ScanWorX User's Guide Preface ScanWorX User's Guide Welcome to Xerox Imaging Systems ScanWorX, the most powerful text and graphics scanning system available for Sun Microsystems workstations. ScanWorX incorporates Xerox Imaging Systems exclusive Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) software, which uses artificial intelligence techniques to achieve unparalleled character recognition accuracy. With ScanWorX and your Sun workstation, you can quickly and accurately scan text from printed documents and create formatted text files to use in desktop publishing and other text applications. In addition, you can scan photographs and other illustrations into image files in any of a number of standard image formats. Before going on to find out more about ScanWorX, please read this preface, as it describes these important items: About this manual Documentation conventions Related publications Technical support About This Manual This users guide includes complete introductory and procedural information and an attached quick-reference card. The infor-mation is designed primarily for non-technical users. However, you should be familiar with the operation of your Sun system. Note This manual should provide all the information you need to operate ScanWorX. However, Xerox Imaging Systems invites your comments about the information provided here. Please fill out the accompanying registration card and mail it as directed to Xerox Imaging Systems, Inc. Organization of this manual This manual is designed mainly as a reference tool with many practical tips. It is organized as follows: Chapter 1, "Overview," introduces ScanWorX features, the ScanWorX Help system, and how to proceed with using ScanWorX. Chapter 2, "How the System Works," describe system basics, including starting up and navigating ScanWorX, as well as file types in the system, how ScanWorX processes pages, and loading pages in the ScanWorX scanner. Chapter 3, "Windows and Commands," is a comprehensive overview of commands and options in ScanWorX. Chapter 4, "Scanning Documents," is the first of four chapters providing step-by-step instructions for using ScanWorX. This chapter provides instructions for scanning text, images, or both during a ScanWorX session. Chapter 5, "Delayed Processing with TIFF Files," details how to scan documents as TIFF files, and to process them later at off-peak times when it is more convenient. Chapter 6, "Verifying Text," describes and provides instructions for using text verification tools to improve character recognition, especially on difficult documents. Chapter 7, "Previewing Documents," describes and provides instructions for using the Document Preview window and previewing tools, which enable you view scanned pages and define text and image zones before processing. Chapter 8, "Tips and Techniques," describes methods to get the best performance from ScanWorX tools. Appendix A, "Character Set," provides a chart to access non-keyboard characters for text verification purposes. Appendix B, "Error Messages," lists ScanWorX error messages and possible causes and solutions for these error conditions. The "Glossary of Terms" defines words, phrases, and concepts used in this manual. Documentation conventions As described in Table P-1, ScanWorX documentation uses certain graphical elements and formatting to emphasize information and denote meaning in the text. Table P-1. Documentation Conventions Convention , Description bold , Introduces a new term,, or the first use of an important term in a chapter; also sometimes used to denote strong in-line emphasis. italic , Denotes titles of other manuals or books. Also used to denote generic representations of file name entries in examples. monospace , Denotes examples,, menu text,, or messages that appear on the computer screen. " " (quotes) , Denotes titles of chapters and sections in this manual. Also used for values that you may type into a menu. For example: Enter a number from "1" to "10" + , Introduces tips that provide useful information about a procedural step or system function. Note , Introduces important information about the current subject. Preface Related Publications Consult the ScanWorX Installation Guide for instructions to install your scanner and scanner software on a Sun workstation. Technical Support If you should experience problems with your ScanWorX system that you cannot resolve, do the following: First, consult the error message appendix. It contains a description of error conditions, and makes suggestions for correcting them. If cannot resolve the problem, call your authorized Xerox Imaging Systems dealer. If you still require assistance, you can call Xerox Imaging Systems Technical Support at: 800-777-5350 If you should need to call XIS Technical Support, be ready to provide: 1. Your software registration number (the serial number on your original ScanWorX tape cartridge) 2. A description of the steps that led up to problem. 3. If ScanWorX generated an error message, a verbatim description of the error message (and/or number). 1. ScanWorX User's Guide. Overview. ScanWorX User's Guide. Xerox Imaging Systems introduces ScanWorX, which offers powerful document scanning tools for Sun Microsystems workstations. ScanWorX streamlines the task of importing hard-copy documents to formatted text and image files on your Sun system. After you import documents into your system, you can edit and use the information in your desktop publishing, image editing, or other document processing application. ScanWorX Windows. Running under OPEN LOOK, ScanWorX operates from windows on your OPEN LOOK desktop. The main window and the optional preview window are shown in Figure 1-1. Figure 1-1. ScanWorX on the OPEN LOOK desktop. Like other applications that run under OPEN LOOK, ScanWorX provides an easy-to-use "point-and-click" interface. With the mouse, you can quickly select menus, commands, settings, and icons. When you first launch ScanWorX, the main window opens on your desktop (Figure 1-2). Figure 1-2. ScanWorX main window;. From the main window, you can access all ScanWorX options, and initiate all scanning, recognition, and image processing functions. Table 1-1 briefly describes the main menu options. Overview. Table 1-1. Main Window Options:. Item , Function. Help , Accesses a general description of using the context-sensitive Help system in ScanWorX. About ScanWorX , Displays an informational window about ScanWorX. Quit , Exits the ScanWorX application. Input Source , Scanner: Informs the system that you want input from the scanner. TIFF: Informs the system that you want input from the TIFF Queue. The TIFF Queue button becomes available when you select this. Process , Text: Instructs the system to process only the text from the input source. Image: Instructs the system to process only the images from the input source. Both: Instructs the system to process both text and images. Options , Preview: Opens the preview window for manual page segmentation (page zoning). Verify: Opens the Verifier for manual text verification . Feedback: Opens the Feedback window, which displays the scanned page with words being highlighted as they are recognized. Load Template , Loads a named template file, a pre-defined set of page zones, to process a job. Load Verification Data , Loads a named verification data file to process a job. Start , Starts a new job. Resume , Resumes a job that you previously interrupted. Pause , Suspends a job temporarily, so that you can change settings or perform some other interim operation. Convert , Converts an unconverted document to any of the supported text formats. Settings , Lets you access and change Document and Scanner settings; save and load settings files; save user defaults, and restore system default settings. What ScanWorX Can Do. The ScanWorX system is designed for high-volume scanning of a wide range of documents (Figure 1-3). Figure 1-3. Document examples. The system enables you to perform a variety of document processing tasks. Specifically, you can:. scan, recognize, and format text and images from a variety of single-sided or double-sided documents with different page sizes, orientations, and print sources (see Chapter 4). Text can be converted to FrameMaker (version 1.0 and above), Interleaf (version 4.0 and above), several Text-only (ASCII) formats, or KDOC for CALS and other third-party conversions. Text can also be stored in a ScanWorX internal format, Format Analyzed Text, for later job resumption or multiple conversions. Original artwork can be captured as line art (straight black-and-white) or as dithered halftone images and output to TIFF Uncompressed, TIFF CCITT-3, TIFF CCITT-4, Sun Rasterfile Standard, Sun Rasterfile Encoded, and Interleaf Graphics Format (IGF). delay processing by storing page images in TIFF files, then perform recognition at off-peak hours (see Chapter 5). accurately recognize even low-quality documents by verifying the text as it is being recognized (see Chapter 6). preview and zone pages to precisely identify the text and graphics to be recognized (see Chapter 7). ScanWorX features Xerox Imaging Systems' exclusive Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) software. Using artificial intelligence techniques, ICR provides unsurpassed character recognition accuracy of virtually any document. These include documents produced on typewriters, dot-matrix printers, ink-jet printers, laser printers, and