Nuance OMNIPAGE PRO 12 User Manual
L EGAL NOTICES
Copyright © 2002 ScanSoft, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
transmitted, transcribed, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or translated into any
language or computer language in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic,
magnetic, optical, chemical, manual, or otherwise, without prior written consent from
ScanSoft, Inc., 9 Centennial Drive, Peabody, Massachusetts 01960. Printed in the United
States of America and in the Netherlands.
The software described in this book is furnished under license and may be used or copied only
in accordance with the terms of such license.
MPORTANT NOTICE
I
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.
RADEMARKS AND CREDITS
T
ScanSoft, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro, PaperPort, Pagis, Tru e Page and Direct OCR are registered
trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc., in the United States and/or other countries.
All other company names or product names referenced herein may be the trademarks of their
respective holders.
ScanSoft, Inc.
9 Centennial Drive
Peabody, MA 01960
U.S.A.
ScanSoft Belgium BVBA
Guldensporenpark 32
BE-9820 Merelbeke
Belgium
Part Number 50-281201-00A
C ONTENTS
WELCOME 7
Using this Guide 8
Getting online Help 9
Online HTML Help 9
Context-Sensitive Help 9
Tech Notes 10
Glossary 10
1INSTALLATION AND SETUP 11
System requirements 12
Installing OmniPage Pro 13
Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro 14
How to start the program 16
Registering your software 17
New features in OmniPage Pro 12 17
2INTRODUCTION 19
What is optical character recognition 20
OmniPage Pro’s OCR capabilities 20
Documents in OmniPage Pro 21
Basic processing steps 21
The OmniPage Desktop 22
The Menu bar 23
The Toolbars 23
The Image Panel 24
OmniPage Pro User’s Guide iii
The Text Editor 24
The OmniPage Toolbox 25
Managing documents 26
Thumbnails 26
Document Manager 27
Customizing Document Manager columns 28
Deleting pages from a document 28
Printing a document 29
Closing a document 29
OmniPage Documents 29
Why save to OPD 30
How to save to OPD 30
Settings 31
3PROCESSING DOCUMENTS 33
Quick Start Guide 34
Loading and recognizing sample image files 34
Scanning and recognizing a single page 34
iv Contents
Processing overview 36
Automatic processing 38
Stopping and restarting automatic processing 39
Manual processing 40
Combined processing 41
Processing with the OCR Wizard 43
Processing from other applications 45
How to set up Direct OCR 45
How to use Direct OCR 45
How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort 46
Processing with Schedule OCR 47
Defining the source of page images 48
Input from image files 48
Input from scanner 49
Scanning with an ADF 50
Scanning without an ADF 51
Describing the layout of the document 51
Zones and backgrounds 53
Automatic zoning 53
Manual zoning 54
Zone types and properties 55
Working with zones 57
Table grids in the image 59
Using zone templates 61
4PROOFING AND EDITING 63
The editor display and views 64
Proofreading OCR results 65
Verifying text 66
User dictionaries 68
Training 69
Manual training 69
IntelliTrain 70
Training files 71
Text and image editing 72
On-the-fly editing 74
Reading text aloud 75
OmniPage Pro User’s Guide v
5SAVING AND EXPORTING 77
Saving original images 78
Saving recognition results 79
Saving a document as you work 80
Selecting a formatting level 81
Selecting advanced saving options 82
Saving to PDF 84
Copying pages to Clipboard 84
Sending pages by mail 85
6TECHNICAL INFORMATION 87
Troubleshooting 88
Solutions to try first 88
Testing OmniPage Pro 89
Increasing memory resources 90
Increasing disk space 90
Text does not get recognized properly 91
Problems with fax recognition 92
vi Contents
System or performance problems during OCR 92
ODMA support 93
Advanced features in Schedule OCR 93
Supported file types 94
File types for opening and saving images 94
File types for saving recognition results 95
Uninstalling the software 96
INDEX 97
Welcome
Welcome to OmniPage Pro®, and thank you for using 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 Pro 12. 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. The guide
is presented in PDF format, allowing you to use hyperlink jumps on
cross-references and other navigation tools in your PDF viewer.
