USING OMNIPAGE 14 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. Note that many word- processors then allow you to leave the find/search dialogue box and then to press the F3 key or the ALT CONTROL Y key combination to find second and subsequent instances of the same string you just searched for. Additionally, all main sections are separated by a centred row of eight asterisks.) Foreword Restrictions Available Tutorial Formats OmniPage Versions Conventions Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial Section 1: Introduction 1.1. What is Optical Character Recognition? 1.2. Stages of OCR Section 2: Before Installing OmniPage 2.1. System Requirements 2.2. Interface Software 2.3. Installing New Scanner Interface Software with OmniPage 14 Section 3: Types of Flatbed Scanners and Scanner Maintenance 3.1. Main Scanner Standards 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. Scanner Maintenance and Scanning Accuracy Optimisation Section 4: Installing OmniPage Pro 14 Section 5: OmniPage Pro 14 Capabilities 5.1. Input and Output Formats 5.2. Scannable Page Types 5.3. Scanners Supported 5.4. Specialist User Dictionaries 5.5. Automatic Document Feeders (ADF) 5.6. Document Colour Scanning Capabilities 5.7. Type Face and Size 5.8. Scanning Resolution 5.9. Print Input Languages Supported 5.10. OmniPage's Own Supported Speech Output Languages 5.11. Scan to E-Mail 5.12. Scanning Your Signature 5.13. Two Page Book Scanning 5.14. Converting your scanned text to Audio Wave Format 5.15. The OmniPage 14 Document Manager Section 6: Customising OmniPage for Visually Impaired People 6.1. General and specific Customisation 6.2. Placing a Shortcut on Your Desktop from which to Launch OmniPage Section 7: Using Automatic Scanning Mode 7.1. Pen-Picture of the OmniPage 14 Screen 7.2. Scanning in Automatic Mode 7.3. Example of scanning of Single Pages using Automatic Settings 7.4. Spell-Checking with the OmniPage Proofreader 7.4.1. Full Spell-Checking Environment 7.4.2. Quick Spell-Checking with the Context Menu 7.5. Saving and Exporting Your Scanned document 7.5.1. Exporting Your Scan Job to Multiple Formats 7.5.2. Saving Your Scan Job to OmniPage's Own Native OPD formats 7.5.3. Saving to an Audio Wave Format so that you can listen to the results of your Scans with Your Favourite Audio Player 7.6. Adding More Pages After Saving 7.7. Example of Automatic Scanning of Multiple Pages 7.8. Enabling the Automatic Setting 7.9. Multiple Page Continuous Scanning 7.10. Two Page Scanning of Books 7.11. Moving Around the OmniPage Text Editing and viewing Pane 7.12. Automatic Character Training Using the OmniPage 14 Intellitrain Feature Section 8: Using Direct OCR to Read Print from Within Another Running Program 8.1. Registering Your Word-Processor or Text Editor with Direct OCR 8.2. Example of how to Scan Documents with Direct OCR 8.3. Changing Direct OCR Settings to Suit Your Needs Section 9: Using the OmniPage 14 Workflow Assistant to Create Automatic Workflow Files 9.1. Setting up a Workflow Routine with the Workflow Assistant 9.2. Example of Scanning with the Workflow Assistant and Saving Your Workflows for Use on Future Scan Jobs 9.3. Accessing the Workflow Assistant 9.4. The Workflow Assistant Steps 9.5. Loading and Scanning with a Workflow 9.5.1. Loading a Specific Workflow 9.5.2. Scanning with your Specified Workflow file Section 10: Using the OmniPage Batch Manager to Create Automatic Batch Job Files 10.1. Example of Creating and Running a Batch Job File to Perform Page Image Recognition at a Later Date or Time--Scheduling Section 11: Scanning in Manual Mode 11.1.Overview of Full Manual Scanning 11.2. Semi-Manual Scanning Section 12: Scan to E-Mail 12.1. Example of Scanning to Mail Section 13: OmniPage Help 13.1. Types of Help 13.1.1. Help topics 13.1.2. Dialogue Help 13.1.3. Index Help 13.1.4. Website Help 13.1.5. Other Help Resources Section 14: Working with Adobe PDF Files in OmniPage Pro 14 14.1. Saving a Scan Job to PDF Format 14.2. Loading PDF Files into OmniPage 14 to get them Converted to More Accessible formats Section 15: Using OmniPage Pro 14s Own Supported Synthesised Speech Output 15.1. Turning Speech Output On and Off 15.2. Moving through a document with Speech in Small Chunks Using the Keyboard 15.3. Adjusting Speech volume, Speed and Switching Between Different Voices Appendix 1: List of OmniPage Pro Keyboard Shortcut Commands Appendix 2: OmniPage Technical Support Appendix 3: Registering OmniPage Appendix 4: Speeding Up Older Hewlett Packard Scanners Appendix 5: 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 users of screen magnification systems and Braille displays should still be able to benefit from this tutorial. The guide assumes that the user is reasonably familiar with both the operation of Windows and their own screenreader. Whilst OmniPage is a fully functional electronic scanning and editing system (and VI persons can use it as such), the emphasis in this manual will be on capturing and recognising text from paper documents placed on a flatbed scanner in order to be able to read the printed word and will include adjusting parameters, scanning in several OmniPage modes, saving scanned text files to different formats, and so forth. ******** 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. ******** OmniPage Versions This tutorial has been written for OmniPage Pro 14, which is the fully-featured, stand-alone purchasable version of the software. It may not be suitable for all versions supplied "free" with scanners which are referred to as "Limited" editions and will not work the same with earlier versions of OmniPage. Scansoft also supply what they call an Office version of OmniPage 14 but this is not what I have written about here, although you can use this tutorial to learn how to use the essentials of both the Pro and Office versions. You will only miss out on a very small amount in the Office version, mostly to do with sharing files and workflows with colleagues over a network and being able to upload and download scanned documents to FTP and other types of file sharing sites. You can also give some basic OmniPage commands verbally using a microphone with the Office version. You may be able to buy OmniPage Pro 14 from some high street computer retailers but purchasing it directly from the manufacturer may save you a few pounds (See Appendix 2 for details of how to contact Scansoft (who have recentlychanged their name to Nuance) who sell OmniPage). Before you buy, phone Scansoft about their price and some of your local software vendors, such as PC World, Dixon's and possibly some mail order suppliers, such as Dabs.com, Jungle.com and Amazon.com, as they may have special offers available. You may also be able to download OmniPage from the Scansoft Website at www.scansoft.com and pay for it by credit card, if you wish. Scansoft's returns policy is that if you are not happy with their products, you can return them and ask for a refund within 30 days. They have also told me that if they bring out a newer version of the software you have bought within 30 days of you purchasing it, they will give you a replacement copy if you ask them for one. Note that a UK company called Serif frequently sell OCR and other software at a much better price than any other vendor I have found and it will be worth contacting them before buying OmniPage from any other source. They are on 0800 3765353 or 0845 3456770 and in July 2005 they were selling OmniPage Pro 14 for only œ29.95 (including P&P) and Omnipage Pro 12 for only œ9.95. You may find that they quote you different prices, depending on which of the foregoing two phone numbers you use. If you cannot obtain a reasonably priced version of OmniPage at the time you are wanting to purchase it, I would recommend that you circumvent the need to pay over œ400 (which is sometimes charged by Scansoft themselves) for a full copy from Scansoft by buying a scanner which has an older or limited version of OmniPage bundled with it, e.g. a Canon Lide 30 (which, in December 2002, comes with a version of OmniPage 11), register the limited version, then if you want to upgrade it later, you can get the fully-featured, up-to-date software by only paying the upgrade price. You are not likely, however, to get a version of OmniPage with the very cheap scanners and are likely to have to buy something in the œ80 to œ200 range to have it supplied with the scanner. In this case, you will be likely to be getting a faster and better scanner for your money as well, although this is not always so, so do your homework before buying. The now obsolete Hewlett Packard HP5200C scanner is bundled with a limited version of OmniPage 8. Check before buying either a new or second-hand scanner and find out if there are any other scanners which come with OmniPage software in with the price. HP scanners rom the HP 5300C onwards are being supplied with Hewlett Packard's own new OCR software called the HP Scanjet. I have also been told that it is sometimes possible to obtain the latest version of OmniPage at the upgrade price rather than the full price if you are changing from a competitor's OCR to the Scansoft offering but this policy may not always apply and may vary from country to country. If you are wondering what happened to OmniPage Pro 13, Scansoft did not release one under that name. In reality, OmniPage 14 should be called OmniPage 13 but I suppose that the Scansoft company must be a superstitious lot! I have also written other manuals in respect of other leading scanning software programs, for instance, for TextBridge Pro 9, TextBridge Millennium, Expervision's Typereader Pro 6.0, ReadIris 6.0 and Abbyy FineReader Pro 5, 6 and 7. ******** 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), O (for Perform OCR" and press ENTER on "Start" is suggested to go into the "Process" menu and then the "Perform OCR" sub-menu and run the "Start" option, the user may follow this method of operation or may prefer to ARROW up and down menus and press ENTER on the various menu and sub-menu options. In this latter example, the keystrokes would be: press the ALT key, right ARROW to the "Process" menu heading, then ARROW down (or up) until the "Perform OCR" item is spoken, then press ENTER, followed by ARROWING to "Start" and pressing ENTER again. If you find that any of the general Windows and OmniPage shortcuts clash with your screenreader's hot keys, remember that most screenreaders feature a bypass hot key to let you skip the screenreader's hot key and therefore allow the omniPage shortcut through, e.g. INSERT B in Window-Eyes, INSERT 3 in JAWS and CONTROL Numpad 7 in HAL. Otherwise you will have to use the menu structure to get things done. ******** Suggested Approaches for Effective Learning with this Tutorial It is, of course, entirely up to the individual as to how they glean information from 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 with a Braille embosser in your area and you are a Braillist. ******** >SECTION 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1. What is Optical Character Recognition? OCR (optical character recognition) is computer software which allows you to scan and reproduce pictures and printed documents as image files, which can then be converted to text so they can be read with a screenreader and synthesiser and edited within OmniPage 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 screenreader can read it intelligibly without it being interwoven). You can scan and recognise the print on ordinary letters, circulars, newspapers, FAX documents, photocopies, print books, etc, and you can also import images from hand-held and flatbed scanners and from FAX modems and get OmniPage to recognise them and convert them to text readable by your screenreader. OmniPage 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 the same way as a sighted person in an office would use it. With OmniPage 14, you can even get scanned and recognised print text saved to an audio wave file and listen to it as speech in OmniPage itself or in any other audio player on your computer or on an MP3 player if you firstly convert the wave file to MP3 format. 1.2. Stages of OCR The main stages OmniPage goes through (whether done automatically or manually) are: 1. Obtaining an image of the print or picture on a paper page or from a FAX MODEM or digital camera. This is the "imaging" step. 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 "zones". This is the "Zoning" step. 3. The textual images within the zones is then recognised and converted to text. This is the "Recognising" or "Perform OCR" process, where the layout, paragraphing and font type of the original document can be retained or discarded. 4. Checking the accuracy of the recognised text and making any necessary corrections. This is the "Proofreading" stage but it may be easier for visually impaired users to turn this off and do any proofreading in their favourite word-processor. 5. The last step is the "Save As" or "Export" stage where you save your work, which can be done in several different formats, such as Word, WordPerfect, text, PDF, Excel, etc. You can save pictures as well or have these omitted. ******** >SECTION 2 BEFORE INSTALLING OmniPage 2.1. System Requirements The minimum system requirements for OmniPage 14 to work are: 1. A Pentium 3 or equivalent computer. 2. 128 Mb of RAM (memory). 3. Windows 98(SE) Windows Me, Windows NT (with service Pack 6), Windows 2000 (with Service Pack 2), Windows XP or Windows Server 2003. 4. For an installation with only one language, between 250 and 300 Mb of hard disk space. For an installation with all nine available languages, between 550 and 600 Mb of disk space. 5. A TWAIN or WIA compatible SCSI, parallel port or USB scanner attached to your PC (see "Types of Scanners and Scanner Maintenance" in Section 3 below). 6. Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01 with at least Service Pack 2. 7. A sound card if you wish to get text read out to you verbally. 