phototypesetters, as well as photocopied versions of any of these document types. In addition, ScanWorX offers powerful text verification features which enable you to optimize character recognition for difficult documents (Figure 1-4). Figure 1-4. Text verification tools. To assure that just those parts of the document that you want to capture are processed, ScanWorX provides interactive previewing features (Figure 1-5). Figure 1-5. Preview features. Other ScanWorX features and capabilities are as follows:. Recognition of virtually any typeface in point sizes ranging from 6- to 24-point. Recognition and output of correct point sizes and type styles (bold, italic, underline, superscript, subscript). Recognition of multiple-column documents. Custom markers for questionable and illegible characters . Capability to save user defaults and save and load settings files for customized job processing. Automatic page-tilt correction up to five degrees. On-line Help system. Refer to Chapter 2, "How the System Works," for a closer look at ScanWorX features and capabilities. On-line Help. ScanWorX software includes a Help system that provides on-line information about all ScanWorX menu options and commands. You can get general help by clicking the Help command in the Main window. To get context specific help, point to a menu item, and press the Help key, or press the Meta ( META ) key and the slash ( / ) key simultaneously:. Help messages are relatively brief and summary in nature. They are not as detailed as the user's guide. If you require more information, consult the appropriate section of the user's guide or use the index to find specific details. An example of a Help message is shown in Figure 1-6, next page. Figure 1-6. A Help message. When you are finished reading the help message, click the Done button to close the Help window. Note. In the event that you encounter a problem that neither the Help system nor the user's guide can help you solve, call your authorized Xerox Imaging Systems' representative or call XIS Technical Support directly at:. (800) 7775350. How To Get Started. Now that you are familiar with the capabilities of ScanWorX, you probably want to get started using ScanWorX right away. Chapter 2, "How the System Works," describes how to start the system. It also describes the system environment and explains in simple terms how the system works. Finally, it discusses how to load pages in the scanner. You should read this chapter, as it provides fundamental information about ScanWorX operation. Chapter 3, "Windows and Commands," provides an overview of each and every window, command, and option in the system. Refer to this chapter for a system overview or when you need information about a specific command. When you are ready to use ScanWorX in a production mode, you can refer to Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7. These chapters provide detailed procedures to use the major functions of ScanWorX. Note. Step-by-step procedures in this manual often include tips to help you in the decision-making process. Tips, indicated by a + symbol, provide information about choosing command options, specifying settings, preparing for involved tasks, and so on. Thus, before attempting a complex task, it is often helpful to read through the procedure to gain this additional insight about system operation. Chapter 4, "Scanning Documents," introduces document scanning, and describes how to prepare for and start a job, and scan text, images, or both. Chapter 5, "Delayed Processing with TIFF Files," describes how to quickly scan pages into TIFF image files for later processing at a more convenient time. Chapter 6, "Verifying Text," describes how to achieve excellent character recognition from even poor-quality documents by using the Verifier. Chapter 7, "Previewing Documents," provides complete information on the system's manual page segmentation (zoning) tools. With these tools, you can view pages and identify specific text and image areas to process. Chapter 8, "Tips and Techniques," helps you take full advantage of the rich features of ScanWorX. Refer to this chapter for information about optimizing text recognition accuracy, system performance, and your own productivity. The Glossary of Terms provides definitions of the many new terms you will encounter in the course of using this manual. If you are new to scanning concepts, the glossary may serve as a primer to scanning and text recognition. If you cannot find specific information, you are encouraged to use the extensive index provided at the back of this book. 2. ScanWorX User's Guide. How the System Works. ScanWorX User's Guide. When you use ScanWorX, you generally need to complete only a few simple steps to initiate a complex task. The system does the difficult work - scanning documents, recognizing text and image data, and converting the data to useable file formats. From scanned pages, the system recognizes characters and words, character style (roman, italic, bold, underline), and text formatting details such as line position and tabs. At your direction, the system also recognizes graphic images from scanned pages. After it isolates and recognizes text and graphics, the system converts recognized data to the format of your choice and outputs the formatted data to text and graphics files on your hard disk. Before you begin using the system, it may be helpful for you to review some of the basics of system operation. This chapter introduces you to concepts about system design and operation that will help you understand and effectively use the system. Specifically, these topics are presented:. Starting the system. Main window. Menu selection methods. File types in the system. How ScanWorX processes pages. Loading pages in the ScanWorX scanner. Starting the System. After your system administrator has installed ScanWorX on your workstation, you can begin a work session by typing the ScanWorX command in a shell window on your OPEN LOOK desktop:. icr . Note. You must launch ScanWorX from within OPEN LOOK. Otherwise, your Sun system will generate a bus error. ScanWorX responds by displaying a splash window introducing the system (Figure 2-1). Figure 2-1. Splash window. Main Window. The main window (Figure 2-2) is the control center for all ScanWorX functions. Items in the main window are presented in four general categories. How the System Works. The Input Source category defines the origin of pages to be processed - the scanner or TIFF files loaded on the TIFF Queue. The Process category defines what type of data is to be output during the job to files on your Sun system - text, image, or both. The Options category indicates the interactive tools that you will be using to assist ScanWorX. Previewing and text verification tools are available. The Settings category provides access to subwindows that let you define job settings, save and load settings files, and save and restore default settings. Figure 2-2. Main window. Methods for Using ScanWorX. ScanWorX is designed to use OPEN LOOK conventions. Therefore, if you are familiar with other OPEN LOOK applications, you should quickly become familiar with ScanWorX operation. Mostly you will use a mouse to operate ScanWorX. However, the system also provides some keyboard equivalents and a command line interface. Use the mouse. Generally, if you have had experience with graphical user interfaces, you are probably accustomed to using a mouse to operate applications (Figure 2-3). Figure 2-3. Using the mouse. Using a mouse plugged into your workstation, you can quickly "point and click" to select ScanWorX commands, checkbox options, and on/off buttons in menus. For virtually all operations in ScanWorX, use the left mouse button. The right mouse button lets you access pop-up menus for cycle options in ScanWorX windows. For more information about the three buttons on your mouse, see the appropriate Sun Microsystems documentation. Use the keyboard. In general, ScanWorX does not provide a keyboard interface to menu options. However, some key equivalents are available when you use the Verifier toolbox, described fully in Chapter 6, "Verifying Text.". Use the command line interface. ScanWorX provides access via a command line interface. The command line interface is a separate executable. You can also use the command line interface to start ScanWorX from another program or script. If you do use the command line interface in a OPEN LOOK shell window, you should also make sure to have a OPEN LOOK console window open, as well, to view any console messages that may occur. See Chapter 8, "Tips and Techniques" for more information about the command line interface. File Types in the System. ScanWorX introduces a number of file types that are specific to its recognition and document processing environment. Table 2-1 (next page) lists and briefly describes these file types and the file extensions that are used to identify them. Files that have been created due to an interruption are removed from the system when you resume document processing and then end the interruption of the document. Table 2-1. File Types in the System;. File Type , Ext. , Description. Interleaf , . doc , Text files in Interleaf ASCII format. FrameMaker , . mif , Text files in Frames Maker Interchange Format (MIF). ASCII , . txt , Text files in straight ASCII format. Raster Image , . ras , Formatted Raster image files. TIFF Image , . tif , Tag Image