USING FINEREADER PRO 5.0, 6.0 AND 7.0 FROM THE KEYBOARD TO READ PRINT BY JOHN WILSON Copyright 2006 ******** TABLE OF CONTENTS (To find a particular section or heading, use your word- processor's or editor's search facility, e.g. type ">section 6" to find that section. Putting a > sign (capitalised full stop) immediately before the word section will ensure that you do not stop on an earlier cross-reference to that section. Type the string "Stages of OCR" to find that subheading or just type "1.2." to find it via its paragraph number. Additionally, all main sections are separated by a centred row of asterisks.) Foreword Restrictions Available Manual Formats FineReader Versions and Resellers Conventions Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial Section 1: Introduction. 1.1. What is OCR? 1.2. Stages of OCR. Section 2: Before Installing FineReader. 2.1. System Requirements. 2.2. Interface Software. Section 3: Types of Flatbed Scanners. 3.1. Main Scanner Standards. 3.1.1. SCSI Scanners. 3.1.2. Parallel Port Scanners. 3.1.3. USB Scanners. 3.2. Which Scanner to Buy and Where From? 3.2.1. Epson Scanners. 3.2.2. Hewlet-Packard Scanners. 3.2.3. Canon Scanners. 3.2.4. Agfa Scanners. 3.3. Scanners Supported by FineReader. 3.4. Operating Systems Supported. 3.5. Scanner Maintenance and Optimisation. Section 4: Installing FineReader. 4.1. Installing FineReader Professional 6.0 and 7.0. 4.2. Installing FineReader Professional 5.0. 4.3. Obtaining the Downloaded Evaluation Version. Section 5: FineReader 5, 6 and 7 Scanning Capabilities. 5.1.1. Supported Input and Output Formats. 5.1.2. Page Types FineReader Can Scan. 5.1.3. Scanners Supported. 5.1.4. Specialist User Dictionaries. 5.1.5. Automatic Document Feeders (ADF). 5.1.6. Document Colour Scanning Capabilities. 5.1.7. Type Face and Size Scanning Abilities. 5.1.8. Scanning Resolution. 5.1.9. Scan to E-Mail. 5.1.10. Duel Page Scanning. 5.1.11. Languages Supported. 5.2. The FineReader 7 Language Selection and Download Dialogue. Section 6: Customising FineReader for Visually Impaired People. 6.1. General and specific Customisation. 6.2. Placing a Shortcut on Your Desktop from which to Launch FineReader. Section 7: Operational Differences Between FineReader 5.0 and 6.0/7.0. Section 8: Using the Scan and Read Mode. 8.1. Pen-Picture of the FineReader Screen. 8.2. Scan and Read Mode. 8.3. Example of Scan and Read of Single Pages with Your Scanner's Interface driver. 8.4. Saving Your Scanned document. 8.5. Adding More Pages After Saving. 8.6. Example of Scan and Read of Multiple Pages with Your Scanner's Interface Driver. 8.7. Scanning Single or Multiple Picture or Text Images for Immediate Printing. 8.8. Deleting a Scan Batch Job. 8.9. Deleting All of the Pages in a Batch. 8.10. Deleting the Contents of a Scanned Page. 8.11. Deleting Single or Multiple Selected Pages from a Batch. 8.12. Renumbering Pages After Some Have Been Deleted. Section 9: Scanning with Finereader's Own Interface Software. 9.1. Enabling the FineReader Scanning Driver and Setting Options. 9.2. Example of Single Page Scanning. 9.3. Example of Multiple Page Scanning. Section 10: Quick Scanning of multiple Pages for Later Recognition 10.1. Example of Deferred Recognition Scanning. Section 11: Using the FineReader Scan and Read Wizard. 11.1. Enabling the Scan and Read Wizard. 11.2. Example of Scanning with the Scan and Read Wizard--The Seven Scan and Read Wizard Steps. Section 12: Creating Your Own Batch Scanning Options. 12.1. Batch Scanning Options. 12.2. Viewing batch Properties. Section 13: Creating Your Own Batch Scanning Templates. Section 14: Opening a Batch Using Windows Explorer. Section 15: Overview of Pattern Editing and Manual Mode Scanning. Section 16: Scan to E-Mail. 16.1. Example of Scanning to Mail. Section 17: Working with Adobe PDF Files. 17.1. Saving a Scan Job to PDF Format. 17.2. Loading PDF Files into FineReader 6.0 and 7.0 to get them Converted to Accessible Formats. Section 18: FineReader Help. 18.1. Types of Help. 18.1.1. Help topics. 18.1.2. Index Help. 18.1.3. Search Help 18.1.4. Website Help. Section 19: Essentials of How to Use the More Limited FineReader 5.0 Home Edition 19.1. Installing the Home Edition 19.2. Main Omissions in the Home Edition 19.3. Main Similarities in the Home Edition 19.4. Single Page Scanning with Your Scanner's Interface Driver 19.5. Multiple Page Scanning with Your Scanner's Interface Driver 19.6. Scanning with the FineReader Scan and Read Wizard 19.7. Saving and Opening Your Scan Jobs 19.8. Clearing the Screen for the Next Scan Job Appendix 1: List of FineReader Keyboard Shortcut Commands. Appendix 2: FineReader Sales and Technical Support. Appendix 3: Speeding Up Older Hewlett Packard Scanners. Appendix 4: Other Manuals by this Author. ******** Foreword This manual is written for the use of visually impaired scanner and scanner software users. It uses keyboard shortcuts instead of a mouse whenever possible and a screenreader and speech synthesiser instead of a monitor, although screen magnification software can also be used if preferred. The guide assumes that the user is familiar with both the operation of Windows and their own screenreader. Whilst FineReader is a fully functional electronic scanning and editing system (and VI persons can use much of it as such), the emphasis in this manual will be on capturing text from a flatbed scanner in order to read print and will include adjusting options, loading scanned documents into editors/word-processors, saving scanned text files, etc. ******** RESTRICTIONS I have written this manual and tutorial for the use of blind and otherwise visually impaired computer users and/or their trainers. It is free of charge and only available from its author's Website and from no other distributer. No individual or organisation is permitted to sell copies of this tutorial either as a stand-alone tutorial or as an integral part of any other literary, software or training package. ******** AVAILABLE MANUAL FORMATS The manual is only available in ASCII text format, as a free download from the author's Website at: http://web.onetel.com/~fromthekeyboard This tutorial and guide has been created with a minimum of formatting, in plain text, so that any word-processor or text editor can read it. In this format it should also be suitable for any one to run it through an embosser but, with some embossing software, you may still wish to make some line spacing and heading format changes to suit yourself and your software. A simple construction such as this should also make reading by arrowing up and down in your word-processor less labour intensive than would be the case with columns, shorter lines, and the like. Colloquialisms, such as don't, haven't, doesn't, etc, have been avoided in this guide in order to make it easier to follow and understand via a speech package. Hopefully, any loss of conversationality and warmth will be compensated for by increased clarity. ******** FineReader Versions and Resellers This tutorial has been written for FineReader Version 5.0 Professional, FineReader 6.0 Professional and FineReader 7.0 Professional, which are the stand-alone, non-networked, fully- featured purchasable versions of the software. Release 6.0 and 7.0 of FineReader have a Corporate version which has a few extra features, such as bar code scanning and a few extra saving formats and which works on a network so that more than one person can use it and get access to the same scanned files, but these extra features have not been covered here. Nonetheless, most of what is covered here will work the same in the Corporate version. There are also two versions which are not quite as powerful as the Professional versions, namely FineReader 5.0 Home Edition, which has the same recognition scanning engine as the Professional 5.0 variety has but which cannot deal with as many languages, has fewer menu options and features and has fewer block creating and editing tools. The other lesser version is called the "Sprint" version and is the basic OCR which is shipped free with some flatbed scanners, such as the Acer, Mustech, Microtek and Umax. This latter Sprint version is a limited variety of FineReader 4.0 and some later versions and has fewer block and other editing features, cannot deal with PDF files and cannot automatically orientate a page for you if you have put it onto the flatbed the wrong way around. These limitations, of course, may change over time. You may be able to buy FineReader from some high street computer retailers such as PC World and there is a list of vendors contact details on the ABBYY site at: www.abbyy.com This same site also permits you to down load a fully-featured try and buy version of FineReader Professional for evaluation. Before buying any version of FineReader, I would recommend that you contact a few vendors both online and in the high street, as some may have special offers on one of the Finereader versions or you may be able to buy it cut-price bundled with a specific supported scanner. At the time of writing it was possible to purchase one version or another of FineReader from the following online vendors: In the United Kingdom Microwarehouse.com: Tel 0870 5550000. Jungle.com: Tel 0870 7271771. Dabs.com: Tel 0870 4293120. Note: You may also be able to pick up several versions of FineReader (some older ones greatly discounted) from www.thegadgetstore.com and www.pricewatch.com. and from a company called Serif on Tel: 0800 3765353. In the United States IBT, Inc: Tel 760 942-5743. Branches of Fry's Electronics Retail Stores. Buy.com: Tel 440 352-7575. amazon.com: Tel 270 469-3589. Please be aware that if you obtain a copy of the limited FineReader Home Edition, this package not only has fewer features than the professional edition, it also uses a different scanning philosophy. The Home Edition does not use the "batch" method of scanning which the professional versions use and does not have a Tools menu with an Options choice from which to make page type, resolution and other similar fine adjustments. However, using this tutorial you will still be able to learn how to use the essentials of Version 5.0 of the Home Edition. You will just have to skip any procedures which do not work in the Home Edition and accept that these are not supported by that reduced featured package. If you have the Home Edition, I have written Section 19 to get you started and explain some of the differences. You may therefore wish to jump straight there to do your first scan and then look at the main tutorial to learn more afterwards. I have also written other manuals in respect of other leading scanning software programs, for instance, for TextBridge Pro 98, 9.0 and Millennium; for OmniPage Pro 10, 11, 12 and 14; for Expervision's Typereader Pro 6.0; etc. ******** Conventions In the writing of this manual, terms have the following meanings: ALT F, A Means hold down the left ALT key and whilst still holding it down press the letter f, then release both and press the letter A. CONTROL S Means hold down the CONTROL key and whilst keeping it held down press the letter S and then release both. SHIFT END Means hold down the SHIFT key and whilst keeping it held down press the END key. ALT E, C, and press ENTER Means hold down the left ALT key and whilst keeping it held down press the letter E key, then release both and then press the letter C key followed by the ENTER key. When a key combination such as ALT P (for Process), M (for Scan and Read Multiple Pages) is suggested to go into the "Process" menu and run the "Scan and Read Multiple Images" Page" menu option, the user may follow this method of operation or may prefer to ARROW up and down a menu and press ENTER. In this latter case, the keystrokes would be: press the ALT key, right ARROW to the "Process" menu heading, then ARROW down (or up) until the "Scan and Read Multiple Images" line is spoken, then press ENTER. ******** Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial It is, of course, entirely up to the individual as to how they glean information and work through this tutorial, but a few suggestions might assist the learner who is relatively new to computers. I would propose that you read through the whole of a section before attempting to practise it to obtain an overview of what is being done. There are a number of approaches which might be taken to make reading the tutorial as a text file and simultaneously carrying out the instructions more fluid and easier to follow. Try one of the below methods. Ideally, if you have two computers, you can load the tutorial into your text editor or word-processor on one PC and have the software program running on the other. You can then listen to the directions on one computer whilst practising them on the other. Alternatively, as is likely to be the case, if you only have the one computer, you could launch your word-processor and load the tutorial into it for reading. You could then launch the program you wish to learn how to use in order to practise the lessons. You would have to keep cycling between each running program by pressing ALT TAB in this case. Yet another approach might be to take a tape recorder or dictaphone and get your screenreader to read the contents of a given section or sub-section onto the tape. You could then play the tape back and follow the instructions through on your PC without having to keep moving from one running program to another. Other options would be for you to print out a copy of the tutorial in large print if you can use this and work from this hard copy, or you could get your local library or resource centre to produce a Braille version for you to work from if you have one in your area and you are a Braillist. ******** >SECTION 1 INTRODUCTION I would recommend that you quickly read through this whole tutorial before starting to use the tutorial. This is because being able to use later sections sometimes (but not always) depends on you having understood and practised skills in earlier sections. 1.1. What is OCR? OCR (optical character recognition) is computer software which allows you to scan and reproduce pictures and printed documents as image files, i.e. pictures of the text and graphics on a page like a photograph or photocopy, which can then be converted to text so they can be read with a screenreader and synthesiser and edited within FineReader itself or by copying them into any text editor or word-processor. You can scan text and pictures or text only. You can keep the original layout of a document or choose to modify its layout, e.g. by having it decolumnised (which puts the left-column above the right-hand column so that your screenreder can read it intelligibly without it being interwoven). You can scan and recognise the print on ordinary letters, circulars, newspapers, FAX documents, photocopies, etc, and you can also import images from hand-held and flatbed scanners and from FAX modems. However, you cannot scan and get cursive handwriting recognised. FineReader can be used simply as a means of reading your black and white or colour mail, novels, bills, magazines, reports, etc, and/or as a means of capturing, editing and saving text on disk as an electronic filing system, in a similar way as to how a sighted person in an office would use it. 1.2. Stages of OCR The main stages FineReader goes through (whether done automatically or manually) are: 1. Obtaining an image of the print or picture on a page--The "Scan Image" stage in the File menu or the first part of the "Scan and Read" stage in the Process menu. 2. Placing box-like lines around the various parts of the scanned image--Pictures, text and tables. These are areas of a scanned image on the screen, known as "blocks", but you would have to have good sight to be able to do this manually. It can be done automatically by FineReader, however. 3. The recognising process--Where the image blocks are then recognised and converted to text. This is the "read" process, where the pictures, text, layout, paragraphing and font type are recognised and converted. 