Nuance OMNIPAGE PRO 6 Reference Guide

OmniPage Pro

Version 6 for Windows

Reference Manual

How to Use the Documentation

Use this online Reference manual to find specific information about any OmniPage feature. It describes all the commands and settings, how to use True Page, how to improve performance, and how to troubleshoot common problems.

This information is also available in OmniPage’s online Help system. Additionally, chapter 2 contains a variety of tutorial exercises to introduce you to basic scanning and many features of OmniPage.

Use the toolbar buttons in Adobe® Acrobat® Reader to view the Bookmarks or Thumbnails. Clicking on the Bookmarks or Thumbnails navigates to the paragraphs or pages of the OmniPage Reference manual.

Assumptions and Symbols

We assume that you know how to work in the Microsoft Windows environment. If you have questions about how to use dialog boxes, scroll bars, edit boxes, and so on, please refer to the Windows User’s Guide.

This symbol means Note. It introduces a tip or an item of note.

This symbol means Warning. It introduces cautionary text.

CAERE CORPORATION 100 Cooper Court Los Gatos, California 95030-3321

European Offices: CAERE GmbH Innere Wiener Strasse 5 81667 Munich, Germany

OmniPage Pro Version 6

(PC Windows version)

Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Such designations appearing in this manual have been displayed in initial caps.

Please read this section carefully! It includes:

• What’s in the Package

• System Requirements

• Saving a User Dictionary Before Installation

• Setting up a Windows Swap File

• Installing the Software

• Starting OmniPage Pro

What’s in the Package

Your OmniPage Pro 6.0 package includes:

• Omnipage Pro program

• OmniPage Pro online manual, which can be printed

• OmniPage Reference manual, if separately requested

Chapter 1

Installation

System Requirements

To install and run OmniPage, you need the following setup:

• Computer with an 80386 or higher processor.

• Microsoft Windows version 3.1 or higher.

• Windows-compatible mouse.

• Total system memory of at least 8MB RAM. 12MB RAM are recommended for Windows for Workgroups users.

• 8MB or larger permanent Windows swap file.

• Super-VGA color monitor with 512K memory on the adapter card.

Installation 4

Saving a User Dictionary Before Installation

To view all 24 bits of color (millions of colors) in 24-bit color images, you need a 24-bit video card.

• A compatible scanner if you plan to scan documents. See the list of supported scanners in the Release Notes.

Install your scanner and test it according to the manufacturer’s instructions before using it with OmniPage.

Saving a User Dictionary Before Installation

Read this section if you have a user dictionary from an older version of OmniPage. OmniPage 6.0 overwrites the user dictionary (user.ud) if you install the program in the omnipro directory.

If you are upgrading from OmniPage 5.x, move the 5.x user dictionary to another directory before installation. This preserves your entries. Move the 5.x user dictionary back to the omnipro directory after installation to overwrite the newer user dictionary.

A user dictionary from OmniPage or OmniPage Professional 2.0 is incompatible with later versions of the program. The following instructions tell you how to save a user dictionary from version 2.0.

Save a Previous User Dictionary

1 Open your older version of OmniPage. 2 Choose

The Select File dialog box appears.

3Select

The Edit User Dictionary dialog box appears.

4 Click

The Export to Text File dialog box appears.

5 Save the dictionary as a text file in a different directory.

Import a Saved Dictionary

1 Install and open OmniPage Pro (see next section). 2 Choose

The Select File dialog box appears.

3Select

Edit User Dictionary...

and click

user.ud

Export...

user.ud

Edit User Dictionary...

and click

OK.

in the Settings menu.

Installation 5

Setting up a Windows Swap File

The Edit User Dictionary dialog box appears.

4 Click

5 Select the user dictionary you saved as a text file and click

Import...

The Import Text File dialog box appears.

The information in the old user dictionary is added to the new user dictionary.

See “Edit User Dictionary” on page 149 for more information.

Setting up a Windows Swap File

Although 8MB is the minimum amount of memory required, OmniPage can perform faster with more memory. 12–16MB RAM is recommended for optimal performance. Set up a permanent Windows swap file with a minimum of 8MB of free, contiguous disk space to improve disk speed.

A swap file acts as virtual memory. Free disk space set aside as a swap file is used as if it were additional memory. This lets you run more programs than you could with memory alone.

The disk space used for a swap file is different than the disk space needed for temporary storage while you are working on a file. Be sure to allocate enough free disk space for both a swap file and temporary storage.

Windows 3.1 automatically creates a swap file at setup. You can change its size. You may need to is in one empty block instead of fragmented into smaller portions.

defragment

OK.

the disk first to make sure free disk space

Use a program such as Norton Utilities to defragment a hard disk. You could also exit Windows and type defrag at the DOS prompt if you have version 6.0 or later of DOS. For more information about swap files, see the Optimizing Windows chapter in your Windows User’s Guide.

To set up a Windows swap file (virtual memory):

1 Start Windows in Enhanced mode by typing win /3. 2 Double-click the Control Panel icon in the Main window of the

Program Manager.

3 Double-click the 386 Enhanced icon to open the 386 Enhanced

dialog.

4 Click the

dialog.

Virtual Memory

button to open the Virtual Memory

Installation 6

Installing the Software

This dialog displays the location, size, and type of swap file. The

swap file should be at least 8192KB. 5 Click the 6 Select a new drive in the

file some place other than the default drive.

For example, you can store the swap file on a second hard disk

that is faster or larger than the default. If you cannot find a drive

with at least 8192KB of free space, try deleting some files and

optimizing the disk again.

Create your swap file in an uncompressed drive. If you use DoubleSpace or another disk compression method, consult its documentation regarding swap files.

7Select 8Type 8192 or greater in the

32-Bit Disk Access

9 Click OK in the Virtual Memory dialog box and click

changes to virtual memory. 10 Restart Windows.

Installing the Software

Change

Permanent

button to expand the dialog box.

list if you want to locate the swap

Drive

in the

if it is available.

Type

list.

New Size

edit box and select

Use

to verify

Ye s

Close all applications — including screen savers and mail applications — to free up memory before installing OmniPage Pro.

1 Start Windows and open the Program Manager window. 2 Insert OmniPage Pro disk #1 in drive a: (or b:) of your

computer. 3 Choose

The Run dialog appears. 4Type a:\setup (or b:\setup) in the

click OK.

A dialog box prompts you to choose where to install OmniPage.

The default directory is c:\omnipro.

in the Program Manager File menu.

Run

Command Line

text box and

Installation 7

Installing the Software

5 Click

6 Insert the other installation disks as prompted.

7 Do one of the following:

Continue

and then click

A dialog box warns that all executable files will be deleted from

your current omnipro directory if you have one.

• Click

A progress meter appears if you click

A dialog box prompts you to install a scanner driver when

installation of OmniPage is complete.

• Proceed to “Scan Manager Installation” on page 8 if you are

• Click

Continue

Back

using a scanner.

Exit

using a scanner. An OmniPage Pro icon is added to the Caere Applications

program group. Restart Windows. You cannot use the Direct Input feature until you restart Windows. See Chapter 5, Direct Input, for information.

to start installation or type your desired location

Continue.

if you want to return to the previous dialog box.

to finish your OmniPage installation if you are not

Scan Manager Installation

You must install the Scan Manager if you plan to use a scanner with OmniPage. Be sure your scanner is connected, compatible with your system, and runs with the software provided by the manufacturer you install the Scan Manager.

to continue.

Continue.

before

You are prompted to install the Scan Manager following OmniPage installation. You will use the Scan Manager to install scanner drivers and select a default scanner.

Follow instructions in “Installing the Software” on page 7 to install OmniPage first if you have not done so.

1 Insert the disk labeled Scan Manager disk as prompted at the end

of OmniPage installation and click

A dialog box informs you that the program will create certain

directories. It lists the files that will be copied to these directories. 2 Click

3 Click

Continue.

The Scan Manager installs and a dialog box asks if you want to

install a scanner driver now.

to continue or No to exit.

Ye s

Continue

Installation 8

Installing the Software

You can install a scanner driver anytime after Scan Manager

installation if you click

See the next section for instructions.

No.

The default scanner is used when you scan in OmniPage.

4 Click

to install a scanner driver now.

Ye s

The Scan Manager Installation dialog box appears.

5 Locate and select your scanner in the 6 Click

7 Click

Install.

The scanner appears in the

Set As Default Scanner.

The scanner appears in the

Installed Scanners

Default Scanner

List of Scanners

list box.

Installed scanner drivers appear here. You can install more than one.

You can install more than one scanner driver but only one can be

the default scanner. Repeat steps 5 and 6 to install more drivers.

Installation 9

Installing the Software

8 Click

when you are done.

9 Restart Windows.

You cannot use the Direct Input feature until you restart

Windows. See Chapter 5, Direct Input, for information.

An OmniPage Pro and a Scan Manager icon are added to the

Caere Applications program group.

Selecting Your Scanner After Scan Manager Installation

You can install a scanner driver anytime after Scan Manager installation.

1 Exit OmniPage if it is running. 2 Double-click the Scan Manager icon in the Caere Applications

program group.

The Scanner Setup dialog box appears.

3 Click

Add>>

4 Insert the Scan Manager disk when prompted.

The dialog box expands to show a list of available scanner

drivers. 5 Follow steps 5 through 8 in the previous section.

Changing the Default Scanner Selection

You can change your default scanner selection anytime.

1 Exit OmniPage if it is running. 2 Double-click the Scan Manager icon in the Caere Applications

program group.

The Scanner Setup dialog box appears. 3 Skip to step 8 if you just want to change your default scanner and

do not need to install a new scanner driver. Proceed to step 4 to

add a new scanner to the 4 Click

Add>>

Installed Scanners

list box.

Installation 10

Starting OmniPage Pro

5 Insert the Scan Manager disk when prompted.

The dialog box expands to show a list of available scanner

drivers. 6 Select a scanner in the 7 Click

The scanner appears in the 8 Select the scanner in the

to be the default scanner. 9 Click

The scanner appears in the 10 Click

Make sure the scanner you selected is already attached to your computer, turned on, and working when you next launch OmniPage.

Starting OmniPage Pro

To start OmniPage:

1 Double-click the OmniPage Pro icon in the Caere Applications

program group.

The first time you launch OmniPage, the User Information dialog

box appears.

List of Scanners

Install.

Installed Scanners

Set As Default Scanner.

list box.

Installed Scanners

list box that you want

Default Scanner

list box.

2 Type your name in the 3 Type your company name in the

a company; otherwise, leave it blank. 4 Click

OK.

Licensee

text box.

Company

text box if you are with

Installation 11

Starting OmniPage Pro

The Product Registration dialog appears the first time you launch

OmniPage.

5 See the next section for instructions on how to register OmniPage.

A scanner message may appear when you close this dialog. See

“Scanner Message on Launch” on page 227.

Registering OmniPage

You can use OmniPage for 25 sessions without registering it. A Register menu appears in OmniPage until you register your copy. See “The Register Menu” on page 151 for information. After 25 sessions, the Registration dialog appears when you launch OmniPage, but the program exits if you click

Registering your copy of OmniPage entitles you to technical support, notification of special offers and upgrades, and the lowest price offered on the next OmniPage upgrade.

1 Click the

from your country. 2 Call the number and ask for a registration number.

You will be asked to provide some information and you will be

assigned a registration number. 3 Enter the number in the

You are now a registered user of OmniPage.

Cancel

Call

drop-down list to find the number you should call

Registration Number

text box and click

Installation 12

OK.

The OmniPage Window

The OmniPage window and AutoOCR™ toolbar appear after the Registration dialog box closes.