8. A microphone for voice document proofing and workflow launching but this is only available if you have the Office version of OmniPage Pro 14, not with the standard version. 2.2. Interface Software OmniPage 14 makes use of your scanner's interface driver, as OmniPage no longer comes with its own scanner interface. This should not, however, limit or result in poorer performance, as it does come with a scanner wizard set-up and configuration utility to get your scanner and its driver recognised and optimised. This Scansoft scanner set-up wizard is found in the "Scanner" property sheet of the Tools, Options menu item by pressing ENTER on the "Setup" button. 2.3. Installing New Scanner Interface Software with OmniPage 14 To install new scanner or digital camera interface software with OmniPage 14 or get your current scanner's scanning driver recognised if it is not already set up: 1. Install your flatbed scanner's interface driver as instructed in its installation instructions and test it to ensure that it is working independently of OmniPage. 2. Launch Omnipage 14 and then press T (for Tools) and then O (for Options). 3. CONTROL TAB to the "Scanner" property sheet and then TAB to the "Setup" button and press ENTER. 4. The Scansoft scanner wizard will run and find your scanner driver if it is supported. You may also be asked if you want to go online and download the most up-to-date scanner database file for OmniPage to recognise scanners with. Do this if you wish or just select "No" and move on as below. So now TAB to "Next" and press ENTER. 5. You will now come into a list of installed scanners and your current flatbed scanner interface and its type, e.g. TWAIN, will be found and displayed. You can add and remove listed scanners in here. You now TAB to "Next" again and press ENTER. 6. If your scanner driver is already known by OmniPage 14, you will now be told this and you can decline testing if the scanner works OK by ARROWING to the "No" option; or, if it is not known, you can use the "Yes" option to test if things will work OK. You then TAB to "Next" and press ENTER. 7. You should be told that the scanner recognition was successful and be able to press ENTER on a "Finish" button to complete things. ******** >SECTION 3 TYPES OF SCANNERS AND SCANNER MAINTENANCE 3.1. Main Scanner Standards For most Visually impaired persons 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 SCSI--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. Parallel Port--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. In the last couple of years parallel port scanners have also become less available and have largely been superseded by USB scanners. USB (universal serial bus)--This is similar to parallel port in that it plugs into a socket at the back or front of your PC (if it is a modern computer and has one). This type of interface is quicker than parallel port and the scanners usually cost less. Ensure that if your USB port is only Version 1.1, the scanner you purchase will work with USB 1.1 and not only with the newer USB 2.0 ports. USB scanners are by far the most frequently available flatbed scanners these days. 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. You may also find that some scanners or their interface drivers will only work with Windows XP. 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 more up-to-date scanner details have also been provided below since the year 2000 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 the TextBridge 98 OCR. 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. 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 the 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 œ80. 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 a version of the OmniPage limited OCR 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. 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. 3.3. Scanner Maintenance and Scanning Accuracy 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 in it. 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 or make sure that they do not go directly against the scanner's glass. 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 the underside of 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 and any see-through effect. 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 Internet newsgroups: alt.comp.periphs.scanner comp.periphs.scanners Note 1: I have not personally tested any of the scanners mentioned in section 3.2. They are simply manufactured by well- known and generally respected companies and I have heard many of them being recommended in reviews and by other individuals. As this is not an indorsement of any particular scanner, you must use your own judgement about which to by, if any. 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. ******** >SECTION 4 INSTALLING OMNIPAGE PRO 14 To install OmniPage, with your scanner connected to your computer and turned on: 1.A. Place the CD disk in the CD-ROM drawer and close it. The setup.exe or autorun.exe program should run automatically. 1.B. If the Cd fails to run and start the set-up process automatically, you should run the "Autorun.exe" file by typing: D:\autorun.exe into the Windows Run dialogue and pressing ENTER. (Assuming, of course, that your CD-ROM is on the d: drive). 2. You will now find yourself on a button called "Install OmniPage Pro 14.0", so press ENTER to activate this. 3. The OmniPage welcome screen will be displayed and you will be on the "Next" button so just press ENTER. 4. The licence agreement will come up and you are on the "I do not accept", button, so ARROW down to "I accept" and press ENTER. 5. The user information screen loads in and in the "Name" box type in your name if it is not already there, Then TAB to "Organisation" and type this in or type "None" in. 6. Next TAB to the "Serial Number" editfield and type this in. The number is printed on the CD envelope. Then press ENTER on "Next". 7. You will now have to installation choices, which are "Complete" and "Custom". Leave focus on "Complete" to ensure that everything is installed before TABBING to"Next" and pressing ENTER. Only use "Custom" if you know exactly which components you want to install and which you wish to exclude, e.g. you may wish only to install the English components and not other languages. 8. You will be told that the program will install to: C:\Program Files\Scansoft\OmniPage Pro 14.0 so accept this by TABBING to "Next" and press ENTER. 9. You will now be on the start installation "Next" or "Install" button so hit ENTER. 10. The installation will now commence and will take a few minutes. When done, you will be on the "Finish" button, so press ENTER to complete the installation. If you now receive a "Register Online" and "Remind me in 7 Days" list of choices, ARROW to the one which currently suits you and then TAB to and press ENTER on the "OK" button. When this registration dialogue appears again in a week's time, you will be able to select a "Skip registration" option as well to get rid of it altogether if you are not in a position to register OmniPage online. 11. Now shut down and then restart your computer, after which you may have to run a short scanner check utility prior to doing your first scan. This will come up automatically for you when you first launch OmniPage and start to scan and you just press ENTER to run it. 12. Each time you launch OmniPage, you may encounter a "Tip of the Day" dialogue, which gives you random tips on how to use the program. You can use this if you wish and move on from it after reading the tips (in mouse mode) to commence scanning by TABBING to the "Close" button. However, if you would like to stop this dialogue from loading in, you can TAB to "Show Tips at Start Up" and press SPACEBAR to turn this off, then TAB to "Close" to get rid of it once and for all. Note: If your scanner is not recognised by OmniPage, look up how to resolve this in the "OmniPage Pro Help Topics" in the Help menu. You should also look at my notes on this above, under the heading of "Installing New Scanner Interface Software with OmniPage 14". ******** >SECTION 5 OmniPage Pro 14 CAPABILITIES 5.1. Input and Output Formats OmniPage can import (accept from other sources) several image file formats such as tiff files, BMP files, pdx files, DCX files, JPEG, OPD (its own format), etc. You can then process and output these in many different alternative formats. With Version 14 you can import Adobe PDF files and get them recognised and converted to other more accessible formats such as text, MS Word and MS Excel. If you save to omniPage's own .opd (Extended) format rather than simply to the standard .opd format, you can ensure that portability is improved as training files, user dictionaries and zone templates can be embedded in the file. OmniPage can also output or save the product of its scanning to many file formats, such as Microsoft Word, bitmap, OPD (its own format), HTML, WordPerfect, MS Powerpoint, Excel, MS Publisher, Ventura Publisher, FrameMaker 5.5, DBase, Txt, Wordpad, rtf, and many more. With OmniPage 14, you can also output your scans to several PDF formats using its PDF printer and to spoken audio wave files. 5.2. Scannable Page Types OmniPage 14 has settings for and can deal with several page formats which you place on your scanner flatbed, including: Automatic--When OmniPage attempts to recognise the layout of any type of page or a variety of differently formatted pages within one document. Multiple Columns--Pages in columns, e.g. magazines, newspapers, and the like. Use this when you want to decolumnise text so that the left-hand column will be placed above the right-hand column and your screenreader can therefore read it to you logically without text being interwoven. Single Column (No Table)--A page with a single column only (sometimes known as simple galley form), e.g. a letter or memo. Spreadsheet--Documents in cells or with tabbed column blocks. Single Column with Table--For pages with a simple galley block of text on it but also containing a table on the same page. Custom--For use by those who find they want to define other layouts for special pages which are not covered by the foregoing page types. Template--For choosing any of your previously defined and created custom scanning templates from. OmniPage 14 will produce better results if you scan with its "accuracy" setting, especially for poor quality hard copy such as FAXES and faint text like appears on some photocopies and for pages with coloured text, backgrounds or both, when grey scale scanning will be undertaken. If your paper hard copy is good quality dark print on a white background, the "Speed" setting should prove to be good enough for the job and will be noticeably faster. OmniPage will also perform better if you can tell it what the layout of the page is, e.g. single column, multiple column, spreadsheet, etc. However, as a visually impaired person you may not be able to do these things but OmniPage should still do a reasonable job on its speed and automatic settings and you can always rescan a page or get your current scan re-recognised with different settings if the first attempt is not satisfactory. It is probably best to start with a page type setting of Automatic or multiple columns. Note 1: Most FAXES 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 or better) setting before sending them to you. These will scan more easily and accurately than the standard quality. Note 2: For OmniPage to be able to scan in its most accurate mode for grey scale and colour pages, rather than just in its black and white mode, you must have scanning for "Accuracy" turned on in stead of scanning for "speed" within the Tools, Options dialogue, in the "OCR" property sheet. Note 3: JAWS used to have several hot keys for achieving given commands in OmniPage up to Version 12, including getting directly into the page types dialogues, but these CONTROL SHIFT hot keys do not work with OmniPage 14, or at least they did not work with OmniPage 14 up to JAWS 6.0. 5.3. Scanners Supported OmniPage supports hundreds of scanner makes and standards, for instance, Epson, Hewlett Packard, Canon, Agfa, Umax, Panasonic, Microtek, and many more ISIS and TWAIN compatible scanners. To obtain an up-to-date list of scanners supported by OmniPage surf to: www.Scansoft.com 5.4. 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". As well as its general and custom dictionaries, OmniPage 14 has its own English professional dictionaries for legal, medical and financial terms which you can turn on when appropriate, in addition to several other foreign dictionaries. 5.5 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 OmniPage 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 this aspect of scanning in this tutorial. You can find out more from the OmniPage help system by typing "ADF" into the Index search box of the OmniPage help system (see Section 13 for how to use the help system). 