Online Help
OmniPage Pro’s online Help contains information on features, settings,
and procedures. The online Help is provided as HTML help, and has
been designed for quick and easy information retrieval. Comprehensive
context-sensitive help aims to provide just enough assistance to let you
keep working without delay. See “Getting online Help” on page 9.
Readme File
The Readme file contains last-minute information about the software.
Please read it before using OmniPage Pro. To open this HTML file,
choose Readme in the OmniPage Pro Installer or afterwards in the Help
menu.
Scanning and other information
ScanSoft’s web site at www.scansoft.com provides timely information on
the program. The Scanner Guide contains up-dated information about
supported scanners and related issues; ScanSoft tests the 25 most widely
used scanner models. Access ScanSoft’s web site from the OmniPage Pro
Installer or afterwards from the Help menu.
OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 7
Using this Guide
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 Pro 12. Please refer to the scanner’s own
documentation as necessary.
The following conventions are used in this guide:
Bold Introduces new terms and presents sub-headings.
Italic Names topics in the online Help system.
Presents longer option texts in dialog boxes.
Non-serif
Presents file names: sample.tif
A note presents an item of additional information.
A tip presents ideas for using program features to
accomplish specific tasks.
8 Welcome
Getting online Help
In addition to using this guide, you can use OmniPage Pro’s online Help
to learn about features, settings, and procedures. Online Help is available
after you install OmniPage Pro.
Online HTML Help
Open OmniPage Pro’s online Help at its top level by choosing Help
Topics at the top of the Help menu. This allows you to see topics
arranged in a Table of Contents, search an alphabetical list of keywords or
make full-text searches through the topics. Other items in the Help menu
provide access to useful topics or web pages.
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.
Context-Sensitive Help
You can get concise on-the-spot information in a popup window about a
particular OmniPage Pro menu item, toolbar button, screen area or
dialog box, in the following ways:
Click the Help tool in the Standard toolbar to get the help icon. Click
this on any item on the desktop outside a dialog box or warning message.
Press Shift + F1 to get the same help icon. 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.
OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 9
Tech Notes
ScanSoft’s web site at www.scansoft.com contains Tech Notes on
commonly reported issues using OmniPage Pro 12. Web pages may also
offer assistance on the installation process and troubleshooting.
Glossary
This guide does not include a glossary. The online Help has a
comprehensive glossary, with its own alphabetical index and a table of
contents. Please consult it if you want to find the meaning of a term used
in this guide or in the program.
10 Welcome
Chapter 1
Installation and setup
This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage
Pro 12. It presents the following topics:
X System requirements
X Installing OmniPage Pro
X Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro
X How to start the program
X Registering your software
X New features in OmniPage Pro 12
OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 11
System requirements
You need the following minimum system requirements to install and run
OmniPage Pro 12:
X A computer with a Pentium or higher processor
X Microsoft Windows 98 (from second edition), Windows Me,
Windows NT 4.0 (with at least Service Pack 6), Windows 2000
or Windows XP
X 64MB of memory (RAM), 128MB recommended
X 90MB of free hard disk space for the application files plus 5MB
working space during installation
X 5MB for Microsoft Installer (MSI) if not present (This is present
as part of the operating system in Windows Me, Windows 2000
and Windows XP)
X SVGA monitor with 256 colors, but preferably 16-bit color
(called High Color in Windows 2000 and Medium Color in XP)
and 800 x 600 pixel resolution
X Windows-compatible pointing device
12 Installation and setup
X CD-ROM drive for installation
X A compatible scanner with its own scanner driver software, if you
plan to scan documents. Please see the Scanner Guide at
ScanSoft’s web site (www.scansoft.com) for a list of supported
scanners.