Starting OmniPage Pro

Status text

The AutoOCR Toolbar

Process buttons

Shortcut command

buttons

Refer to Chapter 2, Tutorials, for an overview of OmniPage tools and recognition techniques. The tutorials begin with basic scanning and an overview of the OmniPage window and move on to more advanced exercises.

Installation 13

Chapter 2

Tutorials

This chapter contains eight tutorials. The tutorials take you through practical exercises for everyday documents such as multi-column pages and spreadsheets. They also cover more advanced concepts such as how to use manual zoning and using deferred page recognition to maximize efficiency.

The following tutorials are in this chapter:

• Tutorial 1 — Introduction to OmniPage

• Tutorial 2 — Basic Text Recognition

• Tutorial 3 — Working With Graphics

• Tutorial 4 — Evaluating a Page

• Tutorial 5 — Scanning a Single Column or Table

• Tutorial 6 — Train OCR

• Tutorial 7 — Deferring OCR

• Tutorial 8 — Using Direct Input

See the Table of Contents for a list of exercises within each tutorial.

Be sure your scanner is attached, turned on, and compatible with your system. Test the scanner with the manufacturer’s software to ensure that it works properly before using it with OmniPage.

Tutorials 14

Tutorial 1 — Introduction to OmniPage

This tutorial gives you a brief introduction to OmniPage. It contains the following sections:

• Launch OmniPage

• What is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)?

• The OCR Process

• Scan the Quick Scan Page Sample

• Settings Panel Overview

You will use the Quick Scan Page sample in this tutorial.

Launch OmniPage

Double-click the OmniPage icon in the Caere Applications program group to launch OmniPage.

The OmniPage window opens.

The OmniPage Toolbar

Launch OmniPage

Status text

AUTO

button

The toolbar contains an

Process buttons

button, three large process buttons, and the

AUTO

Shortcut command

buttons

smaller shortcut command buttons. Status text appears at the bottom of the window. It tells you what you can

do next or what is taking place at the moment in the OCR process.

Tutorials 15

What is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)?

Optical character recognition (OCR) is the process of converting an image file to editable text or graphics. An image is an electronic picture of text and/or graphics. You acquire an image in two ways:

• By scanning a hard-copy document

• By loading an image file such as a TIFF or PCX file (for example, a

received fax file can be saved to an image-file format and recognized in OmniPage)

The image you scan or load is at first just a “picture” to your computer even if it contains text. You can see the text but you cannot edit it. You need to perform OCR to turn the image into individual characters.

During OCR, OmniPage looks for and defines characters on the image to produce editable text. You can export the recognized text from OmniPage to a variety of word-processing, page layout, and spreadsheet programs. OCR is also referred to as

text or page recognition,

or just

The OCR Process

OCR is a three-step process: acquiring an image, zoning the image, and recognizing the image. Use the process buttons in the toolbar (or corresponding commands in the Process menu) to set up the OCR process.

recognition.

The Process Buttons

Each of the following three buttons represents one step in the optical character recognition (OCR) process.

Image button Zone button OCR button

Using the Process Buttons

The OCR process offers choices at each step:

1 Loading an image into OmniPage

•Select

Scan Image

a hard-copy document with a scanner.

Load Image

PCX.

in the Image button’s drop-down list to scan in

to import a graphic-format file such as TIFF or

Tutorials 16

2 Setting recognition zones

•Select

3 Performing OCR on the zoned page areas

•Select

You can either click each process button individually to activate its process or click the on what is selected in the drop-down lists.

In the following tutorial exercises, you will select a processing option for each stage of OCR before you load an image or scan a document.

Auto Zones

OmniPage define the page areas to be recognized.

Manual Zones

Perform OCR

perform optical character recognition on a zoned page.

Defer OCR

Tra in OC R

characters before OCR.

button to activate the buttons automatically depending

AUTO

in the Zone button’s drop-down list to have

to draw the zones yourself.

in the OCR button’s drop-down list to

to perform OCR later.

to teach OmniPage to recognize special

Scan the Quick Scan Page Sample

You will scan the Quick Scan Page Sample in this exercise for a quick introduction to the OCR process.

Scan the Quick Scan Page Sample

Select the Settings

1 Click the drop-down list under each process button and select

these options:

•Scan Image

•Auto Zones

•

Perform OCR

Scan the Page

1 Place the Quick Scan Page Sample in your scanner making sure it

is aligned correctly. 2 Click the

• OmniPage scans the page and opens it in the zone window.

• Automatically drawn zones appear on the image to show how text will be ordered.

button or choose

AUTO

in the Process menu.

Auto

Tutorials 17

Scan the Quick Scan Page Sample

• OmniPage makes three recognition passes over the page: cyan, light blue, and dark blue.

Each of these three stages is discussed in more detail in later tutorials.

OmniPage opens the recognized page in a maximized text window.

3 Choose

Tile Vertical

in the Windows menu so that you can see

both the zone and text windows.

The zone window shows the scanned image of the page. Note that although you can see the text, you cannot select words or letters, or edit the text in any way.

The text window shows the recognized, editable text.

4 Double-click the word

Computer

in the text window.

The Verification window opens to show the image of the word as it was scanned originally.

Tutorials 18

Settings Panel Overview

You can retype the highlighted word if necessary while the Verification window is still open. This is a quick way to edit text without using the spell checker.

5 Click anywhere in the text window to close the Verification

window.

6 Choose

Page sample.

7 Click No in the dialog box that asks if you want to save changes.

You will edit documents and save them in later tutorials.

Close Document...

Settings Panel Overview

Use the Settings Panel to customize the OCR process for particular pages. The page you just scanned had a simple page layout with crisp black text on a clean white background. Most settings work well with this type of page. You will customize the Settings Panel options in later tutorials.

1 Click the Settings Panel button in the toolbar or choose

Panel...

The Settings Panel appears.

in the Settings menu.

in the File menu to close the Quick Scan

Settings

There are seven panels in the Settings Panel dialog box: Scanner, Zones, OCR, Fonts, Spelling, Direct Input, and Preferences

2 Click each icon in turn to view its options.

Use the scroll box to access and select icons below the OCR icon. 3 After you click the Preferences icon, click 4 Position the mouse pointer over the Image button in the toolbar

and click the 5 The Settings Panel opens to the Scanner options.

mouse button.

right

Tutorials 19

Settings Panel Overview

You can also click with the right mouse button on the Zone and OCR process buttons when they are active to open the Settings Panel to the corresponding settings. These two buttons are active after a document has been loaded or scanned.

You would set Scanner options before scanning a page. Your

Scanner settings panel options may look different than those

pictured above, depending on your scanner. 6 Click

Help.

The online Help program opens to Scanner Options.

This section of the Help program gives information on all the

Scanner settings panel options. You can click the

Help

button in

each settings panel to open its corresponding Help section. 7 Choose 8 Click

in the File menu to close the online Help.

Exit

to close the Settings Panel.

See Chapter 4, The Settings Panel, for detailed information on all settings. The next tutorial introduces you to more scanning concepts.

Tutorials 20

Tutorial 2 — Basic Text Recognition

This tutorial takes you through basic scanning, zoning, and OCR exercises with OmniPage. It contains the following exercises:

• Scanning With the Default Settings

• Change a Document’s Fonts During OCR

• Ignore All Formatting

• True Page Recognition

• Deselect Retain Graphics

• Save a Settings File

• Load an Image File

You will use the True Page sample in these tutorials.

Save the files as directed during the exercises so you can use them in later exercises.

Scanning With the Default Settings

You will select the default settings in this exercise, observe the OCR process, use the errors, and save the recognized document in two different file formats.

Check Recognition

command to correct any recognition

Scanning With the Default Settings

1 Click the drop-down list under each process button and select

these options:

•Scan Image

•Auto Zones

•

Perform OCR

2 Click the Settings Panel button or choose

Settings menu. 3 Click 4 Click OK in the dialog box that asks if you are sure. 5 Click the Scanner icon.

Use Defaults.

Settings Panel...

in the

Tutorials 21

Scanning With the Default Settings

Auto Brightness with AnyPage/HP AccuPage 2

is the default. (HP

stands for Hewlett-Packard.)

This setting works well with most types of pages. The default is

Manual Brightness

if you have a black-and-white scanner.

6 Click the Zones icon.

The default setting is

Multiple Columns.

The True Page sample has multiple columns so this is the setting

you want. Use this option for pages such as newsletters, data

sheets, and magazines. 7 Click the OCR icon.

Retain Font and Paragraph Formatting

the section

Output Formatting Options.

is the default setting under

This setting preserves paragraph order and formatting (centered

or left-aligned), and font style (serif and sans serif) and

formatting (bold, point size, etc.) during OCR. 8 Click

Close.

You can leave the Settings Panel open if you have room on your

screen. This is useful if you need to change the settings

frequently.

Scan the Page

You will click the process buttons individually in this exercise to observe each stage of the recognition process.

1 Place the True Page Sample in your scanner making sure the

page is aligned correctly. 2 Click the Image button.

Tutorials 22

Scanning With the Default Settings

OmniPage scans the page and opens the image in the zone

window.

3 Click the Zone button.

OmniPage determines column flow and automatically draws

zones. This shows how text and graphics will be ordered during

OCR.

Numbered zones indicate recognition order.

Your zones may be different depending on whether you are using

AnyPage, HP AccuPage, or Manual Brightness. 4 Click the OCR button.

Tutorials 23

Scanning With the Default Settings

OmniPage performs three OCR passes over the document: a cyan

pass for initial recognition; a blue pass as text is analyzed and

corrected; and, a dark blue pass for final recognition.

The Character window displays characters as OCR takes place.

The Character Window

The recognized document opens in a new maximized text window. See the next section for an overview of the text window and its editing tools.

The Text Window

Tab buttons Ruler (set margins

and tabs)

Text f ra m e

The document’s font and paragraph formatting are retained but page layout is not. Text is displayed in one column with the graphic at the end.

Spacing

buttons

Alignment

buttons

Formatting buttons

(bold, italic, underline)

Tutorials 24

Scanning With the Default Settings

If the text is not ordered correctly, you may have misaligned the page in your scanner. Realign the page and try scanning again.

1 Choose

Tile Vertical or Tile Horizontal

in the Windows menu.

The text and zone windows tile for easy viewing. 2 Compare the recognized document in the text window to the

scanned image in the zone window.

OmniPage highlights any words it had trouble recognizing.

• Green:

suspects,

words that may not have been recognized

correctly, are highlighted in green.

• Red tilde:

or unrecognizable characters, are marked with

rejects,

a red tilde (~).

3 Select a word in the text.

If you double-click the word, the Verification window opens. You

can still edit the word if this window is open. Click anywhere

outside the Verification window to close it. 4 Click the Bold button in the text window.

The text becomes bold. 5 Experiment with the other tools in the text window to see how

they affect your text.

See “The Format Menu” on page 113 for detailed information on formatting options.

The next section shows you how to correct any recognition errors and add words to a user dictionary.

Check Recognition

The True Page Sample has black, crisp text on a clean white background and so should have few, if any, recognition errors. Check Recognition, however, also allows you to add words to your user dictionary as well as correct recognition errors.

1 Click the text window to make it active if it is not already. 2 Click the Check Recognition button or choose

Check Recognition...

in the Edit menu.

Tutorials 25

Scanning With the Default Settings

The Check Recognition window appears. It displays the image

and text of any questionable or unrecognizable word.

3 Correct any errors in the text.

If the word is misspelled:

• Correct the spelling in the

Change To

OmniPage may list one or more suggestions in the

edit box and click

Change To

drop-down list. The first word in the list is the word as OmniPage recognized it. Select a word in the list and click

Change

proper word in the

to replace the word in the text. Alternatively, type the

Change To

edit box.

