Nuance OMNIPAGE PRO 14, SCANSOFT OMNIPAGE PRO 14 User Manual

LEGAL NOTICES

Copyright © 2003 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 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.

MPORTANT NOTICE

ScanSoft, Inc. provides this publication "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Some states or jurisdictions do not allow disclaimer of express or implied warranties in certain transactions; therefore, this statement may not apply to you. ScanSoft reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes from time to time in the content hereof without obligation of ScanSoft to notify any person of such revision or changes.

RADEMARKS AND CREDITS

ScanSoft, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro, PaperPort, Pagis, True Page, Direct OCR, RealSpeak and ASR-1600 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.

THIRD PARTY LICENSES/NOTICES

Please see acknowledgements/notices at the end of this guide.

ScanSoft, Inc.

9 Centennial Drive Peabody, MA 01960 U.S.A.

ScanSoft Belgium BVBA

Guldensporenpark 32 BE-9820 Merelbeke Belgium

Part Number 50-281A-10119

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 When to go online 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 14 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 The Text Editor 24 The OmniPage Toolbox 25

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide iii

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 How to load an OPD 31

Settings 31

3PROCESSING DOCUMENTS 33

Quick Start Guide 34

Loading and recognizing sample image files 34

Scanning and recognizing a single page 34 Processing overview 36 Automatic processing 38

Stopping and restarting automatic processing 39 Manual processing 40 Combined processing 41 Processing with workflows 43 Processing from other applications 44

How to set up Direct OCR 44

How to use Direct OCR 45

How to use OmniPage Pro with PaperPort 46 Processing with the Batch Manager 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

iv Contents

Manual zoning 54

Zone types and properties 55

Working with zones 57

Speed zoning 59 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 67 User dictionaries 68 Languages 69 Training 69

Manual training 70

IntelliTrain 70

Training files 71 Text and image editing 73 On-the-fly editing 75 Reading text aloud 76

5SAVING AND EXPORTING 79

Saving OmniPage Documents 80 Export Results button 80 Saving original images 81 Saving recognition results 82

Selecting a formatting level 83

Selecting converter options 85

Using multiple converters 86

Saving to PDF 88

Converting from PDF 89 Copying pages to Clipboard 89 Sending pages by mail 90 Other export targets 92

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide v

6WORKFLOWS 93

Workflows 94

Sample workflows 94

Running workflows 96 Workflow Assistant 98

Creating workflows 98

Modifying workflows 101 Batch Manager 101

Creating new jobs 102

Modifying jobs 103

Managing and running jobs 103 Watched folders 104 Barcode driven workflows 106 Voice recognition 107

7TECHNICAL INFORMATION 109

Troubleshooting 110

Solutions to try first 110

Testing OmniPage Pro 111

Increasing memory resources 112

Increasing disk space 112

Text does not get recognized properly 113

Problems with fax recognition 114

System or performance problems during OCR 114 Supported file types 115

File types for opening and saving images 115

File types for saving recognition results 116 Uninstalling the software 118

vi Contents

Welcome

Welcome to this OmniPage Pro® 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 Pro 14. 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

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 7

used scanner models. Access ScanSoft’s web site from the OmniPage Pro Installer or afterwards from the Help menu.

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 14. 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.

8 Welcome

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.

OmniPage Pro 14 Office is a version of the product designed for more intensive use and is tailored to office environments. Its added features are denoted through the guide by this symbol. For a concise listing, see “New features in OmniPage Pro 14” on page 17.

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 14. 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.

When to go online

This guide concentrates on providing background understanding of program features, suggesting also what they can be useful for. The online Help provides mainly numbered procedures. Turn to online Help for the following items or for grater detail on the following topics:

◆ Keyboard guide

10 Welcome

◆ Settings guidelines

◆ Manual training

◆ Export Converter options

◆ Using the Text Editor

◆ On-the-fly zoning and editing

Chapter 1

Installation and setup

This chapter provides information on installing and starting OmniPage Pro 14. It presents the following topics:

◆ System requirements

◆ Installing OmniPage Pro

◆ Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro

◆ How to start the program

◆ Registering your software

◆ New features in OmniPage Pro 14

OmniPage Pro User’s Guide 11

System requirements

The minimum requirements to install and run OmniPage Pro 14 are:

◆ A computer with an Intel

◆ Microsoft

Windows NT

Windows® 98 (from second edition), Windows Me,

4.0 (from Service Pack 6), Windows 2000 (from

Pentium® III processor or equivalent

Service Pack 2), Windows XP or Windows Server 2003

◆ Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with at least Service Pack 2

◆ 128MB of memory (RAM), 256MB recommended

◆ 135MB of free hard disk space for application and sample files

plus 40-45MB working space during installation. Additionally:

◆ 20-67 MB per RealSpeak

◆ 2 MB per ASR speech recognition language (15MB for 7 languages) *

◆ 18 MB for ScanSoft PDF Converter *

◆ 3.4 MB for ScanSoft PDF Printer Driver *

◆ 5MB for Microsoft Installer (MSI) if not present (it is included

module (343 MB for 9 languages)

in most Windows operating systems)

◆ Up to 5MB for system updates

◆ An SVGA monitor with 256 colors, but preferably 16-bit color

(called High Color in Windows 2000 and Medium Color in XP) and a resolution of at least 800 x 600 pixels

◆ A CD-ROM drive for installation

12 Installation and setup

◆ 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 ScanSoft’s web site (www.scansoft.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.