Performance and speed will be enhanced if your computer’s processor, memory,
and available disk space exceed minimum requirements.
Installing OmniPage Pro
OmniPage Pro 12’s installation program takes you through installation
with instructions on every screen.
Before installing OmniPage Pro:
X Close all other applications, especially anti-virus programs.
X Log into your computer with administrator privileges if you are
installing on Windows NT, 2000 or XP.
X If you own a previous version of OmniPage Pro, or if you are
upgrading from demonstration software or an OmniPage Special
Edition, the installer asks your consent to uninstall that product.
W To i ns t a l l O mn i Pa g e Pr o :
1. Insert OmniPage Pro’s 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.
Chapter 1
2. Choose a language to use during installation. This language will be
used for the Text-to-Speech system and as the program’s interface
language. The program interface language is used for displays such as
menu items, dialog boxes, warning messages and so on. You can
change the interface language later from within OmniPage Pro 12,
but your choice at installation time determines which Text-to-Speech
system will be installed with the program. See the second note below.
3. Follow the instructions on each screen to install the software. All files
needed for scanning are copied automatically during installation.
Sometimes uninstalling and then reinstalling OmniPage Pro will solve a problem.
See “Uninstalling the software” on page 96.
It is planned to provide Text-to-Speech for English, French, German, Italian,
Portuguese and Spanish. This may vary depending on region or version. The
Readme file provides latest information. A speech system for only one language can
be installed with OmniPage Pro. See “Reading text aloud” on page 75.
Installing OmniPage Pro 13
Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro
All files needed for scanner setup and support are copied automatically
during the program’s installation. Before using OmniPage Pro 12 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 Pro.
Scanner installation and setup are done through the Scanner Wizard. You
can start this yourself, as described below. Otherwise, the Scanner Wizard
appears when you first attempt to perform scanning.
Please follow these steps to use the Scanner Wizard to setup your scanner
with OmniPage Pro 12:
X Choose StartProgramsScanSoft OmniPage Pro 12.0
Scanner Wizard
or click the Setup button in the Scanner panel of the Options
dialog box.
or choose a scan setting in the Get Page drop-down list in the
OmniPage Toolbox and click the Get Page button.
14 Installation and setup
The Scanner Setup Wizard starts. The first panel appears only on
first setup when called from inside OmniPage Pro.
X Choose ‘Select scanner or digital camera’, then click Next. You
see a list of all detected TWAIN scanner drivers, with the system
default scanner selected.
X Click once to select the driver of the scanner you want to use.
Click ‘Other drivers...’ if you need to browse for a driver. Select
‘Configure Advanced Settings’ for an extra panel if you want your
scanner’s own interface to be hidden during scanning or to
modify the image transfer method. Click on Next.
X Choose Yes to test your scanner configuration, then click Next.
The wizard will now test the connection from the computer to
your scanner. When completed, click on Next.
X Insert a test page into your scanner. The wizard is now prepared
to do a basic scan using your scanner manufacturer’s software.
Click on Next. Your scanner’s native user-interface will appear.
Chapter 1
X Click on Scan to begin the sample scan.
X If necessary, click on Inverse Image… or Missing Image… and
make the appropriate selections.
X Once the image appears correctly in the window, click on Next.
X Select the item that most appropriately describes your scanner,
then click on Next.
X Click on Next to proceed to page size.
X The page sizes that the Scanner Wizard believes your scanner to
support are listed in the window. To make any changes to the
page sizes, click on Advanced, make the changes and then click
on Next.
X Insert a page with text but no pictures into your scanner. Click
on Next to begin a scan in black-and-white mode.
X If necessary, click on Inverse Image… or Missing Image… and
make the appropriate selections.
X Once the image appears correctly in the window, click on Next.
X If you have a color scanner, insert a color photograph or a page
with a color picture into your scanner. Click on Next to begin a
scan in color mode. If necessary, click on Inverse Image… or
Missing Image… and make the appropriate selections. Once the
image appears correctly in the window, click on Next. If your
scanner cannot scan in color, skip this step.