File Format image files are an industry-standard image format. KDOC , . kdc , An unconverted file containing recognized text and formatting for later conversion to CALS (Computer Acquisition and Logistics Support). Interleaf Image , . img , Image files in Interleaf Graphics Format. Format analyzed text , . @fa , XIS proprietary format. Unconverted document file containing formatting information. This file, created when you select Format Analyzed Text, must have a companion . @dc file. Document content , . @dc , Unconverted file containing document content. This file must have a companion . @fa file. Verification data file , . @cs , Contains a reloadable verification data set created with the Verifier option. Template file , . @tm , Contains a reloadable set of zones defined with the Preview option. Settings file , . @in , Contains a reloadable group of settings to streamline job processing. User dictionary , . @lx , User-defined word list to improve text recognition (see Chapter 8). Temporary , . @ti , Temporary setting file. , . @tc , Temporary verification data file. , . @tf , Temporary unconverted document file. , . @tq , Temporary TIFF Queue file. , . @tt , Temporary template file. How ScanWorX Processes Pages. ScanWorX requires input from the scanner or TIFF queue to produce output in the form of text and/or graphic image files. When a hard copy document page, monochrome or color illustration, or photograph is scanned or read from a TIFF file, ScanWorX stores the page image in computer memory as a binary (black-and-white) picture. These electronic pictures are sometimes called bitmap images (Figure 2-4). Figure 2-4. Bitmap images. Normally, you use your scanner to produce page images. However, the system also accepts page images from TIFF files, which may come from multiple sources, including ScanWorX. TIFF, which stands for Tag Image File Format, is an industry-standard image format. When the system gets a page image from the scanner or a TIFF file, it can treat incoming data in one of several ways:. Perform character recognition and save the recognized text in an unconverted document file. You can later convert this text to any of the formats supported by the system. Perform character recognition and immediately end and convert the text to a chosen format. Process the page and save the output as a TIFF image file for later processing. Process the page and save the output as an image. Process the page and save the output as both text and image. Character recognition. ScanWorX accomplishes unparalleled character recognition accuracy by using proprietary artificial intelligence techniques known as Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR). ICR enables the system to provide true omnifont character recognition, capable of reading thousands of type styles in sizes from 6- to 24-point on both portrait and landscape pages. The system recognizes typeset, laser-printed, impact-printed, typewritten, and dot matrix print, and distinguishes roman, italic, bold, underlined, subscripted and superscripted type. Intelligent character recognition learns about type styles and character forms present in the document, and adapts and tunes its recognition capabilities for best results. Thus, page recognition actually gets more accurate, and considerably faster, as ScanWorX becomes more familiar with the number of characters recognized and learned. During processing, the system employs cooperating recognition experts, artificial intelligence components that contribute to the analysis and recognition of characters and words. These recognition experts work on three separate levels. At the lowest level, text and graphics are distinguished, and individual words on the page are identified. Recognition experts decide whether a mark is noise or a character to be retained for further analysis, and analyze the size, shape, alignment and complexity of image fragments. Gutters and lines are examined to determine column boundaries. At the next level, recognition experts analyze character shapes, touching characters, and fragmented characters. In addition, they correlate new images with data collected from earlier images to help with recognition of poorly printed text. Third-level experts work to resolve ambiguities still present in text, for example, using an integrated dictionary with built-in context rules to decide the identity of similarly-shaped characters (Figure 2-5). Figure 2-5. Similarly-shaped characters. For jobs that contain a great deal of technical terminology, such as scientific reports and product specifications, the system also lets you prepare and load a user dictionary. A user dictionary is a word file that you create, containing up to 10,000 special terms. The system employs a user dictionary as an extension of the built-in dictionary to improve text recognition. See Chapter 8, "Tips and Techniques," for more information about preparing a user dictionary. Flagging recognition errors. Because no text recognition software can be 100-percent accurate all the time, the system lets you define special markers that can be output to the text file to flag recognition errors (Figure 2-6). Figure 2-6. Questionable and illegible character flags. One marker is for questionable characters, characters that ScanWorX is unsure about (even though they may be correctly recognized). Another marker is for illegible characters, characters that ScanWorX is unable to recognize. After your text file is created, you can edit it and search for these recognition flags, and make corrections as necessary. Text formatting. While accuracy is very important in text recognition, it is only part of the equation. Of equal importance is text formatting (Figure 2-7). The system recognizes the scanned pages and preserves many of the formatting and style characteristics of the original document. It then translates it to a file format that you can work with right away, such as Interleaf or FrameMaker. Figure 2-7. From hard copy to formatted text file. Delayed processing. As Figure 2-7 illustrates, you can also output scanned pages to TIFF image files. ScanWorX supports TIFF output as part of a delayed processing strategy that lets you take full advantage of your equipment. The system processes the image of a page into a binary TIFF file considerably faster than actually performing character recognition - the most time-consuming part of capturing documents. Thus, during the day you can quickly scan multiple pages as TIFF files, monitoring the scanning process and reloading the automatic document feeder as necessary. Then, at off-peak hours - such as overnight or during your lunch break - you can instruct the system to convert and format the text and images from the TIFF files. When you return, you can immediately begin editing or otherwise processing the converted files. For complete information about delayed processing, refer to Chapter 5. Image processing. When you scan a drawing or photograph, your scanner can create a bitmap image of the graphic, as it does for text. ScanWorX, at your instruction, can output this bitmap image as a straight black-and-white (binary) image. Alternatively, ScanWorX can process the image as a dithered halftone image. As with text, image data can be processed to the image format that you select (Figure 2-8). Figure 2-8. From hard copy to formatted image file. See Chapter 4 for basic instructions to scan images. Refer to Chapter 7 for information about using zoning tools to capture images from previewed pages. See Chapter 8 for information about getting the best image quality. Loading Pages into the Scanner. The ScanWorX scanner is a 400 dpi (dots per inch) flatbed scanner with an attached automatic document feeder (ADF). Thus, you can place pages one-by-one on the flatbed and scan them, or for volume processing, you can use the ADF, which has a capacity of 50 pages. For most jobs, it is easiest to use the ADF. You simply load a stack of pages in the ADF, specify Use Automatic Document Feeder in the ScanWorX Scanner Settings window, and start the job. ScanWorX processes all the pages in the ADF automatically. When you are scanning a photograph or line drawing, however, you may want to place the image directly on the scanner flatbed. Scanning images via the ADF can result in a slightly skewed (slanted) image, which may not be acceptable to you. Also, you should use the flatbed to scan images that are on paper stock that is too heavy (or too delicate) to feed through the ADF. Use the ADF. The ADF lets you scan pages as wide as 11.8 inches (30 cm) and as long as approximately 17 inches (43 cm). Figure 2-9. Portrait pages in the ADF. When you load a stack of pages that have a portrait orientation (print running across the width of the paper), place them face down with the page tops entering the scanner first (Figure 2-9). When you load a stack of pages that have a landscape orientation (print running lengthwise across the paper), place them face down with page tops along the left edge (Figure 2-10). Figure 2-10. Landscape pages in the ADF. When you scan in landscape mode, you need to inform ScanWorX of this by specifying Landscape orientation in the Document Settings window. Use the flatbed. ScanWorX lets you use the full platen size when scanning pages on the flatbed. The platen is 11.7 inches (29.7 cm) by 16.5 inches (75.4 cm). For most office documents (8.5-by-11 inches), the platen is large enough so you can scan pages in portrait mode, regardless of whether they are printed in portrait or landscape orientation. When placing pages on the flatbed, use the triangular registration mark as a guide. For portrait pages, place the page face down with the top of the page against the ruler edge and centered on the registration mark (Figure 2-11). Figure 2-11. Portrait page on the flatbed. For landscape pages, place the page face down with the side of the page centered on the registration mark (Figure 2-12). Figure 2-12. Landscape page on the flatbed. Caution. Before scanning, close the cover as the scanning light source is quite bright. 