4. Checking the accuracy of the recognised text and making any necessary corrections--This is the "spell-checking" stage but it is usually easier to turn this off and do any proofreading in your favourite word-processor. 5. The last step is the scan job saving stage where you save your work, which can be done in several different formats, such as MS Word, WordPerfect, RTF, text, PDF, Excel, etc. You can save pictures as well or have these omitted. Note: The full range of possible saving formats can be observed and selected in the Tools, Options, Formats property sheet. ******** >SECTION 2 BEFORE INSTALLING FineReader 2.1. System Requirements The minimum computer specifications you will need for FineReader Professional to run are: 1. A Pentium 200 MHz or better PC. 2. A minimum of 32 Megabytes of RAM (memory), but 64 for NT 4 and 64 if you are running FineReader 7. Remember, too, that your screenreader may also affect this so 128 Mb or more RAM will be preferable. 3. MS Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT 4, ME or XP. However, if you are using FineReader 7, you will need Windows 98 or higher. 4. Around 50 MB of free hard disk space for the minimum installation plus another 70 Mb space for the program to operate in. 5. A 100 per cent TWAIN compatible scanner, video camera or fax machine attached to your PC (see "Main Scanner Types" in Section 3 below). 6. A video card capable of producing 800 X 600 resolution. 2.2. Interface Software You can use the interface software which comes with your mechanical flatbed scanner or the interface program which is provided with the FineReader package itself and interchange between them. It is important to understand the stages of the OCR process and the two types of software which may be running separately or in tandem during scanning. Interface software (a type of large driver) is a program which is an integral part of the flatbed scanner's own scanning program. It acts as an intermediary between your mechanical flatbed scanner and your OCR scanning software. Therefore, there are three distinct elements in the scanning process: 1. the mechanical hardware flatbed scanner itself; 2. The interface software which came with the flatbed scanner; and 3. The Optical character recognition (OCR) software, such as FineReader, which performs the text recognition and outputs the print for you to read. You should install the scanner interface software which comes with your scanner and ensure that the scanner is working prior to installing FineReader. To do this you will have to follow the instructions which came with your scanner set up software. These vary depending upon the scanner you have purchased. If you are new at this, you may be advised to recruit the help of a knowledgeable friend during the scanner interface software and FineReader installations. Note: When running any OCR scanning software with its own interface software, i.e. FineReader with the flatbed scanner's own interface driver rather than using FineReader's driver, there will be steps in the middle of the scanning process which are controlled and dependent on the flatbed scanner's own software and not the OCR software itself. Whilst these intermediate steps will all be similar in operation, you should note that there may be differences from those outlined in this manual. I have tested using a Microtek scanner which uses Microtek's own interface program, known as the Microtek Scan Wizard 32 Bit. The interface software you use, if you use a different flatbed scanner, may behave slightly differently, e.g. you may be using Hewlett Packard's own ScanJet interface program with HP scanners, the ScanWise interface software with Agfa scanners, etc. Warning: If you have several OCR programs on your computer at the same time which make use of the same scanner interface driver, you may find that you have scanning stability problems, regular crashes, illegal operations, etc. This is because OCRs which do not come with their own interface drivers try to access and modify the one flatbed scanner driver and this can cause problems. If this happens to you, you will have to reinstall the interface driver and then decide which single OCR you wish to use along with any OCRs which supply their own independent driver. ******** >SECTION 3 TYPES OF FLATBED SCANNERS 3.1. Main Scanner Standards For most Visually impaired people I would recommend the use of a flatbed scanner. These are easier to use, scan a page in one pass and you do not have to see where you are moving the scanner head, as you do with a hand-held scanner. There are hundreds of different types of flatbed scanners but only a few scanner standards. Main scanner types 3.1.1. SCSI Scanners--This is an older type of standard but which still works well if a good quality SCSI card is used. A card has to be fitted on your computer's motherboard and the scanner attached to this. Fitting such a card may be difficult for a visually impaired person and so one of the below alternatives may be preferable. Such scanners may also cost more than the other types. 3.1.2. Parallel Port Scanners--These scanners run from your parallel port at the back of your PC. They just plug in and if you need to run your printer from the same parallel port you can normally just plug it into the back of the scanner and still use it as part of a chain of computer peripherals. USB (universal serial bus) Scanners--This is similar to parallel port in that it plugs into a USB socket on your PC (if it is a modern computer and has one). This type of interface provides quicker scanning than parallel port and the scanners usually cost less. Note: Some scanner vendors now only supply USB scanners and some only supply scanners which work with Windows 98 upwards, not with Windows 95, so check this carefully before you buy. 3.1.3. USB Scanners--These are the most up-to-date and potentially the fastest scanners. They are similar to parallel port scanners but run from a USB 1 or USB 2 socket on your PC. For the last year or two these USB scanners have been the most available type of flatbed scanners. 3.2. Which scanner to buy and Where From? If you know the type of scanner you like from past experience or have a knowledgeable friend to advise you, feel free to follow your own instincts. There is no one best flatbed scanner, only what you may prefer or what may work adequately enough for you (but it must be supported by your OCR software), depending on your available budgetary wherewithal. However, for the uninitiated the following ideas may be of assistance. These facts were firstly obtained in August 2000 directly from the manufacturers' UK suppliers but most of them will not sell directly to the public. Other updated scanner details have also been given from time to time and the old details have been left because some suppliers may still hold end-of-line stock and some people may be able to pick up a bargain secondhand scanner. If you want more information, phone the manufacturers and if your local high street shop does not sell any particular scanner, ask the manufacturer where to buy from. You should also check out several high street and online suppliers, as prices can vary greatly and new models are coming out every few months. 3.2.1. Epson Scanners--Epson UK Ltd: In August 2000 the Epsom 1200 Cost about œ150 for the USB version or œ190 for the SCSI version. This scanner is said to ship with the classic version of TextBridge 98. Around July 2001 Epson brought out two Epsom Perfection USB scanners, the Perfection 6400U and Perfection 1240U. They start at about œ65 and are said to be very fast and accurate wen scanning print. In May 2002 you could still buy a fastish Epson Perfection 1250 TWAIN USB flatbed scanner for about œ90 and also a Perfection 1650 TWAIN USB scanner for about œ150 but the latter is a little slow. In December 2002 an Epson Perfection 2400 was available for about œ199 which also scans transparencies (35 mm slides and film strip) but this may be more advanced than the home user scanning only text would require. It would be suitable for advanced office use and for professional photographers. It runs on a USB 1.1 or 2 socket, has four quick-task buttons to automate such as scanning to e-mail, to application, and for photocopying. Using the scan manager it is a little slow but is quick if you scan text without using this. It has a DPI of 2400 and is 48-bit. In October 2003 Epsom were offering a flatbed scanner called the Epsom Perfection 1670 which is very suitable for text scanning but it is a little slow. The earlier Perfection 1650 and 1660 scanners were faster if you can find one. For more information phone: 0800 220546. 3.2.2. Hewlet-Packard Scanners--Hewlett Packard: In August 2000 the HP 5200C was still available in some shops at about œ110 and could be obtained both in parallel port and USB versions. It runs on Windows 95, 98 and NT 4. It comes with OmniPage 8 Limited edition OCR. In July 2001 The HP 5300C was one of the current models and comes with an older version of the ReadIRIS OCr, at a cost of around œ130. Hewlett Packard have also recently brought out a scanner called the HP4300C at around œ100 which has quick scan buttons on the flatbed case itself, so with this one, after you have set up the buttons to use your preferred e-mail client, OCR software, FAX client, etc, you can just press one of these to commence a scan. In May 2002 HP were supplying the HP4400 1200 by 600 DPI USB flatbed scanner for around œ90 and the HP5400 USB and parallel port scanner for about œ150 which is 2400 by 1200 DPI. They both come with a version of TextBridge OCR supplied with them. For more information phone: 020 75507900 or phone your local branch of PC World. 3.2.3. Canon Scanners--Canon UK Ltd: In August 2000 the Canoscan FB300P was priced at around œ60 and is a 300 by 600 DPI scanner. The FB630P costs around œ80 and is a 600 by 1200 DPI scanner. They are both parallel port scanners and come with limited versions of OmniPage 5.1. I have also been advised that since January 2001 the Canon 650U is available and is being shipped with a version of OmniPage Pro 9 on it. In May 2002 you could also obtain a portable Canoscan scanner which runs from the USB socket and from your PCs (including a portable PCs) own power supply for about œ120. There are also the Canon N670U USB and the Canon N640P Parallel TWAIN scanners for about œ70 each. In December 2002 you could purchase a Canoscan Lide 30 for about œ116. It is 1200 by 2400 DPI and 48-bit. It can run entirely from the USB plug for its power. It is very small and light and can be stood on its side to save desk space. There are three quick- task buttons which you can customise to use as you wish. It is a TWAIN scanner which supports USB 1.1 and 2. However, this scanner is not particularly quick. The Canoscan Lide 50 is a faster scanner with a better spec for a little more money. They come with a version of the OmniPage OCR. For more information phone: 0870 5143723 or 01737 220001. 3.2.4. Agfa Scanners--Agfa: In August 2000 the Agfa Snapscan 1212P was an older machine but was still selling. It comes with OmniPage limited and works from the parallel port. It costs about œ70and works with Windows 95, 98 and NT 4. Their newer basic spec scanner is the Agfa E40 at around œ150 but will only work with Windows 98 or above. It is USB only and is shipped with a version of ReadIRIS. More recently, in around July 2001, Agfa also brought out a scanner called the "Snapscan Touch" at around œ100 which has quick scan buttons on the flatbed case itself, so with this one, after you have set up the buttons to use your preferred e-mail client, OCR software, colour picture scanning software, etc, you can just press one of these to commence a scan. Unfortunately, when I contacted Agfa UK in May 2002, I was advised that the Scanner side of Agfa had been wound up and no new scanners had been made for the last 8 months, although there are some of the above scanners still in stock and selling in a few shops. For more information phone: 0870 0134271. 3.2.5. Plustek Scanners--In or around August 2004, Plustek released their Opticbook 3600 flatbed scanner in the US for 249 dollars (UK price and availability unknown at time of writing). This scanner is a USB 2.0 scanner with good specifications. It also has the added advantage of having a flatbed specially designed for scanning bound books, so that you do not have to break a book's back or cut the pages out to scan it. It therefore obtains a good scan without loosing text where it falls away at the spine. For more information, visit www.plustek.com Note, however, that not all OCR scanning software will support all scanners. Before purchasing one of the above flatbed scanners or any other scanner of your own choice, make sure that you phone the OCR maker to ensure that the flatbed is supported with drivers or go onto their Website to check this. 3.3. Scanners Supported by FineReader When I was on the ABBYY Website on 22 May 2002 they had a list of over 50 TWAIN compatible flatbed scanners supported by FineReader 6. There were several under each manufacturer's name. the manufacturers were: Acer Agfa Artek Avigramm Genius Canon Epson Fujitsu Hewlet-Packard Kodak Lexmark Logitech Microtek Mustek Nikon Plustek Primax Relisys Umax Visioneer Xerox To view which specific flatbed scanner models are supported under each of the above makers' names, visit www.abbyy.com or phone your local FineReader agent (see Appendix 2). Note 1: I have not tested any of the scanners mentioned in section 3.2. They are simply manufactured by well-known and generally respected companies. As this is not an indorsement of any particular scanner, you must use your own judgement about which, if any, to buy. Note 2: Appendix 3 gives details on how to make an older Hewlett Packard scanner work faster by using an ISIS instead of a TWAIN driver. 3.4. Operating Systems Supported ABBYY FineReader 6 works on the following operating systems: Windows 95 Windows 98 Windows ME Windows 2000 Windows NT 4.0 Windows XP FineReader 7 will work on all of the above but not on Windows 95. 3.3. Scanner Maintenance and Optimisation You should, of course, read carefully and follow the instructions given in the documentation which comes with your flatbed scanner in respect of its cleaning and general maintenance. Scanner maintenance can vary from make to make as some have different types of plastic flatbeds whilst others have glass ones. Nonetheless, the following suggestions should help with general maintenance. If your scanner has a transportation lock, ensure that you turn this on before moving it around and that you turn it off before using it. Such a lock, if your scanner has one, is usually found underneath the scanner, possibly at the back. However, most modern flatbed scanners do not feature a transportation lock, so you can move them around as they are, with the normal amount of care you would expect to give to a piece of electrical equipment with moving parts and light reflectors. Ensure that the scanner's flatbed glass is kept very clean to avoid blurred scans and to eliminate scanning of specs of dust as punctuation marks. Normally, using a clean, soft cloth dampened with warm water and with a little soap applied will be good enough to gently wipe the glass with. Do not scrub with the cloth, just gently wipe with it. Then rinse any soap from the cloth and thoroughly remove any soap from the glass and allow to dry naturally. Do not use any form of alkaline substance on the glass. You may also wish to clean the inside face of the scanner's lid to ensure that dirt and dust is not adhering to that. To avoid scratching, always remove any tags, pins, staples, etc, from paper before scanning a document. If you are scanning paper which has various shades of grey on it or which has dark text on a coloured or grey background and the results of your scans are not good enough, you might be able to improve the character recognition by first photocopying the document and then scanning it. Photocopying it will provide a white background and black text. If your scanner lid is of a light colour, you may wish to tape or glue a sheet of black paper to it. This will improve scans of thin paper, when the text on the other side of the paper might also be seen through the paper when scanning. The black paper absorbs the light and reduces light reflection. Additionally, if you are scanning multiple page documents with paper which is very thin, you may also wish to place a piece of black paper behind each sheet of your document before scanning it to eliminate reflections from the other side of the paper or from the next sheet of paper. You can find out more tips and tricks to do with scanners to improve accuracy and efficiency of scanning, including advice on types of scanners, hardware and software installation, selecting a scanner, troubleshooting, etc, by subscribing to one or both of the below newsgroups: alt.comp.periphs.scanner comp.periphs.scanners ******** >SECTION 4 INSTALLING FineReader 4.1. Installing FineReader Professional 6.0 and 7.0 To install the CD version of FineReader Pro 6.0 and 7.0, with your scanner connected to your computer and turned on: 1. Place the installation CD disk in the CD-ROM drawer and close it keeping the left SHIFT key depressed all the time and keep it depressed for another 30 seconds. This should stop the autoRun feature of Windows from running and giving you the default (standard) FineReader installation method, which is not very screenreader-friendly and is likely to come up in a language other than English. 