* Supplied with OmniPage Pro 14 Office only.

Performance and speed will be enhanced if your computer’s processor, memory, and available disk space exceed minimum requirements.

Installing OmniPage Pro

OmniPage Pro 14’s installation program takes you through installation with instructions on every screen.

Before installing OmniPage Pro:

◆ Close all other applications, especially anti-virus programs.

◆ Log into your computer with administrator privileges if you are

installing on Windows NT, 2000, XP or Server 2003.

◆ 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.

! To i n stal l Omni Pa g e Pro:

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. 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 RealSpeak

Text-to-Speech language modules (currently

9). In OmniPage Pro 14 Office, up to 7 ASR-1600™ 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’.

4. 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 118.

You can use the Control Panel’s Add/Remove Programs facility to add or remove RealSpeak or ASR modules later. You will need your installation CD for this.

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, but no scanner setup occurs at installation time. Before using OmniPage Pro 14 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 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 Pro 14.0!

Scanner 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.

14 Installation and setup

◆ 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 Pro. 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.

◆ 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.

Chapter 1

◆ By default OmniPage Pro 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. Choose Modify 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 Pro 14!

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.

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.

Setting up your scanner with OmniPage Pro 15

How to start the program

To start OmniPage Pro 14 do one of the following:

◆ Click Start in the Windows taskbar and choose All Programs!

ScanSoft OmniPage Pro 14.0!OmniPage Pro 14.0.

◆ Double-click the OmniPage Pro 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 29.

◆ Right click one or more image file icons or file names for a

shortcut menu. Select Open With... OmniPage Pro application. The images are loaded into the program.

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:

◆ Use the Batch Manager program. Click Start in the Windows

taskbar and choose All Programs!ScanSoft OmniPage Pro

14.0! OmniPage Batch Manager. See page 47.

16 Installation and setup

◆ 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 44.

◆ Right-click on one or more image file icons or file names for a

shortcut menu. Select OmniPage Pro 14 and choose a target format or a workflow from its sub-menu. The files will be processed according to the workflow instructions. See page 96.

◆ Click the OmniPage icon on the taskbar. Choose a workflow to

start the program and run the workflow. In OmniPage Pro 14 Office, voice selection of workflow is possible.

◆ Use OmniPage Pro 14 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 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.scansoft.com to register online. Click on Support and from the main support screen choose Register in the left-hand column. For a statement on the use of your registration data, please see ScanSoft’s Privacy Policy.

New features in OmniPage Pro 14

The OmniPage® product family is augmented by OmniPage Pro 14. 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 12. Features unique to OmniPage Pro 14 Office have the Office icon:

Feature Description See

Higher accuracy

Improved layout retention

Workflows and instant access

Drag-and-drop recognition

Adjustable recognition speed

Speed zoning

Financial dictionary

Character validation

Bullets and numbering

More portable OPDs

A new recognition and parsing engine, four years in development, delivers even better OCR accuracy.

This engine also delivers superior page layout retention with True Page and Flowing Page formatting levels. Text flows better round irregular pictures.

Save workflows to perform recurring tasks without having to take care of individual settings each time. Run workflows instantly from your taskbar.

Select a zone and drag it into the working area of a target application. Graphics are pasted as image, text is recognized and pasted.

Recognition performance can be optimized for greater speed or greater accuracy. On good quality documents even faster processing gives good results.

Do manual zoning quickly. See auto-detected zones and double-click on any of them to turn them into real zones.

An English financial dictionary is added to the existing legal and medical professional dictionaries, available for several languages.

Validate individual accented letters for recognition, in addition to those enabled by the language choice.

Bulleted and numbered paragraphs can be detected. Bullets and numbering can be inserted, removed and edited in the Text Editor.

Save to OmniPage Document (Extended) to have training files, user dictionaries or zone templates embedded in the OPD.

page 31

page 83

page 93

page 89

page 31

page 59

page 31

page 73

page 29

Registering your software 17

Feature Description See Office

Colored backgrounds

Resolution control

Improved proofing system

Concurrent saving

Audio book publishing

Voice read-back

Batch Manager

Smart Folders

Get better recognition of text printed on color or shaded backgrounds. There is also improved noise removal.

Choose the resolution for saved page images and for images embedded in recognized pages.

The two parts of words hyphenated at line ends are now joined. The image viewer and the verifier display both image parts.

Create multiple converters to save to more than one file type in one step: for example save page images and recognized pages.

Save recognized texts as WAV audio files. Transfer these to CD to have scanned documents read aloud anytime - even on the move.

ScanSoft RealSpeak as the Text-to-Speech solution provides better quality voices in more languages for having text read aloud.

Redesign of the previous Schedule OCR facility gives more control and better overview for unattended processing of pre-defined jobs.