3 ScanWorX User's Guide Windows and Commands ScanWorX User's Guide This chapter provides an overview of all ScanWorX windows and commands. Specifically, these topics are presented: Main Window Commands Input Source Options Process Options Options Windows and Commands Settings Commands Main Window Commands When you start up ScanWorX, the main window appears, offering all the commands and options that you can select to prepare for and begin a new job (Figure 3-1). Figure 3-1. Main window The following subsections describe seven general commands that you can select from the main window: Help About ScanWorX Quit Start Resume Pause Convert Windows and Commands The other main window options and commands are described in later sections of this chapter. Help The Help button accesses a general message that describes how to use the built-in context-sensitive Help system. Figure 3-2. General Help window A Help message is available for every option in the ScanWorX system. Simply point to an option with the mouse, and press the Help key on your keyboard, or hold down the Meta key and press the / (slash) key. The Help window opens on your desktop. Click Done to close the Help window. About ScanWorX When you select the About ScanWorX command, the ScanWorX splash window is displayed. This window contains basic product information about ScanWorX including the product name and version number and copyright information. Click on the About screen (or anywhere on the desktop) to close it. Quit Select the Quit command when you are done using ScanWorX. The ScanWorX main window and all other open subwindows close and the process terminates. Start The Start command is central to the operation of the system, enabling you to start a new job. When you click the Start button, it displays the Start Processing windows (Figure 3-3). Figure 3-3. Start Processing window The Start Processing window lets you specify the output directory and file name of the file(s) to be created. For all output files, ScanWorX appends an identifying extension. (Refer to Chapter 2 for more information about file types and extensions in the ScanWorX system.) File extensions are added automatically by the system, so you should never add one manually. For image files, the name that you specify becomes the root name, as additional page number and image number information may be appended. If a formatted file with the same extension already exists, you will be asked if you want to overwrite the file. For the output files to be created, the Start Processing window also lets you specify: text format image format text options These items are described in the next three subsections. After specifying all options in the Start Processing window, click Done to begin the scanning and recognition process. Text Format The Text Format option provides a cycle or list box that allows you to choose one of five format options: Text with Line Breaks Text Only Tab Delimited FrameMaker Interleaf KDOC Format Analyzed Text For more information about available formats, refer to the section in Chapter 8 entitled, "Text Conversion in ScanWorX." Image format The Image Format option provides a list box with several choices of file format of images that are created during a process: TIFF Uncompressed TIFF CCITT - 3 TIFF CCITT - 4 Sun Rasterfile Standard Sun Rasterfile Encoded Interleaf (IGF) Text Options The Text Options command displays a subwindow with a list of character formatting and markup options (Figure 3-4). Figure 3-4. Text Options window Note that for the Text-only formats, only a subset of text options is available. Table 3-1 (next page) summarizes the text options. Table 3-1. Text Options Settings , Description Markup , Questionable: lets you specify character(s) to flag in the output file any character ScanWorX is unsure about. Flag appears directly before questionable character. , Illegible: lets you specify character(s) to flag characters ScanWorX could not read. Flag appears in place of illegible character. Zones , Zone marker: lets you specify character(s) to flag the start of a zone (column) in the output file. , Zone Position: lets you specify zone coordinate information in the output file (see Chapter 8,, "Tips and Techniques" for more information) Preserve , Lets you specify preservation of italic,, bold,, underlines,, font changes,, page breaks,, and subscripts and superscripts. , Note Preserve options are available only for Interleaf and FrameMaker formats. Resume One very important ScanWorX feature is the capability to interrupt and resume a document. For example, you might want to interrupt processing of a document in order to scan and recognize a higher-priority job. When you reach a convenient stopping point, you can interrupt a job and save the partial document and associated files. Then you can begin and complete the higher-priority job. The Resume command allows you to resume an interrupted job. Resume displays a window to select the filename and directory of the interrupted document. You can interrupt a document only after the first page of the job has been processed. For complete information about interrupting and resuming a job, see Chapter 8. Pause The Pause command lets you suspend processing of the current document and make decisions about how you want to continue. For example, you could pause a job, change settings, then continue the job. When you click the Pause button, a window with six options is displayed (Figure 3-5). Figure 3-5. Pause window From the Pause window, you can continue the job, preview the current page, interrupt the job, end the document, cancel the page, or cancel the entire document. The Pause command is dimmed in the main window if the preview window is open. The preview window contains pause options at the top of the window. Convert The Convert command lets you convert a Format Analyzed Text (unconverted) file to one of the other supported text formats - Interleaf, FrameMaker, or one of several ASCII file types. The advantage of storing recognized text as Format Analyzed Text is that you can later convert the document to multiple file formats. Your unconverted . @dc and . @fa files remain intact. For example, you can convert a Format Analyzed Text document to FrameMaker or Interleaf format for desktop publishing, while also converting it to ASCII for data base purposes. For complete information about text conversion, see Chapter 8. Input Source The Input Source option allows you to select the origin of page images that are to be processed during a job. Three options appear in the Input Source category: Scanner TIFF TIFF Queue Scanner Select the Scanner button to specify that ScanWorX is to process pages coming in from the attached scanner. TIFF Select the TIFF button to specify that ScanWorX is to process page images stored in TIFF files that are loaded on the TIFF Queue. When you select TIFF, observe that the TIFF Queue command is undimmed (now available). TIFF Queue If you specify TIFF as the Input Source, ScanWorX looks to the TIFF Queue for TIFF files to process. Click the TIFF Queue command to display the TIFF Queue Manager, which lets you specify the TIFF files to be processed and the order in which they should be processed (Figure 3-6, next page). You can change the current directory and list the TIFF files in that directory by entering a new pathname and clicking the Show Files button. If you are processing a group of TIFF files, ScanWorX automatically treats the group of TIFF files as a document and reads them in the specified order from the TIFF Queue. Thus, you can think of TIFF files in the queue exactly as you would a stack of pages in your scanner's automatic document feeder (ADF). The TIFF Queue command lets you view and edit the `stack' of TIFF files to be recognized. Figure 3-6. TIFF Queue Manager The TIFF Queue Manager options are described in the following subsections. Done Click the Done command when you are finished adding and removing files to the TIFF Queue. Cancel Click the Cancel command when you want to close, and cancel any changes you have made to, the TIFF Queue Manager. Show Files Click the Show Files command to list the TIFF files in the current directory. You can change the directory by entering a new path in Directory field, then click on Show Files again. In this way you can select TIFF files from any directory on your system to add to the queue. Add Use the Add command to add files to the TIFF queue. In the Files list, highlight the files to be added, then click the Add command. Added files are displayed with their full pathnames. Remove Use the Remove command to remove files from the TIFF Queue. Click and highlight any file in the queue, then click Remove. Remove All Use the Remove All command to remove all files from the TIFF Queue Manager Contents box. Select All Use