2. If, despite the above, the autoRun still kicks in, just close down the installation screen by pressing ALT F4 twice and try the alternative method below. 3. Press Windows Logo key and R (for Run) and then in the Run dialogue box: A. In the "Filename" editfield type "d:\" or any other drive letter your CD-ROM drive may be set-up on. B. TAB to "Browse", and press ENTER. C. Next TAB to "LOOK In". The CD volume label (title) should show, so press ENTER to open up the list of files and folders on the installation CD. D. TAB once and then ARROW down to "FineReader 6.0 Pro" (or 7.0 Pro) and press ENTER. E. You will now be in a list of choices, so ARROW down to "setup.exe" and press ENTER. F. You will be on an "OK" button, so press ENTER. 4. You will now be in the installation program and will now have to choose your user language and are likely to be on "English United States", which is the only English version for installation purposes. You can ARROW up or down several other languages. 5. Press ENTER on the language of your preference and the normal install shield wizard will load in and take you through the installation process in your chosen language. 6. You now fall on the licence agreement screen, so ARROW down to "I Accept the Terms of the Licence Agreement" and press ENTER or, alternatively, achieve this by pressing the accelerator shortcut of ALT A. 7. Your name will have been entered in the "Name" editfield. TAB through and type the rest of your details and serial numbers in the editfields and then press ENTER on "Next". 8. Accept the standard installation option of "Typical" by simply pressing ENTER on the "Next" button which you should now be on or ARROW to Custom" for an installation using as little of your hard disk space as possible or to choose what components you do and do not want. 9. Now you are given the opportunity to regularly receive ABBYY update information and "Community News", so just press ENTER on "Next" if you would like to be taken onto the Internet from time to time for this; if not, TAB to "Yes" and then ARROW to "NO" and press ENTER. 10. You should now be on the "Install" button, so press ENTER to commence the installation. 11. The installation may take four or five minutes, when you will be left on a "Finish" button to press ENTER on and the installation is now complete. 12. Shut down your PC as normal and reboot it before running FineReader for the first time. Note: The installation of the freely downloadable "Try/Buy" demo version of FineReader installs in a very similar way to the above description from step 4 onwards but it also uses Winzip to extract it firstly. 4.2. Installing FineReader Professional 5.0 To install FineReader Pro 5.0, with your scanner connected to your computer and turned on: 1. Place the CD disk in the CD-ROM drawer and close it keeping the left SHIFT key depressed all the time and keep it depressed for another 30 seconds. This should stop the autoRun feature of Windows from running and giving you the default (standard) FineReader installation method, which is not very screenreader- friendly. 2. If, despite the above, the autoRun still kicks in, just close down the installation screen by pressing ALT F4. 3. Press Windows Logo key and R (for Run) and then in the Run dialogue box type: d:\setup_pro\install.exe (or whatever drive letter your CD-ROM drive is set up on) and press ENTER. 4. You will be on the install in English option, so accept this or ARROW to your preferred installation language and then press ENTER on "Next". 5. The installation is very similar to that for FineReader Pro 6 but a few of the terms are different. 6. Basically, follow the prompts and keep pressing ENTER on "Next". Select the "I Agree" button on the licence agreement page and provide your name and company name or just type "None" if you are not a company. On the next page you will have three installation possibilities, all, custom and minimal. TAB to minimal if you do not want all 170 or more languages installing. 7. You will eventually end up on a "Go" button to press ENTER on and start the installation. It will install in a few minutes and tell you that installation is complete. Press ENTER on "OK" and then ARROW to "Yes" or "No" to accept or reject the opportunity to join ABBYY's "Community News" service. Then finish by pressing ENTER on "OK" again and reboot your computer before launching FineReader 5 for the first time. Note: See the note at the end of the last sub-section for information on the demo version. 4.3. Obtaining the Downloaded Evaluation Version You can obtain the English language 15-hour or 15 launch version or the full credit card purchasable version of FineReader Pro 6.0 online by: 1. Go to: www.abbyy.com 2. When on the home page TAB to or use your find facility to get to the "Professional" link and press ENTER. 3. The next page which loads in has a "Download Trial" link and after pressing ENTER on this you will be able to TAB to a link entitled "FR60PT.EXE" for FineReader Pro 6 or "FR70pro_en.exe" for FineReader Pro 7. 4. Pressing ENTER on the above link drops you on another link to immediately commence the download, so press ENTER. 5. the download is at least 32.4 Mb, so may take around two or 3 hours with a 56K MODEM. 6. Now that you have the self-extracting .EXE file, you can press ENTER on it wherever you downloaded it to to start the installation, along the lines explained in the two earlier sub- sections in this section. Note 1: The full list of supported flatbed scanners link can be found just below the "Professional" link in step 2 above. Note 2: Depending on the version of FineReader you have and where you obtained it from, these installation procedures may vary a little, e.g. demo versions on CD, demo versions downloaded, versions purchased outside of the UK, etc, can be slightly different. For instance, there is a version which requires you to insert both a CD and floppy disk into your Cd and floppy drives simultaneously before starting the installation procedure. ******** >SECTION 5 FineReader 5, 6 AND 7 CAPABILITIES 5.1.1. Supported Input and Output Formats FineReader can import (accept from other sources) several formats such as tiff files, BMP, DCX, JPEG, CCIT3, CCIT4, Packbits AND PNG, plus PDF with Finereader 6 and later versions. FineReader can also output or save the product of its scanning to many file formats, such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, WordPerfect, Lotus Word Pro, Star Writer, RTF, PDF, HTML, several Unicode formats, plus several formats of txt, DBF, CSV, BMP, PCX, JPEG, TIF, CcIT3, CcIT4 and Packbits. With FineReader 7 you also get outputs to Powerpoint and XML formats. To view these input and output options have a look in such as the File menu "Send All Pages To" and the "Save Text As" commands plus the saving formats offered in the "Formats Settings" dialogue of the Tools menu Options "Formatting" property sheet. 5.1.2. Page Types FineReader can Scan FineReader can deal with several page formats which you place on your scanner flatbed automatically or you can select a specific page/document scanning style. It has: 1. Auto Detect Layout--When FineReader attempts to recognise the layout of any type of page or a variety of differently formatted pages within one document. This includes multiple columnar text and text containing tables and pictures. Note that FineReader will do a better job of scanning and formatting spreadsheets if the original hard copy has black borders around the cells to clearly define them and you will not therefore have to do any formatting or line inserting yourself. An ability to deal with white borders in tables and with tables which are more complicated was also added with FineReader 7. 2. Single Column--Used if FineReader fails to correctly determine the columns on a page. In this mode, it will put all text into a single column. This may be the preferred page type for visually impaired people to scan in when they are scanning such as newspapers, magazines and other text in multiple columns so that it is put into a single row of text with the left column being displayed first, the second column underneath the first, etc. 3. Plain Text Formatted with Spaces--When FineReader will be expecting such as C++ or old computer printouts. It will put them in a single column. Whilst you would normally use the auto detect layout and type of print options, FineReader may produce better results if you can tell it what the print quality or type is, e.g. poor quality, such as FAXES and faint text like some photocopies, when grey scale scanning will work best, normal quality, coloured pages, etc; and what the layout of the page is, e.g. single column, table, etc. However, as a visually impaired person you may not be able to do this but FineReader should still do a reasonable job and you can always rescan a page with different settings if the first attempt is not satisfactory. It is probably best to start with a page type setting of "Auto Detect Layout" and "Remove All Formatting" in the Tools, Options, "Scan/Open Image" and "Recognise" property sheets. The maximum number of pages you can scan at once into a single batch with FineReader is 9999. Note: Most FAX machines have a standard quality and fine quality output capability, so if you receive regular FAXES from a particular source, you may be able to ask the sender to choose the fine quality (200 DPI) setting before sending them to you. These will scan more easily and accurately than the standard quality. 5.1.3. Scanners Supported FineReader supports many TWAIN compatible flatbed scanners, within particular makes, including: Acer Agfa Artek Avigramm Genius Canon Epson Fujitsu Hewlet-Packard Kodak Lexmark Logitech Microtek Mustek Nikon Plustek Primax Relisys Umax Visioneer Xerox For the full up-to-date list of makes and models, visit: www.abbyy.com 5.1.4. Specialist User Dictionaries It is possible to create specialist user dictionaries with things like acronyms, proper nouns, scientific and technical words to load before a scanning session to improve recognition accuracy. However, if you are only scanning standard print material, such as newspapers, letters, novels, etc, this is not necessary. It is also unlikely that a visually impaired user would be able to see sufficiently to carry out the visual processes which are required to create such a specialist user dictionary. Nonetheless, if you do scan unusual material and you can get sighted help to create user dictionaries, you can find the instructions in the available online help files by pressing ALT H, press ENTER and CONTROL TAB to "Index" and type in something like "user dictionary". With the advent of FineReader 7, you now have several English and German language options for loadable languages/dictionaries, which include just straight, non-technical English or you can select English with legal or medical terminology. 5.1.5 Automatic Document Feeders (ADF) If you have a sheetfeeder you can scan the front sides of pages (odd pages) first and then the back of the pages (even pages) second and FineReader will interleave them automatically so that they save in the correct order. You should know, however, that sheetfeeders often cost several times more than the basic scanner itself, so I will not go into depth about this aspect of scanning here, except to say that to enable the ADF option, go into Tools, Scanner Settings and check the "Use ADF" option on, then to scan with it use CONTROL SHIFT K to start the multiple page scanning and use CONTROL T to stop multiple page ADF scanning. 5.1.6. Document colour Scanning capabilities FineReader is capable of scanning and recognising black and white pages, grey scale pages (shades of white and black at various levels of darkness between black and white) and colour pages. It can also recognise inverse video--white print on a black background. However, scanning in the grey scale and colour settings takes longer than black and white scanning. The grey scale feature is best used for pages with poor quality or difficult to recognise text. Depending on the design and age of your scanner, you may or may not be able to colour scan, although just about all modern flatbed scanners can do this. Your scanned and recognised page, even if it started out in colour, can either be output as black print on a white background or in its original colours. 5.1.7. Type Face and Size Scanning Abilities FineReader purports to be able to recognise many kinds of type face/font. If it cannot recognise a particular font, it has a "Pattern Editing" facility. However, training and pattern matching are not something most visually impaired people can do, because they require you to be able to see the unrecognised word and/or font type to tell FineReader what it should have been recognising it as. I do not, therefore, intend to go into this pattern editing facility, as this would be turning the concept of print scanning for visually impaired people on its head. 5.1.8. Scanning Resolution By default, FineReader scans all text at 300 dots per inch (DPI), which is invariably the recommended resolution for text scanning. It scans grey scale and colour pictures at 150 DPI, but this can be changed to as low as 72 and as high as 600 DPI. You can increase the print scanning resolution up to 600 DPI so that very small print can be scanned more accurately. Be aware, though, that scanning in resolutions higher than 300 DPI may take considerably longer. 5.1.9. Scan to E-Mail You can output the product of your scans directly to common e- mail programs, such as Outlook Express (see Section 16 for more details on how to do this). 5.1.10. Duel Page Scanning You can tell FineReader that you are about to scan both pages of a book simultaneously, so that it will know to treat the left page as separate from the right page and number them appropriately, the left with odd numbers and the right with even numbers. Note, however, that if you have a large book which you have to put onto the flatbed sideways and want to duel page scan, there may only be one way you can do this to ensure that the left pages are scanned before the right pages so that they are numbered and displayed correctly, so experiment by scanning a few pages to observe the results before spending your time scanning a whole book. 5.1.11. Languages Supported FineReader can scan pages in over 170 different languages but not all on the same page. The most languages you should try to scan on a single page or in a single document is three. For how to deal with languages and download more of them with FineReader Pro 7, see the next sub-section. 