Jobs can take input from watched folders, with better handling of multiple folders. Background processing runs whenever image files are sent to these folders. Recurring jobs are supported.

page 49

page 85

page 65

page 86

page 116

page 76

page 101

page 104

Barcode cover pages

Greater PDF support

Open PDF files in MS Word

Export to Office 2003

Voice control

SharePoint, DMS and FTP

Print to PDF functionality

Start a workflow by placing a barcode cover page in a scanner on top of your document. Cover page image files can start image file workflows.

Generate tagged, signed and encrypted Portable Document Files. Allow reading of tags when PDF files are opened to improve layout retention.

ScanSoft enables PDF files to be converted to Word documents when working in Microsoft Word, without using OmniPage Pro.

Support for Microsoft Word 2003 (Word ML). In OmniPage Pro 14 Office support is added for Microsoft Reader (.LIT) and maintained for the XML and eBook file types.

Start workflows and control proofing corrections by voice commands in a number of languages, using the included ScanSoft ASR-1600 voice recognition modules.

Take image files from Microsoft SharePoint, any ODMA-compliant Document Management System (DMS) or an FTP site and export files to these locations for storage or group use.

Create searchable, editable PDF files from text files, such as Word documents. OmniPage Pro installs a PDF printer driver that becomes available in all your print-capable applications.

page 106

page 88

page 89

page 116

page 107

page 92

page 88

A more complete list of features and differences appears in online Help.

18 Installation and setup

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 14 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:

◆ What is optical character recognition

• Documents in OmniPage Pro

• Basic processing steps

◆ The OmniPage Desktop

◆ Managing documents

◆ OmniPage Documents

◆ 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. Images do not have editable text characters; they have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form character shapes. These present a picture of the text on a page.

During OCR, OmniPage Pro analyzes the character shapes in an image and 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.

Tex t form a ttin g

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.

) 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 laserprinted or typewritten text. However, it can retain handwritten text, such as a signature, as a graphic.

Chapter 2

Documents in OmniPage Pro

OmniPage Pro 14 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 three ways of handling documents: with automatic, manual or workflow processing. See “Automatic processing” on page 38, “Manual processing” on page 40 and “Workflows” on page 94. The basic steps for all 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, send it as a mail attachment or publish it. 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 79.

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

Verifi er

Reorder

Default location

Horizontal under Menu bar

Vertically to left of current page image

Horizontal at top of Text E d i tor

Hover the cursor over the verifier window to see this floating toolbar.

Click the Change reading order tool. This toolbar replaces the Formatting 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 operations. See page 53 and page 59.

Formatting recognized text in the Text Editor. See page 73.

Controlling the location and appearance of the verifier. See page 67.

Modifying the order of elements in recognized pages. See page 73.

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:

No Formatting view (NF)

Retain Fonts and Paragraphs view (RFP) True Page (TP)

The True Page

formatting level 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. Tru e Page is also an export formatting level, along with Flowing Page that retains page layout without boxes and frames. See page 64.

In both the Image Panel and Text Editor, the shortcut menu (right mouse click) allows you to zoom in our out on the display. The standard toolbar also provides a zoom control.

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/Stop button Get Page button

Workflow dropdown list with two sample workflows and a user-defined one.

Automatic processing is started, and can be stopped and re-started with the Start button when “1-2-3” is selected in the Workflow drop-down list. See “Automatic processing” on page 38.

Manual processing allows you to process documents page-by-page and step-by-step. Start each step (again with “1-2-3” selected) 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.

Get Pages drop-down list

Perform OCR button Export Results button

Layout Description drop-down list

Export Results drop-down list

Workflow pro c e s s ing is designed for performing repeated tasks efficiently. Select New Workflow... in the Workflow drop-down list and click Start. The Workflow Assistant helps you define a workflow that can be saved for repeated use. See “Workflow Assistant” on page 98.

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

4 Modified

6 Pending

7 Saved recognized and saved at least once.

Recognized, Proofed

Modified, proofed

recognized, but not proofread, or proofing was interrupted on the page.

recognized, and proofing has reached the end of the page.

recognized with at least one editing or formatting change made in the Text Editor.

recognized, edited in the Text Editor, and proofing has reached the end of the page.

acquired, maybe recognized; some zone changes are stored but not yet processed.

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

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 image by hovering the cursor over it with Image Info enabled in the image panel shortcut menu. 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.

Move the cursor onto the page’s status icon to see a thumbnail of the page.

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.

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.

28 Introduction

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. 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:

◆ You cannot finish working with the document in the current

session.

◆ 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.

◆ 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. All three are retained in OPD files originating from OmniPage Pro 12.

30 Introduction

How to save to OPD

Saving to OPD is done from the File menu, or by using the Save button in the Standard toolbar. The title bar shows the OmniPage Document file name. If you intend to create an OPD, you can save it to this file type at an early stage, for protection. Then use the Save button to save it periodically as you work. Save it again at the end of your session.

When you close the document or exit the program, you will be prompted to save the document as an OPD. You can include one or more saves to the OPD file type in a workflow, along with steps to save images or recognition results to other file types, see “Creating workflows” on page 98.

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