panels. The left panel shows the starting image. Your changes are shown in the right preview panel. When you click Accept, the right image is moved to the left panel to become the new starting image for further enhancement. The following tools are accessible on the toolbar: Pointer (F5) - the Pointer is a neutral tool carrying out different operations under different circumstances (for example, to pick a color for the Fill operation, or to catch the deskew line.) Zoom (F6) - click the tool then use the left mouse button to zoom in on your image or the right mouse button to zoom out. You can also use the mouse wheel for zooming in and out - even in the inactive view. In the active view the "+" and "-" buttons serve the same purpose. Select Area (F7) - click and draw your selection on the image to use a tool only on the selected area. (Image Enhancement Tools, by default, work on the whole page.) Selection has three modes (in the View menu): Normal - you can select rectangular areas on the page, then move or resize the selection. Additive - this mode enables you to make irregular selections by drawing overlapping rectangles that will be added to each other. Subtractive - use this mode to cut out parts from your existing selections by drawing overlapping new areas. Image Enhancement Tools 35 Primary/OCR Image - click this tool to switch between the primary and the OCR image in the active view. Primary images can be of any image mode, while an OCR image is its black and white version, generated purely for OCR purposes. Synchronize Views - click this tool to zoom and scroll the inactive view to the same zoom value and scroll position as the active view. To make the inactive view dynamically follow the focus of the active one, click View then choose the Keep Synchronized command. Brightness and Contrast - click this tool to adjust the brightness and contrast of your primary image or a selected part of it. Use the sliders in the tool area to achieve the desired effect. Hue / Saturation / Lightness - click this tool then use the sliders to modify the hue, saturation and lightness of your primary image. Crop - if you decide to use only a given part of your image, click the Crop tool then select the area to keep and the rest of the image will be removed. Rotate - click this tool to rotate (by 90, 180 or 270 degrees) and/ or flip your image, or its selected area. Despeckle - click this tool to remove stray dots from your image. Despeckle works on the OCR image at 4 levels. You can also use this tool not to remove noise from the page but to strengthen letter outlines: to do this mark the checkbox Inverse despeckling. OCR Brightness - use this tool the set Brightness and Contrast of your OCR image. See the diagram on page 34. Dropout color - click this tool and pick a color. Sections of the scanned image in this color will be set transparent. The tool has its effect on the OCR image. Resolution - use this tool to decrease the resolution of your primary image in percentages. Note that you cannot adjust a resolution higher than that of the original one. 36 Chapter 3 Deskew - sometimes pages are scanned crookedly. To straighten the lines of text manually, use the Deskew tool. (Auto-deskew is also available in the Process panel of Options.) Fill - use this tool to apply uniform coloring to selected areas. Using Image Enhancement History To commit or undo your image edits (one by one or all the steps), use the History panel in the Image Enhancement window. Once you have modified the original image, its preview displays the changes, but they are not done until you click the Apply button next to the History list. Modifications not added to the History by clicking the Add button will not be applied. Any time you want to see what output a certain step resulted in, double click it in the History list. To discard changes you have performed with a given tool, but before applying it, select the step in the list, then click the Reset button. To restore the image as it was before you started the current enhancement session, click the Discard all changes button. Saving and applying templates This feature is not available in OmniPage SE. If you have a number of similar images to enhance, you can build up a list of enhancement steps to apply to all of them. To create and store an image enhancement template, first bring an image file into the Image Enhancement window, then carry out your preprocessing steps and add them to the History clicking the Apply button. When you are done, choose Save Enhancement Template from Using Image Enhancement History 37 the File menu. Browse to your preferred destination and save the template file (with the extension .ipp). To carry out the set of modifications saved in the template file on another image, simply open the new image in the Image Enhancement window and choose Load Enhancement Template from the File menu. Image Enhancement in Workflows Workflows, Workflow Assistant and Workflow Viewer are supplied only with OmniPage 15. To incorporate image enhancement in a workflow choose its icon in the Workflow Assistant. The following options are available: Display images for manual enhancement - during the execution of a workflow, each loaded image will be displayed for manual editing. Apply enhancement template - an already saved enhancement template will be applied automatically to the image while being processed by the workflow. Apply enhancement template and display - the workflow will apply the selected image enhancement template, and will also display the image so that you can make further edits to it. Zones and backgrounds Zones define areas on the page to be processed or ignored. Zones are rectangular or irregular, with vertical and horizontal sides. Page images in a document have a background value: process or ignore (the latter is more typical). Background values can be changed with the tools shown. Zones can be drawn on page backgrounds with the tools shown under Zone Types and Properties (see later). 