5.2. The FineReader 7 Language Selection and Download Dialogue To use the new Language dialogue to select another specialist language within the English or German language or another completely different language to use: 1. Press CONTROL L. 2. For example, if you are currently using the standard English interface and dictionary language, you will now fall on a listbox of six choices and you will be on the "English" standard language. If you ARROW down once you will select the "English with Legal Dictionary" language and another down ARROW will select the "English with Medical Dictionary". Simply pressing ENTER on either of these will switch from the standard English dictionary to the more technical legal or medical dictionary as well as the standard English one. 3. If you then ARROW up from "English" you come to a "Download More Languages" option and can then ARROW through 39 extra languages to select for downloading. Select them by pressing SPACEBAR on any of them and then, when you TAB forward once, you will encounter a "Download" button to activate to go online to download the language. 4. To get to the two options above the "English" option, press SHIFT TAB and then ARROW up. These two options are the "Choose More Languages" and "Select Multiple Languages" options. Pressing ENTER on either of these opens up a list of other related languages and related dictionaries which can be chosen for use with FinReader. ******** >SECTION 6 CUSTOMISING FineReader FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE (As customisation is not essential for FineReader to function for visually impaired people, but is rather desirable for maximising accessibility and simplicity, you may wish to jump straight to Section 8 and run a scan of a page in scan and read mode before tackling customisation. That way you will have an idea what the reasons for customisation may be. Then come back to this section and make any suggested changes which suit your needs. However, have a quick look at this now for a general idea of what is proposed.) In order to enhance FineReader's performance as a print scanner for visually impaired people, make the screen less cluttered and make it easier to use and get things output in the most accessible format, you may find some of the below suggestions worthwhile. However, it may make a difference to what customisation you undertake as to whether you use a screen magnification system or speech system, so experiment with these and other configurations for yourself. 6.1. General and Specific Customisation The following customisation and fine-tuning for screenreader users using FineReader as a print scanning machine are suggested. 1. When FineReader first launches, you will get a Welcome screen and can TAB through several buttons, such as "Show Welcome Dialogue at Start Up", "Scan and Read Wizard", etc. If you do not like this type of interface or your screenreader does not read the buttons very well, I would suggest that you TAB to "Show Welcome Dialogue at Start Up" and press SPACEBAR to turn this off, then TAB to "Close" and press ENTER. In future you will not launch into this dialogue. You can achieve all of the things the Welcome dialogue can do and much more via the menus or FineReader shortcuts. 2. Always run FineReader maximised by pressing ALT SPACEBAR and then X just after it has loaded, although once you have done this it should continue to load in this way in future. 3. Experiment with the many options in the View menu. Depending on the version of FineReader you are using, you may have all or just some of the below menu options. If any option is not there, just skip on to the next one. Press ALT V and then ARROW down and press ENTER on: A. "TextWindow Scale" and then ARROW down to "Fit to Width" and press ENTER to switch this on. B. "Batch View" and then ARROW to "Details" and press ENTER. This will turn the thumbnail view off and details on. Miniature thumbnail views are of little or no use to visually impaired people but if you can see a little or use a screen magnifier, the details view might help you. C. "Batch Window" and press ENTER and then press ENTER on "Maximise". D. "Image and Text Windows" and ARROW down to "Show Text" and press ENTER, so that only the scanned text and not the image is showing. The screen will be less cluttered and your screenreader will be more likely to be able to read what is on screen. You can also achieve this with the shortcut of CONTROL 3. CONTROL 2 invokes the image window only and CONTROL 1 brings up both the image and text window view. E. "Zoom Window" and press ENTER on "Hide" to get rid of this as it is unlikely to be of any use to most VI people. F. "Status Bar" and press ENTER to check this on if it is not already checked on. G. Experiment with different views but be aware that reducing the size of the text on the screen to lower than 100 per cent may result in it becoming unreadable with a screenreader at this stage if, indeed, it is not unreadable from the outset--which is very likely with earlier versions of FineReader. 4. Go through the Tools, Options property sheets (CONTROL SHIFT O is the shortcut to get there) and change the following to improve such things as text recognition speed, reduce clutter on the screen, fine-tune the type of output you get for screenreader users, etc. Remember that not all of the below options will exist in all versions of FineReader and that some of them may already be in the correct state of on or off, so will not need changing and that there will be many more options in these sheets which I will not be mentioning. Do this with the "Default" or "Untitled" batch file open, then press ALT T (for Tools) and then O (for Options) and: A. If you are not already on it, CONTROL TAB to the "General" property sheet. TAB through this and in here turn off (by pressing SPACEBAR on them): "Show Image During Recognition", "Show Tips During Recognition", "Open the last Batch at Start Up" and "Show Welcome Dialogue at Start Up" . Then CONTROL TAB to the "View" sheet. B. In the "View" sheet TAB to and turn off the following: "Show Black and White Image in Zoom Window", "Show Zoom Window Scroll Bars" and "Highlight Uncertain Characters". Now TAB around again and turn on: "Switch to Full Page Mode". Then CONTROL TAB to the "Scan/Open Image" sheet. C. In the "Scan/Open Image" sheet TAB to and then ARROW either to "Use TWAIN Source Interface" or "Use FineReader Interface", whichever you would prefer to use. Your own flatbed scanner's interface may work faster than the FineReader one but the FineReader driver gives you more options and flexibility if it will work for you. You might like to use your flatbed's interface driver initially and then switch to the FineReader driver later to compare the two before deciding which you want to use permanently. Next turn on: "Detect Image Orientation During Recognition" and "Convert Colour and Grey Images to Black and White". Experiment with "Open Image During Scanning" both turned on and off, as this can sometimes work better on than off, depending on your overall setup and screenreader. With automatic orientation turned on, you will be able to scan successfully whichever way around you put text onto the flatbed scanner and you may also be able to scan books two pages at a time sideways on. Next CONTROL TAB to the "Recognition" sheet. D. In the "Recognition" sheet ensure that the following are selected by ARROWING to them (but they are likely to already be selected): "Auto Detect Layout", although "Single Column" will be preferred if you are to scan such as newspaper columns. Next check on "Clear Background Noise" and there is an "Auto Detect" for types of print where "auto" should be left on, although "Typewriter" and "Dot Matrix" may improve recognition accuracy if you are scanning that type of print. Then CONTROL TAB to the "Check Spelling" sheet. E. In the "Check Spelling" sheet turn off: "Stop at Words with Uncertain Characters", "Stop at Words Not Found in Dictionary" and ARROW up to "None" in the "Error Display Level Set Before Recognition" radio button list. Then CONTROL TAB to the "Formatting" sheet. F. In the "Formatting" sheet ARROW down to "Remove All Formatting" to select this option and then turn off: "Keep Pictures" and press ENTER on "Formats Settings" and in this sub- dialogue TAB to and turn off "Retain Text Colour" and press ENTER on "OK" to leave this sub-dialogue. G. Now SHIFT CONTROL TAB back to the "General" sheet you first made changes in and SHIFT TAB back to "Save" and press ENTER. If your copy of FineReader asks you for a batch filename, type one of your own choice in here, e.g. mybatch1, otherwise it will be given the default "Untitled" filename, and if it has an "Apply this Template to New Batches" checkbox, press SPACEBAR on it to turn it on. You may then have a couple of "OK" messages to press ENTER on to confirm and after doing this you can TAB to the "General" sheet's "OK" or "Close" button and press ENTER to finish. H. This will make these new options save as a batch template (discussed later) with the filename "default.fbt" (in FineReader 5 and 6) or "Untitled.fbt" (in Finereader 7) or whatever other name you chose to call it. The changes will also save as your standard default scanning options file. You will now scan with these options each time you scan and you will also have a batch template back-up of the options for loading from the "General" property sheet if anything should happen to your newly adjusted default batch scanning file. These different concepts are discussed in later sections. Note 1: If you decide that you wish to go back to FineReader's default (standard) options at any time, with a page having been scanned in already, all you need to do is press ALT T, O, and then ALT U. Note 2: These changes presume that you will not be trying to use the FineReader editing screen to read and edit in and that you are not interested in getting the output of your scan in colour or exactly as it appears on the original paper hard copy. You are strongly advised to do your reading and editing in a program such as MS Word, Windows Wordpad or MS Excel rather than in FineReader. If you do want to do things differently, ignore those changes which do not suit the way you would like to work. 6.2. Placing a Shortcut on Your Desktop from which to Launch FineReader To place a shortcut icon on your Desktop for quick and easy launching of FineReader: 1. With Windows 98 or later and some versions of Windows 95: A. place focus on the FineReader launch link by pressing Windows Logo Key, then P (for Program Files), then A (for ABBY FineReader 6.0 Pro." Note that there is one further menu level to go down when locating the FineReader Pro 5 launch link before you get to the "ABBYY FineReader 5.0 Pro" or a similar link. B. Now press SHIFT F10 to bring up a Context Menu and ARROW to "Send To" and press ENTER. C. Lastly, ARROW down to "Desktop" and press ENTER and ENTER again to confirm. 2. If the above is not possible with your operating system, the longer way to achieve this is: A. Press Windows LOGO key followed by the letter S, then press T. B. Then press CONTROL TAB to the 'Start Menu Programs Property Sheet'. C. You will and on the 'Add' button, so press ENTER. Then tab to the 'Browse' button and press ENTER. D. You will be asked for the executable filename, so type in "FineReader.exe" and then TAB to the list of folders on your c: drive underneath the 'Look In' line. Press P until 'Program Files' is spoken and then press ENTER. E. Then press A until "ABBYY FineReader 6.0" or something similar, depending on your version, is spoken and press ENTER. F. Press F until "finereader.exe" is highlighted and then press ENTER. G. Press the TAB key to the 'Open' option and then press ENTER. H. Then TAB to the 'Next' button and press ENTER. You are asked where you want to place the shortcut, so ARROW up to 'Desktop' and then press TAB to 'Next' and press ENTER. I. You are asked to select a name for the shortcut and given "FineReader.exe" as an option. If you want to change this, just type over it, e.g. with "FineReader 6" and then press TAB to the 'Finish' button and press ENTER. J. Now press TAB to the 'OK' button and press ENTER to complete the procedure. 3. You can now, in the normal Windows way, go to this shortcut on your Desktop by pressing Windows LOGO key M (or D) followed by F until "FineReader 6" is spoken and then press ENTER to launch it. Alternatively, your shortcut may have been saved under the "Abbyy Finereader" name, so you would press A to get to it on your Desktop in this case. ******** >SECTION 7 OPERATIONAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FINEREADER 5.0 AND 6.0/7.0 In reality, there are few differences between Version 5 and Version 6 or 7 of ABBYY FineReader. The main claim of the manufacturer is that Version 6 has a new, improved algarithum for its recognition engine and so is more accurate than FineReader 5. A quick run through the nine menus reveals that all of the main options are the same but FineReader 6 and 7 have five or six extra menu choices. Having said this, for visually impaired people using FineReader as a print scanning utility, these extra options are of little extra importance and to all intents and purposes each version of FineReader can be used virtually the same. Version 6 and 7 have a handy "Print to Text" option on their File menu but it is not essential to use this. Versions 6 and 7 have an "Advanced Search" option in their Edit menu (shortcut ALT F3) and there is a "Customise" option in Version 7s Tools menu to customise toolbars but these are not likely to add much to how someone with little or no sight would use the program. However, Version 7 has been made fully compatible with and integrated with MS Office 2003 and will work from within Word 2003 as well as earlier versions of Word. It has an improved PDF recognition ability and can now recognise background text as well as foreground text in PDF files. A couple of features which were only available in the more expensive Corporate edition of Finereader are now also available in FineReader Pro 7, e.g. recognition of barcodes. You can enable this barcode scanning ability by checking it on in Tools, Options, Recognition, "Look for Barcodes". ******** >SECTION 8 USING SCAN AND READ MODE 8.1. Pen-Picture of the FineReader Screen If you have made all or most of the suggested configuration changes mentioned in Section 6 above, The FineReader screen will look something like the following description. For example, with FineReader Pro 6 (and things are very similar with Version 7), the Title Bar at the very top of the screen will hold the words - "Default - ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Professional - 2 Text" but if you have saved a scan and not yet cleared the screen with ALT F, H, the document batch name will appear in place of the word "Default" (or in place of the word "Untitled" in FR7). The "2 Text" signifies how many pages have been scanned and that the images have been read, i.e. recognised and converted to text. If an image only had so far been obtained or you had scanned for an image only and not asked for it to be recognised to text yet, the "2 Text" would have read "2 Image", signifying that two images had been scanned into the default batch. On the next line comes the Main Menu with File, Edit, View Menus, etc. Next comes the main window area where the images, recognised text and tables will be displayed and where you may also find scanning settings information such as type of scan done, the resolution you have used, image size in Kb, etc. At the very bottom is the Status line which can show different things, depending on what stage you are at, e.g. the number of pages scanned, the scanning language being used, etc. In FineReader 