X Insert a photograph or a page containing a picture into your
scanner. Click on Next to begin a scan in grayscale mode. If
necessary, click on Inverse Image… or Missing Image… and
make the appropriate selections. Once the image appears
correctly in the window, click on Next.
X You have successfully configured your scanner to work with
OmniPage Pro 12! Click on Finish.
To change the scanner settings at a later time, or to set up a different
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 Scanner Setup Wizard from
the Windows Start menu and select ‘Test scanner or digital camera’ in the
first panel, then work through the procedure described above.
Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro 15
How to start the program
To start OmniPage Pro 12 do one of the following:
X Click Start in the Windows taskbar and choose Programs
ScanSoft OmniPage Pro 12.0OmniPage Pro 12.0.
X Double-click the OmniPage Pro icon in the program’s
installation folder or on the Windows desktop if you placed it
there.
X Double-click an OmniPage Document (OPD) icon or file name;
the clicked document is loaded into the program. See
“OmniPage Documents” on page 29.
On opening, OmniPage Pro’s title screen is displayed and then its
desktop. See “The OmniPage Desktop” on page 22. It provides an
introduction to the program’s main working areas.
There are several ways of running the program with a limited interface:
X Use the Schedule OCR program. Click Start in the Windows
taskbar and choose ProgramsScanSoft OmniPage Pro 12.0
Schedule OCR. See “Processing with Schedule OCR” on
page 47.
16 Installation and setup
X Click Acquire Text from the File menu of an application
registered with the Direct OCR™ facility. See “How to set up
Direct OCR” on page 45.
X Right-click an image file icon or file name for a shortcut menu.
Select a sub-menu item from ‘Convert To...’ to define a target.
X Use OmniPage Pro 12 with ScanSoft’s PaperPort
®
or Pagis®
document management products, to add OCR services. See
“How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort” on page 46.
Chapter 1
Registering your software
ScanSoft’s registration Wizard runs at the end of installation. We provide
an easy electronic form that can be completed in less than five minutes.
When the form is filled, and you click Send the program will search an
Internet connection to immediately perform the registration online.
If you did not register the software during installation, you will be
periodically invited to register later. You can go to www.scansoft.com to
register online. Click on Support and from the main support screen
choose Register on the left-hand column.
For a statement on the use of your registration data, please see ScanSoft’s
Privacy Policy.
New features in OmniPage Pro 12
The OmniPage® product family is augmented by OmniPage Pro 12. If
you are upgrading, you may not need to consult this guide very much.
Here are some main areas of innovation compared to OmniPage Pro 11:
X Dramatic increase in accuracy
Improved synergy between recognition engines, support for
professional dictionaries and the ability to train characters chosen
by the user boost accuracy to new levels.
X Streamlined interface
Automatic and manual processing are now driven directly from
the OmniPage Toolbox without separate toolbars. See page 25.
Thumbnails now display in the Image Panel; choose to see the
current page, thumbnails or both. See page 26. The previous
Detail view becomes the Document Manager and includes a
Note column for comments and searchable keywords.
X New zoning concepts
On-the-fly zoning allows zone changes to be processed
immediately without having to re-recognize the whole page. See
page 74. Page backgrounds are defined as process (auto-zone) or
ignore, so all zoning instructions appear on the page and can be
Registering your software 17
saved to zone templates. See page 53. Irregular zones can be
drawn and zones split and joined more simply, without the need
for separate tools. See page 57.
X Better proofing and verifying
The Proofing dialog box now shows suspect words in a wider
context. A dynamic verifier can stay open as text is being
checked, with the image display and window tracking the editing
position. See page 65.
X Formatting levels for display and saving
There are three formatting levels for Text Editor display. See
page 64. The output formatting level is now chosen at export
time; the choices depend on the specified file type. An export
choice ‘Flowing Page’ is an improved version of the previous
‘Retain Flowing Columns’ view. It preserves page layout without
boxes and frames whenever possible, so text can flow between
columns. See page 81.