5.6. Document colour Scanning capabilities OmniPage 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 or light print on a darker background. However, it is my experience that the better the black on white print the better will be the scanned result and reasonable black on white print will produce better recognised results than will grey scaled print and print in colour or black print on a coloured background. moreover, scanning in the grey scale and colour (known as "accuracy scanning") settings takes longer than black and white scanning (known as "speed" scanning). OmniPage 14 uses its black and white scanning mode for scanning good quality black print on a white background. It uses its grey scale scanning mode for scanning various grades of grey print on a white background or for generally porer quality print and for scanning coloured pages and it saves them as black and white. The colour scan setting is devoted to scanning coloured text or backgrounds but this time it saves the results of the scan in the same colours as the original page. Depending on the design and age of your flatbed scanner and its drivers, you may or may not be able to colour scan, but most scanners bought in the last five years or so will be able to do this. You may find with some older scanners and drivers that they are not fully supported and that you do not get choices of black and white, grey scale and colour to select from during your scanning set-up and that your only scanning choices are for "speed" or "accuracy" scanning. Your scanned and recognised page, even if it started as a colour page, will normally be output as black print on a white background. However, if you have available to you and use the "Colour" scanning setting, the original colours on your scanned page will be retained and saved for you. 5.7. Type Face and Size OmniPage purports to be able to automatically recognise many kinds of type face/font. If it cannot recognise a particular font, it has a "Training" and "font matching" facility. However, training and font 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 OmniPage what it should have done. I do not, therefore, intend to go into this training facility here. However, OmniPage 14 also incorporates an automatic training feature, called Intellitrain, which you should keep checked on in the Tools, Options, Proofing Dialogue. Intellitrain takes input from the corrections a user makes during proofing and remembers and records these so that it does not make the same mistakes again but such proofing/correcting must be done within OmniPage's own proofreader/spell-checker for this to work. You may or may not consider that this limited training feature makes spell-checking in the Omnipage environment worthwhile. 5.8. Scanning Resolution By default, OmniPage scans all text at 300 dots per inch (DPI), which is invariably the recommended resolution for text scanning. You may sometimes obtain a better scan if you change the resolution for print scanning to 400 DPI for print under 8 points in size. OmniPage scans grey scale and colour images at 150 DPI. 5.9. Print Input Languages Supported OmniPage can scan pages of many language types, including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Portuguese, Finish and Brazilian. The list grows with every new version release. 5.10. OmniPage's Own Supported Output Languages OmniPage from Version 11 supports synthesised speech output in English. Version 12, depending on when and where you purchase it, may also support French, German, Italian, Portuguese and spanish. OmniPage 14 also supports at least three extra languages. This speech, if enabled by pressing the F5 key, lets you listen to as well as look at a scanned document to assist in its proofreading. This feature may be of use to visually impaired people who access their computers using screen magnification software or a Braille display rather than speech synthesis, as an extra means of verifying scanned text. 5.11. Scan to E-Mail You can output the product of your scans directly to common e- mail programs, such as Outlook Express and Microsoft Outlook, to save you the time and effort of scanning, then saving/copying and manually opening your e-mail client. 5.12. Scanning Your Signature Whilst OmniPage cannot recognise hand-writing, it can scan it as an image and you can then save this as a graphic. You could then later open this graphic at the point on a page where you want your signature to appear and it would be pasted in for printing or saving with the letter. To do this ensure that OmniPage is set up to recognise images/graphics and then scan a page with only your signature on it, Press ALT P and then E and give the image a filename, select an image format such as tif and press ENTER on "OK". To retrieve this signature into the current document, press ALT F, G, press ENTER on "Load Image File", type in the graphic filename and press ENTER. 5.13. Two Page Book Scanning OmniPage can scan two pages at once, as with the left and right pages of a book. Each page is treated and recognised as a separate sheet of paper. Any slight deskewing of pages is automatically corrected and straightened by OmniPage. You can find the "Facing Pages" or book scanning option in Tools, Options, in the "Process" property sheet. 5.14. Converting your scanned text to Audio Wave Format A new feature with OmniPage 14 is its ability to take the results of your scanned and recognised text and convert it to standard audio wave format so that you can listen to it in OmniPage itself or in your favourite audio player, such as Windows Media Player or Winamp. You do this via the Process, Export Results sub-menu item and select "Wave Audio Converter" from the Files of Type list. 5.15. The OmniPage 14 Document Manager The Document Manager in OmniPage 12 and 14, if turned on, provides a pane on screen with facts, figures and statistics of how a given scan job went, such as if it was done in black and white or colour scanning, how long the various stages took to complete, how many suspect words were found, etc. You find the Document Manager in the View menu and it is turned on by default. You may wish to turn this off, as the information it gives can only be viewed in mouse mode and it is difficult to ascertain what figure belongs to what category. However, you can customise the number of categories of stats it provides by deselecting some of the many categories in the list in the "Customise" columns option in the View menu, so experiment to see if you want it or not. If you do decide to keep all or more than one of the three default OmniPage 14 on-screen panes open, including this Document Manager pane and the Page Image pane, you can cycle through them by pressing the F6 key. You may wish to do this or close them all other than the Text Editing pane (see the customisation suggestions in the next section). ******** >SECTION 6 CUSTOMISING OMNIPAGE FOR VISUALLY IMPAIRED PEOPLE As customisation is not essential for OmniPage to function for visually impaired people, but is rather desirable for maximising accessibility, speed and simplicity, you may wish to jump straight to Section 7 and run a scan of a page in automatic 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 OmniPage's performance as a print scanner for visually impaired people, make the screen less cluttered and make it easier to use, you may find some of the below suggestions worthwhile. 6.1. General and Specific Customisation To view and/or change things in the OmniPage Options property sheets, press ALT T (for Tools) and then O (for Options). In This multiple TAB dialogue box you may wish to CONTROL TAB through the sheets and TAB through the options in each sheet and: 1. In the "Proofing" property sheet: A. Uncheck (by pressing the SPACEBAR on it) "Automatically Proofread Results after OCR" so that the process skips the proofreading/spell-checking stage, as this is not very screenreader-friendly in the case of some screenreaders or in the case of most if they are more than a couple of years old. On the other hand, if you find that this environment is OK with your screenreader and if you have no other suitable software in which to spell-check and proofread, such as MS Word, MS Excel, WordPerfect, etc, you may wish to leave this checked on, when you will find that most of the standard spell-checking commands apply, such as ALT I to ignore the mis-spelled word, ALT H to change the word to the first suggested replacement, ALT A to add the word to the spell-checker dictionary, and so forth. To be honest, it is now fair to say that, from OmniPage 11 onwards, each version of OmniPage has made proofing in the OmniPage proofreader with a screenreader a little easier than its predecessor. You can move through the text in the editing/proofreading screen with standard Windows movement keystrokes, e.g. ARROW left and right to move left or right a letter at a time, CONTROL left and right ARROWS to move left and right a word at a time, ARROW up or down to read the line above or below respectively, CONTROL PAGE up or PAGE down to move through a document a page at a time, and so forth. If you firstly press F5 to invoke the OmniPage speech system, the text on screen will be verbally spoken to you as you move through it. B. Leave "Enable Intellitrain" checked on. 2. In the "process" sheet: A. Check on "Page Rotation - Automatic" so that the page can be successfully scanned what ever way you put it onto the scanner. B. You may also wish to check off "Retain Text and Background Colour" if these are of no value to you, so that page recognition can be done a little quicker. C. You may also wish to ensure that "Retain Inverted Text" is turned on so that, if you scan a page with such as highlighted headings in inverted video, e.g. a small area on the page with light text on a darker background, this is retained and available to you, instead of being lost. D. You would only check on "Look for Facing Pages" if you are to scan books and want to be able to scan both pages of a book at the same time. 3. Then CONTROL SHIFT TAB to the Direct OCR sheet (but see "Changing Direct OCR Settings to Suit Your needs" in Section 8 for what to do here). 4. Press CONTROL SHIFT TAB to the "Scanner" sheet and: A. You will be able to TAB to a "Settup" button and if you press ENTER on this you can then either select a different scanner interface driver (if you have more than one or are installing a different flatbed scanner) or you can test and re-configure your current driver if it does not seem to be working correctly. As soon as you activate this settings button you will be offered the opportunity to go on line and download the most up-to-date scanner drivers file from the Scan soft site to support your flatbed scanner if the one you have is not being recognised by OmniPage. If you do not need to do any of these things and your scanner is set up and working OK, leave this setup button alone. B. Ensure that the "Prompt for More Pages" option is checked on. C. Options like turning on deskewing of crooked pages, brightness settings and page colour selections which used to be in this property sheet in earlier versions of OmniPage no longer have to be switched on or altered, as they are now automatically enabled so that deskewing of crooked pages on the scanner flatbed and brightness correction for poor quality pages are automatically corrected and optimised by OmniPage as you scan. 5. Press CONTROL SHIFT TAB to the "OCR" sheet and: A. you can alter the scanning speed and accuracy of text recognition by ARROWING to either "Faster" or "More Accurate". The faster you make things run, the less accurate may be the recognised document but good quality dark text on a white background will still come out well when scanned at top speed, so experiment with "Speed" and "Accuracy" selected to see which works best for the average type of document you scan. You may notice a marked increase in the time it takes to get a page recognised to text with the "accuracy" option. B. If you press ENTER on the "Custom Layout" button, you will then be able to TAB and ARROW through several lists to select finer ways to get certain types of pages scanned, such as flowing columns, telling OmniPage if a page has no tables, one table on it, one graphic in it, etc, or you can place all options on "Auto" to let OmniPage work this out for itself. It is in here where, if you are to scan known and fixed types of table or columnar pages, you would move things from auto to that specific setting to try to even more accurately obtain a scan and format retention. The "Auto" selections will probably be best for people who cannot see what type and format of pages they are scanning or those who scan a wide variety of different page types. C. TAB through the other options but these are unlikely to be of any use to visually impaired people, as they involve things like custom user dictionaries, character training and font matching. It is necessary to be able to see these print characteristics clearly and tell OmniPage what to do with them when it has made a mistake before these features can be used. With reasonable quality print changing these settings should not be necessary. Note: If you elect to scan with the above-mentioned "Speed" option instead of the "Accuracy" option, certain other options and settings will no longer be available to you, such as getting a colour page's colours output in these colours (things will default to black and white output only) and the inverted text retention option is not available. 6. Then CONTROL TAB to the "Text Editor" sheet and TAB through the options in here. You are unlikely to want to change any of these, except, perhaps, for the way measurements are shown, as you may prefer centimetres to inches, etc. Just ARROW up and down the four measurement options and leave focus on your preference. 7. Then when you have finished TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to save any of your changes in all property sheets simultaneously. these settings will remain in force for all future scan sessions until you make further changes. Note: In the above multi-page dialogue box there is also a "Use Defaults" button (to put things back to how they were before you changed anything), a "Save Settings" button (to save any changes you make to a configuration file for reloading later if you do not decide to make these changes your default) and "Load Settings" (to reload the aforementioned saved settings file for scanning with specific settings you chose to save). In this way, if two people in a family use OmniPage in different ways, with different views, options, etc, e.g. one spouse is sighted and uses the image pane, the proofreader, the thumbnail view and the mouse and the other spouse is visually impaired and needs different settings, both can save their own individual settings and options to quickly load when they use the PC instead of having to make configuration changes every time they use it because someone else was on the computer last. To view and/or change the View settings, press ALT V (for view) and: 1. Press ENTER on "Toolbars" and TAB down to "Show Tool Tips" and deselect this by pressing the SPACEBAR. Tool tips will only clutter your screen and may make your screenreader speak more than it needs to. In this same dialogue TAB to "Toolbars" and ARROW to "OmniPage Toolbox" and check this on by pressing the SPACEBAR if it is not already on (which it is likely to be by default). Then press ENTER on "OK". 