the Select All command to highlight and select all the files in the Files list. Then you can use the Add command to add all files in the directory to the queue. Deselect All Use the Deselect All command to deselect all highlighted files in the Files list. Process Options Just as the Input Source category lets you define the origin of the document to be processed, the Process category lets you define the type of data to be captured from the document. The Process category lets you specify that text, images, or both are to be captured from the scanned pages (or TIFF files in the TIFF Queue). Text Click the Text button to specify that only the text of scanned pages (or TIFF files in the TIFF Queue) is to be processed. If there are any line art or halftone images on the scanned pages, ScanWorX will detect and ignore them. If your document contains halftones, you can also select the Remove Halftones filter to speed up text recognition. See the `Settings' section later in this chapter for information. Image Click the Image button to specify that only image data from scanned pages (or TIFF files in the TIFF Queue) is to be processed. A `picture' of each page will be stored in a separate image file in the specified image format. Both Click the Both button to specify that both the text of the document and the images will be processed. This is sometimes referred to as compound scanning. For example, you might want to recognize the text of a document and process it to, say, Interleaf for desktop publishing purposes. At the same time, you might want to maintain page images of the document on the system for data base imaging purposes. Note With compound scanning, you can process text and image data only as Text or Line Art (binary). Options Windows and Commands In the main window, the Options category provides three checkbox options and two commands. These five items provide access to the system's previewing, text verification, and feedback tools, which let you interact with, and precisely control, system processes. If you choose the Preview mode, the Preview window is displayed. The Preview window lets you view the scanned image and create zones after it has been scanned from the scanner or TIFF queue and before it is processed. If you select the Verify mode, ScanWorX displays the Verifier window and toolbox. These features allow you to verify and, if necessary, correct scanned data character by character. By doing this for the first page or two of the document, you help the system improve its recognition accuracy for the entire document. This is especially useful for difficult documents such as multiple-generation photocopies. If you select the Feedback mode, ScanWorX displays the feedback window that provides an ongoing visual representation of the recognition process. You can display any combination of the Preview, Verify, and Feedback windows. After you perform previewing and verification tasks, you can save your work in template files and verification data files. The Load Template and Load Verification Data commands let you reuse this data on other documents of the same types to automate and speed up processing. Preview Click the Preview checkbox to open the Document Preview window (Figure 3-7, next page). The preview window enables you to view scanned pages to ensure that they were correctly scanned. With preview tools, which appear at the top of the window, you can also draw text zones, image zones, and/or ignore zones. Zones let you more precisely control the parts of the page(s) that are to be processed, and the type(s) of data to be processed. You can identify up to a total of 40 zones on the previewed page, in any combination of text, image, and ignore zones. Figure 3-7. Document Preview window While the preview window is open, you can access most other ScanWorX windows. So, for example, if the image in the preview window was too dark or too light, or if the page is skewed, you can make adjustments and rescan the page before processing it. In addition, at the top of the preview window, you can access a number of commands to operate the system. These commands are summarized in Table 3-2. For complete information about previewing documents, see Chapter 7. Table 3-2. Document Preview Window Commands Command , Function Process , Recognizes (processes) the current page. Scan Page , Scans the first (next) page in the scanner,, or TIFF file on the TIFF queue,, and displays the page image in the preview window. If it is the first page of a multi-page document,, the Start Processing window appears so you can name the document before proceeding. Interrupt , Interrupts the job,, and saves all the intermediate character recognition and format analysis files for pages of the document that have been recognized so far. You can resume processing of this document at a later time. Cancel Page , Cancels processing of the current page and clears the preview window. End Document , Converts all pages of the document that have been recognized so far,, creates the selected output files,, and closes the window. Cancel Document , Cancels processing of this document,, removes all temporary files,, and clears the document preview window. Load Template , Allows you to select and load a previously created template file. Save Template , Saves the current template in a template file of the name you assign. Clear Template , Erases all zones and links in the preview window. in & cm , Allows you to choose between inches and centimeters in the ruler. Dim Image , De-emphasizes (`grays out') the page image so you can see zones more clearly. Verify Certain documents have characteristics that cause character recognition accuracy to decline, for example: documents with noise documents that are too dark or too light multiple-generation photocopies documents with ornate, thin-stroke typefaces, in which character segments do not always connect To enable the best possible character recognition, even on such problem documents, ScanWorX provides an interactive text verification system called the Text Verifier. The Text Verifier allows you to create verification data, verify recognized text, and to correct recognition errors. Click the Verify box in the main window to display the Verifier window and toolbox (Figure 3-8). Figure 3-8. Verifier window and toolbox The Verifier window shows a graphic display of the scanned text, and a text display showing the recognized text. The toolbox contains the tools you need to perform verification tasks. Toolbox tools are briefly summarized in Table 3-3. Table 3-3. Verifier Toolbox Tools Tool , Key , Function , R8 , Ignore this character,, as it is simply noise on the page. , R9 , Undo any operations to the previous entire group (usually a word,, or a word with punctuation). , R10 , Move the cursor left one character within the block. Cursor is now in overstrike mode , R11 , Accept the character with verification. This informs ICR that it has correctly recognized the character. , R12 , Move the cursor right one character within the block. Cursor is now in overstrike mode,, and anything you type replaces the one character. , R13 , Join this character (or group of characters) with the previous character. Cursor is now in overstrike mode,, and anything typed replaces the joined characters. , R14 , Accept the entire group with verification. , R15 , Join this character (or character group) with the next character. Cursor is now in overstrike mode,, and anything typed replaces the joined characters. Feedback To gain a visual representation of the recognition process, click on the Feedback checkbox in the main window. This opens the Feedback window (Figure 3-9). Figure 3-9. Feedback window The Feedback window displays an image of the page currently being recognized. As the character recognition process takes place, it is dynamically illustrated in this window. ScanWorX employs Xerox Imaging Systems' exclusive Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) software, which uses artificial intelligence techniques to teach itself about, and recognize, the letter forms of practically any document. As outlined in Chapter 2, ICR performs multiple passes on a page to achieve a high degree of recognition accuracy. This is shown in the Feedback window, as words that are not recognized during the first recognition pass are marked (outlined) so that the recognition software can return to them in a later pass. As text is recognized, it is changed by ScanWorX to a generic recognition font. A black highlight moves through the page, highlighting each word as the word is being recognized. If the Feedback window is sized during a process, the window contents are scrolled (if it is made smaller) and subsequent pages are scaled to fit the entire page into the window. Load Template The Load Template command allows you to load a previously created template (. @tm) file. A template file contains a set of zones (and links) that you defined in the preview window. When you click Load Template in the main window, a subwindow opens, letting you locate and load the template file (Figure 3-10). Load Template command Figure 3-10. Load Template window Saving and reusing template files can help to streamline your document processing environment. For example, suppose you regularly scan a three-column newsletter. You can create a zone template for the three columns, and save it in a template file. Later, when you scan another newsletter, you can