X Superior page analysis
The transfer of table formatting has improved, in particular the
detection of tables without gridlines in original pages. Web and
e-mail addresses can be detected and transferred to the Text
Editor; hyperlinks can be inserted. Reading order can now be
viewed and changed after recognition in the Text Editor’s True
®
Page
view. See from page 72.
18 Installation and setup
X Improved PDF handling
OmniPage Pro 12 searches background text in PDFs it opens, to
deliver higher recognition accuracy. A new file type ‘PDF Edited’
allows good format retention on pages that were modified in the
Text Editor after recognition.
X Advanced saving options
A wider range of saving options is offered for each output file
type. User-defined output file types can be created with
customized settings. See page 82. If your edition of OmniPage
Pro 12 includes the new saving formats XML and eBook, see
page 95.
Chapter 2
Introduction
You probably use your computer for business correspondence, preparing
reports, handling data and an ever-increasing number of other uses. The
challenge is that, in spite of the digital revolution, certain sources of
information still circulate in printed, paper form and cannot be used
immediately in a computer.
For example, if you want to incorporate information from a magazine
article in a report you are preparing, you somehow have to get the text
from the article into your computer. Painstakingly retyping the article is
not an appealing solution.
This chapter introduces you to the solution: optical character recognition
(OCR). It describes how OmniPage Pro 12 uses OCR technology to
transform text from scanned pages or image files into editable text for use
in your favorite computer applications.
We present the following topics:
X What is optical character recognition
• Documents in OmniPage Pro
• Basic processing steps
X The OmniPage Desktop
X Managing documents
X OmniPage Documents
X Settings
OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 19
What is optical character recognition
Optical character recognition is the process of extracting text from an
image. This image can result from scanning a paper document or
opening an electronic image file.
characters; they have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form character
shapes. These present a picture of the text on a page.
During OCR, OmniPage Pro 12 analyzes the character shapes in an
image and defines solutions to produce editable text. After OCR, you can
save the resulting text to a variety of word-processing, desktop publishing
or spreadsheet applications.
OmniPage Pro’s OCR capabilities
In addition to text recognition, OmniPage Pro can retain the following
elements of a document through the OCR process.
Graphics
Photos, logos, and drawings are examples of graphics.
Text formatting
Font types, sizes and styles (such as bold, italic and underlines
examples of character formatting. Indents, tabs, margins and line spacing
are examples of paragraph formatting.
Images do not have editable text
) are
20 Introduction
Page formatting
Column structure, table formats, and placement of graphics and headings
are examples of page formatting.
The graphics, text and page formatting elements that OmniPage Pro
retains are determined by the settings you select. Refer to the Settings
Guidelines in the online Help for more information about selecting
settings.
OmniPage Pro only recognizes machine-generated characters such as offset or
laser-printed or typewritten text. However, it can retain handwritten text, such as a
signature, as a graphic.
Chapter 2
Documents in OmniPage Pro
OmniPage Pro 12 handles documents one at a time. When you acquire
your first image (from scanner or from file) a new document is started.
Further acquired images are added to the same document, until you save
and close it.
A document in OmniPage Pro 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 and tables.
See “The OmniPage Desktop” on page 22.
Basic processing steps
There are two main ways of handling documents: with automatic
processing or manual processing. See “Automatic processing” on page 38
and “Manual processing” on page 40. The basic steps for both processing
methods are broadly the same:
1. Bring a set of images into OmniPage Pro.
You can scan a paper document with or without an Automatic
Document Feeder (ADF) or load one or more image files. The
resulting images can appear as thumbnails in the Image Panel along
with the image of the first page entered. The document pages are
summarized in the Document Manager. See “Defining the source of
page images” on page 48.
2. Perform OCR to generate editable text.
During OCR, OmniPage Pro creates zones around elements on the
page that will be processed, and then interprets text characters or
graphics in each zone. Manual and template zoning are also possible.