2. Go back into the View Menu and ARROW down to "Page Image" and press ENTER to get rid of this, as you are not likely to be able to benefit from this. 3. If you can see any of the views on screen--Thumbnail, image or text--you may be able to benefit from the "Zoom" facility at 200 per cent but if you use a screen magnification program you will probably do better by editing in your word-processor. If changing the view to 200 per cent does not help you, put it on 100 per cent instead. 4. Again in the View Menu, ARROW to "Text Editor" and press ENTER to turn this on if it is not already checked on, as it may be of assistance to you if you are to try to do any editing in the OmniPage proofing and editing screen. It is likely to be checked on by default. 5. The View menu of OmniPage 14 also features a "Text Editor Views" sub-menu and "Retain Fonts and Paragraphs" is selected by default. If one of the other two options works better for your screenreader than the default, use that one instead. 6.2. Placing a Shortcut on Your Desktop from which to Launch OmniPage To place a shortcut icon on your Desktop for quick and easy launching of OmniPage: 1. place focus on the omnipage.exe file by: pressing Windows Key, then P (for Program Files), then S (for Scansoft) and then O (for Omnipage Pro 14.0) 2. Now press SHIFT F10 to bring up a Context Menu and ARROW to "Send To" and press ENTER. 3. Lastly, ARROW down to "Desktop", press ENTER and the job is done. If you now press Windows key M or D and then O (for OmniPage), you will be able to start the program running quickly and easily. ******** >SECTION 7 USING AUTOMATIC SCANNING MODE 7.1. Pen-Picture of the OmniPage 14 Screen If you have made all or most of the suggested configuration changes mentioned in Section 6 above, The OmniPage 14 screen will look something like the following description. The Title Bar at the very top of the screen will hold the words "Untitled OmniPage Document - OmniPage Pro" but if you have saved a scan and not yet cleared the screen with ALT F, C, the document title will appear here instead of "Untitled". On the next line comes the Main Menu with File, Edit, View Menus, etc. Under this is a toolbar with mouse click options for starting the most common actions such as "Start" to start an automatic scan and "Perform OCR" to start a manual scan. Below these menus and quick click buttons is The main part of the screen where what you encounter is buttons for Get Page, Perform OCR, Export results, etc, and the type of font being used is displayed plus the means of scanning which is to be used, e.g. the "1-2-3" scanning mode, Single Column page scanning, etc, or whatever settings you are set up to scan in. In this main area of the screen you can have either an editing pane, a Document Manager pane or an image pane open or you can have all three of these panes open if you like. The editing area lets you read the results of your scanned and recognised print pages and spell-check and edit them if you wish, the Document Manager holds certain facts and figures about the scan job on screen and how successful it was done and the image area holds the image of the pages you scanned before they were recognised so that you can compare the images with the recognised version of the pages in the editing pane. For straightforward scanning of paper pages of print for reading your mail, newspapers, print books, etc, you may only wish to have the editing pane open for most of the time to reduce screen clutter. Lastly, at the bottom of the screen, there is a Status Line showing some page number and position details. Note: To make all of the above information and click buttons available to be seen by your screenreader (if you want it), you may have to run your screenreader's label graphics feature, if it has one, e.g. CONTROL INSERT G in both JAWS and Window-Eyes and left CONTROL right BRACKET with HAL. You will have to do this whilst tool tips are switched on in the View, Tool Bars dialogue. 7.2. Scanning in Automatic Mode Before starting your computer you should switch the scanner on otherwise it may not be recognised. You run OmniPage in this stand-alone, automatic way independently of any other running application (see Section 8 "Using Direct OCR" for how to run it from within another application). You would then save the scanned page in any of a number of formats, e.g. Word 2002, WordPerfect 9, Adobe PDF, audio wave format, etc. You could then open the saved file in such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect for editing if you wish. This can be easier, more familiar and more controllable than trying to edit within omniPage itself, although the OmniPage proofing and editing screen has become much more usable for screenreader users than it used to be several versions ago. If you want to save a document in OmniPage's own format, you should choose the .opd extension, which will then permit you to reload the page into OmniPage with the CONTROL O command and then add more pages to it later or do your editing and reading later if you wish. 7.3. Example of Scanning of Single Pages Using Automatic Settings With your scanner having been turned on prior to switching on your computer: 1.A. Start OmniPage from the icon on your Desktop if you have one by pressing Windows key M followed by O until you get to it and press ENTER; or 1.B. If you have not set up an icon on your Desktop or Start Menu, start OmniPage by typing the path to it in the Start Menu, Run facility or navigate to it as follows: Press Windows key, then P (for Program Files, S (for Scansoft OmniPage 14.0) until you reach it and then press ENTER and then press O (for OmniPagePro 14.0 and then press ENTER again. 2. As soon as the program starts up, you firstly encounter on screen three main listboxes with several choices for how to do the basic scanning and saving in them. You can either make your initial basic scanning choices in these lists or, if these lists do not display very well for you (which they do not with some screenreaders, you can instead make these choices from the Process menu. to make your scanning choices from the immediate on-screen lists: A. You will be on a list of eight choices, on the "1-2-3" option. This is the correct option for automatic scanning, so leave it there. Do not attempt to ARROW down this list, otherwise unexpected things will happen and the following few steps will no longer apply. B. You should TAB once to a list with two options in it, which are "Load Image File" and "Scan". If you are not currently on "Scan" ARROW down to it. C. Press TAB once again and you will move onto the type of page to scan listbox which should be on the first choice of "Automatic". If you ARROW down once you will have selected the "Single Column, No Table" choice and the four other options in order are: "Multiple columns, No Table", "Single Column with Table", "Spreadsheet" and "Custom (User Defined)". If you know the format and layout of the print pages you are to scan and they are consistently like this, ARROW to the correct page layout option; otherwise, leave focus on "Automatic" so that OmniPage will be ready to expect any kind of page layout and do its best to deal with this for you. D. Another press of the TAB key takes you to the last listbox, where you will be on the first choice of three, which is "Save to File". The other two choices to ARROW down in order are "Send in Mail" and "Copy to Clipboard". Leave focus on "Save to File" for this exercise. To make your choices from the Process menu instead of in the above lists, because the above selection interface may not always be available to you or because you may simply prefer to do it this way: A. Just ignore the above-mentioned lists and press ALT P (for Process) and Then W (for Workflows" and ARROW down to the "1-2-3" option and press ENTER to turn it on. You will then be dropped out of the Process menu. B. Now go back into the Process menu with ALT P and then press G (for Get Page). You will be on the "Start" option, so firstly ARROW down to see if "Load Image file" or "Scan" is checked on. If "Scan" is currently checked on, you know you are on the correct setting. If not, ARROW to it and press ENTER to check it on, when you will be bounced out of the menu. C. Go back into the Process menu with ALT P but this time then press O (for Perform OCR). You will come onto the "Start" button, so ARROW down the options in here and note that they are the same as those mentioned in the above paragraphs to do with choosing page types. Make your choice of what kind of pages you are to scan or, if you do not know what the page format is like or the pages are of differing types, leave focus on the "Automatic" option and press ENTER on this if it is not already checked on. Again you will be thrown out of the Process menu. D. Re-enter the Process menu with ALT P and then press E (for Export Results) and now set up the exporting/saving options. Again, you have "Save to File", "Send in Mail" or "Copy to Clipboard" options. If "Save to File" is not already checked on, press ENTER on it to turn it on, when you will yet again be thrown out of the Process menu. Whichever way you made your initial scanning settings above, you will not have to do this again unless you wish to change any of these settings, as they will save for future scan jobs. Henceforth, as long as you do not wish to change any settings, you can start your automatic scanning from the next step. 3. You can now start an automatic scan straightaway by pressing ALT P (for process) and W (for Workflow). Then press ENTER on the "Start" option you will now be on. 4. The scanner may run immediately or you may firstly be on a "Scan" or similarly name button to press ENTER on. The page image may then be immediately recognised to text or you may firstly have a "Stop Loading Pages" button to press ENTER on. There may also be a second button you can TAB to here named something like "Add More Pages" and you can TAB to and press ENTER on that (or press the accelerator keystroke of ALT A) if you want a second or subsequent page scanning and recognising. As well as the page images being recognised at this stage, prior to the recognition, the blocks of text, graphics and other picture elements, if any, will be automatically zoned. Note 1: The above step may vary and the names of the scanning buttons may be slightly different, depending on the flatbed scanner you are using and its own scanning interface driver which is what is being used during this process. I am using a Microtek scanner and driver. Note 2: depending on your scanner interface, you may find that you loose focus on your "Scan", "Stop Scanning" and "Add more Pages" or similarly named buttons from time to time. You can usually get them back into focus for pressing ENTER on if you ALT TAB once or twice when this occurs. 5. After pressing ENTER on the "Stop Loading Pages button", you will then be taken straight into the proofreader (if you have not turned it off) to correct any spelling mistakes but because this can be an extra complication during automatic scanning and may further cause you to loose focus on the scanning interface, I strongly recommend that visually impaired users turn this off beforehand within the "Scanner" property sheet of Tools, Options so that OmniPage skips this step and goes straight on to the next step. You can always do your proofreading/spell-checking in your favourite word-processor or text editor later instead. You can also get rid of this proofreading stage if it comes up by TABBING to "Close" and pressing ENTER. Having said this, for those who wish to experiment or who have no choice but to use the OmniPage proofreader, I have provided guidelines in the next sub-section to assist in the proofreader's use. 6. Automatically, you are next taken into the OmniPage Export Results (Save to File) dialogue box to give your scan job a filename and save it to disk. You now type into the editfield you will be in a filename such as "report1" and press ENTER to get your scan saved into your default saving folder, which will usually be in My Documents. (See the sub-section below entitled "Exporting Your Scan Job to Multiple Formats" for fine-tuning the exporting/saving step.) Note: Be aware that, as long as you have automatic page orientation turned on as directed in Section 2, 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 to save a little time in the recognition phase. 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. 7.4. Spell-Checking with the OmniPage Proofreader There are several ways you can use OmniPage's proofreading and spell-checking features but the most accessible two methods are shown below. 7.4.1. Full Spell-Checking Environment If you do not elect to skip the OmniPage spell-checker by earlier disabling it from within Tools, Options or by pressing ESCAPE or by choosing "Close" at the proofreading stage of automatic scanning, the way the proofreader works is: 1. After a short wait for the page to be recognised, it will appear on screen. The proofreader will stop on the first word it finds which is spelled wrongly or which, mistakenly or correctly, it believes to be wrongly spelled. This word will be underlined with a coloured wavy line but your screenreader is unlikely to be able to tell you this. 2. OmniPage 14 gives you a better sentence context in which the word is found than earlier versions of OmniPage. If you press your left ARROW key once or twice you will move over the last letter or two of the suspect word and thereby be able to determine which word on the line is suspected of being spelled or recognised wrongly. Also use your screenreader's read current line hot key or just ARROW up or down to get the line spoken to you. Your screenreader's read word in context hot key, if it has one, is not likely to work in OmniPage. 