5 and 6, the Status line will also tell you (if you are not using FineReader's own interface driver automatic brightness detection and adjustment ability) whether you need to lighten or darken the brightness setting to obtain a better scan, by saying such as "Increase brightness to make image lighter". With FineReader 7, some of this just-mentioned Status Line information is not given on the Status Line but is rather displayed just above the Status Line in a table with several column headings, such as "Page", "Error Warning", "Comment", etc. The Page column, obviously, lists the page number of the scan you have done, the Error Warning column lists any errors which might have occurred in scanning that particular page, the Comment column lists any pertinent tips, hints and suggestions, such as wether it would be beneficial to increase or decrease scanning brightness before continuing with the scan job. However, what shows on the screen is very much dependent on what toolbars you have left turned on, the type of scanning you are doing, the stage you are at and the scanning interface driver you are using. Additionally, with Finereader 7, you can customise the look of the screen, moving toolbars around, window positions, etc. 8.2. Scan and Read Mode Before starting your computer you should switch the scanner on otherwise it may not be recognised. You run FineReader in this stand-alone way independently of any other running application. You can then save the scanned page in any of a number of formats, e.g. MS Word 97, MS Word XP, rtf, MS Excel, etc. You could then open the saved file in Word or Wordpad for reading or editing if you wish. This is much easier and more controllable than trying to edit in FineReader itself. You can save the results of your scan directly to a particular file format without having that program open automatically or save it to such as Word 2000 and have word then immediately launch with the document on screen for you. You can also simply send it to an application to view it without saving it first. Note: If you have MS Word on your PC, when FineReader installs, it will put a "FineReader 6.0" or "FineReader 7.0" option and check it on in your Word "Toolbars" list in the View menu. If you are able to use the Word Toolbar in your screenreader's mouse mode, you can then click on this button to launch FineReader from this Toolbar button whilst Word is running to scan from within Word. The Toolbar button is labelled such as "Run Finereader 7.0 OCR". 8.3. Example of Scan and Read of Single Pages with Your Scanner's Interface Driver With your scanner having been switched on prior to turning your computer on: 1.A. Start FineReader from the icon on your Desktop if you have one by pressing Windows LOGO key M followed by F until you get to it and press ENTER. 1.B. If you have not set up an icon on your Desktop or Start Menu, start FineReader by typing the path to it in the Start Menu, Run facility or navigate to it as follows: Press Windows LOGO key, then P (for Program Files, A (for ABBYY FineReader" until you get there and then press ENTER. 2. The program will load and you can start a scan after about a 10 second delay whilst the program settings load. After this short initial wait, you press ALT P (for process) and then press ENTER on "Scan and Read". Alternatively, use the shortcut of CONTROL D to achieve this. 3. As you will be using your scanner's interface driver in this case, you are likely to fall on a button such as "Scan" or "Start", so just press ENTER to commence the single page scan. For the first page you scan, you may have to wait about another 10 seconds before this "Scan" button appears but for subsequent pages you will not need to wait before starting the scan of another page. 4. The scanner will run using your scanner's interface scanning driver and the page will be recognised. An image of the recognised text will appear on screen and you may or nay not be able to read it with your screenreader but it is likely that it will not all fit on the screen and lines may be truncated. If this happens, read the text in a word-processor or text editor instead, as shown below. If no text appears on screen, you may need to get the page re-recognised by pressing either CONTROL R or CONTROL SHIFT R and then ENTER. 5. Either read and then save your document in a word-processor or simply save it without first reading it using one of the below two saving procedures. 6. Lastly, with FineReader 5 and 6, clear the screen for scanning a different job if you wish by pressing ALT F (for File) and then H (for Clear Batch Job). In FineReader 7 you would use ALT F and then T (for Close Batch). Note 1: At step 2 above, before you press ENTER on "Scan", your scanner's interface software may have its own menu bar which you can access by pressing the ALT key and in there you may be able to make several other scanning adjustments. This, of course, will vary depending on the flatbed scanner you are using. Note 2: If you want to try reading the contents of one of your scanned pages without first saving it and reading it in such as a word-processor, you may find this possible if you ARROW to the page number, press ENTER to open it and then press CONTROL R and then ENTER to get all pages re-read. This may or may not work for you, depending on the version of FineReader you are using and on your screenreader. Note 3: Be aware that, as long as you have automatic page orientation turned on as directed in Section 6, you can scan pages sideways on or even upside down, although it is recommended that you put pages on the correct way up whenever possible. You can also put the text page onto the flatbed scanner at any corner of the mirror as well, not just to the top right or top left corner, as long as you have not narrowed the scanning margins at all, e.g. I myself prefer to scan with my sheet lined up with the bottom right-hand corner of the scanner's mirror. 8.4. Saving Your Scanned document With your above page scanned and recognised, You now have a choice of saving methods: 1.A. To view a list of common saving options, use the "Save Wizard" by pressing ALT F (for File) and then Z (for Save Wizard). 1.B. You will open up a dialogue on a list of saving options which you can ARROW down, including: file, MS Word, MS Excel, e- mail, copy to Clipboard and Web browser. FineReader 7 also has a "Powerpoint" saving option. You would leave focus on the one you desire but, for this example, make it "Microsoft Word". 1.C. TAB once to "retain Full Page Layout" and note that there are two other options you can ARROW down in here. They are "Retain Font and Font Size" and "Remove All formatting". If you want to keep the original appearance of the page, including arrangement of paragraphs, font type and size, columns, text direction, text colour and table structure, use the first option; to retain only table structure, paragraph arrangement, font type and size use option two; but if you want to remove all formatting except for table structure and paragraph arrangement select option three. For screenreader users who are scanning mainly to get print read to them, the last option is likely to be the best in most circumstances, so that text is not intertwined when read back to you. However, experiment to find the best option for the type of documents you like to scan. 1.D. TAB to "Keep Pictures" and press SPACEBAR to check this off if these are not wanted, if it is not already off. On the other hand, if you do decide to keep pictures, for example, for posting with text to the Internet as a HTML file, you will probably want to reduce the picture resolution to under 150 DPI to aid uploading and downloading speeds. 1.E. TABBING further takes you to a "Formats Settings" button which will open several more refined choices for you. So press ENTER on it and TAB through and view what is in there. You can change the size of paper to scan by ARROWING to A4, A3, letter, etc. Keep TABBING in here and check on or off any options you would like, such as keeping page breaks, line breaks, etc. You are probably best leaving these off for straightforward print scanning for reading only. However, it may be best to check off "Retain Colour" before TABBING to "OK" and pressing ENTER, when you will return to your first dialogue box again to continue. 1.F. Continue to TAB in the first dialogue which you will have returned to and leave focus on "Selected Pages". You could also ARROW down to "All Pages" which can be used if you have scanned and want to save more than one page, provided that they have all been recognised before you try to save them. Note that "All Pages" may sometimes be your only available option. 1.G. Finish by TABBING to "OK" and press ENTER. Note: In 1.E. above, the property sheet you are in is only one of seven or eight sheets, the others being automatically used when you choose different saving formats from .doc or .rtf. 1.H. the scan job, after a short launching and loading delay, Will now come straight up in your chosen word-processor or other program for reading, editing, spell-checking or resaving. In this example it will be Microsoft Word if you have it on your computer, otherwise Windows Wordpad. 1.I. As you have not yet given the scanned page a file name, if you want to save it for later viewing, you would now do this in the normal way in Word or Wordpad, i.e. with CONTROL S, type in the desired filename and press ENTER. It will save to My documents or wherever you usually have Word save files. Note 1: The options you choose when you save in the above way will all be remembered and retained by FineReader and used automatically next time you save unless you again change them. So, once you have got your default program to save to and your normal choice of settings to use chosen by going through the above stages, in future to save in this same way, all you need to do for speed is press ALT F then ENTER to get the job saved and opened for you. note 2: In step 1.B. above, if you had elected to "Save to File" instead of Microsoft Word or any of the other formats, you would have been asked for a filename at that stage and much of the below alternative saving method would have applied thereafter. 2.A. Alternatively, save your scan job without having it automatically open in MS Word, MS Excel, etc, with the saving procedure of pressing CONTROL F2 with FineReader 6 and 7 or just F2 with FineReader 5. 2.B. Then type your desired filename into the "Filename" editbox. 2.C. TAB to "Save As Type" and ARROW up and down the choice of saving formats and leave focus on the one you want. 2.D. TAB through and note the other options you have in this dialogue box and, if you are using FineReader 7, you can also press SPACEBAR on a "Open Document After Saving" checkbox to immediately get the scan job opened in for reading in such as Word, Excel, etc, at the same time as saving it. 2.E. TAB to "Save" and press ENTER. The place your scanned document file is likely to save to by default is: c:\My Documents\ However, if it does not and you would like it to save the file in your MS Office "My Documents" folder to make it easy to find and load into MS Word when you give the file a filename, you could do this by typing, for example: c:\my documents\memo1 (Where "memo1" is your filename) before TABBING to the "OK" or "Save" button. In future all files you save will save to the "My Documents" folder until you change this. You will probably also wish to make the "Save As Type" a Word file with the extension .doc in this case. To save to your A: floppy disk drive, in the "File Name" editfield, type such as: A:\memo1 and press ENTER. Alternatively, if you want the file to save elsewhere using the browsing/navigating Windows method of saving, e.g. My Documents, TAB to the "Save In" control just above the filename editfield and use your up and down ARROW keys to select another destination, which can be somewhere else on the C: drive, or on the A: drive, etc. To open up the folders on the C: drive, ARROW to C, press ENTER and then ARROW to the folder you want, press ENTER and keep on ARROWING and pressing ENTER until you get to the place you want to save the file. Then TAB to and press ENTER on "OK" or "Save" to finish. 3.A. Yet another alternative to the above two saving options is not strictly a saving procedure at the FineReader stage but is quick for when you just want to read a scan job without saving it. 3.b. All you do after scan and recognising your pages is press ALT F (for File) and then A (for Send All Pages To). 3.C. Lastly, just ARROW in the list you are in to the program you want to send your scan job to for reading in, e.g. Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, etc, and press ENTER. That other program will launch with your reading material on screen to read. 3.D. After reading your scan job in your chosen program, you can just close that program and discard the text as usual or you can then save it in that other software package using its File, Save or Save As options. 3.E. After closing the other program, you will be returned to FineReader with your scanned document still on screen. 8.5. Adding more Pages After Saving When you close down MS Word or whichever application you saved and launched to, you will be returned to the Finereader program and If you now realise that you have missed out a page you should have scanned to the same job, as long as you have not cleared the screen with ALT F, H or T, you can still add it to the end of the above saved file by Pressing CONTROL D, when the new page will be added to the end of the current scan job document. 8.6. Example of Scan and Read of Multiple Pages with Your Scanner's Interface Driver. This works very similarly to the single page scanning but you would: 1. Press ALT P (for Process) and then M (for Scan and Read Multiple Images". 2. Your scanner interface "Scan" or similar button will appear after a few seconds, so press ENTER to start scanning. 3. You will be brought back onto the "Scan" button for the next page, so put it on the flatbed and press ENTER again. Carry on in this way for all pages. 4. After a possible wait (depending on the speed of your CPU, the amount of RAM in your computer and the quality and type of document you are scanning), You may or may not be able to save straightaway. If you do not automatically return to the FineReader screen but rather are left on your scanner's interface screen, you will have to press ALT TAB to get back to the FineReader screen and be able to view (in mouse mode and by using your screenreader's read Status Line and Title Bar hot keys) just how many pages have so far been read/recognised out of the number you scanned in. Whilst this next tip should not normally be necessary, if, for any reason, all pages have not been recognised automatically or you have just been scanning for images only, you can get them recognised by pressing ALT P (for Process) and then A (for Read All Pages) or use the shortcut of CONTROL SHIFT R. 5. Now either save with the ALT F, Z method or the CONTROL F2 method as outlined earlier in this section, or you could simply get the results of your scan job sent to your preferred application for reading/editing without saving them by pressing ALT F (for File) and then A (for Send All Pages To" and ARROWING to the program you wish to get the pages opened up in and pressing ENTER. If all of the pages you have scanned have not already been read/recognised by FineReader, you will be warned about this and asked if you wish to save just the already recognised pages, so either TAB to and press ENTER on "Yes" or go to "Cancel" and press ENTER to return to the Finereader screen and use ALT P, A or CONTROL SHIFT R to get all pages recognised before trying to save them all as a single file again. Note: After finishing scanning at step 3 above, as already intimated, you may have to ALT TAB to bring focus back to the FineReader window before you can continue. You may have a "Stop" or similar button to activate as well. 8.7. Scanning Single or Multiple Picture or Text Images for Immediate Printing If you do not need to wait for pages to be recognised because you just want to scan and then print out more copies of the same picture or text page(s), you can, in FineReader Version 6 and 7 but not Version 5: 1. Scan for an image only with either CONTROL K (single page) or CONTROL SHIFT K (multiple page). 