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, or send it as a mail attachment. You can save it as
an OmniPage Document (OPD) as described later. You can save the
same document repeatedly to different destinations, different file
types, with different settings and levels of formatting. See “Saving
and exporting” on page 77.
What is optical character recognition 21
Standard toolbar
The OmniPage Desktop
The OmniPage Desktop has a title bar and a menu bar along the top and
a status bar along the bottom. It has three main working areas, separated
by splitters: the Document Manager, the Image Panel and the Text
Editor. Each has close, maximize and restore buttons top right. The
Image Panel has an Image toolbar and the Text Editor has a Formatting
toolbar.
OmniPage
Toolbox
Thumbnails show a
picture of each page
in the document.
The current page
has an “eye” icon.
This page has been
recognized.
Image toolbar
Page navigation
buttons
Buttons to show or hide the
Document Manager, Text
Editor and the Image
Panel’s thumbnails and
current page display. This
can also be done from the
View menu.
Drag these splitters to
resize the working areas.
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.
Formatting toolbar
The Text Editor view
buttons offer three
formatting levels.
Text Editor:
This is displaying the
recognition results from the
current page in True Page
view.
22 Introduction
Chapter 2
We show the program with a three-page document. Page one is the
current page, which has been recognized and proofed. Page two has been
recognized but not proofed yet. Page three has been acquired and
manually zoned, but not recognized yet. The icons at the bottom of the
thumbnail images show page status.
Status bar buttons let you show or hide the main screen areas and move
to other pages in the document. A right mouse click in any screen area
brings up a shortcut menu with the most useful commands for that area.
The Menu bar
For concise information on any menu item, click the context-sensitive
help button and then click a menu item. A popup text explains the
purpose of the menu item. Click anywhere to close the popup.
The Toolbars
The program has three main toolbars; all can be floated. Use the View
menu to show, hide or customize them. Context-sensitive help explains
the purpose of all tools. Two further toolbars govern specific tasks.
Toolbar
Standard
Image
Formatting
Verifier
Reorder
Default
location
Horizontal under
Menu bar
Vertically to left of
current page image
Horizontal at top of
Text Editor
Hover the cursor ove r the verifier window
to see this floating toolbar.
Click the Chan ge reading order tool. This
toolbar replaces the Fo rmatting toolbar.
Other docking
locations
Any edge of the
OmniPage Desktop
Vertically to right of
current page image
None
Purpose
Performing basic program functions.
See page 29 and page 65.
Image, zoning and table op er at i ons .
See page 53 and page 59.
Formatting recognized text in the
Text Editor. See page 7 2.
Controlling the loca tion and appearance of the verifier. See page 66.
Modifying t he order of elements in
recognized pages. See page 72.
The OmniPage Desktop 23
The Image Panel
When this displays the current page image, the Image toolbar is available.
All page images have a background value: process or ignore. Zones can be
manually drawn on page images, or can be placed automatically after
recognition. There are five zone types: Process, Ignore, Text, Table,
Graphics. Areas inside process zones and on a process background outside
other zones have zones automatically drawn and their zone types
determined during processing. See “Zones and backgrounds” on page 53.
If the current page image is hidden, the thumbnails appear in rows to
make the best use of the available space.
24 Introduction
The Text Editor
This displays recognition results in any of three formatting levels:
X No Formatting view (NF)
X Retain Fonts and Paragraphs view (RFP)
X Tr u e Pa g e ( T P )
Tr u e P a g e retains page layout using text, table and picture boxes, and
frames. It can display multicolumn areas, to show text blocks that can be
treated as flowing columns at export time.
Tr u e Pa g e is also an export formatting level, along with Flowing Page
that retains page layout without boxes and frames. See “The editor
display and views” on page 64.