3. Having determined the suspect word, you can either edit it by using your BACKSPACE or DELETE keys to remove the wrong letters and type correct ones in or you can TAB once to a list of suggested replacement words, ARROW down and to the right through these and stop on the correct replacement if it is there, then either just press ENTER or press ALT H to change it to this new word. There may be no suggested replacements listed. 4. Most of the other buttons in this spell-checking dialogue box will be familiar to those who have used standard Windows spell- checkers before, for example: Pressing ALT I will ignore the currently highlighted word only if you know that it is not spelled wrongly. Pressing ALT L will ignore all subsequent instances of this same word. Pressing ALT A will add the word to the "Custom" dictionary so that the proofreader will not suspect it of being wrongly spelled again in future scans (ensure that the "Custom" dictionary rather than "None" is selected). Pressing ALT N will change all instances of the wrongly spelled word in this document to your choice of replacement without stopping to ask you again. 5. When OmniPage has finished spell-checking you will receive a message to this effect and be on an "OK" button to press ENTER on. There are also "Page Ready" and "Document Ready" buttons to TAB to and press ENTER on when you yourself feel you have finished proofreading a given page or the whole document if this occurs earlier. 6. You will then automatically be taken into the save dialogue box, as mentioned above and outlined in more detail below. 7.4.2. Quick Spell-Checking with the Context Menu If you do not wish to use the full spell-checking feature explained in the last sub-section, OmniPage 14 provides a handy shortcut key plus a Context Menu in which you can do some basic proofing. This can be used in the following way: 1. Scan and recognise your pages. Skip the usual proofreading step by pressing ESCAPE if it comes up. 2. After scanning, with your recognised text on screen, just press the F4 key once. 3. OmniPage will find the first instance of a word in your document it believes to be wrongly spelled. 4. You can now press SHIFT F10 to bring a Context Menu up with a few basic options, e.g. if you ARROW through the options, you will find that you can add the current word to the dictionary if you know that it was not spelled wrongly so that OmniPage will not suspect it has being wrong in future, you can ignore all instances of this word in future in the current proofing session, etc. 5. In this same Context Menu there is a spelling suggestions option in which you may be able to get the wrongly spelled word corrected with a suggested replacement. However, this suggestions list is often not available. 6. Having stopped on the first wrongly spelled word, you are now also in a position to correct the word by editing it if you know why you typed it wrongly and what you need to do to correct it. If you do not know what is wrong with it, you will have to look it up elsewhere or run another spell-check elsewhere later. 7. After this you can again simply press F4 and OmniPage will stop on the second instance of a wrongly spelled word in your document, so carry on in this way to the end of the document. 8. When all words have been checked, you will be on an "OK" button to finish. 9. If you ever wish to get a page spell-checked for a second time, you will find simply pressing F7 or F4 just jumps you to the "OK" button to finish because OmniPage remembers that it has already completed spell-checking this document. However, you can get a recheck of the current page if you first press ALT T, R. Note: One of the above described OmniPage spell- checking/proofreading facilities is what you will be obliged to use if you want to tidy up and correct mistakes in some of OmniPage's more exotic formats, such as before saving your scan job to an Adobe PDF file for reading in the Adobe Acrobat Reader or to its own OPD format and for saving to its new audio wave format for playing and listening to in an audio player or sound editor. 7.5. Saving and Exporting Your Scanned document There are two main types of saving methods in OmniPage 14, one called "save OPD" and the other called "export results". If you simply save the scanned document image or recognised text in the standard way by pressing CONTROL S, you will only be offered two saving formats, which are to OmniPage's own saving formats known as "OPD" or "OPD (Extended)" formats. These are the formats you are offered for saving if you simply press CONTROL S (for Save) or try to close the on-screen scan job or exit the program without firstly saving. The second type of save offers many more formats and option choices and is known as "Export Results". Export results is found either in the File menu or the Process menu or you can open up the Export Results saving dialogue box by using the OmniPage shortcut keystroke of CONTROL 3. Both saving methods are explained below. 7.5.1. Exporting Your Scan Job to Multiple Formats 1. Either straight after image scanning or recognition has completed or after proofreading if you do this in OmniPage, you can open the Export Results dialogue and you will be asked to type a filename straight into the "Filename" editfield in the "Save to File" dialogue immediately, So do so, e.g. memo1. 2. Press TAB twice to a listbox with three choices in it, when "Text" is likely to be selected. If you ARROW down you will find other choices of "Image" and "Multiple". Obviously the second choice is to save to a simple image of the file and not save the actual recognised text itself, whilst the third option is for saving scans which have had both recognised text in them and have also had scanned but unrecognised text and/or graphics or pictures in them. To save your recognised text to a file, ensure that "Text" is selected. 3. Press TAB once more to Files of Type" and ARROW up and down the many formats that you can save your scanned document in or press the initial letter of the name of the format you want to jump straight there, e.g. press W to go to such as WordPerfect or Wordpad formats, T to go to various forms of ASCII plain text formats, M to go to several Microsoft program formats, etc. OmniPage will remember this format and save to the same format next time you save a scan, unless you change this at this step. 4. You can then press TAB several times until you reach the "OK" button and press ENTER to complete the saving and exporting process. However, you may wish first to TAB to the "Save and Launch" button and ensure that this is checked on by pressing SPACEBAR on it if you would like the scan job to come straight up in your chosen word-processor or text editor for reading, editing, spell-checking or resaving. The place your scanned document file will save to by default is: C:\My documents\ However, if you want to save the file in any other folder, you could do this by typing such as: c:\my Files\memo1 into the "Filename" editfield before TABBING to the "OK" button. In future all files you save will save to the "My Files" folder until you change this. You will, of course, have to create a folder called "My Files" off of your C: root directory first. To save to your A: floppy disk drive, in the "Filename" editfield, type: A:\memo1 and press ENTER. Alternatively, if you want the file to save elsewhere using the browsing/navigating Windows method of selecting alternative folders, e.g. to My Files, TAB to the "Look In" folders list 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 or right ARROW and then TAB and 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". However, before pressing ENTER on "OK" you may wish to examine yet more of the options in the Export Results dialogue. The "Create One file for all pages" option, which you can ARROW up and down in, lets you create one file with one filename for all pages you have scanned (which you will normally want to do) or you can choose other options, such as "Create one file per page" where, if you have scanned 10 pages, each individual page will be given its own filename and become a separate file in its own right. The Export Results dialogue box has a "Converter Options" button you can TAB to and press SPACEBAR on to open up a sub-dialogue (pressing ALT C also opens this). In here you will find a "Formatting Level" item you can TAB to, where you can normally ARROW up or down four formatting types, namely "No Formatting", "Retain Fonts and Paragraphs", "True Page" and "flowing Page"in that order. You may wish to opt for no formatting or retain fonts and paragraphs to save most scans so that they can be more easily read with a screenreader or you may wish to choose to maintain columns as they appeared on the page or you may wish to choose the true page option in order to have OmniPage do its best to maintain the whole layout, position of blocks, text boxes, frames, columns, font types, font size, all other attributes, etc, of the original document. The "No Formatting" option saves or exports your scan as plain, decolumnised, left aligned text in a single font face and font size. Note that how many and what types of format saving levels are available in this list will depend on your choice of format to save to in the earlier "Files of Type" list. To illustrate this, if you choose RTF as your saving format, the aforementioned four format levels will, indeed, be available, but if you change the "Files of Type" format to, say, TXT, you will discover that these choices have completely changed and now represent a more basic list of formatting choices which can be dealt with in a plain text file. There are several other formatting choices you can make in this Converter Options sub-dialogue and you leave it and get your choices applied by pressing ENTER on the "Apply" button. 5. After pressing ENTER on "OK" in the main Export Results dialogue box the scan job will be saved. The process is now finished and you will be taken into the launched program which you chose as your reading, editing, etc, program if you made such a choice. Otherwise, you will find yourself in the usual OmniPage editing pane. If you did elect to get your scan job launched in another word-processor, after viewing your scanned document in this preferred external program, you can now close this other application. you will then return to OmniPage which will still be running with your scanned document on screen. You can now either shut OmniPage down with ALT F, X or by pressing ALT F4 or you can clear the screen by pressing ALT F, C, and start another scan job. However, you will then encounter yet another save dialogue but this time what you are being asked is whether or not you also want to save the results of this same scan job to OmniPage's own OPD saving format for future reading or editing in OmniPage itself. If you TAB to and press ENTER on "No" the process is at an end; if you press ENTER on "Yes" you will be asked for another filename (which can be the same as your first saving filename or different) and you will only have two formats choices, both being a form of OPD saving format (see more about this just below). Note: If you have your export type set to export to e-mail rather than to a saved filename, you will encounter a dialogue before the above save as dialogue comes up. You just make your e-mail selections in this e-mail export dialogue first. 7.5.2. Saving Your Scan Job to OmniPage's Own Native OPD formats You can either save to one of OmniPage's two OPD formats immediately after your scan or after firstly saving to another format via the Export Results dialogue box, as described above. You might wish to do this if you only want to view or edit your scanned document from within OmniPage itself. You might also want to do this because you only have enough time to scan half of a document and therefore want to save what you have done, open the file later and recommence scanning from where you left of--you just open the file and start scanning again as normal and any additional pages will be appended to the end of the already scanned file. You can always reopen this OPD file later and then resave it to another format using the Export Results method of saving. To save to OmniPage's OPD format without firstly saving to any other format: 1. Scan your document as normal either simply to images or get it recognised to text as well, e.g.: A. Use the above already explained automatic scanning method; or B. Use the manual scanning method (explained in Section 11) by pressing CONTROL 1 to obtain an image of each page and then CONTROL 2 to recognise each page. 2. Now to save press CONTROL S (for Save OPD). 3. In the "Filename" field type your preferred filename in, e.g. "letter5". 4. TAB to the "Files of Type" list and leave focus on "OmniPage Document (*.opd)" or ARROW to "OmniPage Document (Extended)" if you have other attributes in your file you also wish to get saved with it to improve its portability, such as training files, user dictionaries and zone templates which will then be embedded in the file. 4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to finish, if you know you will save to your preferred folder; otherwise, type the full path to wherever you want to save into the "filename" editfield first or navigate to it first from the "Look In" folders list. TIP: Once you have saved to this OPD file you can continue pressing CONTROL S frequently to get any changes you have made to this file also saved to the same filename, such as editing changes, so that you will not loose any or much of any work you have subsequently done on this file if your PC crashes or you have an electrical failure. 7.5.3. Saving to an Audio Wave Format so that you can listen to the results of your Scans with Your Favourite Audio Player If you would like to convert and save your scanned text to a wave (.WAV) audio file to listen to immediately or later, you can do this. You might also want to save to this format to then burn your wave files to CD to listen to on your HI-FI system or car stereo, or to download the file to such as an MP3 player after firstly converting it to an MP3 file to listen to on the move, if you have any software on your Pc capable of doing this. To save the results of your scanned documents to an audio wave file: 1. Scan your pages as normal and get them recognised to readable text, as outlined earlier in this section. 