If the word is correct:

• Click

to add the word to the User Dictionary. The word will

Add

still be flagged if it is a suspect (green) word and it occurs again.

• Click

to ignore the currently flagged word. Other

Ignore

instances of the word in the document will be checked.

• Click

Ignore All

to ignore all instances of the currently flagged

word in the document.

OmniPage automatically moves to the next word after you click a

button.

Change

4 Click

if you want to end the spell check.

Done

Otherwise, a dialog box informs you when the end of the

document has been reached. Click OK in this dialog box.

Tutorials 26

Scanning With the Default Settings

Save the Document

You will save the document as a Caere Document (a special OmniPage format), reopen it, and save it as a word-processing file.

Save as a Caere Document

1 Click the Save As... button or choose

Save As...

in the File menu.

The Save As dialog box opens.

2Select

Caere[*.MET]

in the

Save File as Type

drop-down list.

The data directory is the default location, but you can choose

another location if you wish. 3Type 4 Click 5 Choose

multi.met

OK.

Close Document

in the

File Name

in the File menu.

edit box.

Tutorials 27

Reopen the Document

1 Choose

Open Document...

The Open dialog box appears.

Scanning With the Default Settings

in the File menu.

2Select Caere files[*.MET] in the

List Files of Type

drop-down

list if it is not selected already. 3 Locate and open the file multi.met.

The text window opens maximized.

OmniPage opens only Caere Documents and image files. A Caere Document can contain both text and zone window information from a recognized document. (An image file contains only an image.) You can save a Caere Document to multiple file formats. You can also rezone or re-recognize it to save the time of rescanning the original document.

Save as a Word-Processing File

1 Click the Save As... button or choose

Save As...

in the File menu.

The Save As dialog box appears.

2 Select a word-processing application file type in the

list box, such as Microsoft Word for Windows.

Ty pe

Save Files as

Tutorials 28

Change a Document’s Fonts During OCR

Type a new name for the file in the 3 Click OK. 4 Leave the document open for the next exercise.

Change a Document’s Fonts During OCR

In the previous exercise, OmniPage retained font formatting but the fonts to ones preselected in the Fonts settings panel. You can change the fonts and point sizes assigned to your recognized document during OCR. You may want to do this to save formatting time later, either in the text window or in your target application.

You will see how font mapping works in this exercise.

Change the Font Settings

1 Choose

multi.met file if you did not leave it open after the previous

exercise.

See “Reopen the Document” on page 28 for information. 2 Click the Settings Panel button or choose

Settings menu. 3 Click

exercise.

Open...

Use Defaults

in the File menu to locate and open the

if you have changed the settings since the last

File Name

Settings Panel...

text box if you like.

mapped

in the

4 Click

Retain Font and Paragraph Formatting

you may recall from the last exercise.

This setting preserves paragraph order and formatting (such as

centered or left-aligned), and font style (serif and sans serif) and

formatting (bold, point size, etc.) during OCR.

It matches font types to the fonts selected in the

Formats

retain page layout.

in the dialog box that asks if you are sure.

Ye s

is the default OCR setting as

Retained Font

section of the Fonts settings panel. It does not try to

Tutorials 29

Change a Document’s Fonts During OCR

5 Click the Fonts icon and observe the settings.

Serifs

San Serif

Re-recognize the Page

• The default

seriffed

a letter.) The body text in the True Page sample is already Times New

Roman and so would not change during OCR.

• The default font has no serifs.)

The title and subtitles in the True Page sample are already Arial and so would not change during OCR.

• There are no monospaced fonts in the True Page sample so ignore these settings for now.

You can change the selection in any of the drop-down lists and the fonts in your document will change accordingly during OCR.

6Select

Proportional

7Select

Proportional

8 Click

1 Click the OCR button. 2 Click

current text. OmniPage re-recognizes the page and displays the recognized

text in the text window.

Serif Proportional

font has short lines, or

Sans Serif Proportional

Century Schoolbook

drop-down list.

Helvetica

Close.

Ye s

OR the font of your choice in the

drop-down list.

in the dialog box that asks if you want to replace the

setting is

serifs,

OR the font of your choice in the

Times New Roman

on the ends of the strokes of

settings is

Arial. (A sans seriffed

Sans Serif

. (A

Serif

Tutorials 30

Arial becomes Helvetica

Times New Roman becomes Century Schoolbook

Change a Document’s Fonts During OCR

Font and paragraph formatting are retained but page layout is not. Text is displayed in one column with the graphic at the end. The fonts match the selections in the Fonts settings panel.

3 Click in the body of the text. 4 Choose

in the Format menu.

Font...

The Font dialog box appears.

5 Verify that the font display matches the font you selected in the

Serif Proportional

drop-down list in the Fonts settings panel.

6 Leave the document open for the next exercise.

See “Retain Font and Paragraph Formatting” on page 172 for detailed information on the Fonts settings panel options.

Tutorials 31

Ignore All Formatting

You may decide you do not need any formatting at all, just the recognized text itself. You will use the font and paragraph formatting during recognition and assign one font and point size to the recognized text.

This option speeds the OCR process. It is useful if you want to export just text that either needs no particular formatting or that you want to format yourself in your target application.

Ignore All Formatting

OCR option to strip away

1 Choose

multi.met file if you did not leave it open after the previous exercise.

See “Reopen the Document” on page 28 for information.

2 Click with your

the Settings Panel to the OCR settings.

3Select

OmniPage will maintain paragraph order but not formatting. It will ignore font types (serif and sans serif) and any formatting (bold, point size, etc.) when it recognizes the document. You can choose a single font type and size for all the recognized text in the

Ignored Font Formats

4 Click the Fonts icon.

The Fonts options appear.

Open...

Ignore All Formatting

in the File menu to locate and open the

mouse button on the OCR button to open

right

section of the Fonts settings panel.

The default setting under All recognized characters will be formatted as plain, Arial, 10point text. You can choose a different font and point size in the drop-down lists if you like.

5 Click

Close.

Ignored Font Formats

is Arial 10-point.

Tutorials 32

6 Click the OCR button.

True Page Recognition

All text is now 10-point Arial.

7 Click

in the dialog box that asks if you want to replace the

Ye s

text. OmniPage re-recognizes the page and displays the recognized

text in the text window.

Formatting has been discarded and all text is Arial 10-point (or whichever font and point size you chose). The text is displayed in one column in order of recognition with the graphic at the end.

8 Leave the document open for the next exercise.

True Page Recognition

You may want to scan a document and retain not only font and paragraph formatting, but also as much page layout as possible. You can retain page layout by using the

You will re-recognize the True Sample with the True Page OCR option, work with frames in the text window, and deselect the Retain Graphics option to observe what effect this has on True Page recognition.

1 Choose

multi.met file if you did not leave it open after the previous exercise.

See “Reopen the Document” on page 28 for information.

Open...

True Page - Retain All Page Formatting

in the File menu to locate and open the

OCR option.

Tutorials 33

True Page Recognition

2 Click with your

mouse button on the OCR button to open

right

the Settings Panel to the OCR settings.

3Select

True Page - Retain All Page Formatting

Use this option when you want to duplicate page layout as

closely as possible. 4 Click 5 Click the OCR button 6 Click

in the dialog box that asks if you want to replace the

Ye s

current text.

OmniPage re-recognizes the document and displays the

recognized text in the text window.

The result matches the original page layout as closely as possible.

Tutorials 34

Working With Frames

True Page Recognition

Because

Multiple Columns

automatically creates

was the default zoning method, True Page

around recognized text and graphic zones to

frames

preserve a side-by-side column structure.

Frames

You can resize frames and move them around to modify your document’s page layout. These frames are exported intact when you save your document in an appropriate file format. You will work with True Page frames in this exercise.

1 Click the text window to make it active if it is not already. 2 Choose

Select Recognized Zones

in the Edit menu. You cannot select this command if the zone window is active. All text and graphic zones in the text window are selected.

Handles appear around the text zones.

3 Hold your cursor over a frame handle in a text zone so that it

turns into a two-way arrow.

Resizing the frame

4 Hold down the mouse button and drag to resize the frame.

Tutorials 35

Moving the frame

Deselect Retain Graphics

5 Place your cursor inside a text zone so that it turns into a four-

way arrow.

6 Hold down the mouse button and drag the zone to any location

on the page.

7 Choose

Select Recognized Zone

All frames are deselected. A check mark in front of the command indicates that the command is active. The check mark disappears when you reselect the command.

8 Place your cursor inside a frame. 9 Hold down the Alt key, and click the right mouse button.

This selects an individual frame.

10 Repeat the Alt-right-mouse-button click to deselect the frame. 11 Leave the document open for the next exercise.

Deselect Retain Graphics

You may want to retain page layout but not graphics during page recognition. Not retaining graphics speeds recognition because OmniPage can skip over those zones. You will re-recognize the document you scanned in the previous exercise but not retain the graphic.

1 Choose

multi.met file if you did not leave it open after the previous exercise.

See “Reopen the Document” on page 28 for information.

Open...

s in the Edit menu again.

in the File menu to locate and open the

Tutorials 36

Save a Settings File

2 Click with your

mouse button on the OCR button to open

right

the Settings Panel to the OCR settings.

3 Deselect 4Select

True Page - Retain All Page Formatting

Retain Graphics

if it is not selected

already.

5 Click

Close.

6 Click the OCR button. 7 Click

in the dialog box that asks if you want to replace the

Ye s

text. OmniPage re-recognizes the page. The text appears in the same format as before, but has an empty

space where the graphic was originally.

Empty space where graphic was

Save a Settings File

8 Choose

Close Document

in the File menu.

9 Click No in the dialog box that asks if you want to save changes.

You may find that you use the same Settings Panel options often. You can save these settings as a file and load the file before scanning or loading an image file. This saves you the time of opening the Settings Panel and resetting the options you need.

Tutorials 37

Save the Settings

Save a Settings File

1 Click the Settings Panel button or choose

Settings Panel...

Settings menu.

2 Select the following options in each settings panel:

• Scanner:

•Zones:

•OCR:

Manual Brightness

One Zone

Ignore All Formatting

Note that none of these settings is a default setting.

3 Leave the Settings Panel open 4 Choose

Save Settings...

in the File menu.

The Save Settings dialog box appears.

• Caere Settings files[*.SET] is the only selection in the

Save Files of Type

list box.

•The data directory is the default location but you can choose

another if you like.

in the

5 Type the name test.set in the 6 Click OK.

Load the Settings

1 In the Settings Panel, click 2 Click

Ye s

3 Choose

File Name

Use Defaults

text box.

in the dialog box that asks if you are sure.

Load Settings...

in the File menu.

Tutorials 38

Load an Image File

The Load Settings dialog box appears.

4 Locate and select the file test.set. 5 Click OK.

The Settings Panel settings change to match the settings file you just loaded.

6 Click the Scanner, Zone, and OCR icons to verify that their

respective settings have changed.

7 Choose 8 Click No in the dialog box that asks if you want to save changes.

Load an Image File

OmniPage can load, zone, and recognize TIFF and PCX files in the same way it does scanned documents. You will load an image file in this exercise and experiment with font settings. See “Supported Input File Formats” on page 239 for a complete list of supported file types you can load.

Load a Single Image File

1 Click the drop-down lists under the process buttons and select:

• Load Image

•Auto Zones

•

Perform OCR

Close Document

in the File menu.

Tutorials 39

Load an Image File

2 Click the

AUTO

button.

The Load Image dialog box appears.

3Select TIFF files[*.TIF] in the

List Files of Type

drop-down

list.

4 Locate and select the test.tif file.

The file was placed in the c:\omnipro\data directory during installation.

5 Click

OK.