Chapter 2
The OmniPage Toolbox
This Toolbox lets you drive the processing. By default it is located along
the top of the OmniPage Desktop, just above the working areas. It can be
floated and also be docked along the bottom of the desktop.
Start button Get Page button Perform OCR button Export Results button
Get Pages
drop-down list
Layout Description
drop-down list
Export Results
drop-down list
Automatic processing is started, and can be stopped and re-started with
the Start (1-2-3) button. See “Automatic processing” on page 38.
Manual processing allows you to process documents page-by-page and
step-by-step. Start each step with the three large buttons: the Get Page
button (1), the Perform OCR button (2) and the Export Results button
(3). See “Manual processing” on page 40.
You can switch between automatic and manual processing any time the
program is not busy with processing. That means you can switch between
them while you are working within a document. You can automatically
process some pages, then add more pages with manual processing. After
processing a stack of pages automatically, you can inspect the results and
then go back to reprocess certain pages manually. This procedure is
described in chapter 3. See “Combined processing” on page 41.
The OCR Wizard is designed for new users. See “Processing with the
OCR Wizard” on page 43. If you have a document open when you start
the OCR Wizard, the document will be closed after a prompting to save
it. When you have used the OCR Wizard to process and save a
document, it remains in the program and can be further processed
(adding more pages, re-recognizing pages etc.) with either manual or
automatic processing.
The OmniPage Desktop 25
Managing documents
Document management can be done by thumbnails in the Image Panel
or by the Document Manager, situated along the bottom of the
OmniPage Desktop. Both summarize the pages in the document and are
synchronized. Our pictures show these with the same seven-page
document. Pages 1 and 2 are selected and page 4 is the current page, that
is, the one shown in the Image Panel. Page status is shown as follows:
Page Status Icon Page image has been...
1 Acquired acquired but has not yet been recognized.
2 Recognized
3
4 Modified
5
6 Pending
7 Saved recognized and sav ed at le as t on ce.
Recognized,
Proofed
Modified,
proofed
recognized, but not proo f read, or proofing
was interrupted on the page.
recognized, and proo fing has reached the
end of the page.
recognized with at leas t o ne editing or formatting change made i n t he Text Editor.
recognized, edited in the Text Editor, and
proofing has reached the end of the page.
acquired, m aybe recognized; some zone
changes are stored but not yet pr ocessed.
Thumbnails
These present a set of numbered thumbnail images, one for each page in the
document. Scroll to see pages as necessary. The current page has an ‘eye’
icon. You can select multiple pages in the document; these have a distinctive
appearance. Use thumbnails for page operations, as follows:
Jump to a page: Click the thumbnail of the desired page.
Reorder a page: Click the thumbnail of the page you want to move and
drag it above the desired page number. Pages are renumbered
automatically.
26 Introduction
Delete a page: Select the thumbnail of the page you want to delete and
press the Delete key.
Select multiple pages: Hold down the Shift key and click two
thumbnails to select all pages between and including them. Hold down
Move the
cursor onto the
page’s status
icon to see a
thumbnail of
the page.
Chapter 2
the Ctrl key as you click thumbnails to add pages to a selection one by
one. Then you can move or delete the selected pages as a group, or send
them to (re)recognition. You can also export selected pages.
Get information on an input image by hovering the cursor over its thumbnail (so
long as ToolTips are enabled). A popup text displays the image size in pixels and
the program’s unit of measurement. Image resolution is also shown.
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. The picture shows
columns that a user has specified.
Enter comments
or searchable
keywords here.
The current page is shown with an ‘eye’ icon. You can use the Document
Manager for page operations, as follows:
Jump to a page: Click the leftmost part of the page row or double click
anywhere in its row.
Reorder a page: Click the row of the page you want to move and drag it
to the desired location. An indicator on the left shows where the page will
be inserted. Pages are renumbered automatically.
Delete a page: Select the row of the page you want to delete and press the
Delete key.
