PageKeeper Pro 3.0 CD - NEW UNOPENED

Product Description:

TextBridge Pro 98  is a full-featured OCR scanning package. TextBridge provides highly accurate recognition while preserving page layout. TextBridge recognizes complex document elements including insets, line art, un-ruled tables, reversed text and drop caps. It also offers the ability to proofread and edit documents. Documents can be easily converted into HTML or PDF for publishing on the Web, or output in any of over 40 popular file formats.

Other features include: batch processing; an OCR wizard that guides you through the process; deferred processing; double-sided page support; and more.

This program allows the input of information on paper into your computer, including maintaining the entire document layout.

Features are improved accuracy and access from your word processor or other application. Output to Word or WordPerfect preserves the page layout including tables, graphics and text wrapping. Documents output to Lotus or Excel maintain the spreadsheet and cell tables. A wizard guides you through the optical character recognition process. There are predefined page layouts to enhance recognition, automatically recognizing text and image zones, these zones can be also determined manually or changed. The optical character recognition process can be can be trained in its processing for difficult types of documents. Templates of page zones and the results of training can both be saved. Program output can be standard text, Word, WordPerfect, HTML and Adobe Acrobat formats.

Documents that can be recognized are typewritten, dot matrix printouts, photocopies and faxes as well as typeset. Point sizes that are recognized are from 5 to 72.

Scanners can be ISIS or TWAIN. Double sided sheets fed from sheet-fed scanners can be collated after recognition.

File formats that can be imported are Windows bitmap (*.bmp), PCX (*.pcx), multipage PCX (*.dcx), tag image format (*.tif), Delrina fax formats and extended image file (*.xif). Image files must be monochromatic except extended image files (*.xif) can be grayscale or color.

When the program is run the page type can be specified to aid in processing: fax pages, legal documents, magazine pages, newspaper pages and spreadsheets. The layout of a scanned page can be preserved through recomposition. In automatic processing you select a page type layout and then the processing proceeds.

Running the program in the manual mode starts with selecting a page type and then you are presented with a preview. In the preview you can rotate the page or adjust the brightness and other settings before processing as well as zooming in on page areas. The page can then be zoned automatically or manually as text, picture or table area, each of these zones is highlighted in a specific color. Zones are ordered for processing (headers, text, captions and footnotes), the order of processing for these zones can be changed and zones can be deleted. If you don't retain the page layout the text is output in this order. Only zoned areas are processed. Zone templates can be saved for repetitive processing of a page type.

Proof reading when using the manual mode is after each page is scanned, in the automatic mode after all the pages have been scanned and before the results are saved. Suspect words are shown highlighted, a small windows shows a magnified view of the suspect word to aid in deciding on the corrections to be made, this is shown in Fig. 1. A window in the toolbar shows the suspected word and the suggested replacement, which is where you edit the correction. Words that are corrected can be added to the dictionary for future recognition. Additional pages can be scanned automatically or manually while in the proofreading process.

Settings can be selected to improve the document processing. Page layout types can be any layout, single column, multicolumn or tables. Print types can be any type, good quality, fax, dot matrix or newspaper. Page types can be any type, fax, legal, magazine, letter, newspaper or table. Page sizes are letter, legal, A4 or business card. Scanner settings are resolution and manual or automatic control of brightness. Processing settings include language, which dictionary, training and zone templates to use. Output settings are to retain the original page layout or to retain the pictures on the page (which places the images after the text); also the output can be a single file, a file for every page or a new file at every blank page. Formats that can be output are text, HTML, word processor, spreadsheet and database formats as well as Adobe Acrobat.

TextBridge's performance can be enhanced with training, this can be done before or during a job in both the automatic and manual modes. Documents of poorer image quality or special fonts are added by this process. Corrections of suspected words in the proofreading process performs this training. Words can also be saved to the dictionary. The dictionary and training data and zone templates can be saved and reused.

TextBridge can be accessed from within a number of applications. The Instant Access control panel installs a menu selection into an application.

I found the program installation to be totally automatic and ran flawlessly. The program had no problem with scans of different qualities including faxes. Fonts that where difficult for other optical character recognition programs where recognized in TextBridge Pro, fonts that were very different were recognized
after training. Point sizes of the full range were recognized. I'm pleased with the program and it is certain to become one of my more valuable applications.

System Requirements:
CPU 486 or better, Monitor VGA or SVGA, RAM 16M, Operating System Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0, Hard Drive Space 20M for one language (1M for each additional)