OmniPage loads the image file, creates automatic zones on it, performs OCR, and then displays the recognized text in the text window.

Load Multiple Image Files

You can load your own image files in this exercise if you have them. Otherwise, skip to the next tutorial. See “Supported Input File Formats” on page 239 for a list of file types you can import.

1 Click the drop-down lists under the process buttons and select:

• Load Image

•Auto Zones

•

Perform OCR

Tutorials 40

Load an Image File

2 Click the

AUTO

button. 3 The Load Image dialog box appears. 4 Select a file format in the

List Files of Type

5 Select a file to load and click

The file appears in the

Selected Files

Add.

drop-down list.

list box.

6 Repeat for each file you want to load.

7 Click OK when you have selected all the files to load.

OmniPage loads, zones, and performs recognition on the files in the order selected. The new document starts at page two if you left the document from the previous exercise open.

Each subsequent document becomes a new page in the final recognized document. Three one-page TIFF files, for example, would be merged into a three-page recognized document.

8 Choose

Close Document

in the File menu.

9 Click No in the dialog box that asks if you want to save changes if

you do not want to save the document. You will learn about the different save options available for

multiple-page documents in the “Deferring OCR” tutorial. Or, see “Save Options” on page 92 if you want to save the document.

Tutorials 41

Tutorial 3 — Working With Graphics

OmniPage can export a scanned page or pages as one or more graphicformat files. It can also find individual graphic zones on each page and export them as graphic-format files. This tutorial contains a tutorial on how to Export a Graphic

You will use the True Page Sample in this tutorial.

Export a Graphic

You will export the graphic on the True Page sample as an individual graphic file in this exercise.

Select Settings

1 Click the drop-down list under each process button and select

these options:

•Scan Image

•Auto Zones

•

Perform OCR

Export a Graphic

2 Click the Settings Panel button in the toolbar or choose

Panel...

The Settings Panel appears.

3 Click 4 Click

in the Settings menu.

Use Defaults

in the dialog box that asks if you are sure.

Ye s

Settings

Tutorials 42

Export a Graphic

5 Click

Scan the Page

1 Place the True Page sample in your scanner making sure it is

aligned correctly.

2 Click the

AUTO

3 OmniPage scans, zones, and recognizes the document.

Export the Graphic Zone

1 Choose

Export Image...

The Export Image dialog box opens.

button.

in the File menu.

2Select

Save Current Page Only

under

Save Options

You only have one page, but if you had a multiple-page document open, OmniPage would save the page being viewed.

3Select

Save Each Graphic Zone to a File

under

Image Options

There is one graphic zone on this page, the image of the woman. OmniPage will export just this image and none of the text.

4 Select a file format in the

Save Files as Type

drop-down list. 5 Select a location for your file. 6 Type a name for your graphic file in the

File Name

edit box.

The name you choose can have up to seven characters. OmniPage appends a letter to indicate the order of the graphic on the page.

If you had multiple graphics to export, A would indicate the first graphic, B the second and so on. Up to 26 files can be created in one directory with this method.

Tutorials 43

7 Click OK.

The recognized graphic zone on the page is exported in the file format you chose. You can open it in most image-editing programs.

Tutorial 4 — Evaluating a Page

A complex page may require more attention on your part for accurate OCR to take place. Tight or non-rectangular columns, text-filled or very small graphics, shading behind text, or very stylized text may be difficult for OmniPage to recognize with perfect accuracy on the first try. Sometimes you need to reprocess a page with different settings.

This tutorial illustrates some difficulties a complex page or any kind of page can present and how to correct those problems. It also gives a basic introduction to manual zoning at the same time. It contains the following exercises:

• Overcoming Recognition Difficulties

• When to Use Manual Zoning

• Manual Zones — Recognize Portions of a Page

• Manual Zones — Specify Zone Contents

• Manual Zoning — Reorder Text

• Scanning and the Brightness Setting

Overcoming Recognition Difficulties

You will use the Complex Page sample in this tutorial.

Overcoming Recognition Difficulties

This exercise uses a fictional newsletter to illustrate some challenges you may encounter with your own scanned pages — graphics recognized as text, background interfering with text recognition, unwanted text or graphic elements on a page — and how to solve them.

Select Settings

1 Set these options in the toolbar:

•Scan Image

•Auto Zones

•

Perform OCR

Tutorials 44

Overcoming Recognition Difficulties

2 Click the Settings Panel button in the toolbar. 3 Select the following settings:

• Scanner:

Auto Brightness with AnyPage/HP AccuPage2

This is a good setting for shaded backgrounds.

• If you have a black-and-white scanner, set

Manual Brightness

the center of the slider.

•Zones:

Multiple Columns

The page has multiple columns so this setting is appropriate.

•OCR:

Retain Graphics

• You will retain the Caere logo in this exercise.

•OCR:

True Page - Retain All Page Formatting

This setting retains page layout and will make it easier to find various sections of the page in this exercise. You would choose

Retain Font and Paragraph Formatting

if you did not need to

preserve page layout.

4 Click

Scan the Page

1 Place the Complex Page Sample in your scanner making sure it is

aligned correctly.

2 Click

AUTO

Tutorials 45

Unwanted graphic element

Caere logo recognized as text

Your results may be different than those pictured above depending on your scanner. The line above the newsletter title may be not recognized at all, for example.

Overcoming Recognition Difficulties

OmniPage scans, zones, and recognizes the page. The recognized page opens in the text window.

OmniPage assumed the beginning of a word.

The Problems to be Solved

You may find some or all of the following recognition difficulties.

1 Note that the Caere logo was not reproduced: OmniPage tried to

recognize it as text. This is because it saw the CA at the beginning of the logo and

assumed it was the beginning of a word such as cat.

was

You may have different recognition results depending on the quality of your scanner.

Tutorials 46

Overcoming Recognition Difficulties

Dark shading recognized as a graphic zone

Unwanted text element

2 Scroll down the page to the

A Little Background

article.

OmniPage had trouble with this section because the extremely dark background could be interpreted as part of a graphic. The lack of distinct contrast also interfered with the program’s ability to distinguish characters.

Depending on your scanner, you may find recognition errors and perhaps some small graphic zones here.

3 Note that OmniPage may have tried to recognize the tiny squares

at the bottom of the page because they are easily confused with text. You might see tildes or other characters here.

You will not always need all the information on a page. You can choose which portions to recognize. In this exercise, you will recognize just the logo, the headlines, and the body text.

How to Solve the Problems

You will:

• Rezone the page to leave out the unwanted text and graphic

elements.

• Specify a graphics zone content for the Caere logo.

• Isolate the shaded portion of the page and rescan it with a different

brightness setting to compensate for the shading.

Tutorials 47

When to Use Manual Zoning

These fixes require you to use of the page, manual zoning techniques in the course of this tutorial.

specify zone contents

manual zoning.

for the logo and text, and learn other

You will recognize portions

When to Use Manual Zoning

Use manual zoning in the following circumstances:

• to select a portion of a page for recognition

• to specify zone contents

• to order text for recognition

• to create a zone template for standardized pages

The next exercises cover the first three circumstances. Creating a zone template is covered in the next tutorial.

Manual Zones — Recognize Portions of a Page

You can recognize portions of a page to retain just the information you want to recognize and to leave out undesired elements.

1 Choose

zone windows side by side. You can also close the maximized text window and it will tile

automatically with the zone window.

2Select

in the toolbar.

Tile Vertical

Manual Zones

in the Window menu to view the text and

in the drop-down list under the Zone button

3 Click

current zones.

in the dialog box that asks if you want to replace the

Ye s

Tutorials 48

Manual Zones — Recognize Portions of a Page

The zones disappear and the automatic zone tools change to manual zone tools.

Zoom tool: zoom your view of the page in and out.

Draw Zones tool: draw zones for recognition.

Order Zones tool: change text recognition order.

Erase Zones tool: erase a zone.

Use the arrow buttons

to rotate the image.

Select zone contents.

4 Click the Zoom tool.

Your cursor turns into a magnifying glass.

5 Click anywhere on the zone window to zoom into the image.

This is useful when you are drawing zones around areas that are

close together such as the three columns on the page. 6 Click the right mouse button to zoom out of the image. 7 Click the Draw Zones tool. 8 Place the cursor by the Caere logo, hold down the mouse button,

and drag the cursor to draw a rectangular zone around the title.

Leave out the volume number and other text below the logo.

OmniPage numbers this zone with a 1. 9 Draw a zone around the headline below the Caere logo.

OmniPage numbers this zone with a 2.

Tutorials 49

Manual Zones — Specify Zone Contents

10 Draw zones around the three side-by-side columns, avoiding the

lines, as illustrated in the picture.

This is where zooming in your view of the page is especially of

help.

Do not draw a zone around the

will zone this separately in another exercise.

You should now have five zones as pictured below.

A Little Background

article. You

Manual Zones — Specify Zone Contents

1 Click in the zone around the Caere logo to make it active.

Handles appear on the zone when it is active. 2Select

3 Click the OCR button. 4 Click

Graphic

The zone is now identified as a graphics zone. OmniPage will not

try to recognize it as text.

Ye s

current text.

in the

Zone Contents

in the dialog box that asks if you want to replace the

drop-down list.

Tutorials 50

Caere logo recognized as graphic

Manual Zoning — Reorder Text

OmniPage re-recognizes the document according to the zones

you drew. The logo now appears in the text window as a graphic.

5 Leave the document open for the next exercise.

Manual Zoning — Reorder Text

After you scan a document, you may decide to reorder the text before or after recognition to save yourself time editing the document. In this exercise, you will recognize just the columns in a different order.

Reorder the Zones

1 Click the Erase Zones tool. 2 Click the first two zones to erase them.

OmniPage will recognize just the three columns. 3 Click the Order Zones tool.

The cursor becomes the # symbol and numbers in the three

remaining zones around the columns disappear. 4 Click the right column that used to be labeled 5.

Now the zone is labeled 1. This zone will be recognized first and

placed at the beginning of the new document in the text window. 5 Click the middle column.

It is now labeled 2 and will be recognized second.

Tutorials 51

6 Click the left column.

It is now labeled 3 and will be recognized third.

Manual Zoning — Reorder Text

OCR

1 Click with your

mouse button on the OCR button to open

right

the Settings Panel to the OCR options. 2Select

Retain Font and Paragraph Formatting

This setting allows you to see the reordered text in the text

window. Text would still be reordered with the True Page setting

but you would have to export the text first and view it in the

target application. 3 Click

Close.

4 Click the OCR button. 5 Click

in the dialog box that asks if you want to replace the

Ye s

text.

OmniPage makes three recognition passes over the zones.

Tutorials 52

The text window opens to display the newly reordered text.

Scanning and the Brightness Setting

The scanner brightness setting you choose in the Scanner settings panel can strongly affect page recognition. 3D and

Auto Brightness with AnyPage/HP AccuPage 2

settings to choose for shaded areas.

Scanning and the Brightness Setting

OCR with HP AccuPage 2/AnyPage

are both good scanner

However, the shaded area in this case is too dark for the auto brightness settings to help much. You may find adjusting brightness manually works better. You will re-recognize just the recognition and evaluate the article during processing.

Some scanners cannot scan a dark background well even with manual brightness adjustment. Skip this exercise if recognition does not improve after you have tried one or two different brightness settings.

1 Make sure the Complex Page sample is still in your scanner. 2Select

Manual Zones

already selected.

in the Zone button drop-down list if it is not

A Little Background

article to improve

Tutorials 53

Scanning and the Brightness Setting

3 Click with your

mouse button on the Image button to open

right

the Settings Panel to the Scanner options. 4Select

Manual Brightness.