Select multiple pages: Hold down the Shift key and click two page rows
to select all pages between and including them. Hold down the Ctrl key
as you click rows to add pages to a selection one by one. Then you can
move or delete the selected pages as a group, or send them to
(re)recognition. You can also export selected pages.
Managing documents 27
When multiple pages are being selected, the page set as current does not
change. All selected pages are highlighted.
Customizing Document Manager columns
You can specify which columns of information you want to see in the
Document Manager. Click Customize Columns... in the View menu for
the following dialog box:
This item is
highlighted.
Click a checkbox
to select the item.
Image sizes are
expressed in
pixels.
Define a width for
the highlighted
item.
Highlight an
item and use
these arrows to
change the
order of
columns.
28 Introduction
Define which columns should appear, their widths, and column order.
The topic Customizing Document Manager columns in online Help
clarifies what is presented in each column. You can change column
widths easily in the Document Manager; just drag the column dividers in
the title bar.
Deleting pages from a document
Page deletions must be confirmed and can be undone. Delete the current
page only with the item Delete Current Page in the Edit menu. Delete all
selected pages in the Document Manager or from the thumbnails by
pressing the Delete key or using the shortcut menu command Clear.
Chapter 2
Printing a document
You can print the document with the Print item in the File menu.
Choose whether to print images or text (that is, recognition results as
they appear in the Text Editor). You can print all pages or a range of
pages. The Print tool in the Standard toolbar prints images or text,
depending whether the Image Panel or the Text Editor is active.
Closing a document
Choose Close in the File menu to close a document. You are prompted to
save your document if you have not saved it or you have modified it since
the last save. See the next section on saving the document as an
OmniPage Document (*.opd). You will also be prompted to save unsaved
training data if you selected ‘Prompt to save training data when closing
document’ in the Proofing panel of the Options dialog box.
OmniPage Documents
The OmniPage Document is the program’s proprietary file type; it has
the extension .opd. It is one of the file types offered when saving a
document to file. You save the document to the OPD file type if you
want to work with it again in OmniPage Pro during a future session. You
can then process unfinished pages, add more pages and proof or edit
recognition results.
An OmniPage Document contains the original page images (deskewed
and pre-processed) with any zones placed on them. After recognition, the
OPD also contains the recognition results. Recognized characters are
stored along with their coordinate and confidence data. This preserves
the links between image and text, so that verification and proofing
remain available when the OPD is reopened in future sessions.
When you save an OmniPage Document, the current settings (and
unsaved training) are also saved. When you open an OmniPage
Document, its settings are applied, replacing those existing in the
program.
OmniPage Documents 29
Why save to OPD
You do not have to save your documents to the OPD file type. You would
typically do this for the following reasons:
x You cannot finish working with the document in the current session.
x You want to pass the document to other users who have OmniPage
Pro. For example, you can pass an OPD file to a specialist for
proofing. In an office network, you may have one scanner generating
images for recognition and proofing at several workstations.
x You want to build up an archive of recognized documents whose
original images remain accessible. The recognized texts allow
searching by keywords and other document retrieval techniques.
Recognition results should be saved from OPD files before installing any
OmniPage Pro upgrade. These files may not be upwards compatible to newer
OPD file formats, or possibly only the images will be retained when the files are
upgraded. When you open an OPD created by OmniPage Pro 10, only images are
loaded. When you open an OPD created by OmniPage Pro 11, images and
recognized pages are loaded, but no zones are retained.
How to save to OPD
30 Introduction
If you intend to create an OPD, you can save it to this format at an early
stage, for protection. Use the Save button to save it periodically as you
work. Save it again at the end of your session.
The Save button saves the document to the name and file type of its last
save. You can save your document repeatedly to different formats. If your
first save was to another format (for instance
.doc), use the item Save As...
from the File menu to save it as an OPD. If a document is saved as an
OPD, then you later save it to another format, it is not automatically
resaved as an OPD. When you close the document or exit the program,
you will be prompted to save the document as an OPD.
The title bar shows the file name of the most recent whole-document
save.
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