2. Press CONTROL 3 to open the Export Results dialogue box or do this via the Process menu. 3. Type your preferred filename into the "Filename" editfield, e.g. "annual report". 4. TAB to "Files of Type" and then press W until "Wave Audio Converter (*.wav)" has focus. 5. If you want to get this file launched in your default audio player as soon as you save it, e.g. Windows Media Player, RealPlayer, Winamp, etc, check on "Save and Launch". 6. Press ALT C to open the "Converter Options" sub-dialogue and in here TAB to the "Voice Name" option and then ARROW down to open up a "Speech Rate" list and select from the five speech speed options available, e.g. "Normal" for moderate speed speech or "Fast" for pretty quickly spoken speech, etc. Then TAB to "Apply" and press ENTER. 7. You now come back into the first dialogue and then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER if there are no more options you wish to change. The file will save into the My Document folder or wherever else you elected to save it. You can now go to it and press ENTER on it to hear it in your default audio player or launch that player first and then open it in the player as usual. After saving to the wave format, you will come back to the OmniPage editing screen and still be able to ARROW through your just scanned text document on screen. 7.6. Adding more Pages After Saving If you realise that you have missed out a page you should have scanned, as long as you have not cleared the screen with ALT F, C, you can still add it to the end of an already saved file by Pressing ALT P (for process) and then G (for Get Page) and ENTER on "Start", as before. Or just press the shortcut of CONTROL 1 to add it as an image only and then CONTROL 2 to also get it recognised. The page will be added to the end of the document. If you have already saved your scan to an OPD file and closed the editing pane or shut OmniPage down, you can open this OPD file with CONTROL O and when it is on screen again, add more pages to its end with CONTROL 1, get them recognised with CONTROL 2 and resaved and exported to whatever format you like with CONTROL 3. You can save to the same filename, to a different filename or folder or to a different format under the same filename if you like. 7.7. Example of Automatic Scanning of Multiple Pages I would recommend this multiple page method of scanning to the majority of users, because it is relatively simple, quick and easy and does not require the use of the mouse. However, the beginner may wish first to try the Workflow Assistant or manual method of scanning to get a feel for what is happening during a scan (see Sections 9 and 11) and you can always use the above automatic mode to do your scanning. In fact, you may find that you have no choice but to use one of these other modes of scanning because not all flatbed scanners and/or their drivers will permit the below continuous scanning mode to work. You will soon know if yours will when you try to find the "Automatically Scan Pages" option in the "Scanner" property sheet of the below Tools, Options dialogue box. 7.8. Enabling the Automatic Setting To enable the automatic, continuous scanning feature: 1. Press ALT T (for Tools) and then O (for Options). 2. CONTROL TAB to the "Scanner" property sheet and TAB down to "Automatically Scan Pages" and press the SPACEBAR to check this on if it is not already on. 3. TAB once to "Time Between Scans", which will be set to 10 seconds. This is the time OmniPage will allow you to get the next page onto the scanner for scanning before it automatically runs the scanner again. If you want this to be longer or shorter, just type the appropriate figure of seconds in here. 4. TAB on to "OK" and press ENTER. Note: If you have no "Automatically Scan Pages" option to check on in the above property sheet, this form of scanning will not be supported by OmniPage 14 for your scanner and/or its driver and you will be able to go no further with this set-up and mode of scanning. 7.9. Multiple Page Continuous Scanning 1. Press ALT P (for Process) and then W (for Workflow) and then ENTER on "Start"to start the scan of the first page in the document and you should receive a "begins automatic processing" or "Waiting" message. 2. The scanner will run and, after the first page has been traversed by the scanner's platen, you will have 10 seconds (or any amount you changed this to) to get the current page off the flatbed and the next one on to it. You may find that as the pages are scanned your scanner runs a little jerky or even stops at times. This is because your computer processor and memory are trying to do several things simultaneously, e.g. scan, zone, recognise, orientate, etc, and there has to be a compromise in how much of your PCs resources each process can have. The more memory your computer has and the faster the processor, the less likely you are to get scanner slowness and pauses. 3. You can control what happens at this stage as you will immediately fall on a "Pause" button. If you press ENTER here the scanning will stop until you press ENTER on the "Scan now" button, which you are already on, when the continuous scanning will recommence. There is also a "Stop Scanning" button which you can TAB to or press ALT S to activate and which will curtail scanning when the job is finished. 4. After pressing ENTER on "Stop Scanning" the pages will be recognised and you will be brought into the standard "Save As" dialogue as outlined in an earlier sub-section in this main section. 5. The process is now the same as in 1 to 5 Above (in "Exporting Your Scan Job to Multiple Formats", so jump back there and follow on from there. Note: When you chained the type of scanning to "Automatically Scan Pages" above, you made a permanent change and this type of scanning will now be the default (standard) way that OmniPage will deal with your scanning sessions. If you want to change it back to single page scanning you will have to re-enter the "Scanner" sheet in Tools, Options and uncheck "Automatically Scan Pages". However, if it is available to you, I am sure that this automatic method will be the quicker, easier and generally more desirable way to do things when you get used to it and if you regularly scan multiple page documents. 7.10. Two Page Scanning of Books OmniPage 14 has a special two page scanning feature which independently deskews and scans first the left page of a book and then the right page, when both pages are placed on the flatbed together. To enable this feature: 1. Either place your book on the flatbed so that the spine runs vertically up and down the glass for portrait scanning or with the spine running horizontally left to right for landscape scanning. The direction the text runs in is not relevant. 2. Press ALT T (for Tools) and then O (for Options). 3. Now CONTROL TAB to the "Scanner" property sheet and check that your page rotation is set to "Auto" and that the other settings are set correctly by TABBING through and ARROWING up and down the various options. Ensure that "Look for Facing Pages" is checked on by pressing the SPACEBAR on it. 4. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 5. All you do now is set the scanning in motion as normal with ALT P, W, press ENTER and then proofread (if you do this in OmniPage) and export the result to a filename, to an e-mail attachment or to the Clipboard as normal. Note 1: Do not forget to turn two page scanning off when you intend to go back to single page scanning. 7.11. Moving Around the OmniPage Text Editing and viewing Pane You move around a scanned document in the OmniPage Text Editing area in much the same way as you would navigate through a standard word-processor document but, depending on your screenreader, you may not find it quite as responsive as it would be in such as MS Word. For example, ARROWING up and down should read successive lines of text, CONTROL left or right ARROWING should take you through a document a word at a time, pressing HOME or END takes you to the beginning or end of a line of text respectively, CONTROL HOME goes to the top of a document, CONTROL END to the end of it, and so forth. You are likely to find that your lines of text do not quite fit in the editing pane, however. If you have scanned more than one page, you can move forwards or backwards through pages by pressing CONTROL PAGE down or CONTROL PAGE up. The environment you are in is a true editing one, so you can delete characters and words and you can type extra material into the document if you wish. 7.12. Automatic Character Training Using the OmniPage 14 Intellitrain Feature If you decide that you are comfortable doing your proofing/spell- checking in the OmniPage proofreader or if you think that OmniPage's automatic character training feature makes it worth any inconvenience that editing in that environment might cause, you would be advised to ensure that the OmniPage "Intellitrain" feature is enabled. This feature automatically remembers character shapes which it scanned incorrectly so that it does not make the same mistake again, as long as you corrected its mistake in the OmniPage proofreader. This does not happen if you make corrections elsewhere, such as in Microsoft Word, unless you are using Direct OCR (see the next section). You can ensure that Intellitrain is turned on by going to the Proofing property sheet within Tools, Options, i.e. Press ALT T, O, and CONTROL TAB TO "Proofing". In fact, it should be switched on by default. After turning Intellitrain on, you need do no more than use the OmniPage proofreader as usual by either having things set up so that the proofreader automatically loads after each scan or by invoking the proofreader manually after scans by pressing the F7 key for each page separately. ******** >SECTION 8 USING DIRECT OCR TO READ PRINT FROM WITHIN ANOTHER RUNNING PROGRAM Direct OCR is a means of running OmniPage in the background from within another running program. For example, If you have such as Word 2003 or WordPerfect 9 running you could start OmniPage from within that program and scan a page. The scanned page would be pasted into your word-processor at the point where the cursor currently is for reading or editing as required. You should not already have OmniPage running when you start Direct OCR scanning. Any scan from a word-processor which supports the RTF format will retain the text attributes which the original document possessed, such as text bold, underlined, italicised, etc, and graphics will also be pasted in if your application can deal with bitmap images (if you do not have these turned off). Otherwise, plain text only will be pasted in. 8.1. Registering Your Word-Processor or Text Editor with Direct OCR If OmniPage does not automatically put the "Acquire Text" option in the File Menu of your chosen word-processing application, you should be able to achieve this by registering it to do so as follows. Wordpad is used here as an example: 1. Launch OmniPage and then press ALT T (for tools) and O (for Options) and then CONTROL TAB to the "direct OCR" property sheet. 2. TAB to and make sure that "Enable Direct OCR" is checked on by pressing the SPACEBAR on it if it is not already on. You may have to go into your screenreader's navigation or mouse mode to do this. It should, however, already be checked on. 3. If you do not want to spell-check in the OmniPage proofreader, TAB to "Proofread OCR" and press SPACEBAR to turn this off. 4. TAB forward to the "Browse" button and press ENTER. The "Filename" editfield will come up so type the name of the executable file of your application in here, e.g. wordpad.exe". 5. You then TAB to the "Look In" button and, In the normal Windows way, navigate via Program Files, Accessories to Wordpad and then TAB to "OK" and press ENTER. 6. Lastly, you TAB again to another "OK" button and press ENTER and the process is finished. 7. Your application should now contain the "Acquire Text" and "Acquire Text Settings" options in its File Menu. Note, however, that I have done this registering with several versions of OmniPage and Office programs plus Notepad and Wordpad and, whilst it has worked in all programs, it has not always worked consistently with all versions of all programs. I cannot therefore regard it as wholly reliable. The registration usually works most reliably with Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. 8.2. Example of How to Scan Documents with Direct OCR With your scanner having been switched on prior to booting your computer: 1. Without OmniPage running and with your page on the scanner flatbed, Open the text editor or word-processor you wish to scan from within, e.g. MS word 2000, WordPerfect 9, Windows Notepad, MS Excel 2003, etc. 2. Press ALT F (for file) and ARROW up to "Acquire Text" and press ENTER. 3. The OmniPage scanning engine will be kicked into action in the background and the scan may commence immediately or you may be on a "Scan" or similarly named button to press ENTER on firstly, depending on how you have OmniPage set up to operate and on your scanner's interface software. 4. You will now be taken into the OmniPage proofreader to spell- check as usual (if you have not permanently turn this off) but if you want to skip this stage you can do so by pressing the ESCAPE key. 5. The text you scanned will be recognised and then immediately pasted into your word-processor at the point of your cursor. Therefore, if you want a block of scanned text to appear partway down a document you have started typing already, with the cursor in the relevant position, commence the Direct OCR scan. 6. The scanning process is over and you can now read, edit, spell-check in your word-processor, spreadsheet program, etc, as usual and/or save the scanned print document. Save with CONTROL S or ALT F and A in most word-processors. Note: If you did not have an open document on screen in your word-processor application at the time you started the scan, the recognised text will be pasted into the clipboard. 