The number range that appears in the text box on the right

depends on what kind of scanner you have. 5 Drag the slider box to the left on the slider (toward

Lighten

You may have to experiment to find the optimum scanning

brightness. For now, try to position the slider box approximately

where it appears on the slider in the previous picture. 6 Note the number in the text box for future reference.

7 Click

Close.

8 Click the Image button.

OmniPage rescans the document. It opens in the zone window as

page two of your current document.

Tutorials 54

9 Look at the image to see how the brightness setting affected

scanning.

Brightness setting too dark Brightness setting just rightBrightness setting too light

• Set the brightness to a lighter setting if your image still has shading behind the article as does the left image, above, and rescan.

• Set the brightness to a darker setting if your image looks faded as does the middle image, above, and rescan.

• The right image, above, has the right brightness setting. The text outside the

A Little Background

text inside the article (you can use the Zoom tool to enlarge the image and see).

This would cause recognition problems if you recognized the entire page. That is why you will zone and recognize just the

Little Background

article.

Scanning and the Brightness Setting

article is lighter than the

10 Choose

Delete Page

in the Edit menu to delete the page being

viewed if it did not scan well.

Tutorials 55

Zone and Recognize the Article

1 Click the Draw Zones tool.

Scanning and the Brightness Setting

2 Draw a zone around just the

A Little Background

3 Click the OCR button. 4 Observe the Character window during OCR.

article.

Shaded background dots would hinder recognition

Brightness

setting too dark

Brightness setting

too light

Brightness setting

just right

• The Character window on the left, above, still shows some of the shaded background. Set the brightness to a lighter setting and rescan after OCR.

• The Character window in the middle, above, shows thin, broken characters. Set the brightness to a darker setting and rescan after OCR.

• The Character window on the right, above, shows well formed characters.

Tutorials 56

Scanning and the Brightness Setting

OmniPage displays the text in the text window after OCR.

5 Scroll down the page to locate the article in the text window.

You should find few, if any, recognition errors once you have scanned with the proper brightness setting. Continue to adjust the scanner brightness setting in the Settings Panel and rescan the page if there are numerous errors.

6 Choose

Delete Page

in the Edit menu to delete the page being

viewed if it did not scan or recognize well.

Cut and Paste the Text

If you deleted any pages that did not scan or recognize well, you should now have two pages with portions of recognized text on each. You can cut and paste the text in the

A Little Background Article

into the text from the

rest of the newsletter.

1 Select the text in the 2 Choose

in the Edit menu.

Copy

A Little Background

article.

3 Click the left arrow button by the page number at the bottom of

the window to go to page one. This is the page that has the newsletter text from the three

columns. 4 Place your cursor at the end of the text in the column. 5 Choose

in the Edit menu.

Paste

The text is added to the text on the page. 6 Resize the column as necessary to view all the text.

See “Working With Frames” on page 35 for detailed information

on resizing and moving frames.

You could also export the whole document and cut and paste the text in your target application instead.

Tutorials 57

Recognize a Memo With a Table

Tutorial 5 — Scanning a Single Column or Table

So far in these tutorials, you have scanned two different multiple-column documents with various settings. You may need to scan spreadsheets, tables, or memos. Although these also have multiple columns, these documents usually rely on tabs to maintain formatting. The

or Table

document.

zoning method is specifically designed to recognize this sort of

Single Column

You will use the will also learn how to speed processing and increase recognition accuracy by creating a zone contents file and a zone template.

There are three exercises:

• Recognize a Memo With a Table

• Create a Zone Contents File

• Create a Zone Template

You will use the Single Column or Table Page sample in this exercise.

Single Column or Table

Recognize a Memo With a Table

1 Place the Single Column Page sample in your scanner making

sure it is aligned correctly. 2 Click the drop-down lists under the process buttons and select:

•Scan Image

•Auto Zones

•

Perform OCR

3 Click the Settings Panel button in the toolbar.

The Settings Panel appears.

zoning method in this tutorial. You

4 Click the 5Select

Single Table or Column.

icon in the Settings Panel.

Zones

Tutorials 58

Recognize a Memo With a Table

This option is best for preserving tabbing or columns of

characters such as are on the table on the sample page.

6 Click the OCR icon.

Tabs inserted by OmniPage to maintain formatting

7Select

Retain Font and Paragraph Formatting

This option preserves the formatting of the page but not its

layout as True Page would. On the sample page, for example,

True Page would interpret the wide spacing between sections as

extra line returns. You may not want this extra formatting. 8 Click 9 Click

AUTO

OmniPage scans, zones, and recognizes the document.

Tutorials 59

Note that OmniPage preserves the table and other even spacing

with tabs.

The red tildes on the page mean OmniPage did not recognize

some of the specialized characters in the document. You can

double-click each tilde in the text window to open the

Verification window and see the original image. A later tutorial,

Train OCR, shows you how to teach OmniPage to recognize these

special characters and symbols. 10 Leave the document open for the next exercise.

Create a Zone Contents File

You can speed OCR and minimize potential recognition errors by creating your own zone contents file. Depending on the font and image quality, OmniPage may recognize a five (5) as an S or a zero (0) as an O. A zone contents file prevents this by telling OmniPage exactly what to recognize in a particular zone. You will create a zone contents file in this exercise.

Creating the File

Create a Zone Contents File

1 Choose

The Select File dialog box opens. 2 Click

The Edit Zone Content File dialog box opens with a string of

highlighted characters. This is the default Alphanumeric zone

contents set

Edit Zone Contents File...

New

in the Settings menu.

Tutorials 60

Create a Zone Contents File

You need to enter all the numbers in the table. You must also

enter any characters. If you just entered numbers, OmniPage

would not be able to recognize the letters with this zone contents

file. 3 Type the characters 0123456789ABCDTL- (hyphen).

Zone contents files are case-sensitive, so make sure your letters are uppercase as in the example.

The highlighted characters are replaced with the ones you enter. 4 Click

Save

The Save dialog box opens.

5Type finance in the 6 Click

OK.

Draw and Specify Zones

1 Follow steps 1–8 beginning on page 58 if you did not leave the

document open. 2 Choose

Tile Vertical

window. 3Select 4 Click

Manual Zones

in the dialog box that asks if you want to delete the

Ye s

current zones.

File Name

text box.

in the Window menu so you can see the zone

in the Zone button drop-down list.

Tutorials 61

Alphanumeric

Finance

Alphanumeric

Create a Zone Contents File

5 Draw zones around the sections of the page as shown in this

picture:

6 Click in the zone around the table to make it active. 7Select

Finance

in the

Zone Contents

drop-down list. 8 Click the OCR button. 9 Click

in the dialog box that asks if you want to replace the

Ye s

current text. OmniPage recognizes each of the zones according to the zone

contents you specified. Because you selected the appropriate zone contents file, all

characters in the table are recognized correctly.

10 Leave the document open for the next exercise.

Tutorials 62

Create a Zone Template

The Single Column or Table Page sample is a fictional example of a weekly report — one that always has similar information in the same place on the page. This is known as a to use on standardized form instead of drawing the same zones each time.

Select Settings

1 Perform the previous exercise, “Draw and Specify Zones” if you

did not leave the document open.

standardized form.

Create a Zone Template

You can create a zone template

2 Choose

The Save Zone Template File dialog box appears.

Caere Zone (

drop-down list.

4 Type the name weekrpt.zon in the

The data directory is the default location for all zone template files. This is where OmniPage looks for them. It cannot find the zone template files in any other location.

5 Click OK.

Save Zone Template...

*.zon

is the only selection in the

)

in the File menu.

File Name

Save Files as Type

text box.

Load the Zone Template

1Select

weekrpt

in the Zone button drop-down list.

Tutorials 63

Create a Zone Template

2 Click

in the dialog box that asks if you want to replace the

Ye s

current zones.

3 Click the Zone button.

OmniPage draws zones on the page image according to the zone template you just saved.

4 Click each zone and observe the setting in the Zone Contents

drop-down list to verify that your zone template is correct. You could use this template on any similar documents.

You can create zone templates for any page that has a standardized layout. You could also load a saved settings file before OCR so that an OCR training file could be used on the document. See “Save a Settings File” on page 37.

The next tutorial, “Train OCR,” teaches you how to create a training file.

Tutorials 64

Tutorial 6 — Train OCR

OmniPage automatically recognizes characters commonly found in most documents. Other documents may contain characters OmniPage has not yet learned to recognize such as copyright and trademark symbols, and mathematical symbols such as pi (π). You can train OmniPage to recognize special characters and create a training file to use on similar documents.

This tutorial contains the following sections:

• Scan a Document With Special Characters

• Train OCR to Recognize Special Characters

You will use the Single Column or Table Page sample in this exercise.

Scan a Document With Special Characters

1 Place the Single Column or Table Page sample in your scanner

making sure it is aligned correctly.

2 Click the drop-down lists under the process buttons and select:

•Scan Image

• week.rpt

This template was created in the last tutorial. Select if you did not perform the last tutorial.

•

Perform OCR

Scan a Document With Special Characters

Auto Zones

3 Click the Settings Panel button in the toolbar.

The Settings Panel appears. 4 Click the 5Select

6 Click the OCR icon. 7Select

8 Click

Single Table or Column.

This option is best for preserving the tabbed spacing found on the

sample page.

Retain Font and Paragraph Formatting

You do not need to retain exact page layout in this exercise.

Close.

icon in the Settings Panel.

Zones

Tutorials 65

Scan a Document With Special Characters

9 Click

AUTO.

OmniPage scans, zones, and recognizes the document. and then

displays the recognized text in the text window.

View the Recognized Text

1 Compare the text in the text window to the page you scanned.

OmniPage replaced unrecognizable characters with red tildes. 2 Double-click a red tilde if you have any, such as the one after the

word LUMINA in the example above.

The Verification window opens to show the original scanned

character, a registered trademark sign.

Tilde

Original image of the character

You will train OCR to recognize this and other characters. 3 Click anywhere outside the Verification window to close it.

Leave the document open. You will create a training file in the

next exercise.

Tutorials 66

Train OCR to Recognize Special Characters

You will train OmniPage to recognize several characters in this exercise. See “Scan a Document With Special Characters” on page 65 if you did not leave the document open.

Re-recognize the Document

The Train Characters Dialog Box

Suspect character

Attempted identification. A tilde means OmniPage could not identify the character.

1Select

Tra in OC R

in the OCR button drop-down list. 2 Click the OCR button. 3 OmniPage re-recognizes the document, and then opens the Train

Characters dialog box.

Characters OmniPage had trouble identifying are displayed at the top of the dialog box.

Beneath each image, in smaller type, is OmniPage’s attempted identification of that character. A tilde means that OmniPage could not identify the character.

Depending on your scanner, the characters you see in this dialog box may be different from those pictured above.

Specify Characters to Recognize

1 Locate the registered trademark (®) symbol in the dialog box. 2 Double-click the symbol, or select it and click

Specify

Tutorials 67

Train OCR to Recognize Special Characters

The Specify Character dialog box appears.

It displays the symbol as it appeared in the scanned document.

Tilde replaced with registered trademark symbol

3 Locate the registered trademark symbol in the

Extended ANSI

list

box on the left.

4 Double-click the symbol.

It appears in the

Character

edit box.

If a symbol or character does not appear in the list, you can type it in the

Character

edit box, cut and paste it from another source, or use an

Alt-number key combination.

5 Click OK.

The specified character now appears under the suspect character in the Train Characters dialog box.

The symbol turns gray to indicate that you specified a character for it.

Tutorials 68

6 Specify other characters in the same way such as the lowercase ü

5 recognized as the letter S. You ca n create and use a zone contents file to prevent this (see “Create a Zone Contents File” on page 60 for information).