2. The scanning may start immediately or you may have to press ENTER on the usual "Scan" button. 3. Next just press ALT F (for File) and ARROW up to either "Print Image" (for pictures) or "Print Text" (for text) and press ENTER. 4. You will be taken into the standard type of print dialogue box to select whether to print all pages or just a given page range, elect just to print to a file rather than to your printer and to set up or change your printer settings and properties in "Printer Properties", such as paper size, orientation, type of printer, e.g. tractor fed, manual fed, etc. 5. Lastly, TAB to "OK" or "Print" and press ENTER, when the scanned pages will be printed, provided that your printer is turned on. 8.8. Deleting a Scanned Batch Job To delete a batch with all of its scanned pages and all of its options, user languages and other settings, so that none of it exists any more: 1. With the batch file (the sum of pages you have scanned to a given job and its options and other settings) on screen, press ALT B (for Batch). 2. Then press B (for Delete Batch) or ARROW up to it and press ENTER. 3. The batch is gone and you will be on a blank screen with not even the default batch showing. 4. If you now scan another page (e.g. with CONTROL D), the "Default" batch (or any other batch you may have elected to use as your normal scanning batch in FineReader 7) with its settings and options will be loaded in and used but you can elect to change these settings or even use a different batch or a batch template of special options if you wish (this will be demonstrated in a later section). 8.9. Deleting All of the Pages in a Batch Besides deleting a batch itself, as above, the next most common thing you are likely to want to delete using the FineReader editing screen is the whole contents of the batch, but without deleting its other attributes, such as any special options and parameters you may have assigned to the batch, languages, and so forth. The rest of the sub-sections in this section instruct on how to do other types of deleting but it is advised that, normally, you would be better placed to do any deleting, amending and general editing in such as MS Word, MS Excel, WordPerfect, etc. To delete all of the pages in a batch and therefore just leave the batch itself and its options as a blank wrapper for new scan jobs: 1. With the batch on screen, press CONTROL A to highlight all pages. 2. Press DELETE. 3. Press ENTER on the "OK" button which now appears to ask you to confirm the multipage deletion. 8.10. Deleting the Contents of a Scanned Page To delete the contents of an already scanned page and leave it blank but still in existence, including its text and blocks from a batch scan file such as "default" (which is where FineReader saves all of its scanned pages unless you change this): 1. With the scan job open on screen, ARROW to the page number of which you wish the contents to be removed. 2. Press CONTROL DELETE. 3. You will normally have to confirm this action by pressing ENTER again. This should delete all images in the image window and all text in the text window. 8.11. Deleting Single or Multiple Selected Pages from a Batch Whilst you are not likely to want to do much editing in the FineReader editing screens, you may sometimes want to delete an unwanted page or two and then renumber the remaining pages. Your screenreader should read out the page numbers as you ARROW up and down them, even though it may not be able to read any of the text on screen. With a batch on screen and its several scanned pages, you can delete a single page by ARROWING to its number on screen (they should be spoken as you ARROW down through them) and press the DELETE key. You will be asked to confirm the page deletion and be on an "OK" button to press ENTER on to confirm the deletion. You may have to press CONTROL F4 before you can get access to the list of pages. If you wish to delete several pages, you can use standard Windows procedures of highlighting before deleting them. For example, if you have 10 pages scanned into a batch and you want page 1 to 5 deleting, ARROW to "5" and then press CONTROL SHIFT up ARROW to highlight page 5 and all pages upward and then press DELETE and confirm with ENTER. To delete pages 2, 4 and 6, ARROW to page 2 when it will automatically be highlighted, then hold the CONTROL key down and ARROW to page 4 and press SPACEBAR, followed by ARROWING to page 6 and pressing SPACEBAR again and then release the CONTROL key and press DELETE and ENTER to confirm. 8.12. Renumbering Pages After Some Have Been Deleted If you wish, after deleting one or more pages as above, you can renumber the remaining pages by: 1. Press ALT B (for Batch) and then R (for Renumber Pages). 2. A dialogue box will open and you will be on the page number editfield, so BACKSPACE the number out and type in your page starting number, e.g. if you have deleted pages 1 to 5 in a 10 page document and want pages 6 to 10 to become pages 1 to 5, type 1 in here. 3. TAB once and ARROW down to "All Pages". 4. Lastly, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. ******** >SECTION 9 SCANNING WITH FINEREADER'S OWN INTERFACE SOFTWARE FineReader's own scanning driver can automate several tasks, such as not having to press ENTER on a "Scan" button each time you want to scan another page and being able to scan many pages continuously without having to press ENTER on "Scan" or use an automatic document feeder (ADF). You can also save scanning options/parameters in a batch template file (a *.fbt file) in order to be able to use these same options in future scanning jobs. However, if the comparison between my own scanner's interface software driver (a Microtek) and FineReader's own driver is typical, you may find that the amount of time it takes to scan each page is considerably increased. For instance, it takes around three times longer for my own flatbed scanner to be driven from back to front across the flatbed's mirror with the FineReader driver than it does with the Microtek driver. This may vary depending on the make of flatbed scanner you possess. You will have to experiment to find out which works best for your set-up. For scanning text which is reasonably easy to recognise, you may be better-off using your scanner's driver, but find the extra wait using the FineReader driver worthwhile when scanning text which is more difficult to recognise or requires special batch template options. Be aware, though, that if the flatbed scanner you are using is not a supported make or model, then the FineReader scanning interface may not be available and you will be left with using your flatbed scanners driver only. Moreover, I have also experienced more scanning error messages using this FineReader interface than with my flatbed's interface, so you may find that the latter is preferable for other reasons. If the FineReader interface will not work with your flatbed scanner, or if you do receive error messages or your flatbed scanner starts to run too slowly and will not return to its original running speed, it is likely that you will have to uninstall FineReader and then reinstall it to get things working again correctly. 9.1. Enabling the FineReader Scanning Driver and Setting Options To change from your scanner's interface driver to FineReader's interface: 1. With a batch open on screen, such as the "Default" or "Untitled" batch, press ALT T (for Tools) and then O (for Options) or use the shortcut of CONTROL SHIFT O. 2. If you are not already on it, CONTROL TAB to the "Scan/Open Image" property sheet. 3. TAB once or twice to "Use TWAIN Source Interface" and then ARROW to "Use FineReader Interface" and leave focus there. 4. Now TAB to "Scanner Settings" and press ENTER. 5. Make what configuration changes you might prefer for your scans in here by TABBING through and ARROWING up and down the several selections, e.g.: A. portrait or landscape page orientation (but note that this will not matter if you have kept the FineReader default setting of automatic orientation). B. If you would prefer to work in "Inches" to such as "Millimetres", just ARROW up to that. C. Select the type of paper size you usually scan and would like text saving to or just select a large one, such as A4, but the application can normally set the paper size automatically if necessary. D. In "Brightness" you will be on "Use ABBYY FineReader" or "Automatic", which means that FineReader will itself do its best to automatically adjust to the paper and text brightness to get the best possible scan, but this only works if you are using FineReader's own scanning interface driver. However, despite the fact that, with the FineReader driver being used, FineReader should do the best adjustments itself, from time to time you may find that you can make manual brightness changes which do even better. To do this ARROW down to "Manual" and note that when you now TAB once a new slider adjustment field will be available to you. You should be on 50, which is for 50 per cent (i.e. middle) brightness. ARROWING either left or right will change the brightness setting by 1 per cent at a time. E. In FineReader 5 and 6 (but this does not appear in FineReader 7), TAB again to "Black/White Pictures" and if you are to scan text or pictures which are not in good quality black and white, ARROW down to "Grey" or "colour" as appropriate. The "Grey" option will also scan grey or coloured text or pictures but output them in black and white, whereas the "Colour" option would output them in their original colours. Note that the black and white option should make your flatbed scanner work reasonably quickly, the grey option a little slower (depending on your flatbed make and model) and the colour option is likely to make it run very slowly. In FineReader 7, instead of the aforementioned option, what you get is a "Pause Between Pages" followed by a "Stop Between Pages" pair of on/off options, which are explained below. F. TAB again to "Resolution" and note that the normal resolution for scanning print is 300 DPI (dots per inch). You can ARROW and change this to anything from 200 to 600 DPI. You might want to go to 200 DPI for scanning large or top quality print or to one of the higher resolutions for scanning print smaller than 9 point. Note that the 200 DPI setting is likely to make your flatbed scanner move the quickest and the other settings will progressively slow it down. This resolution list is found earlier in this dialogue in some versions of FineReader. G. The ADF option (if your version of FineReader has one in this dialogue) should only be checked on if you are to use an automatic document feeder rather than putting pages onto your scanner by hand. H. TAB now to "Pause Between Pages" and leave this off, as the FineReader scanning driver allows plenty of time to change pages when continuously scanning. Note, though, that if you press SPACEBAR to check this on, then underneath it opens up an editfield which will display 5 seconds, allowing another 5 second delay between scans. You can BACKSPACE this out and type in any other delay figure you would prefer. I. Leave "Stop Between Pages" off, unless you want to have to press ENTER every time you put a new sheet onto the flatbed. J. If you would like the sub-dialogue you are currently in to appear before each scan job you do, check the Show This Dialogue Before Scanning" checkbox on, so that you can make changes to configuration options before scanning. Once you have experimented and got the best average scan settings for your scanner and the type of text you normally scan, you are likely not to want to be bothered by this extra step every time you start a scan. Leave it off or put it on, depending on your own preferences. K. After all that, TAB again to "OK" and press ENTER to save the settings you have just selected and return to the first dialogue. 6. Keep TABBING through the options in the dialogue box you will fall back into, i.e. the one you started out in before going into the above settings sub-dialogue, if you can remember that that was where you started off! "Invert Image" would normally be left off, as this would, for example, make your black text on a white background change over to white text on a black background. Those who can see to view the scan in the image or text windows might prefer this but screenreaders are unlikely to be able to "see" such text. Having said this, some scanners automatically output white text on a black background and so you may wish to turn this on to reverse this often unwanted phenomenon. 7. TAB to "Despeckle Image" and only check this on if you know or suspect that the paper you are scanning has "dust" like spotting on it which needs removing to get a good scan, e.g. with such as Fax paper or photocopies. Note that if a recognised page is unsatisfactory and you suspect speckling on the page, you can rescan the page to an image (CONTROL K) and then get it despeckled with ALT I (for Image) and then M (for Despeckle Image), as well as several other image scan improvement options in this menu. 8. Now TAB to "Split Duel Pages" and only press SPACEBAR to check this on if you have to scan such as books and you want to have both left and right pages scanned simultaneously, decolumnised and recognised separably and then be given correct page numbers, i.e. the left page being numbered 1, the right 2, and so on. Note, however, that if you have a large book which you have to put onto the flatbed sideways and want to duel page scan, there may only be one way around you can put the book onto the flatbed to ensure that the left pages are scanned before the right pages rather than the right before the left so that they are numbered and displayed correctly, so experiment by scanning a few pages to observe the results before spending your time scanning a whole book. You do not want to scan 500 pages to then find that all of the left-hand pages have been numbered and displayed after the right-hand pages. 9. The next option "Detect Image Orientation During Recognition" should be left on, unless you know that you are putting a document onto the scanner the correct way up. With this checked on, it does not matter what way around you get your paper, it will still scan correctly. 