38 Chapter 3 Process areas (in process zones or backgrounds) are auto-zoned when they are sent to recognition. Ignore areas (in ignore zones or backgrounds) are dropped from processing. No text is recognized and no image is transferred. Automatic zoning Automatic zoning allows the program to detect blocks of text, headings, pictures and other elements on a page and draw zones to enclose them. You can Auto-zone a whole page or a part of it. Automatically drawn zones and template zones have solid borders. Manually drawn or modified zones have dotted borders. Auto-zone a page background Acquire a page. It appears with a process background. Draw a zone. The background changes to ignore. Draw text, table or graphic zones to enclose areas you want manually zoned. Click the Process background tool (shown) to set a process background. Draw ignore zones over parts of the page you do not need. After recognition the page will return with an ignore background and new zones round all elements found on the background. Zone types and properties Each zone has a zone type. Zones containing text can also have a zone contents setting: alphanumeric or numeric. The zone type and zone contents together constitute the zone properties. Right-click in a zone for a shortcut menu allowing you to change the zone's properties. Select multiple zones with Shift+clicks to change their properties in one move. The Image toolbar provides six zone drawing tools, one for each type. Process zone Use this to draw a process zone, to define a page area where autozoning will run. After recognition, this zone will be replaced by one or more zones with automatically determined zone types. Zones and backgrounds 39 Ignore zone Use this to draw an ignore zone, to define a page area you do not want transferred to the Text Editor. Text zone Use this to draw a text zone. Draw it over a single block of text. Zone contents will be treated as flowing text, without columns being found. Table zone Use this to have the zone contents treated as a table. Table grids can be automatically detected, or placed manually. Graphic zone Use this to enclose a picture, diagram, drawing, signature or anything you want transferred to the Text Editor as an embedded image, and not as recognized text. Form zone Use this to enclose an area of your document containing form elements such as a checkbox, radio button, text field or anything you want transferred to the Text Editor as a form element. Afterwards, in True Page view, you can edit form layout, and modify the properties of form elements. Form zones are available in OmniPage Professional 15 only. Working with zones The Image toolbar provides zone editing tools. One is always selected. When you no longer want the service of a tool, click a different tool. Some tools on this toolbar are grouped. Only the last selected tool from the group is visible. To select a visible tool, click it. To draw a single zone select the zone drawing tool of the desired type, then click and drag the cursor. To resize a zone, select it by clicking in it, move the cursor to a side or corner, catch a handle and move it to the desired location. It cannot overlap another zone. 40 Chapter 3 To make an irregular zone by addition draw a partially overlapping zone of the same type. To join two zones of the same type draw an overlapping zone of the same type (drawn zones on the left, resulting zone on the right). To make an irregular zone by subtraction draw an overlapping zone of the same type as the background. To split a zone draw a splitting zone of the same type as the background. A full set of zoning diagrams appear in the Online Help. When you draw a new zone that partly overlaps an existing zone of a different type, it does not really overlap it; the new zone replaces the overlapped part of the existing zone. The following zone types are prohibited: Speed zoning lets you do manual zoning quickly. Activate the zone selection cursor, then move the cursor over the page image. Shaded areas Zones and backgrounds 41 will appear showing the auto-detected zones. Double-click to transform a shaded area into a zone. Table grids in the image After automatic processing you may see table zones placed on a page. They are denoted with a table zone icon in the top left corner of the zone. To change a rectangular zone to or from a table zone, use its shortcut menu. You can also draw table type zones, but they must remain rectangular. You draw or move table dividers to determine where gridlines will appear when the table is placed in the Text Editor. You can draw or resize a table zone (provided it stays rectangular) to discard unneeded columns or rows from the outer edges of a table. Using the table tools you can insert row and column dividers; move and remove dividers. Click the Place/Remove all dividers tool to have dividers in a table auto-detected and placed. You can specify line formatting for table borders and grids from a shortcut menu. You will have greater choice for editing borders and shading in the Text Editor after recognition. Using zone templates A template contains a page background value and a set of zones and their properties, stored in a file. A zone template file can be loaded to have template zones used during recognition. Load a template file in the Layout Description drop-down list or from the Tools menu. You can browse to network locations to load templates created by others. 