Train OCR to Recognize Special Characters

and é, and the copyright (©) symbol. Characters OmniPage believes it identified correctly are listed

alphabetically below the suspect characters. Check for common errors, such as a 5 being recognized as the letter

Generally, you will not want to train OmniPage to recognize common letters unless they are in a very specialized font. One way to prevent these common errors is to use a special zone contents files during recognition, such as the numeric

finance

zone contents file created in the previous tutorial. Even if a character is not recognized, OmniPage corrects most

common OCR errors by analyzing the structure of a word and comparing it to entries in the dictionary.

Save the File and Recognize the Document

1 Click the

Save

button.

The Save dialog box appears.

2 Type a file name in the

File Name

edit box.

3 Click OK.

A dialog box asks if you want to recognize the image with the training file you just created.

4 Click

Ye s

OmniPage recognizes the document and all specified symbols. 5 Check the text window to verify the training file improved OCR. 6 Close the document and click No in the dialog box that asks if you

want to save changes.

This file becomes the default training file in the OCR section of

the Settings Panel. You can save Settings Panel selections,

including this training file, as a settings file for use on similar

documents. See “Save a Settings File” on page 37. See “Train

OCR” on page 129 for more information on creating and editing

an OCR training file.

Tutorials 69

Tutorial 7 — Deferring OCR

Compared to the time it takes to scan and zone a page, OCR can be timeconsuming. You might find it more efficient to scan a stack of pages (especially if you have an ADF) or load multiple images all at once, zone them, and then defer recognition to a later time.

You can choose to finish OCR at any time convenient to you or set it to take place automatically at a specific time. In this tutorial, you will scan two pages, defer OCR, and then finish OCR both on an open document and on a saved document.

Use the Quick Scan Page sample and the True Page sample in this tutorial. This tutorial contains the following exercise:

• Scan Multiple Pages and Defer OCR

• Finish Current Document

• Finish Deferred Documents

Scan Multiple Pages and Defer OCR

1 Click the drop-down list under each process button and select

these options:

•Scan Image

•Auto Zones

•

Defer OCR

Scan Multiple Pages and Defer OCR

2 Click the Settings Panel button or choose

Settings menu.

The Settings Panel appears. 3 Click 4 Click 5 Make the following selection if you are using an automatic

6 Click 7 Place both sample pages in your ADF.

Use Defaults.

in the dialog box that asks if you are sure.

Ye s

document feeder (ADF):

• Click the Scanner icon.

• Click

Scan until Empty.

Close.

Settings Panel...

in the

Tutorials 70

Finish Current Document

If you do not have an ADF, place the Quick Scan Page sample in

your scanner. 8 Click the

The first page in the stack is scanned and zoned, and then the

next page.

If you do not have an ADF, place the True Page sample in your

scanner now and click

You now have a two-page document open in the zone window. 9 Leave the document open for the next exercise.

You have two choices at this point: finish recognizing the current open document or save the document and perform recognition later. You will finish the current open document in the next exercise.

AUTO

Finish Current Document

In the normal course of a day, you may decide to leave scanned or loaded documents open in OmniPage and finish them later. OCR can be both time- and memory-intensive.

You can even set OCR to begin and leave your computer while it is in process.

1 Choose

The Finish Current Document dialog box appears.

Finish Current Document...

button.

AUTO.

in the Process menu.

You can perform recognition and save the document later, or

perform recognition and save the document automatically. You

will save the document automatically in this exercise. 2Select

3 Click

Save Automatically

This activates the other options in the dialog box.

Save As...

if it is not selected.

Tutorials 71

The Save As dialog box appears.

Finish Current Document

4 Select a file type in the

Save Files as Type

drop-down list.

Microsoft Word for Windows is selected in the example above. 5 Select a location for your saved file. 6Select

Create one file per page.

This save option creates two separate files after OCR. See “Save

Options” on page 95 for information on the other two save

options. 7Type smple in the

File Name

text box.

You can type in a name of up to five characters, not including the

extension, with this save option. 8 Click OK to return to the Finish Current Document dialog box. 9 Click OK to begin OCR.

OmniPage recognizes each page and saves it as specified. The

Caere Document remains open in OmniPage with the recognized

text displayed in the text window. 10 Choose

Close Document

in the File menu, saving changes to the

Caere Document if you wish.

You now have two new files in the directory you selected. The Quick Scan sample is named smple001.*. The True Page sample is named smple002.*. OmniPage has appended the appropriate file extension if you did not type it in. (In this example, the full file names are smple001.doc and smple002.doc.)

See “Finish Current Document” on page 133 for detailed information on this command.

Tutorials 72

Finish Deferred Documents

You may decide to defer OCR, close the open documents or OmniPage, and finish processing later. You must save the open documents in order to reopen and recognize them.

Scan and Save the Pages

1 Follow the steps in the section “Scan Multiple Pages and Defer

OCR” on page 70 and then return to this section.

OmniPage scans and zones the pages. You now have a two-page

document open in the zone window.

Finish Deferred Documents

2 Choose

The Save As dialog box appears.

3 Locate the omnipro\input directory.

This is the default location in which OmniPage looks for deferred

files. 4Select

You can only select Caere Documents and image files when

finishing deferred OCR. 5Type new.met in the

Save As...

Caere[*.MET]

in the File menu.

in the

Save Files as Type

File Name

text box.

drop-down list.

6 Click 7 Choose

OK.

window.

Close Document

in the File menu to close the zone

Tutorials 73

The Finish Deferred Documents Dialog Box

Finish Deferred Documents

1 Choose

Finish Deferred Documents...

in the Process menu.

The Finish Deferred Documents dialog box appears.

2 The file you saved to the input directory appears in the

list box.

Finish

This is where OmniPage looks by default for deferred files.

OmniPage assigns a a file format to your file based on the last-

selected file format. (In the previous example, Word for Windows

was the selected file format so it is selected in this example by

default.) It assigns a new file name based on that file format.

You can select a different location and file format for files if you

wish.

Files to

3 Click

Set Output Directory...

The Set Output Directory dialog box appears.

Tutorials 74

Finish Deferred Documents

Network

Windows For Workgroup with network enabled.)

• Locate and select the output directory as the location to save

the file if it is not already selected by default.

•Select

• Select a file format in the want to change the current selection.

In this exercise, there is just one file selected for OCR. Note that if you select multiple deferred documents, however, selections made in the Set Output Directory dialog box would affect

4 Click OK to return to the Finish Deferred Documents dialog box.

Perform OCR

1 Deselect

selected. 2Select 3 Click

OmniPage opens and recognizes the new.met file, and then saves it as specified. You now have three more new files in the output directory.

The Quick Scan sample is named new001.*. The True Page sample is named new002.*. OmniPage has appended the appropriate file extension if you did not type it in. (In this example, the full file names would be new001.doc and new002.doc.)

OK.

button also appears in this dialog box if you use

Create one file per page

Delete Deferred File After OCR

under

Now

Perform OCR.

if it is not already selected.

Save Files as Type

drop-down list if you

under

Settings

if it is

all

files.

The new.met file also moves here after OCR. If you had selected

Deferred File After OCR

file permanently from the input directory instead. See “Finish Deferred Documents” on page 135 for detailed information on

this command.

, OmniPage would have deleted the sample.met

Tutorial 8 — Using Direct Input

You will use OmniPage’s Direct Input mode in this tutorial to scan and recognize text from within another application. Recognized text will be pasted directly into the initiating application.

This tutorial consists of one exercise containing the following sections:

• Register an Application

• Launch Direct Input

• Direct Input Mode

Delete

Tutorials 75

You will use the Quick Scan Page sample in this tutorial.

Register an Application

You must Once an application is registered with Direct Input, the command appears in its File menu above the this command to initiate OCR processing from your application.

A variety of applications are compatible with Direct Input. You will register a compatible application in this exercise if you have one.

1 Launch OmniPage if it is not already open.

an application before using it to initiate Direct Input.

Direct Input...

command. You choose

Exit

2 Choose

This command is enabled only when the Direct Input settings panel.

The Register Applications dialog box appears.

The Windows programs Write and NotePad are pre-registered. 3 Select an application that is installed on your computer in the

Unregistered Applications

4 Click

Add>>.

in the Settings menu.

Enable Direct Input

list box.

is selected in

Tutorials 76

Launch Direct Input

The application moves into the

5 Select and move as many applications as you like. 6 Click OK when you are done.

OmniPage immediately places the

File menu of the registered application(s). 7 Choose

Launch Direct Input

1 Place the Quick Scan Page sample in your scanner making sure it

is aligned properly. 2 Open or switch to any registered application.

Microsoft Word is used in this example. 3 Use your program’s commands to create a new document if one

is not open.

in the File menu.

Exit

Registered Applications

Direct Input...

command in the

list box.

4 Place your cursor in this new document if it is not already there. 5 Choose

Direct Input...

in the program’s File menu.

Tutorials 77

Direct Input Mode

Some applications, such as Word and Notepad, allow you to launch multiple copies of the application. The appears in the first copy of the application launched.

OmniPage launches in Direct Input mode and the Direct Input

window appears.

Direct Input...

command only

Direct Input Mode

Always select the appropriate settings before you begin the OCR process.

1 Click the drop-down list under each process button and select

these options:

•Scan Image

•Auto Zones

•Auto Paste

Perform OCR

2 Choose

Panel.

There are no shortcut command buttons in Direct Input mode as

there are in the regular OmniPage mode.

is the only selection under the OCR button.

Settings Panel...

in the Settings menu to open the Settings

Tutorials 78

3 Click the Direct Input icon to observe the settings.

Direct Input Mode

4 Click 5 Click

Use Defaults.

if a dialog box appears to confirm your choice.

Ye s

The default output formatting option is

Formatting.

This setting retains font types and styles, and

Retain Font and Paragraph

paragraph order and formatting in recognized text. 6 Click 7 Click

Close.

AUTO

You can click

STOP

at any time to cancel processing but remain in

Direct Input mode.

OmniPage scans, zones, and recognizes the document in the

Direct Input window. Then the program exits, your initiating

application appears, and the text is pasted where you left the

cursor.

If you had for some reason closed your initiating application or had not opened or created a document, OmniPage would paste the recognized text to the Clipboard instead. Use your program’s commands to paste text from the Clipboard into the application of your choice.

See Chapter 5, Direct Input, for detailed information on this feature.

Tutorials 79

Direct Input Mode

Tutorials 80

Chapter 3

Commands and

Settings

This chapter explains how to use the OmniPage commands and settings, all of which are located within eight menus and a toolbar.

This chapter contains the following sections:

• The Toolbar

• The File Menu

• The Edit Menu

• The Format Menu

• The Process Menu

• The Settings Menu

• The Register Menu*

• The Window Menu

•The Help Menu

The menu command information is listed in the same order in this chapter that the commands appear in the menu.

See Chapter 5, Direct Input, for an explanation of the different toolbar options and menu commands available in Direct Input mode.

Many of the operations explained in this chapter are detailed further in the form of tutorial exercises. Please refer to Chapter 2, Tutorials, for information on basic and advanced document processing.

* The Register menu only appears if you did not register your copy of OmniPage the first time you launched it after installation.

Commands and Settings 81

The Toolbar

The toolbar has four process buttons and several shortcut command buttons.

Process buttons

Shortcut command

AUTO

button

Image button

Zone

button

OCR

button

buttons

Use the toolbar to access the three basic steps of the optical character recognition (OCR) process:

1 Acquiring a page image to recognize. 2 Creating zones on the image to choose what will be recognized. 3 Performing OCR on the information in the zones.