8.3. Changing Direct OCR Settings to Suit Your needs With your word-processor or other registered software running, you can change some of the settings which Direct OCR uses when it scans to meet your own requirements and preferences. Do this by: 1. Launch MS word, MS Excel, MS Powerpoint or whichever program you wish to scan from within and then press ALT F (for file) and ARROW up to "Acquire Text Settings" and press ENTER. 2. There are four settings property sheets within the dialogue box you will now come into. If you do not land in the "Direct OCR" sheet, just hold down the CONTROL key and keep pressing TAB until you reach it. 3. Then TAB down the various settings you can change to suit yourself. These are: A. "Draw Zones Automatically", which should be checked by pressing the SPACEBAR if it is not already checked on. B. "Proofread OCR", which you may wish to uncheck if you find spell-checking in the OmniPage environment to be not particularly user-friendly from the keyboard with a screenreader. You can always spell-check from within your word-processor later. C. "Image Source", which allows you to ARROW up and down two options of "Scan" and "Load Image File". The former is what you would leave focus on for normal scanning of hard copy paper documents and the load image file option is for if you regularly receive already scanned images of documents and now want to get them recognised and pasted into the text window of your word- processor or other registered program. D. TAB to "OK" and press ENTER to save these settings for all future Direct OCR scans until you change them again. 4. You can, of course, by CONTROL TABBING to them, make any other changes you like in the other three Property sheets which appear here at this time if you wish--in the "OCR", "Scanner" or "Format" property sheets. You will find that the options in these other sheets correspond to those which have been discussed in some detail in earlier sections of this tutorial when scanning in other modes. ******** >SECTION 9 USING THE OMNIPAGE 14 Workflow Assistant TO CREATE AUTOMATIC WORKFLOW FILES The OmniPage Workflow Assistant replaces the previously supplied OCR Wizard and takes you step-by-step through the scanning process, letting you make choices about the type of material you are scanning and the type of output you would like as you go. These settings will then be retained until you change them, e.g. if you later scan in automatic mode, the settings will still apply. You may find some options easier to select and change in the Workflow Assistant than by other means for all types of scanning but making settings changes via the Workflow Assistant for a one-off scan job only can be somewhat time-consuming. 9.1. Setting up a Workflow Routine with the Workflow Assistant You can not only initiate an immediate scan using your just selected options and settings with the Workflow Assistant but you can also save the workflow you have created in the Assistant to a filename for use on future scan jobs of the same kind requiring the same type of end result. What it is chiefly designed for is to pre-define steps and settings like you would when setting up a macro to later use as your wrapper or set of instructions for use in future scans if you choose to use a given workflow you earlier created. In other words, you use the Workflow Assistant to create template- or macro-like workflows holding settings and options instructions for future scans and you can create as many of these workflows with the Assistant as you like for use in different situations and with varying types of scan jobs and scan jobs requiring different end results. The below example will illustrate how to get a scan of hard copy paper text output with the Workflow Assistant and how to save this same workflow for use again at a later time. 9.2. Example of Scanning with the Workflow Assistant and Saving Your Workflows for Use on Future Scan Jobs The Workflow Assistant in OmniPage 14 replaces the OCR Wizard which existed for step by step selecting and scanning in earlier versions of OmniPage. After going through the steps in the Workflow Assistant you can save the workflow you have created to a filename for use again when you want to do a subsequent scan using the same steps and settings without having to select them again. So it is probably quicker and easier if you are scanning single pages only or needing to change settings regularly to use automatic or manual scanning than the Workflow Assistant but for regularly recurring tasks and scan jobs setting things up in the Workflow Assistant initially will be a time-saver, in the same way that creating macros or templates in a word-processor saves time when doing regular jobs in a predefined way. 9.3. Accessing the Workflow Assistant You set up and use the Workflow Assistant as follows: 1. Ensure that the OmniPage Toolbox is switched on by pressing ALT V (for View) and then T (for Toolbars). 2. In the list of options you will now be in, ARROW down to "OmniPage Toolbox" and,if it is not checked on, press SPACEBAR to check it on, although it is likely to already be turned on. 9.4. The Workflow Assistant Steps 1. You can load the Workflow Assistant in a number of ways, including: A. As soon as you launch OmniPage and are in the several lists of scanning choices on screen, on the "1-2-3" option, just press your down ARROW key to open the Assistant up; or B. you can also press ALT T (for Tools and then A (for Workflow Assistant); or C. You could press ALT P (for Process), W (for Workflows) and then ARROW down to "New Workflow" and press ENTER. 2. You now come into the first of several steps or dialogues you have to go through in the Assistant, the exact number of steps being dependent on your earlier choices within the Assistant, although you are likely to go through at least six or seven steps in all. You will recognise most of these steps and settings choices from the settings explanations and scanning steps already outlined in earlier scanning and set-up sections in this tutorial and from those mentioned in manual scanning mode below. 3. Firstly, you will come into a dialogue with three options to choose from and you will be on the "Fresh Start" option, which is what you want for this exercise and for most other Workflow Assistant jobs. This is what you use to start creating a workflow from scratch. The other two options: "Omnipage Workflows" and "Batch Manager Jobs" respectively are to do with creating a workflow from an earlier created workflow or Batch Manager job (i.e. modifying an existing workflow or batch Manager job file). So just press ENTER on "Fresh Start" or on the "Next" button. 4. Another dialogue loads in and you can ARROW up and down and right and left to leave focus on one of four choices, which are: "Load Image Files", "Use Current Document", "Scan Images" and "Open OmniPage Document". To scan print from your flatbed scanner leave focus on "Scan Images". The load image file option is to load an existing scanned but not yet recognised to text file or other image, perhaps to get it recognised to readable text, such as a Fax image or a text image you earlier scanned but did not get recognised at that time. The use current document and open OmniPage document options are to deal with a document already on screen or to get a saved document opened for further processing. So press ENTER on "Scan Images" or on "Next". 5. Now you come into a dialogue wanting you to make selections to do with what scanner driver you wish to use (you will usually only have one) and some options for how the scanner should work. TAB through these selection lists and ARROW through the options. As stated earlier in this tutorial, you should leave "Prompt for more pages" checked on, ensure that "Automatic" is selected in the page orientation list, only check on "Look for facing pages" if you are to scan books and want both pages scanning at once but treating as separate pages and the "Keep original resolution" option will usually be best left turned off. Then TAB to "Next" and press ENTER. 6. Next the recognising dialogue appears and you are in a listbox with seven choices in it. For scanning and recognising scanned print from hard copy paper, leave focus on "Recognise Images". Most of the other options will be self-explanatory but are basically to "Save"if you just wish to scan for images and save the image results without getting them recognised; or to get OmniPage to pause during the process so that you can "Zone Images Manually" so that you can personally draw lines around text and pictures in your scan job instead of allowing the zoning to be done automatically by OmniPage; or so that you can select a "Zone Template" you previously created to apply to the current scan job; or so that you can save the scan job to the OmniPage native OPD format after scanning; or so that you can have your scan sent as an image to someone via an e-mail message as an attachment; or, lastly, so that you can get the workflow process finished at this early stage if you like instead of defining other processes after this one with "Finish Workflow". Then press ENTER on "Next". 7. The next step is where you are required to get OmniPage to automatically determine the layout of any pages you scan or where you can ARROW down the first list to select exactly which format of page OmniPage should treat the pages as being in, e.g. "Multiple Columns, No Table", "Spreadsheet", etc. When you TAB once you can decide if you want "Speed" or "Accuracy" as your scanning mode, where the former recognises text faster but expects good quality text to be able to do this or where the latter will take more time in recognition if colour or degraded text is to be scanned. Continue to TAB through the options in here but most of them will not be very appropriate to scanning text for reading it only or will be only of use if you can see to make the necessary visual corrections to certain scanned characteristics, although you can select what language the print you are to scan will be in if not in English and choose to apply other dictionaries for other languages if appropriate.You can also press SPACEBAR on "Look for headers and footers" or "Look for hyperlinks" if you want OmniPage to make a special effort to find these elements of a print page and treat them differently from the main body of text in a document.You may also not require "Retain text and background colour" on if you only want to listen to a document on screen and want to save a little time in the recognition process, and you may want "Retain Inverted text" to be checked on so that any inverse video text in your document is not discarded. Then press ENTER on "Next". 8. The next step has some of the same options as have been explained in earlier steps in this section. The "Correct recognition results" option is for if you want the OmniPage proofreader to automatically load after a scan to spell-check in this facility but this is probably best left off unless you have no other means of spell-checking. You will most likely want to select "Save" in here to get the results of your scan saved/exported to any number of saving formats, such as RTF, DOC, TXT, PDF, etc. Then press ENTER on "Next". 9. Depending on what you selected above, the next step can greatly vary. For example, if you chose "Save" in the last step as directed for this exercise, you will have to make choices of such as saving to "Text" or "Image"; saving to a given "File Type", e.g. such as RTF, DOC, Wave Audio Converter, etc; to create one file for all pages or give each scanned page a different filename; to decide to have such as no formatting retained in the text of your output file or a true page output to keep all page attributes; to get not only your scanned file saved but also launched in the program which supports the saving format you selected, e.g. launched in Notepad if you saved to TXT, launched in MS Word if you saved in DOC format, launched in the Acrobat Reader if you save to the PDF format, etc.Then press ENTER on "Next". In the step before the last one, if you elected to "Correct recognition results" or "Send in mail", the options and choices in this dialogue will be very different from the above ones, e.g you would be getting asked about selections for proofreading or about entering e-mail addresses, attachment filenames, etc. 10. Yet another dialogue opens up and you are faced with four options, three of which have already been explained, namely "Save", "Send in mail" and "Save as OPD", so I will not repeat myself. For this example you leave focus on "Finish Workflow" and press ENTER or use the"Next" button. 11. Now the last dialogue appears and you are asked if you want to "Start the workflow when I close this Assistant", so press SPACEBAR to turn this on if you want the workflow you have just created to run and do the current scan job as soon as you finish creating it or leave it off if you just wanted to create the workflow template/macro and not use it until later. Then TAB once to "workflow Name" and give the workflow a meaningful filename if you want to be able to use it on later scan jobs, e.g. perhaps call this workflow such as "scan to text with no proofing and then save". If you do not name it it will still run for the current scan job but you will then loose the results of your work and selections in creating this workflow and not be able to reload the workflow for future use. If you leave "I want the document to remain open" checked on, it will remain on your OmniPage editing screen for you to read as well as anything else you elect to do with it. Finally, TAB to "Finish" and press ENTER. Note: I think that you will agree with me after going through all of the above that most of the other modes of getting a scan job set up and done are quicker and possibly easier than using this Workflow assistant for straightforward scanning of documents and getting them recognised for straightforward reading of such as your letters and circulars. However, where it comes into its own is for frequent scan jobs using these same selections, provided that you saved your workflow to a filename and that you retrieve it before doing future same situation scan jobs. 12. Provided that you checked on "Start the workflow when I close this Assistant" in The last step, scanning of your text on paper will commence automatically or after you press ENTER on such as a "Scan" button and work either as single page scanning or as multiple page scanning, depending on which type of scanning you have configured as your preference (see Section 7). Otherwise, you will simply save your workflow settings to a file and have to load this workflow before then using it to scan with( See the next sub-section for how to do this). Note: depending on your scanner interface, you may find that you loose focus on your "Scan", "Stop Scanning" and "Add more Pages" or similarly named buttons from time to time. You can usually get them back into focus for pressing ENTER on if you ALT TAB once or twice when this occurs. 