OCR today?

[Robin LaPasha]

Hello, folks.  The question returns.  I have a library colleague with a
brand new digital
production center and...  somebody who wants to OCR some Russian (printed)
text.

The last time I checked (about 9-12 months ago) FineReader was still on
top, but
there were some fans of Readiris.  (I gather it would be the choice for
Mac-only people...)
And, as usual, though you wouldn't buy it with Russian in mind, if your shop
happened to have full current OmniPage, it was perhaps worth a try.

It hasn't been discussed on this list since 2003 (except for a recent
OCS/Old Greek thread), so...

Does anyone have some direct experience with recent revs of these products?
(Or other newcomers to the market?)  If so, please tell us - but do also
include:
	- the specific rev and level of your product (so we can compare apples and
apples),
	- whether you're using a Mac or a PC version of the product, and
	- whether you have also used the product to OCR other Slavic or non-Slavic
languages.

For example - the current products/versions appear to be:

	Readiris Pro 10 Windows and its Corporate Edition, and also
	Readiris Pro 9 (home and biz editions) for Mac
	http://www.irisusa.com/products/index.html
vs.
	FineReader 7 Pro and Corporate editions and
	"a Mac version" (which may have been dropped; I'm not seeing it on the
website...)
	http://www.abbyy.com/finereader_ocr/
	(oddly, the US site abbyyusa.com seems to be down today...)
or perhaps
	Omnipage pro 14 and pro office 14...
	http://www.scansoft.com/omnipage/

and what looks to be a general listing of current multilingual OCR
information appears at
http://www.translation.net/ocr.html

Now, with the background out of the way - does anybody have fresh news
about actually using this stuff? ;^)

Thanks in advance,

Robin
Robin LaPasha
ruslan at duke.edu			

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