OCR is the process of converting an image file to editable text. An image is an electronic picture of text and/or graphics. You acquire an image by scanning a hard-copy document or loading a graphic-format file (such as a TIFF or PCX file). The image you scan or load is just a picture to your computer before OCR.

During OCR, OmniPage looks for and defines characters on the image to produce editable text. You can export the recognized text from OmniPage for use in a wide variety of applications.

The toolbar’s process buttons perform the same operations as the

Settings

commands in the Process menu. The shortcut command buttons

Process

provide shortcuts for performing other OmniPage commands. Click the:

•

button to process your document automatically from start to

AUTO

finish according to the selected processing commands.

• Image button to acquire an image for recognition by scanning a

page or loading an existing image.

• Zone button to specify what will be recognized in an image by

creating zones manually, automatically, or with a template.

• OCR button to perform OCR, defer OCR, or train OCR.

• Shortcut command buttons to access various menu commands.

Commands and Settings 82

The Toolbar

The toolbar is different in Direct Input mode. See Chapter 5, Direct Input, for detailed information.

Each button is described next in the order it appears on the toolbar.

AUTO

Button

The

AUTO

operations as the Click

or to finish processing the current page of an open document according to the currently selected Process Settings commands. This is known as

automatic processing.

For example, if you select processing button drop-down lists and click scanner is scanned, automatically zoned, and recognized. You do not have to click each process button individually.

You can also click document. The resulting operation depends on the state of the page and the selected Image, Zone, and OCR commands. If the page image is zoned and you click OCR according to the selected OCR button command.

The

AUTO

Click

Image Button

The Image button is the second button in the toolbar. This button contains the same commands, menu under the

button is the first button in the toolbar. It performs the same

command in the Process menu.

Auto

AUTO

STOP

to start and finish processing each page of a new document

Scan Image, Auto Zones

AUTO

AUTO,

button changes to

at any time if you want to discontinue processing.

Process Settings

to finish processing the current page of an open

for example, then OmniPage immediately begins

when automatic processing begins.

STOP

Scan Image

and

Load Image,

command in the Process menu.

, and

Perform OCR

, the first page in the

AUTO

that are in the cascading

in the

Click the Image button to acquire an image by scanning a page or loading an existing image file. The two commands are described further in this section.

OmniPage uses the selected Image button command when it performs automatic processing.

Use your right mouse button to click the Image button and automatically open the Settings Panel to Scanner options.

Commands and Settings 83

Scan Image

The Toolbar

Select appears in the drop-down list if you have installed the Scan Manager. Select your default scanner in the Scan Manager before scanning (see “Scan Manager Installation” on page 8). Select the appropriate Scanner options in the Settings Panel as well.

A progress meter appears and the status bar reports progress during scanning. The page image appears in the zone window when scanning is complete.

Click the

Load Image

Select or to add it as a new page to an open document.

An image file is a picture of text and/or graphics that is saved in an image file format such as TIFF or PCX. When you load an image file in OmniPage, it appears in the zone window. See “Supported Input File Formats” on page 239 for a list of files OmniPage can load.

Click the “Load Image” on page 119 for detailed information on this command.

Zone Button

The Zone button is the third button in the toolbar. This button contains the two commands, menu under the button drop-down list contains the names of available zone templates rather than the Process menu command

Scan Image

STOP

Load Image

STOP

to scan a page in your scanner. This command only

button in the toolbar to cancel scanning at any time.

to load a previously saved image file as a new document

button in the toolbar to cancel processing at any time. See

Auto Zones

Process Settings

and

Manual Zones,

command in the Process menu. (The Zone

that are in the cascading

Use Template...

Click the Zone button to create zones that determine what will be recognized in the page image. The available commands are described further in this section.

OmniPage uses the selected Zone button command when it performs automatic processing.

Use your right mouse button to click the Zone button when it is active and automatically open the Settings Panel to Zones options.

Commands and Settings 84

Auto Zones

The Toolbar

Select

Auto Zones

in the drop-down list to have OmniPage automatically

draw and order zones for text recognition on the current page image. OmniPage uses the selected Zones option in the Settings Panel:

Columns, Single Column or Table

, or

One Zone

. For more information about

each of these options, see “Zones Options” on page 163. If the current page already has zones when you select this command, you

are prompted to delete the current zones before auto zoning occurs. Click

to have OmniPage delete old zones and draw new zones.

Yes

Manual Zones

Select

Manual Zones

to draw and order your own zones for text recognition

on the current page image. OmniPage uses the selected Zones option in the Settings Panel on the

zones you draw:

Multiple Columns, Single Column or Table

, or

One Zone

more information about each of these options, see “Zones Options” on page 163.

If the current page already has zones when you select this command, you are prompted to delete the current zones. Click

to have OmniPage

Yes

delete old zones so that you can draw new zones. For more information on creating manual zones, see “Tutorial 4 —

Evaluating a Page” on page 44.

Zone Templates

Select a previously created zone template file to automatically zone the current page image. Zone template files appear in the Zone button dropdown list after they are saved. A template contains zones that you created manually for a page and then saved as a file along with the zones’ order, position, and contents.

Multiple

. For

Using a zone template is a quick and efficient means of processing documents that have the same zoning requirements. See “Save Zone Template” on page 100 for detailed information on creating zone templates.

If the current page already has zones when you select a template, you are prompted to delete the current zones. Click

to have OmniPage delete

Yes

old zones and apply the selected zone template.

Commands and Settings 85

OCR Button

The OCR button is the fourth button in the toolbar. This button contains the same commands, the cascading menu under the menu.

Click the OCR button to perform the selected OCR command on the page image. The available commands are described further in this section.

OmniPage uses the selected OCR button command when it performs automatic processing. Zones are created automatically if you click the OCR button before clicking the Zone button or before drawing manual zones.

Use your right mouse button to click the OCR button when it is active and automatically open the Settings Panel to OCR options.

Perform OCR

Perform OCR, Defer OCR,

Process Settings

The Toolbar

and

Tra in O CR,

command in the Process

that are in

Select

Perform OCR

Before performing OCR, make sure the appropriate OCR options are selected in the Settings Panel.

If there are no zones on the page when you select the OCR button, OmniPage automatically creates zones according to the selected Zone command. If ignores this and draws zones automatically.

Defer OCR

Select

Defer OCR

document. OCR can be a time- and memory-intensive process so you may want it to take place while you are away from your computer.

You might, for example, choose the processing commands. OmniPage will scan and zone the document and stop processing it further. Save deferred documents as Caere Documents (*.met).

Choose Process menu when you want to perform page recognition on the deferred document(s).

See “Finish Current Document” on page 133 and “Finish Deferred Documents” on page 135 for detailed information.

Finish Current Document

to recognize text on the current page.

Perform OCR

Manual Zones

to delay text recognition of one or more pages of your

Scan Page, Auto Zones,

is currently selected, OmniPage

and

Finish Deferred Documents

and click

Defer OCR

in the

Commands and Settings 86

Train OCR

The Toolbar

Select

Tra in O CR

to create a character training file (*.trn) that assists

OmniPage during text recognition and allows better recognition of special characters.

A character training file is a set of pre-recognized text characters that OmniPage compares with the characters in the page image during recognition. Before recognizing an image, you can create a new training file or choose an existing one in the OCR settings panel.

For more information on creating a training file, see “Train OCR” on page

129.

Shortcut Command Buttons

The shortcut command buttons perform the same functions as the commands of the same name in the File, Edit, Settings, and Help menus.

Settings

Panel

Save

Help Save As... Print

Cut

Copy

Paste Clear All

Zones

Find/

Replace

Check

Recognition

For example, you can click the Settings Panel button in the toolbar to open the Settings Panel or you can choose

Settings Panel...

in the Settings menu.

See each button’s respective menu entry further in this chapter for information.

Some buttons are only active when the particular command it represents can be applied to the active text or zone window. The Check Recognition button, for example, is only active when the text window is active. There are no Shortcut command buttons in Direct Input mode. See Chapter 5, Direct Input, for detailed information.

Commands and Settings 87

The File Menu

The File menu lets you manage OmniPage file operations. File menu commands include:

• Open Document

• Close Document

• Mail (MAPI mail systems only)

•Save

•Save As

• Export Image

• Revert to Saved

• Get Accuracy Info

• Save Settings

• Load Settings

• Save Zone Template

•Print

• Publish to Envoy

•Exit

Open Document

Choose file. A Caere Document is created the first time you scan a page or load an image file. This is a proprietary OmniPage file format. See “Caere Document (*.met)” on page 92 for more information.

Image file

An image file is a “picture” of text and/or graphics that is saved in an image file format such as TIFF or PCX. Received fax files, for example, can usually be saved in an image format OmniPage recognizes. Image files do not have OCR or zone information. When you open an image file in OmniPage, it appears in the zone window.

Open Document...

to open a Caere Document (*.met) or an image

Commands and Settings 88

Opening a Caere Document or Image File

The File Menu

1 Choose

Open Document...

in the File menu.

The Open Document dialog box appears.

2 Select the type of file to open in the

List Files of Type

drop-down

list.

Files of that type appear in the

File Name

3 Double-click a file or select it and click

list box.

OK.

The image file opens in the zone window. A Caere Document

opens with recognized text in the text window (if it was

recognized) and its original image in the zone window. In either

case, the first page of your file is displayed.

Click

to exit without opening a file.

Cancel

An image file becomes a Caere Document once it is opened with the

command. You can only open one Caere Document at a time.

Open...

OmniPage closes the current document if you open another one. It prompts you to save the current document if you have made changes to it.

Add page images to your open document by choosing

in the Process menu or in the Image button drop-down list. See

Image

Load Image

Scan

“Adding a Page to a Scanned Image” on page 119 and “Adding a Page to a Loaded Image” on page 121 for detailed information.

Commands and Settings 89

Close Document

Choose OmniPage running.

If the current document has not been saved or has changed since the last save, a prompt appears asking if you want to save the document before closing. See “Save As” on page 90 for information.

Close Document

The File Menu

to stop working on a document but leave

Mail

Save

Save As

Click

Choose recognized text from your currently open document. This command only appears if you have a MAPI-compliant mail system such as Microsoft Mail.

Choose disk. This command is also available as a button in the toolbar.

The Save As dialog box appears when you save a file for the first time. After saving, you can continue working on your document.

Choose command is also available as a button in the toolbar.

Use this command to save Caere Documents and recognized documents to other file formats.

to return to the open document.

Cancel

to access your mail system and send each page of

Mail...

to write the contents of your current working document to

Save

Save As...

to choose a file format and save a document to disk. This

Commands and Settings 90

Saving a File

The File Menu

1 Choose

Save As...

in the File menu.

The Save As dialog box appears.

2 Select a file type in the

Save Files as Type

drop-down list.

See “Supported Output File Formats” on page 238 for a list of

supported file formats.

Remember, if you save your image as a Caere Document first,

you can reopen and re-edit it, and save it in other file formats as

well.

You must perform OCR on any document before you can save it to a text format.

3 Type a name for your file in the

File Name

text box.

See the next section for information on how the save option you

choose affects the length of the file name. 4 Select a location for your file.

The default location is omnipro\data. 5 Select the appropriate option under

Save Options

as described in

“Save Options” on page 92. 6 Click OK.

OmniPage automatically adds the appropriate file extension to

the file name and the current working file returns to the screen.

Click

at any time to exit without saving.

Cancel

Commands and Settings 91

The File Menu

Caere Document (*.met)

OmniPage creates a Caere Document the first time you scan a document or open an image. A Caere Document can have up to 256 pages. Each page includes the original image and can vary to include zones and recognized text. When you close the scanned or loaded image, OmniPage prompts you to save the Caere Document. There are advantages to doing this. You can:

• Continue to reopen a Caere Document in OmniPage, make edits,

and save it in any other supported file format you wish.