10. The next option will convert any scans to black and white from other colours, if you can see these better or your screenreader can work better with black and white. If you are only using your scanner as a print reading program and no one else wants to see colour, you may as well press SPACEBAR and check this on, as your scans may be quicker like this and the saved result of your scan will take up less space on disk. 11. Just TAB on now past a couple of less important options and: A. With Finereader 5 and 6, press ENTER on "Close" or "OK" and press ENTER to finish. If you are asked to confirm any of your changes at this stage, just press Y (for Yes) to confirm. B. With FineReader 7, you will also have to CONTROL TAB to the "General" property sheet and then SHIFT TAB backwards to the "Save" button and press ENTER to save your new settings to the default "Untitled" file. You may then have a couple of confirmation "OK" or "Yes" buttons to press ENTER on and you will then have to TAB to a Final "OK" button to finish. Note 1: There are several more property sheets in this same multi-page dialogue box and we will look at the others later. Be aware, also, that the options in A to K will not be available if you choose to use the TWAIN interface driver rather than the FineReader one. Note 2: If you only want to change scanning options whilst the FineReader scanning driver is already enabled, you can get into the essential settings to change via the Tools menu by pressing ALT T and then pressing ENTER on "Scanner Settings". Note 3: I have discovered that, with some makes of flatbed scanner and FineReader 7, the above process explained in 12.B. fails to save the FineReader interface driver as your new default driver for future scanning, although it does save the other settings changes. Hopefully, This will not occur in your case but if it does, you will simply have to use the TWAIN driver only or go through the process of selecting the FineReader interface in the Scan/Open Image sheet within the Tools, Options property sheet each time you scan. 9.2. Example of Single Page Scanning. Before scanning with the FineReader interface driver, do a single page and multiple page scan as directed in Section 8, as not all of the possible steps will be repeated below. To scan one page only with the FineReader interface: 1. Launch FineReader and either: A. If you want to add more pages to the last batch scan you did, if you have not disabled the default way FineReader works of launching with your last batch loaded, Just go straight to step 2 below. B. In FineReader 5 and 6, if you would like to start a new batch scan and provide a new batch file name, first press CONTROL N and provide a filename of your own choice in the editfield you fall in, e.g. "gasbill2". The batch should be set up to save in "My Documents" but you can change this if you like. You will then have to re-select the scanner interface driver to use by going to Tools, Options "Scan/Open Image", as described in the last sub-section. C. If you are using Finereader 7, pressing CONTROL N simply opens a new batch (if one is not already open) and this is automatically called "Untitled" until you save it and give it a new name. 2. Press CONTROL D as usual but this time you will not need to press ENTER on a "Scan" or similar button. The scan will start after a short delay. 3. You will remain on a "Stop" button whilst the scanning and recognising is going on, which you can press ENTER on if you want to stop the scan. 4. Your screenreader is unlikely to be able to "see" anything on screen with this method of scanning. However, as viewing and spell-checking is not recommended in this not very screenreader- or keyboard-friendly environment, this is of little consequence. Just save your file and get it opened immediately in your preferred word-processor or save it to disk for later viewing, editing, spell-checking, etc. 5. To open and read your scanned page immediately press CONTROL F2 (or F2 with FineReader 5). If your "gasbill2" filename is already inserted in the filename editfield just carry on as below; if any other unwanted filename is in here, BACKSPACE the existing filename out and then give the file a name of your own choosing. 6. TAB to "Save as Type" and ARROW to your preferred format, such as MS Word, XLS, PDF, etc. Remember, of course, you will only get the file opened up for reading immediately if you have the word- processor, text editor, Acrobat PDF reader, etc, available on your computer already. 7. In the rest of this dialogue box, TAB through the various options you could change, e.g: A. TAB to "Selected Pages" and then ARROW to "All Pages". B. TAB to "Create a Single File for All Pages" and you will probably want to leave it on this selection but you could ARROW to one of the other three saving options if you like, e.g. "Create a Separate File for Each Page" to have a different filename allotted to each page scanned. C. TAB to "Retain Full Page Layout" and keep this if you want the text you view to be as close as FineReader can keep it to the original. However, if you would like things simplifying, decolumnising, etc, for reading with a screenreader, you might be best ARROWING to "Remove All Formatting". D. TAB to "Keep Pictures" and press SPACEBAR to turn this off if you do not want pictures to appear in your file. E. TAB to "Formats Settings" and press ENTER on this if you want to make any formatting changes, such as paper size, keeping page breaks, etc, (as described in 1.E. of "Saving Your Scanned Document" above). If pressing ENTER on this button does not open the sub-dialogue box, try the shortcut accelerator of ALT M. F. Now TAB to "Open Document After Saving" and press SPACEBAR to turn this on if you would like to immediately read the text you have just scanned; otherwise, leave it off so that the file will just save and not be opened for viewing straight away. G. TAB to "Save In" and you are likely to be in "My Documents", so leave it there if this is OK for you or ARROW up and down to the folder and sub-folder you would like this and future saved scanned files to go to. H. TAB on to "Save" and press ENTER to finish. Note: All of the configuration selections you made in A to H above will be remembered by FineReader and used next time you scan using this same batch file options file, unless you change any of them, so in future you could just TAB to "Save" and press ENTER after providing a filename for the file. 8. The file will save and you should get a message such as "Saving to file. Processing page 1 (or whatever page number it is)" and then you will have your document saved to disk plus a copy of it in front of you in MS Word, Wordpad, etc, for reading and editing. 9. After reading the text, either just close Word down without further saving or save any amendments to the same filename "gasbill2" which you originally used or provide another filename so that you will now have two files, your original "gasbil2.doc" file and the amended one called whatever you like. Note: If you know or suspect that the document you are scanning has inverse video text on it, i.e. inverted text such as white text on a black background, you will improve the accuracy of the recognition if you enable the "Invert Image" option in the "Image" menu before you start scanning. 9.3. Example of Multiple Page Scanning To continuously scan many pages with the FineReader driver: 1. Launch FineReader and either: A. If you want to add more pages to the last batch scan you did, if you have not disabled the default way FineReader works of launching with your last batch loaded, Just go straight to step 2 below. B. With FineReader 5 or 6, if you would like to start a new batch scan and provide a new batch file name, first press CONTROL N and provide a filename of your own choice in the editfield you fall in, e.g. "gasbill2". The batch should be set up to save in "My Documents" but you can change this if you like. You will then have to re-select the scanner interface driver to use by going to Tools, Options "Scan/Open Image", as described in the last sub-section. C. With FineReader 7, pressing CONTROL N simply opens a new batch (if one is not already open) and this is automatically called "Untitled" until you save it and give it a different filename. 2. With the FineReader interface driver being used, press ALT P (for Process) and then M (for Scan/Read Multiple Images). Note that if you want to make any further settings adjustments before starting the scan, you can quickly open the "Formats Settings" sub-dialogue box to make such changes in first with the shortcut of CONTROL SHIFT X. 3. The scanning will continue without you having to press ENTER on a "Scan" button. 4. After each page is scanned and before the next page starts to be scanned, you will be on a "Stop" button (which your screenreader may not announce), so to stop the scanning just press ENTER or ALT S. 5. If you have stopped scanning for any reason and now wish to recommence multiple page scanning, just press ALT P, M, again. 6. Deal with the rest of the process exactly the same as with "Example of Single Page Scanning" in this section above from step 5 onwards. ******** >SECTION 10 QUICK SCANNING OF MULTIPLE PAGES FOR LATER RECOGNITION 10.1. Example of Deferred Recognition Scanning In contrast to scanning and getting what you scan recognised simultaneously, as exemplified in sections 8 and 9, you can elect to scan for images only (a snap shot or picture of the page) and then get FineReader to read (i.e. recognise and convert to text) the images later to produce the actual tangible text. With most fast computers with plenty of RAM (memory) this is probably not necessary, because they will recognise the text quickly enough. However, with slower PCs, you may find that image scanning and then leaving the PC to convert the images to text later is preferable, whilst you go to lunch, do another task or go to bed. Hundreds of pages could take several hours to recognise on slower computers. You would do this by: 1. With your book or other multiple paged document on the flatbed, Press CONTROL SHIFT K to commence the multiple page scanning. 2. In the normal way, scan the images of as many pages as you require and then stop the scanning by pressing CONTROL T or ALT F and then P, when the FineReader window has focus--you may have to ALT TAB to this. 3. Now that you have all pages quickly image scanned, you can start the recognition process by pressing CONTROL SHIFT R or CONTROL R. The recognition can take much longer than the image scanning, depending on the speed of your computer, the amount of memory it has and the quality of the text you are scanning. 4. You can now leave the computer to get on with the recognition whilst you do something else. 5. When the reading/recognition is complete, either send the file to your preferred word-processor for examining and/or save it to disk with a filename, as explained in Section 8 above. Note: At step 2 above, if you did not want to get the scanned pages recognised immediately, you could simply save the images to a filename and keep them for later recognition. Do this with the File, "Save Image AS" option or use the shortcut of F12. You just open such an image again with CONTROL O and provide the path and filename, then do the reading/recognition on it. ******** >SECTION 11 USING THE FineReader SCAN AND READ WIZARD The Scan and Read Wizard takes you step-by-step through the OCR process, letting you make choices about the type of page you are scanning as you go. These settings will then be retained to be used on future Scan and Read Wizard or other scans until you change them, e.g. if you later scan in normal scan and read mode, the settings will still apply. However, you must be aware that the steps the Scan and Read Wizard takes you through are only the main seven OCR steps and that there are many more which you can use if you opt for other methods of scanning. Once you have become accustomed to making changes to the basic seven steps, I would recommend that you change your scanning method to automatic multiple page scanning (as outlined in Section 9), because this is more flexible, quicker and easier to get started. The Scan and Read Wizard may seem, initially, to be an easy way to do things but, for most visually impaired users, will eventually prove to be a slower and more clumsy method of scanning. This is why I have left it to this later section before introducing it. 11.1. Enabling the Scan and Read Wizard I suggested in Section 6 that you turn the Scan and Read Wizard off. This was because it cannot be used if you wish to scan using your flatbed's own interface driver and because even with the FineReader scanning interface you will still find other methods of starting a scan to be quicker and more convenient after you get to know what you are doing and have changed the scanning defaults to those which suit you. Nonetheless, for those who might like to use it, with either your flatbed's interface driver or the FineReader interface enabled, what you would do is either: 1. If you have turned off the Welcome screen, which holds a Scan and Read Wizard button, turn it back on with ALT T (for Tools) and O (for Options). Then, in the "General" property sheet, TAB to "Show Welcome Dialogue at Start Up" and ensure that it is checked on; or 2. If you would prefer to keep the Welcome screen turned off, you can just start the Wizard up with the shortcut key combination of CONTROL W. Now, after pressing ENTER on the Welcome screen "Scan and Read Wizard" button or pressing CONTROL W, you would continue as follows. 11.2. Example of Scanning with the Scan and Read Wizard--The Seven Scan and Read Wizard Steps. 1. Step 1--You will be asked where you want to scan from, namely from your flatbed scanner or from a file. ARROW to the option you want if you are not already on it, i.e. "From Scanner" if you want to scan from paper documents or "From File" if you already have a scanned image on file which you now want to get recognised. You can then just press ENTER to move to the next step or TAB to "Next" and press ENTER, its all the same. 2. Step 2--You are now asked to put your document on to the flatbed and told the parameters or options which will be used for the scan if you do not change them in the next step, e.g. the resolution to be used, the brightness level, black and white or colour scanning, etc. Your screen reader may simply read these parameters out to you or you may have to view them in mouse mode but this is not important, as this is only an information step and the next step will allow you to tab through these and change any of them, so just press ENTER on "Next". 3. Step 3--If you are using the FineReader interface, the scanning settings which now appear consist of a number of options group boxes which you can ARROW up and down in to change how the scan will be done if the settings are not as you would like them. So, firstly, you are in the "Image Orientation" list on "Portrait" and the other option below it is "Landscape". As the default way FineReader does things is to work out the orientation itself, you can just TAB past this. You now ARROW up or down to get things measured in millimetres, inches or centimetres and can make changes in the other lists of options such as "Paper Size", "Brightness", "Pictures", and "Resolution" as required. Note that these are the same options which we have been dealing with in earlier settings and options selecting. When finished here, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER, when the scanning will start and the image of the document will be obtained. If you are using your flatbed's interface driver, the above options and selection choices will not appear and you will just come onto the usual "Scan" button to press ENTER on to start the scanning. 4. Step 4--Having obtained the image, the next step is to get it recognised into the language the document is written in. You may only have one language available, e.g. English, but if you have installed more, they will be available at this stage. Now TAB to the "Next" or it may be an "OK" button and press ENTER, depending on whether or not you have changed anything in here. The text will now be read (recognised). 5. Step 5--Now the spell-checking options are offered but, as it is best to spell-check in another program, just press ENTER immediately and then ARROW down to "NO" and press ENTER to skip this stage. 6. Step 6--You now have to choose the saving mode you would like and can ARROW up and down the list you are in. Your options in FineReader 6 are: File, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Send by E-Mail, Copy to Clipboard and Web Browser, plus Microsoft Powerpoint if you are using FineReader 7. So ARROW to the one you want and press ENTER. 7. Step 7--The last step requires you to provide a filename for your scan job, if you have elected to Save to File. Overwrite the default filename with one of your own choice and select the format you wish to save in. If, on the other hand, you are saving to such as Microsoft Word, Excel, etc, the application you are saving to will open with your scan job on screen. 