load the template file. This saves you from having to create the template each time you process this type of document. You use the Save Template command in the preview window to store a template in a named file. For complete information about saving and loading template files, see Chapter 7. Load Verification Data When ScanWorX recognizes a document, it compiles recognition information about the document called verification data. When you use the Verifier, you help the ScanWorX compile extremely accurate verification data for a particular document. This information can be saved in a named verification data (. @cs) file and reloaded for use with other documents of the same general type. Thus, the time you spend optimizing character recognition for one document can be applied over and over again to documents of the same type. The Load Verification Data command allows you to load a previously created verification data file. When you select the command, the Load verification data window is displayed (Figure 3-11). Figure 3-11. Load verification data window In the Directory field, type the directory that contains the verification data file. Then select Show Files to display a list of available files in the bottom portion of the window. Click the file to enter it in the Filename field. Then click Load to load the file. Important Verification data files should be reused only for documents that are of the same type as the document for which the original verification data was created. Documents should be similar in design and should use the same type styles and type sizes. Otherwise, recognition may not improve, and in some cases, may suffer. For complete information about the Verifier, see Chapter 6. Settings Commands The Settings category of commands in the main window is your control center for preparing ScanWorX for a particular job. The Settings category contains six commands that enable you to specify nearly all of the job settings necessary to process even the most complex document or graphic image. With one of the Settings commands, you can specify document settings, such as the number of columns in the document, the page size, and the primary type of text in the document (alphanumeric, letters only, or numbers only). In addition, you can specify scanner settings to control such things as brightness, document quality, resolution, and more. Two commands in the Settings category let you save and reload settings files to streamline job operation. Finally, two Settings commands let you save settings as defaults or to restore the preset defaults in place when you first installed the ScanWorX system. The following subsections describe the commands available in the Settings category. Document Document settings let you inform ScanWorX about the document you intend to process. When you click the Document command in the main window, a window of settings appears (Figure 3-12). Figure 3-12. Document Settings window Often you can scan a document without changing the default settings. Default settings are configured for processing good quality, letter-sized, single-column documents with a portrait orientation. However, to more closely define the type of document you want to process, you can change document settings. Document settings are organized in two categories - Page Settings and Recognition Settings. Page Settings enable you to describe the pages that the system is about to process. These settings include Orientation, Page Size, Columns, Next Page, Pages, and Blank Pages Separate Documents. Recognition Settings enable you to describe the text that system is about to recognize. These settings include Text Type, Lexical Context, Filtering, Confidence Level, User Dictionary, Choose User Dictionary, and Choose Language. All Document settings are described in the following subsections. When you are done specifying Document Settings, click the Done button to put them in place for the upcoming job. Orientation The Orientation option lets you define the orientation of print on the page (Figure 3-13). You can select either Portrait or Landscape. The default is Portrait. Figure 3-13. Page orientations ScanWorX is capable of processing documents that have a mix of portrait and landscape pages. If you intend to process mixed documents, you must reset Orientation before a page with a different orientation is scanned. You may therefore find it easiest to work with the preview window open so you can process pages one at a time. Page Size The Page Size category provides selections that enable you to specify the size of pages about to be processed. A cycle or list box lets you select one of the standard sizes supported by the system: Letter (8.5-by-11 inches or 21.59-by-27.94 centimeters) Legal (8.5-by-14 inches or 21.59-by-35.56 centimeters) A3 (11.69 -by-16.53 inches or 29.7-by-42 centimeters) A4 (8.27-by-11.69 inches or 21-by-29.70 centimeters) Columns ScanWorX supports column recognition for pages with multiple columns, including pages with irregular layouts. Identifying where columns begin and end automatically, ScanWorX processes the text in the correct sequence and outputs it to a file in galley (single-column) format. Column settings depend on page layout. An annual report, for example, might be presented in a two- or three-column layout, where columns are of equal width. Newsletters, on the other hand, often have irregular layouts, where a page might have one article set in a single four-inch column while another is set in three two-inch columns. Figure 3-14 provides examples of both types of layout. Figure 3-14. Column settings and page layout The Columns setting lets you specify that your original document has 1, 2, 3, or 4 columns. Alternatively, you can choose Auto Detect (automatic detection) mode for pages with complex layouts, or layouts that differ from page to page of your document. The default is 1 Column. In general, specify an explicit number of columns for pages that have symmetrical columns of equal width. Click Auto Detect when you are scanning a page with an irregular layout, or one that has more than four columns. Note Column settings are for automatic document processing. If you select 2, 3, 4, or Auto Detect, you cannot zone text in the Document Preview window. Do not use multiple columns if your document contains tables or is of an irregular format (see Figure 3-14) because the document format may be changed in the output document. You can also use preview tools to zone multiple-column pages instead of choosing columns here. Refer to Chapter 7 for complete information about using preview tools. Next Page The Next Page option keeps track of the current page number being processed. Generally, you do not have to change it. When you first start ScanWorX, the Next Page option is set to 1. However, you can enter a page number manually for the next page you intend to scan, for whatever reason. This is useful, for example, if you are processing a job out of sequence. You can enter the next number in sequence or any other number up to 999. Do not attempt to use 0 or any number past 999 or you will receive an error message during processing. Pages The Pages option lets you select either single-sided or double-sided scanning. The default is Single-Sided. Blank Pages Separate Documents The Blank Pages Separate Documents option lets you inform ScanWorX that blank pages are to be interpreted as document separators. During scanning, each time ScanWorX encounters a blank page, it ends the current output document and begins another one. For example, if you wanted to scan 10 documents in a batch process, you could insert a blank page in between each document, then load the entire stack in the automatic document feeder. Then, you could click the Start command, enter a file name and directory, and proceed. The file name that you enter becomes the base name of the multiple output files. For example, if you entered `report' as the name, the 10 output files would be named as follows: report-001. ext report-002. ext ... report-010. ext Where the . ext is the extension of the output files that indicates the text format you selected. This option only works if you are processing single-sided documents. Text Type ScanWorX performs extremely accurate character recognition on a wide variety of documents. However, it occasionally misreads characters, particularly characters that are similar (Figure 3-15). Figure 3-15. Characters that look similar during recognition The Text Type option lets you define the types of text to be scanned. Use this option to enhance character recognition on some types of documents. For example, if you are scanning financial data you might use the Numbers Only option. By setting the correct Text Type, you can help the system do an even better job of character recognition. Three Text Type options are available - Alphanumeric, Letters Only, and Numbers Only. Alphanumeric is the default setting. Select Alphanumeric if your document contains both alphabetic characters and numbers. Select Letters Only for documents that contain only alphabet characters and no (or only a few) numbers. Select Numbers Only for documents, such as spreadsheets, that contain all (or mostly) numbers. Note The system will still correctly recognize most characters, regardless of the Text Type setting. Text Type simply provides one more level of help for the ICR software. Lexical Context The Lexical Context setting provides another way