• Use the Verification window to compare recognized text with the

original page image.

• Defer recognition.

• Rezone and re-recognize pages at any time.

• Save the time needed to rescan or reload the same page.

You must rescan or reload a document to use it again in OmniPage if you do not save it as a Caere Document.

Saving one or more images as a Caere Document, however, requires more room on the hard drive. The amount depends on the size of the image(s).

Save Options

When you save your document to a file format other than a Caere Document you can select one of three

Save Options.

Create one file for all pages

Select this to save all the pages in your document as one file. (Blank pages are not saved.) Save the file with a standard file name of eight characters or less.

Create one file per page

Select this to create a separate file for each page in your document and automatically increment file names. (Blank pages are not saved.) Save the file with a file name of five characters or less. OmniPage appends numbers starting with 001.

For example, if you use form as a file name, the first file is named form001, the second file form002, and so on. The file extension added depends on your choice of file formats: a Word for Windows file would be named form001.doc.

Create new file at each blank page

Select this to create a new file after each blank page in your document. (Blank pages are not saved.)

Commands and Settings 92

The File Menu

For example, if you want to scan several stacks of pages at once, insert blank pages to separate each batch. OmniPage saves the first stack as one file, detects a blank page, saves the next stack as one file, detects a blank page, and so on.

Save the file with a file name of five characters or less. OmniPage appends numbers starting with 001.

How Saved Text Appears

The way text appears when you open your recognized document in your target application depends on that application.

For example, if you save a page with text and graphics in ASCII format, only the text will be displayed because ASCII format does not retain graphics. Graphics are only displayed in applications that support graphics.

Normal differences in typeface sizes between applications can result in differences in the page formatting and display of the text. The settings within the application, such as margins, also affect the page layout.

If you use the True Page option (chosen in the OCR settings panel), OmniPage exports text in frames. If your application doesn’t accept frames, the text frames are not maintained in their original positions and the text within the frames is displayed in one vertical column.

Applications that support frame-based output have the letters TP in front of their names in the box. See Chapter 6, Using True Page, for more information.

Export Image

Choose as TIFF or PCX. This exports just the original scanned image of a document, not zone or OCR information.

An image file is a “picture” of text and/or graphics. When you open an image file in OmniPage, it appears in the zone window.

Export Image...

List Files of Type

to save an image to disk in an image file format such

drop-down list in the Save As dialog

Commands and Settings 93

The File Menu

Exporting an Image File

You can export an image file after a document has been scanned or loaded.

1 Choose

Export Image...

in the File menu.

The Export Image dialog box appears.

2 Select a file type in the

Save Files as Type

drop-down list.

See “Supported Output File Formats” on page 238 for a list of

supported file formats. 3 Type a name for your file in the

File Name

text box.

See “Graphic File Name” on page 96 for information on how the

options you choose affect the length of the file name. 4 Select a location for your file. 5 The default location is omnipro\data. 6Select

Save

and

options as described in the following

Image

sections. 7 Click OK.

OmniPage automatically adds the appropriate file extension to

the file name. The Export Image dialog box closes and the current

working file returns to the screen.

Click

at any time to exit without saving.

Cancel

Commands and Settings 94

Save Options

The File Menu

You can select one of two

•Select

Save Current Page Only

Save Options.

if you want OmniPage to save only

the current page image as a file.

•Select

Save All Pages

if you want OmniPage to create a separate file

for each page in your document and automatically increment file names starting with 001.

You must have

Save Page Images in Caere Document

selected in the

Preferences settings panel to save an a page to an image file.

Image Options

You can select one of two

•Select

Save Each Graphic Zone to a File

only the graphics within your page image. You must create graphic zones on the page image and perform OCR before you can choose this option.

•Select

Save Entire Page to a File

entire page image. You do not need to create zones or perform OCR unless you have graphic zones.

You must either choose the Zones settings panel or draw manual zones and identify the graphics as graphic zones to separate graphics from text and export them.

Image Options.

if you want OmniPage to save the

Multiple Columns

if you want OmniPage to save

zoning option in the

Commands and Settings 95

Graphic File Name

The File Menu

The way you match the of the file name. The file name form is used as an example of how a file would be named in the following combinations of save and image options.

•

Save Current Page Only

can have up to eight characters. This creates a one-page image file. A PCX file named form would be saved as form.pcx.

•

Save All Pages

up to five characters. 00n is appended, where n represents the page number (001, 002, etc.). This creates multiple one-page image files.

A multiple-page PCX file named form would be saved as form001.pcx, form002.pcx, and so forth.

•

Save Current Page Only

name can have up to seven characters. OmniPage appends a letter to indicate the order of the graphic on the page.

A PCX file with multiple graphic zones named form would be saved as forma.pcx, formb.pcx, and so forth.

This creates one file for each graphic on the current page. Up to 26 files can be created in one directory with this method.

•

Save All Pages

have up to four characters. OmniPage appends both a number and a letter as an extension.

A multiple-page PCX file with multiple graphics named form would be saved as form001a.pcx, form001b.pcx, and so forth. This creates one file for each graphic on every page.

The number (00n) indicates the page number and the letter indicates the order of the graphic on the page. Thus the second graphic on the second page would be named form002B.pcx.

Save Options

and

Save Entire Page to a File:

and

Save Each Graphic Zone to a File:

and

Image Options

Save Entire Page to a File:

Save Each Graphic Zone to a File:

affects the length

the file name

the file name can have

the file name can

the file

Revert to Saved

Choose saved version of the file.

If you accidentally deleted important information in the text window, for example, choose you last saved it.

Revert to Saved

to undo edits made to a file and return to the last-

Revert to Saved

and the file will reappear as it was when

Commands and Settings 96

Get Accuracy Info

Choose Accuracy information is valuable for comparing the effect of different

settings on recognition accuracy. For example, if you are not sure about which Scanner settings panel options to choose, you can compare the recognition accuracy percentages of different options.

You can also quickly tell if a poor-quality document is worth editing. If the recognition accuracy rate is less than 97%, it might be quicker to rescan a better copy of the page or to enter the text manually.

The Get Accuracy Info dialog box provides a statistical report for the most recently recognized page.

Get Accuracy Info

The File Menu

... for a statistical report on recognition accuracy.

Number of Characters

This is the number of characters and spaces recognized on the page.

Number of Words

This is the number of words recognized on the page.

Number of Rejects

This is the number of unrecognizable characters. This does not count improper substitutions or incorrectly recognized formatting commands.

Reject characters appear in red in the recognized document. By default, rejects are represented by the tilde (~) character.

Number of Suspects

This is the number of questionable characters that OmniPage made an attempt to recognize. These words are green in the recognized document.

Commands and Settings 97

The File Menu

Number of Spelling Replacements

This is the number of words that were corrected automatically by the Language Analyst. These words are blue in the recognized document.

Recognition Time

This is the time it took to break the page down into text and graphics and perform recognition. This does not count scanning time, the time it takes to create zones, or the time spent writing data to disk.

Words per Minute

This is the number of words per minute (wpm) that OmniPage recognized. Assuming that the average word is five characters long, the formula is

[characters per second

Recognition Rate

This rate is expressed in characters per second (cps). The formula is

total number of characters

Accuracy Rate

This is the character recognition accuracy given as a percentage. The formula for Accuracy Rate is

[number of characters - number of rejects] of characters = recognition accuracy

If the accuracy rate is less than 97%, it might be quicker to rescan a better copy of the page or to enter the text manually.

Save Settings

Choose and language selection(s) (from the Select Languages dialog box) to a settings file (*.set) for later use.

Saving settings files is especially useful if you use the same settings often.

Saving Settings

1 Select the Settings Panel options you want to save if they are not

Save Settings...

set already.

5] x 60 = wpm

recognition time = cps

number

to save the currently selected Settings Panel options

2 Choose

Select the language(s) appropriate to your document and click OK.

Select Languages...

in the Settings menu.

Commands and Settings 98

The File Menu

3 Choose

4 Type a name for your file in the 5 Select a location for your file. 6 The default location is omnipro\data. 7 Click OK.

Choose

Load Settings

Choose

Save Settings...

The Save Settings dialog box appears.

Caere Settings (*.set)

drop-down list.

Load Settings...

in the File menu to load the file. See the next section.

to load a previously saved settings file (*.set).

in the File menu.

is the only selection in the

File Name

Save Files of Type

edit box.

A loaded settings file automatically configures the Settings Panel and language selection(s) to preselected values. This is useful for quickly restoring OmniPage to settings required for particular documents.

Loading a Settings File

1 Choose

The Load Settings dialog box appears.

Load Settings...

in the File menu.

Commands and Settings 99

The File Menu

Caere Settings (*.set)

drop-down list. 2 Locate and select the settings file to open. 3 Click

To save a settings file, choose “Deleting *.set, *.trn, *.ud, *.zcn, and *.zon Files” on page 236 for information on how to delete a settings file.

OK.

The settings are loaded immediately into the Settings Panel.

Save Zone Template

Choose image as a template.

A zone template file (*.zon) is comprised of various zone attributes such as position, order, and zone contents. If you frequently process documents with layouts and content that require the same type of zoning, you can create and save a zone template. Save time by applying it to all documents of the same layout, especially when processing multiple documents.

Automatically drawn zones cannot be saved as a zone template.

Saving a Zone Template

Save Zone Template...

1 Create manual zones on a page image.

is the only selection in the

Save Settings...

to save manually created zones on a page

in the File menu. See

Save Files of Type

2 See “Manual Zones — Recognize Portions of a Page” on page 48

for an overview of manual zoning. 3 Choose

The Save Zone Template File dialog box appears.

Caere Zone (

drop-down list. 5 Type a name for your file in the

Save Zone Template

*.zon

is the only selection in the

)

... in the File menu.

File Name

text box.

Commands and Settings 100

Save Files as Type

Nuance OMNIPAGE PRO 6 Reference Guide

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

What’s in the Package

Installation

System Requirements

Saving a User Dictionary Before Installation

Setting up a Windows Swap File

Installing the Software

Scan Manager Installation

Starting OmniPage Pro

Registering OmniPage

The OmniPage Window

Tutorials

Tutorial 1 — Introduction to OmniPage

Launch OmniPage

What is Optical Character Recognition (OCR)?

The OCR Process

Scan the Quick Scan Page Sample

Settings Panel Overview

Tutorial 2 — Basic Text Recognition

Scanning With the Default Settings

Change a Document’s Fonts During OCR

Ignore All Formatting

True Page Recognition

Deselect Retain Graphics

Save a Settings File

Load an Image File

Tutorial 3 — Working With Graphics

Export a Graphic

Tutorial 4 — Evaluating a Page

Overcoming Recognition Difficulties

When to Use Manual Zoning

Manual Zones — Recognize Portions of a Page

Manual Zones — Specify Zone Contents

Manual Zoning — Reorder Text

Scanning and the Brightness Setting

Recognize a Memo With a Table

Tutorial 5 — Scanning a Single Column or Table

Create a Zone Contents File

Create a Zone Template

Tutorial 6 — Train OCR

Scan a Document With Special Characters

Train OCR to Recognize Special Characters

Tutorial 7 — Deferring OCR

Scan Multiple Pages and Defer OCR

Finish Current Document

Finish Deferred Documents

Tutorial 8 — Using Direct Input

Register an Application

Launch Direct Input

Direct Input Mode

The Toolbar

Image Button

Zone Button

OCR Button

Shortcut Command Buttons

The File Menu

Open Document

Close Document

Mail

Save

Save As

Export Image

Revert to Saved

Get Accuracy Info

Save Settings

Load Settings

Save Zone Template