8. After saving your scan to a filename or sending your scan job to such as MS Word, when you return to FineReader, you will be on a "Load Next Page" radio button, so press ENTER on this to start the same step by step process again for the next page, etc, or ARROW down once and press ENTER to stop scanning and exit the Scan and Read Wizard. You will, of course, recognise all of these settings, parameters, options and saving formats as having been examined in earlier sections. If you do not mind going through this process every time you scan (and once you have set the options they will hold for further scans), then work this way. You will just have to press ENTER at each stage up to the saving step in future, if you do not need to change options regularly again. However, I believe that, for most people, scanning without using the Wizard will prove quicker in the long run. Note: Depending on whether or not you make changes in any of the options, you may get an "OK" button rather than or as well as a "Next" button and you may find that other options open up after changing the defaults, e.g. if you elect to manually control brightness, a left and right ARROW slider will open up below the "Brightness" radio button list. ******** >SECTION 12 CREATING YOUR OWN BATCH SCANNING OPTIONS 12.1. Batch Scanning Options FineReader does all of its scanning jobs using what are called "Batches". A batch is a kind of wrapper or file which holds all of the scanning instructions to do the current scan in a given way, plus the pages already scanned or about to be scanned into that batch. The normal batch which FineReader uses is called "Default" (in FineReader 5 and 6) or "Untitled" (in FineReader 7)and this name appears in the Title Bar when you launch FineReader for the very first time. The Default batch file holds all of the instructions which we have so far been looking at in the above sections and occasionally changing. You customise your own scanning options by: With FineReader 5 and 6 1. Press CONTROL N (for New Batch). 2. In the editfield you come into type the batch name you would like it to be known as, e.g. "Gasbill", and press ENTER. 3. Press ENTER to save the batch under your filename. 4. Note that on the Title Bar the filename will no longer be "Default" or "Untitled" but will now be "Gasbill" or whatever you called it. 5. With the new batch wrapper now open, make any options changes you like in any of the Tools, Options property sheets (Shortcut to get there is CONTROL SHIFT O) but, of course, most of these are likely to be done in the "Scan/Open Image", "Recognise" and "Formatting" sheets. 6. After making the changes in the above property sheets, TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to save your changes to the Gasbill batch file. 7. You can now scan pages in any of the normal ways into this new batch file with its special parameters and options. 8. After you finish scanning you can either: A. clear the screen and close the batch as normal with ALT F, H, which will mean that when you next scan a page the default batch will be used; or B. Just exit the program as usual and when you next launch it to scan you will be automatically using the batch which you were last using with its already scanned pages and options, if you have not disabled the "Open the Last Batch at Start Up" option in the Tools, Options, General property sheet. Otherwise, you will be using the default batch or you will have to open the alternative batch you want with its already scanned pages by pressing CONTROL N and providing its filename. With Finereader 7 The CONTROL N shortcut does not work the same in FineReader 7 as in Versions 5 and 6. Pressing CONTROL N simply loads in the default "Untitled" batch if it is not already open. To create a new batch in FineReader 7: 1. If you have not already got the "Untitled" default batch open, press CONTROL N to open it. 2. With the new batch wrapper now open, make any options changes you like in any of the Tools, Options property sheets (Shortcut to get there is CONTROL SHIFT O) but, of course, most of these are likely to be done in the "Scan/Open Image", "Recognise" and "Formatting" sheets and TAB to and press ENTER on one of the "OK" buttons. 3. After making the changes in the above property sheets, press ALT F (for File) and then V (for Save Batch As" and give this new batch a filename, e.g. "Gasbill", and press ENTER to save your changes to the Gasbill batch file. 4. Note that on the Title Bar the filename will no longer be "Untitled" but will now be "Gasbill" or whatever you called it. 5. You can now scan pages in any of the normal ways into this new batch file with its special parameters and options. 6. After you finish scanning you can either: A. clear the screen and close the batch as normal with ALT F, T, which will mean that when you next scan a page the default "Untitled" batch will be used; or B. Just exit the program as usual and when you next launch it to scan you will be automatically using the batch which you were last using with its already scanned pages and options, if you have not disabled the "Open the Last Batch at Start Up" option in the Tools, Options, General property sheet. Note 1: FineReader, depending on the version you have, normally saves its batches to one of two places. For example, either: C:\Program Files\ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Pro\Batches\ or C:\My documents\ Note 2: By default, FineReader launches with the last batch file you used being loaded and any further scanning you do will add to that file. This is fine if you are to continue a scanning job from the day before but if you do not want this, you can ensure that it does not happen by going into Tools, Options and pressing SPACEBAR to turn off the "Open the Last Batch at Start Up" checkbox in the "General" sheet. 12.2. Viewing batch Properties You can view the Main properties of a batch with it open and on the FineReader screen by: 1. Press ALT V (for View) and then R (for Properties). 2. Now you can TAB through many of the properties, such as the saving path for batch files, the size of pages, the type of file format, etc, in the four property sheets in here. However, your screenreader may not be able to read everything in all of these sheets without you going into mouse mode first. ******** >SECTION 13 CREATING YOUR OWN BATCH SCANNING TEMPLATES In Section 12 we looked at creating your own batch scanning options, i.e. the sum of pages scanned and all of the special option settings you had applied to that one batch job. However, if you want to scan a particular document you regularly receive in a given way, you may wish to create your own "batch template" of options to load in and quickly allow you to do the scan on that particular regularly received document optimally. This will mean that you will not have to change the default batch options time and time again if you frequently do certain types of scans with special option choices different from your default scanning options. For example, if the default batch options are not adequate for scanning a particular weekly social club typed newsletter you like to scan and read, you can create your own batch for that newsletter and give it a name like "club" and load it in every time you want to scan that specific document. For this "club" batch template (in the Tools, Options, "Scan/Open Image" and "Recognise property sheets") you might have selected scanning options such as "Grey", "Despeckle" and "Typewriter" if the newsletter is created on a typewriter, has then been photocopied, stencilled, or Faxed to you, has not very good quality print on it and usually suffers from bittiness and specks on the paper. When you save your batch template it is automatically given a ".FBT" extension. You create a batch template by: 1. With your default "Default" or "Untitled" batch options (or any other batch settings you prefer to start from loaded) as your starting point, enter the Tools, Options dialogue box with ALT T, O, or use the shortcut of CONTROL SHIFT O. 2. CONTROL TAB through the several property sheets and TAB down the options changing any of them as you go to suit the current social club newsletter scan job. Remember that there are seven or eight sheets in the Formats Settings" button on the "formats" property sheet, not just the settings for Word and RTF. 3. Lastly, CONTROL TAB to the "General" sheet and after making any changes to suit in their, TAB to the "Save" button and press ENTER. 4. In the filename editfield you are now in, type in the name such as "club" which you want the template settings and options to be saved under and press ENTER followed by ENTER on the "OK" button. All of the options you have set will now be saved to this "club" batch template and it will have been given a ".FBT" extension. 5. The next time you want to scan your social club newsletter, you just retrieve your specific options by loading the "club.fbt" file by pressing CONTROL SHIFT O (you may have to press CONTROL N first) and then TABBING to the "Load" button on the "General" property sheet and pressing ENTER. You then either type the filename of "club" (no need to type the extension in) and press ENTER to load it or SHIFT TAB backwards once and then navigate through the folder structure to it in the "Look In" list and press ENTER on it. 6. Finally, TAB to "Close" and press ENTER to finish the loading and close the dialogue. 7. The template options will now be loaded but your filename in the Title Bar will not change, as you have not loaded a new batch, rather you have just loaded a set of new options for scanning under your current batch name. Your specific "club" template options will be loaded in for optimal scanning of your not very well produced social club newsletter. 8. Now just start scanning in your preferred way and save or open the results as normal. Note 1: In FineReader 6, batch templates are normally saved in a folder just underneath the ordinary batch folder mentioned above, i.e. they are at: C:\Program Files\ABBYY FineReader 6.0 Pro\Batch Templates\ In FineReader 7, they are normally stored in: c:\My documents\ Note 2: Just under the "Save" and "Load" buttons in the Tools, Options, General property sheet there is a "Default" button. If You press ENTER on this, you will return things to their default (standard) options state, including changing the FineReader interface driver for the TWAIN driver. This will be the way you have things set up for the default batch, including any modifications you may have made to it. ******** >SECTION 14 OPENING A BATCH USING WINDOWS EXPLORER If you find it to be preferable, you can open a batch with its scanned pages and get FineReader launched simultaneously via Windows Explorer. This only works in FineReader Version 6.0 but not in other versions I have tested. You do this by: 1. Load Windows Explorer as normal, i.e. with Windows Logo key E. 2. Navigate to the batch file as usual and when it has focus press ENTER or SHIFT F10 or your screenreader's simulate right click button, e.g. Numpad minus, to open a Context Menu. Depending on the version of FineReader you are using, the batch folder by default is at: C:\Program Files\ABBYY Finereader 6.0 Pro\batch\ or C:\My Documents\ or C:\Windows\Temp\ Although, if you have saved a batch file somewhere else, this will still work if you go to that saving place as well. 3. ARROW to "Open with FineReader" and press ENTER. FineReader will launch with your chosen batch loaded. Note: This will also work with a saved (unrecognised) scan image which has an extension supported by FineReader. ******** >SECTION 15 OVERVIEW OF PATTERN EDITING AND MANUAL SCANNING In manual mode you take FineReader through the various stages of OCR yourself so that you have access to methods of fine-tuning the results. For example, if an automatic scan and read operation (which automatically images, recognises and then analyses the page) has not produced satisfactory results, in theory, if you could see enough, you could draw your own block lines around areas of text, pictures and tables and get FineReader to re- recognise some of these, to change there orientation, to re- analyse them, etc using such features as the various "Analyse . . . " options in the Process menu, the "Pattern Editor" in the Tools menu and the "Block Type" and other options in the Image menu. However, for most visually impaired people this may not offer much additional flexibility, as such features as pattern editing and block drawing require good sight to perfect. You have to be able to see which word on a page FineReader has made a hash of to be able to instruct it as to what the word should have been and you have to be able to draw lines around areas of text, pictures and tables on the screen to be able to advise FineReader where you want blocks to apply. For this reason, I have not gone into this method of scanning in this manual. The above three alternative methods of scanning are all easier, faster and more convenient than manually orienting, analysing, etc. It is no coincidence that specialist scanning programs for visually impaired people do not offer pattern editing or block drawing as part of their repertoire of features. ******** >SECTION 16 SCAN TO E-MAIL You can output the product of your scans directly to common e- mail programs, such as Outlook Express, CC Mail, etc. Your e-mail program will open up and you can complete the normal fields, e.g. "To:", "CC:", "Subject", etc, and the scan job will automatically be appended to the e-mail message as a standard attachment. 16.1. Example of Scanning to mail With your scanner having been switched on before your computer, scan to e-mail by: 1. Scan a document as normal. 2. Press ALT F (for File) and then Z (for Save Wizard). 3. ARROW down the list of save and send formats you are now in to "Send by Email" and leave focus on this. 4. TAB through all of the other save options as discussed in Section 8 above and make your choices, then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 5.A. With versions of FineReader before version 7, your e-mail program will immediately load, e.g. Outlook Express. or 5.B. With Finereader 7, you will have two more steps to go through first: the first to ARROW up and down a list of sending formats for your attachment, including Word, RTF, etc, before going to the "OK" button; and the second to accept the profile to use, before activating another "OK" button. 6. You will now come into the "To:" editfield to enter the e-mail address you want to send the scanned document to, so type it in. Then TAB to "Subject:" delete what has been put in their and complete this as normal, then TAB to the message field and type your covering note to whoever you are sending the scanned document to. 6. The scanned document will have been attached to the e-mail message as a standard attachment with a filename such as "recognized.doc". Depending on the version of FineReader you are using, a copy of the message may also have been copied to the body of your message, so if you do not want duplicates to be transmitted, just delete one of them. 7. Give the usual command to your mail program as you would to send a standard e-mail message, e.g. ALT S, then CONTROL M and ENTER with MS Outlook Express, and the cover message and attached scanned document will be sent via your modem after you have been taken on line. If you are not taken online immediately, you will later have to open your e-mail client and send your message from within that program. 8. After the message has gone, you will be returned to FineReader with the scanned text still on screen, so either press ALT F, H or ALT F, T to clear it and do more scanning or press ALT F4 to exit FineReader. Note: This send to e-mail feature works much easier and more straightforwardly in FineReader 5 and 6 than it does in FineReader 7. If you have any difficulties using it, you may be better advised to simply save your scanned documents in the normal way, in the format you desire, then close Finereader and open your e-mail client and attach the saved file in the usual way and send it independently of Finereader. Warning: If your e-mailed scan contains any form of graphics or pictures, it may become a sizeable file to transfer and could take mu