42 Chapter 3 When you load a template, its background and zones are placed: on the current page, replacing any zones already there on all further acquired pages on pre-existing pages sent to (re-)recognition without any zones. With manual processing the template zones in the first two cases can be viewed and modified before recognition. With automatic processing the template zones can be viewed and modified only after recognition. With workflow processing, use the zone images step. This combines two steps: load templates and manual zoning. To use a zone template, click the Add button in the appropriate panel of the Workflow Assistant, and select the zone template file to use. Then make your choice between displaying images for manual zoning; applying the zone template; or applying it and display the images. Workflows, Workflow Assistant and Workflow Viewer are supplied only with OmniPage 15. Templates accept ignore and process zones and backgrounds. They can therefore be useful to define which parts of the pages to process with autozoning, and which parts to ignore. Process zones or process background areas from a template may be replaced during recognition by a set of smaller zones; specific zone types will be assigned to these zones. How to save a zone template Select a background value and prepare zones on a page. Check their locations and properties. Click Zone Template... in the Tools menu. In the dialog box, select [zones on page] and click Save, then assign a name and optionally a different path. Choose a network location to share the template file. Click OK. The new zone template remains loaded. How to modify a zone template Load the template and acquire a suitable image with manual processing. The template zones appear. Modify the zones and/or properties as desired. Open the Zone Template Files dialog box. The current template is selected. Click Save and then Close. Using zone templates 43 How to unload a template Select a non-template setting in the Layout Description drop-down list. The template zones are not removed from the current or existing pages, but template zones will no longer be used for future processing. You can also open the Zone Template Files dialog box, select [none] and click the Set As Current button. In this case, the layout description setting returns to Automatic. How to replace one template with another Select a different template in the Layout Description drop-down list, or open the Zone Template Files dialog box, select the desired template and click the Set As Current button. Zones from the new template are applied to the current page, replacing any existing zones. They are also applied as explained above. How to remove a template file Open the Zone Template Files dialog box. Select a template and click the Remove button. Zones already placed by this template are not removed. Template files can be deleted only from the operating system. How to include a template file in an OPD Load the template, then click the Save button in the Standard toolbar and choose the file type OmniPage Document (Extended). That means the template will travel with the OPD if it is sent to a new location. When the extended OPD file is opened later, the included zone template will be shown in the Zone Template dialog box as [embedded] and can be saved to a new named template file at the new location. OmniPage SE does not support Extended OmniPage Documents. 44 Chapter 3 Proofing and editing Recognition results are placed in the Text Editor. These can be recognized texts, tables, forms and embedded graphics. This WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor is detailed in this chapter. The editor display and views The Text Editor displays recognized texts and can mark words that were suspected during recognition with red, wavy underlines. They are displayed with red characters in the OCR Proofreader. A word may be suspect because it was not found in any active dictionary: standard, user or professional. It may also be suspect as a result of the OCR process, even if it is found in the dictionary. If the uncertainty stems from certain characters in the word, these are shown with a yellow highlight, both in the Editor and the OCR Proofreader. Choose to have non-dictionary words marked or not in the Proofing panel of the Options dialog box. All markers can be shown or hidden as selected in the Text Editor panel of the Options dialog box. You can also show or hide non-printing characters and header/footer indicators. The Text Editor panel also lets you define a unit of measurement for the program and a word wrap setting for use in all Text Editor views except Plain Text view. OmniPage can display pages with three levels of formatting. You can switch freely between them with the three buttons at the bottom left of the Text Editor or from the View menu. Plain Text view This displays plain decolumnized left-aligned text in a single font and font size, with the same line breaks as in the original document. Proofing and editing 45 Formatted Text view This displays decolumnized text with font and paragraph styling. True Page view True Page® view tries to conserve as much of the formatting of the original document as possible. Character and paragraph styling is retained. Reading order can be displayed by arrows. Proofreading OCR results After a page is recognized, the recognition results appear in the Text Editor. Proofreading starts automatically if that was requested in the Proofing panel of the Options dialog box. You can start proofing manually any time. Work as follows: 1. Click the Proofread OCR tool in the Standard toolbar, or choose Proofread OCR... in the Tools menu. 2. Proofing starts from the current page, but skips text already proofed. If a suspected error is detected, the OCR Proofreader dialog box colors the suspect word in its context, adds a yellow highlight to any suspect characters and provides a picture of how the word originally looked in the image. The explanation says 'Suspect word' or 'Nondictionary word'. 3. If the recognized word is correct, click Ignore or Ignore All to move to the next suspect word. Click Add to add it to the current user dictionary and move to the next suspect word. 4. If the recognized word is not correct, modify the word in the Edit panel or select a dictionary suggestion. Click Change or Change All to implement the change and move to the next suspect word. Click 46 Chapter 4 Add to add the changed word to the current user dictionary and move to the next suspect word. 5. Color markers are removed from words in the Text Editor as they are proofread. You can switch to the Text Editor during proofing to make corrections there. Use the Resume button to restart proofing. Click Page Ready to skip to the next page and Document Ready or Close to stop proofreading before the end of the document is reached. 