Users who have been waiting for performance improvements in character-recognition software may be big winners, as two developers bring award-winning technology to NEXTSTEP OCR software.
While Kentfield, California-based GS Corporation is hoping to set new standards with eXTRAREAD, an OCR package based on the Recognition Toolkit from ExperVision, Pittsburgh-based Visual Understanding Systems (VISUS) is relying on the Mac and Windows favorite, Caere's OmniPage, for its OCR Express! line of products.
eXTRAREAD, which began shipping in September, relies on an algorithm that looks at the differences between letters that have been scanned in from an image. If the software recognizes a letter as being round, for example, it can decide it is an "o" rather than a "c" by the fact that the letter is a closed circle.
According to the company, pervious OCR packages have relied on comparisons between a finite number of letterforms from a table, but software based on letterform lists makes mistakes if the letter doesn't match exactly.
VISUS' products also use what president Tom Thibadeau refers to as "intelligent character recognition," rather than "OCR," relying on pattern recognition rather than trying to match entries on a reference table.
VISUS is selling OCR Express! as a $795 API, allowing application designers to incorporate character recognition into their software; as a stand-alone product for $499; or together with VISUS Paper Sight, the company's image-management software, for $499. With Paper Sight, users are able to scan, index, and perform batch processing of images into editable text without supervision.
Educational and reseller pricing is available.
eXTRAREAD will provide formatted text for the user: Fonts are mapped as closely as possible to typefaces present in the system and include tabs, spacing, and approximate size, said Joe Bresler, marketing manager for GS Corporation.
The software can be used as a stand-alone application or accessed in other software via the Services menu. It is currently offered in Intel-only or Motorola-only versions.
eXTRAREAD is priced at $299 for Version 1.0; Version 2.0 will include a scanner driver and have the capabilities for batch processing and fax recognition. According to the company, the upgrade is scheduled to be priced at $699, but registered 1.0 users will be able to upgrade for $199.
GS Corporation: 415/257-4700; info@goldleaf.com. VISUS: 412/ 488-3600; info@visus.com.