to help the system in the character recognition process. It provides three options, Enabled, Disabled, and No Rules. Enabled is the default setting. Select Enabled to specify that the system's language dictionary and context rules are to be used during character recognition. If you load a user dictionary, it will be used, as well. Select Disabled if you want the system not to refer to the system (or user) dictionary, but otherwise apply normal context rules. Select No Rules to tell the system not to use either the dictionaries or the context rules. When you select Enabled, the system compares the words on scanned pages to those in the lexicon(s) to verify their identity. It also informs the system to use word definition (context) rules, among them: Words are composed of alphabetic characters only. Uppercase characters appear only at the beginning of a word, unless the entire word is capitalized. Punctuation appears only in certain positions in a word. If most of the text in the document consists of words that can be found in a standard dictionary, you should select Enabled. Enabled is the proper setting for most documents. Select Disabled only to instruct the system not to look at any dictionary. Select this if your document does not have many words - a spreadsheet, for example, or uses terms and acronyms not found in a dictionary. Select No Rules if numbers and upper and lower case letters are frequently mixed in the text (as in parts lists, for example). Filtering The Filtering option provides settings that also are helpful during the character recognition process. None, the default, leaves filtering off. The Remove Halftones filter helps improve recognition accuracy and speed on documents that contain halftone pictures. (Half-tones are reproductions of continuous tone images that are made by a screening process for printing purposes.) By turning the Remove Halftones filter on, you assure that ScanWorX does not waste time trying to interpret the halftone dots as text. Another filtering capability - Enhance Dot Matrix - helps ScanWorX recognize documents printed on draft-quality dot matrix printers, which use dots to build characters (Figure 3-16). Figure 3-16. Draft-quality dot matrix print Ordinarily, on draft-quality dot matrix output, ScanWorX would notice the white space between the dots, and thus would have difficulty recognizing character shapes. With Enhance Dot Matrix filtering on, ScanWorX compensates for the white space and recognizes characters with greater accuracy. Important For most documents, including those with letter-quality, or near-letter-quality, dot-matrix print, you should leave filtering set to None. Otherwise, recognition accuracy and speed may suffer considerably. Confidence Level The Confidence Level setting provides a slider bar that allows you to set an assurance value for character recognition in the form of a number between 0 and 10, inclusive. During recognition, the system assigns a confidence level to each character. If a system's confidence level for a character rises above the confidence level that you set, the system regards that character as being correctly identified. If the system's confidence level falls below the number that you specify, the system regards the character as being questionable (possibly mis-recognized) and marks the word so you can check it when you later edit the file. Under Text Options in the Start window, you can specify a questionable character marker that the system outputs in the text file in front of each questionable character. The higher the number you enter, the more likely that characters will be marked as questionable. For most documents, a number in the middle of the range is appropriate. The default is 5. User Dictionary The User Dictionary field displays the pathname of a currently loaded dictionary, if there is one. If there is not one, the field (which is always dimmed) displays the word `None'. A user dictionary is an ASCII file that you create, containing up to 10,000 special words for technical, legal, scientific, or other documents that may hold a great deal of special terminology. Note For information about creating a user dictionary, see Chapter 8, "Tips and Techniques." If you do not have a dictionary currently loaded, the default is None. If you load a user dictionary, the system uses both the system dictionary for the current language and your user dictionary. You use the Choose User Dictionary command to load and unload a user dictionary. Choose User Dictionary If you have created a user dictionary to aid in the recognition of a particular document (or set of documents), you can use the Choose User Dictionary command to load it. When you select Choose User Dictionary, a window is displayed, which lets you locate and select the user dictionary (Figure 3-17). Figure 3-17. Load User Dictionary window The Filename field shows the selected or currently loaded dictionary file. The Directory field lists the current directory and may be changed. The Show Files command lists files after you have changed the current directory. The files in the directory are listed in the bottom portion of the window. Click on a file to load it in the Filename field. The Load command loads the selected dictionary file. The None command unloads a dictionary, if one is currently loaded. Language The Language setting lets you select the language of the document you intend to recognized. You have a choice of Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish. English is the default. Scanner When you are preparing to process text and/or images from a document, the Scanner command lets you fine-tune controls that are built into your scanner. Scanner settings are often critical to achieving a good quality page image that the recognition system can process successfully. When you select the Scanner command in the Settings category, the Scanner Settings window appears (Figure 3-18). Scanner settings are discussed in the following subsections. Figure 3-18. Scanner Settings window Scanner Resolution The Scanner Resolution setting allows you to choose 400, 300, or 200 dots per inch (dpi) resolution. In general, use 400 dpi for all text scanning, and for the best resolution and best document quality. Use 300 dpi for image scanning, when your output device (for example, laser printer) is 300 dpi. Use 200 dpi only to scan line art images that do not require detail, and also to save disk space. Use Automatic Document Feeder The Use Automatic Document Feeder setting lets you turn your automatic document feeder (ADF) on and off. Turn the ADF off when you want to place a document directly on the platen of the scanner. For most jobs, leave the Automatic Document Feeder on. Because document feeders sometime introduce page skew, you may want to disable the feeder and use the flatbed when you are scanning graphic images. Output Brightness The Output Brightness setting allows you to determine how dark or light the scanned image will appear to ScanWorX. You can select one of: Normal Light Lighter Dark Darker Custom Normal is the default and is fine for most good-quality office documents. However, if your documents are faintly or too darkly printed, you can adjust output brightness accordingly to optimize character recognition. Select Custom to manually change the Brightness control on your scanner. When you select Custom, the brightness slider bar becomes available (is no longer dimmed). This way you can adjust the Brightness level in finer increments. Having the correct brightness setting is important for both text and image scanning. For text, when a page is scanned too lightly, the character images become thinner and may break up. This results not only in poorer recognition accuracy, but may also slow down processing. If your original page was lightly printed to begin with, or the typeface of the characters was very light with thin strokes, you can adjust the Output Brightness setting to darken the scanned image. Select the Dark setting or select Custom and move the slider toward the left side of the bar (toward the 1). This should result in more accurate character recognition. Of course, it is possible to go too far in this direction. By making the scanned image so dark that characters begin to touch and noise on the page becomes visible, recognition accuracy suffers. Figure 3-19 shows a comparison of the same character images scanned with different Output Brightness settings. Figure 3-19. Different brightness settings The current Brightness amount is shown in the bracketed text box to the left of the slider bar. The default setting is typically in the middle of the dial. In general, for scanning graphic images, if your original image is clean and crisp, use the Normal setting. On the other hand, if your original image is overly dark or light, adjust brightness to lighten or darken the output. For example, if you are scanning a photograph, and the background is very dark, select Light, or select Custom and specify a value on the lighter side of the slider bar. To determine the best brightness setting, you can preview the image in the preview window. By using the magnifying glass tool, you can zoom in on the scanned image at full resolution to determine if it is of acceptable quality. See both `Preview' earlier in this chapter and Chapter 7 for information about document previewing. Text/Line Art Click the Text/Line Art button (the default) if you are scanning