13. When you have scanned all pages, the "Save to File"dialogue will appear, so save as explained in Section 7 above, e.g. type your chosen filename in, TAB to "Files of Type" and select your saving format and then press ENTER on "Save". If you simply want to read the results of your scan and not save them to a file, just press the ESCAPE key at this saving stage. 9.5. Loading and Scanning with a Workflow After creating and saving your workflow as outlined in the last sub-section, when you want to do another scan job using the same options and settings, you simply load the appropriate workflow file and commence scanning with it. 9.5.1. Loading a Specific Workflow You can load/open a workflow file in several ways, including: 1. Either: A. Press ALT P (for Process), W (for Workflows) and then ARROW up or down the list you are in, where your own created workflows will be listed plus some workflows already created for you by the OmniPage programmers. The "From OPD to Word and TIF", "To Word and TXT", etc, options are, in fact, pre-installed workflows in their own right; or B. Press ALT T (for Tools), W (for Workflows) and then ARROW up or down the list of workflow files, which will include your own created workflows and those already created for you and supplied with the program. Leave focus on a workflow file, TAB to "Set as Current" and press ENTER twice; or C. Open your System Tray and ARROW down to "Show Current Workflows" and press ENTER, followed by ARROWING to a workflow file and pressing ENTER on the one you want to use (get to the Sys Tray with INSERT F11 in JAWS, INSERT S or Windows key B in Window-Eyes or left SHIFT Numpad SLASH in HAL). Having loaded your workflow, you then continue as outlined below. 9.5.2. Scanning with your Specified Workflow file You now scan with your workflow just as you would scan normally. However, remember that the stages scanning will go through will be defined by the type of workflow you earlier created. If your workflow specified that the last step it should go through should be to save/export the file, then this will occur; if not, then there will be no saving option given you after you finish scanning. Similarly, if you elected to skip proofreading and chose to have only the images of your scanned documents saved to a filename without recognising them to text, then this is what will happen and you will have to do any necessary spell-checking either in OmniPage or another program later after firstly getting your scanned pages recognised separately. However, if you have followed the example steps I took you through in the earlier sub- section entitled "The Workflow Assistant Steps" right to the saving step, then all that will remain to do is as follows. 1. Select your workflow file to use on the current scan job in one of the three ways suggested in the last sub-section. 2. Scanning of your text on paper will commence automatically or after you go into "Workflow" in the Process menu and press ENTER on "Start". You may also have to press ENTER on such as a "Scan" button and work either as single page scanning or as multiple page scanning, depending on which type of scanning you have configured as your preference (see Section 7). Note: depending on your scanner interface, you may find that you loose focus on your "Scan", "Stop Scanning" and "Add more Pages" or similarly named buttons from time to time. You can usually get them back into focus for pressing ENTER on if you ALT TAB when this occurs. 3. When you have scanned all pages, the "Save to File"dialogue will appear, so save as explained in Section 7 above, e.g. type your chosen filename in, TAB to "Files of Type" and select your saving format and then press ENTER on "Save". If you simply want to read the results of your scan and not save them to a file, just press the ESCAPE key at this saving stage. Then ARROW through your document to read it or start continuous document reading with your screenreader, e.g. with Numpad 7 with HAL, CONTROL SHIFT R with Window-Eyes and Numpad down ARROW with JAWS. Remember to press CONTROL PAGE down to move on to the next page and read it if your document contains more than one page. ******** >SECTION 10 USING THE OMNIPAGE 14 BATCH MANAGER TO CREATE AUTOMATIC BATCH JOB FILES The OmniPage Batch Manager allows you to create batch files to be able to run jobs in a very similar way as you create workflow files (see the last main section). The main difference is that you have to give a batch job file a filename and you can specify that it runs immediately or specify a future date and time for it to run, so it has a scheduling facility. In fact, you use the Same Workflow Assistant to set up Batch jobs as you do to set up workflow jobs and many of the steps and options are the same or similar. The most useful use of the Batch Manager is likely to be found to be its ability to let you specify unrecognised image document files you have scanned and provide instructions on how to later process them and get them recognised and saved to a file and format of your choice. In this way, if you have many pages to scan which would take hours to wait to get recognised as you scan them, you can elect to get only the images quickly scanned and saved to a filename and then run a batch job file to do the recognising later when it is more convenient and you are not needing to use your computer, for instance, over night when you have left work or simply at home when you are in bed. 10.1. Example of Creating and Running a Batch Job File to Perform Page Image Recognition at a Later Date or Time--Scheduling If you have scanned several pages of text and simply saved them as images only to OmniPage's own OPD format and now want to get the more time-consuming zoning and text recognising done on them at a more convenient later date or time, you can do this with the Batch Manager as follows: 1. Press ALT P (for Process) and then B (for Batch Manager). 2. If you had of already created any batch jobs, they would be listed in the listbox you are currently in with their status indicated at the side of them, e.g. batchjob1 completed, batchjob2 waiting, etc, the former showing that it has been run and finished and the latter showing that it is waiting a future already scheduled date or time to automatically run. 3. Now press CONTROL N (for New Job), when the same Workflow Assistant opens up as you used in the last main section. You will be on "Fresh Start", so press enter on this or on the "Next" button. Keep TABBING to and pressing ENTER on "Next" after each of the below steps without me having to keep repeating this. In fact, because I have gone through most of the below steps and options in some detail in the last section, I will not say as much about them here, except for those which did not feature earlier (see Section 9 for a more detailed explanation of the Workflow Assistant's options and choices). 4. In the next dialogue you ARROW up, down, left or right through options and select the "Load image files" option. 5. Next TAB to "Files . . ." and press ENTER to be able to select the image input files you have scanned and now want recognising. You can select one file with many pages in it or several files with multiple pages in them for processing one after the other. In the "Filename" editfield you now come into either type the full path and filename to the image file you want to get recognised, e.g. c:\my documents\my pictures\report1.tif" or SHIFT TAB to the "Look In" list and use this and the files list below it to navigate in the usual Windows way to the image file or files you want converted to text, selecting/highlighting them either consecutively or non-consecutively in the usual way. You can select a whole folder of image files or individual files from several different folders. Then press ENTER on "OK" to return to your last Workflow assistant step. 6. TAB through the several other options in the above dialogue, most of which will be familiar from the last section and make your choices as you prefer. However, note the additional options of "PDF Password" and if you are getting a PDF file opened and recognised which is password protected type the password in here. 7. The next dialogue puts you on "Recognise Images" automatically so accept this option. 8. You now have to choose the usual automatic or specific page type to scan for, decide whether to scan for "Speed" or "Accuracy" and any languages other than English which are in the document you are getting recognised, etc. 9. Next decide if you want to proofread in OmniPage itself with "correct Recognition results" or Just select "Save" to save without spell-checking. 10. You now enter the familiar saving choices dialogue, so make your choices. However, in here note a new button you will have to press ENTER on called "Specify output file" and in the sub- dialogue you come into type a filename in for the recognised text file to be saved to, e.g. report1, and press ENTER on "OK" and then on "Next". The recognised file(s) will save to your usual saving folder. 11. You now accept the "Finish Job" option you are firstly offered. 12. Now we come to a completely different dialogue from those you have previously encountered. This is to do with deciding whether to start the recognition of your selected image files immediately, whether not to start the job at all (just allowing you to save your batch job template/macro to a filename for future use in the same situation) and, most importantly for this current example, "Start at this time". Leave focus on "Start at this time" and then TAB once to a figures list which requires you to select a date for the recognition job to commence. Today's date will be displayed so if you want the job to start later than today, just ARROW up in this list to tomorrow's date, etc. When you TAB once again, you reach the time list which is in three columns, so ARROW up or down the first list of figures, which is the hours, to what you want, then right ARROW to the minutes column and ARROW up or down to the minute you want and ARROW right and do the same with the seconds if you need things this accurate. You now just TAB again to the "Job Name" field and you have to type a filename in here to save your batch job file/template/macro so that you will have it available for use again in the future. You cannot skip this file naming stage. 13. You lastly TAB in the above dialogue to the "Finish" button and press ENTER. 14. You will return to the very first list you started in with the list of already created batch job files in it and showing what state of completion they are at. So, for example, if this list had of contained four batch jobs, two completed, one waiting and the one you just created above also waiting but, whilst you were creating your current batch job, the time for the third job to run had passed, then this third batch job would have automatically been run for you and would now also be indicating "completed" instead of "waiting". 15. After a batch job has automatically run (you have to leave your PC switched on for this to happen, of course), you can then locate your recognised and now resaved text file in My documents or My Pictures or wherever else you elected to have it saved to. 16. Leave the Batch Manager by pressing ALT F. 17. If you wish to rerun a given already completed batch job with all of its current settings, options and output filenames, etc, or get an unscheduled job run at any time, you can open the Batch Manager as usual with ALT P, B, ARROW to the completed or unscheduled batch job file and then press the shortcut of CONTROL S (for Start Job). Note 1: From within the Batch Manager, with focus on a batch job file in the batch jobs list, you can start a batch job running by pressing CONTROL S, stop one from running with CONTROL T, pause a job with CONTROL P and resume the running of a paused job with CONTROL R. Note 2: With OmniPage Pro 14 You cannot use batch jobs to rerun batches for new scans like you can with workflows. You can only do this for already completed or unrun/unscheduled jobs. The ability to run new batch jobs from existing and saved batch job files/templates/macros is only possible if you have a copy of the more expensive Office version of OmniPage 14. ******** >SECTION 11 SCANNING IN MANUAL MODE 11.1.Overview of Full Manual Scanning In manual mode you take OmniPage through the various stages of OCR yourself so that you have access to methods of personally fine-tuning the results. However, for most visually impaired people this may not offer much additional flexibility, as such features as training and zoning require good sight to perfect. You have to be able to see which word or symbol on a page OmniPage has made a hash of to be able to instruct it as to what the word or symbol should have been and you have to be able to draw lines around areas of text and/or pictures on the screen to be able to advise OmniPage where you want zones to apply. For this reason, I