6. A page is marked with the proofed icon on its thumbnail and in the Document Manager if proofing ran to the end of the page. Voice-driven proofing is available in OmniPage Professional 15. See "Voice recognition" on page 82. The proofreader's suggestions are numbered. Speak the number of the suggestion you want to accept. Verifying text After performing OCR, you can compare any part of the recognized text against the corresponding part of the original image, to verify that the text was recognized correctly. The verifier tool is in the Formatting toolbar. The verifier can also be controlled from the Tools menu. Hover the cursor over a verifier display to obtain the verifier toolbar. Use it as follows: How much context for dynamic verifier? · one word · three words (current + neighbors) · whole image line zoom in/out Verifying text 47 To turn the Verifier on, click the Verifier tool or press F9. To turn it off, click the Verifier tool again, press F9 again, or press Esc. A full list of verifier keyboard shortcuts is available in the Online Help. The Character Map The Character Map is a dockable tool giving you aid in proofing. It is used for essentially two purposes: to insert characters during proofing, and editing that are not or not easily accessible from your keyboard. In this respect, it is very similar to the system Character Map. to show all characters validated by the current recognition languages. (Not applicable to OmniPage SE.) To access the Character Map, click its button in the Formatting Toolbar, or choose Character Map from the View menu and click Show. Under the Character Map menu item, you have additional options: Recent Characters Only: click this option to display only the 36 recently used characters in the formatting toolbar. This is useful if you work with a limited set of characters to be inserted. Character Sets: choose this, then select all the character sets that you want displayed in the character map. Click Tools > Options and choose the OCR tab. Click the Additional Characters button to select characters to be included in proofing. Similarly, you can modify the Reject Character by using the Character Map. Select Train Character under the Tools menu. The Character Map will display when you click the (...) button beside the Correct field. Select Train Character from the shortcut menu of a suspect, or non-dictionary word in the Text Editor. You can access the Character Map in other ways, such as: 48 Chapter 4 The above three ways to access the Character Map are not available in OmniPage SE. User dictionaries The program has built-in dictionaries for many languages. These assist during recognition and may offer suggestions during proofing. They can be supplemented by user dictionaries. You can save any number of user dictionaries, but only one can be loaded at a time. A dictionary called Custom is the default user dictionary for Microsoft Word. Starting a user dictionary Click Add in the OCR Proofreader dialog box with no user dictionary loaded or open the User Dictionary Files dialog box from the Tools menu and click New. Loading or unloading a user dictionary Do this from the OCR panel of the Options dialog box or from the User Dictionary Files dialog box. Editing or removing a user dictionary Add words by loading a user dictionary and then clicking Add in the OCR Proofreader dialog box. You can add and delete words by clicking Edit in the User Dictionary Files dialog box. You can also import words from OmniPage user dictionaries (*.ud). While editing a user dictionary, you can import a word list from a plain text file to add words to the dictionary quickly. Each word must be on a separate line with no punctuation at the start or end of the word. The Remove button lets you remove the selected user dictionary from the list. OmniPage SE does not support importing and exporting User Dictionaries. To embed a user dictionary in an OmniPage Document, load it and save to the file type OmniPage Document (Extended). OmniPage SE does not support Extended OmniPage Documents. User dictionaries 49 Languages The program can read over 50 languages with three alphabets: Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. See the list in the OCR panel of the Options dialog box. It shows which languages have dictionary support. A listing is also provided on the Nuance web site. In addition to user dictionaries, specialized dictionaries are available for certain professions (currently medical, legal and financial) for some languages. See the list and make selections in the OCR panel of the Options dialog box. Legal and Medical dictionaries are only available in OmniPage 15. Financial dictionaries are only available in OmniPage Professional 15.0. Training Intelligent proofing (IntelliTrain), character training and training files are only available in OmniPage 15. Training is the process of changing the OCR solutions assigned to character shapes in the image. It is useful for uniformly degraded documents or when an unusual typeface is used throughout a document. OmniPage 15 offers two types of training: manual training and automatic training (IntelliTrain). Data coming from both types of training are combined and available for saving to a training file. When you leave a page on which training data was generated, you will be asked how to apply it to other existing pages in the document. Manual training To do manual training, place the insertion point in front of the character you want to train, or select a group of characters (up to one word) and choose Train Character... from the Tools menu or the shortcut menu. You will see an enlarged view of the character(s) to be trained, along with the current OCR solution. Change this to the desired solution and click OK. The program takes this training and examines the rest of the page. If it 50 Chapter 4