text, or if you are scanning line art (black-and-white) images. Halftone Select Halftone if you are scanning photographs or color images and you want to output image files with the scanner's dithering patterns to simulate gray tones. Halftone is dimmed unless you have selected Image as the Process mode in the main window. Halftone Pattern The Halftone Pattern setting becomes available when you choose the Halftone button. It lets you select from a list of halftone dithering patterns to simulate continuous-tone images. Continuous tone images, such as photographs, contain a gradient of colors, or gray tones, ranging from white to black. The printing press (as well as typesetters and most laser printers) print only one color at a time - black, for example. Consequently, the printing press has to simulate the gray tones of a photograph by printing halftones, black dots of varying sizes that give the appearance of gray tones. In traditional page make-up, halftones are made by a screening process that photographs the original image through a very fine glass or contact screen. The resulting image is a series of different-sized black dots. Similarly, your scanner can only scan one color - black; so it uses another method of continuous-tone simulation, called dithering. Dithering is the arrangement of black dots in particular patterns to represent gradient tones. Figure 3-20 shows some examples of halftone patterns available from your ScanWorX scanner. Figure 3-20. Dithering patterns (300 dpi) Dithering is similar to traditional halftoning. The difference, however, is that your scanner has only one dot (pixel) size. Your scanner's highest resolution determines the pixel size. The ScanWorX scanner's highest resolution is 400 dots per inch, the pixel size is 1/400 of a inch. The ScanWorX scanner has 10 built-in halftone patterns from which you can choose: Diagonal Random Spiral Horizontal Vertical Small Spiral Forty-five Degrees High Gradation High Contrast Fine Dot Select a pattern that would apply an appropriate treatment to a particular halftone image that is being scanned. Look in the Document Preview window to determine which is the best treatment for your halftone image. The previewed image is only meaningful if you zoom in as far as possible. Save In the Settings category, the Save command allows you to save the current settings to a named settings file. Creating and using settings files is a quick way to set up your system for a particular type of job. When you click the Save command, ScanWorX displays the Save Settings window, which allows you to define the directory and name in which to store the settings (Figure 3-21). Figure 3-21. Save Settings window Load The Load command lets you load an existing settings file for fast job set up. When you select Load, the system displays the Load Settings window (Figure 3-22). Figure 3-22. Load Settings window The Load Settings window lets you specify the name of the file, and the directory location. The Show Files button lists the settings (. @in) files in the current directory. You can click a file in the list to install the name in the Filename field above. When you are ready, click Load to put the settings in place for the job at hand. These settings remain intact until you either load another settings file or select Restore Defaults to return to the ScanWorX default settings. Save as Defaults The Save As Defaults command allows you to save the current settings and window configurations as the defaults ScanWorX uses when you start the application. A default settings file is saved in your home directory. It is named: ksun. @in Thus, when you quit ScanWorX and start it back up, all settings and windows (for example, the Preview window) will be as you left them when you executed the Save As Defaults command. Restore Defaults The Restore Defaults command restores the ScanWorX defaults that are shipped with the system. If you have changed and saved settings with the Save as Defaults command, you can restore the system defaults with the Restore Defaults command. 4 ScanWorx User's Guide Scanning Documents ScanWorX User's Guide To import paper documents and graphics into files on your Sun workstation, ScanWorX provides versatile scanning capabilities. Supporting a number of industry-standard file formats, the ScanWorX system can scan text, graphics, or both from practically any document. For text processing, you can convert documents into formats compatible with Interleaf, FrameMaker, several text-only (ASCII) formats, KDOC and Format Analyzed Text, two ScanWorX proprietary formats. For image processing, you can scan drawings and photographs, and output them as line art or halftone files. For halftones, you can select one of 10 dithering patterns to be applied to the scanned image. At your instruction, images can be output to a variety of popular image file formats - Sun Rasterfile (Standard and Encoded), Interleaf (IGF), and several TIFF variations (uncompressed, CCITT-3, and CCITT-4). This chapter provides step-by-step instructions for using the ScanWorX system for document scanning, specifically covering these topics: Scanning text Scanning images Scanning text and images together Note This chapter describes document scanning without the use of the system's text verification or previewing capabilities. For information about text verification, see Chapter 6. For information about previewing, see Chapter 7. Getting Started The procedures in the following sections assume that your hardware and software has been completely installed. Scanning Documents With those tasks accomplished, you can start up the ScanWorX Intelligent Scanning System. In OPEN LOOK, to start the ScanWorX system from a UNIX shell tool window, type: icr In a few moments, the ScanWorX splash window appears on your desktop. Click on the splash screen and the main window appears (Figure 4-1). Figure 4-1. Main window You can now go on to scan and recognize text, graphic images, or both. Procedures for these tasks are provided in the next three major sections of this chapter. Scanning Text One of the ScanWorX system's most important capabilities is text processing - scanning one or more pages and converting the text on those pages to a file in any one of the supported formats. After the file is created, you can use a desktop publishing or text application to edit, format, or otherwise process the text. This section describes how to prepare for, and perform, text scanning and recognition with your ScanWorX system. Specifically it describes how to: Specify document settings Specify scanner settings Start the job and specify text options Process the document Note One way to streamline the setup process for a job is to load a settings file. Use the Load command from the main window. For more information, refer to Chapter 3. Specify document settings Document settings inform the system about the document you intend to process. These settings include page settings and recognition settings. Page settings include page orientation, page size, and column layout of the document to be processed. Recognition settings describe the text about to be processed. Refer to the "Settings" section in Chapter 3 for more information about document settings. To specify document settings, use the following procedure: 1. Select the Document Settings command from the main window. The Document Settings window appears (Figure 4-2, next page). The Page Settings are on the left side of the window; the Recognition Settings are on the right. Figure 4-2. Documentation Settings window 2. Specify document settings, as appropriate for the document about to be processed. Use Table 4-1 as a guide. 3. Click Done to close the Document Settings window. Table 4-1. Document Settings for Text Scanning Setting , Tips Orientation , Specify Portrait for most documents,, and feed them into the scanner accordingly. Specify Landscape if print runs horizontally across the length of the page,, and page length exceeds 11.6 inches. Such pages (for example,, legal-sized landscape pages) are too large to feed as "portrait" pages. Page Size , Click on the list and select one of the page sizes. Columns , In general,, specify an explicit number of columns (1,, 2,, 3,, or 4) for pages that have evenly-spaced columns of equal width. Specify Auto Detect when you are scanning pages with an irregular layout,, or one that has more than four columns. Next Page , Specify the number of the next page you want scanned. In general,, if the next page is a new document,, use the default setting,, 1. Pages , Specify single-sided if your input document is single-sided. Specify double-sided if your input document is double-sided. Blank Pages Separate Documents , Turn on if you plan to scan multiple documents as part of the same job. ScanWorX will then interpret a blank page as the start of a new document and open a new output file automatically. Text Type , Use Alphanumeric if your input document has both numbers and letters. Select Numbers Only if you are scanning financial data,, and Letters Only if your input has few or no numbers. Lexical Context , Select Enabled to specify that the system's language dictionary and context rules are to be used during character recognition. If you load a user dictionary,, it will be used,, as well. , Select Disabled to prevent the system from use the system (or user) lexicon. , Select No Rules to tell the system not to use either the lexicon(s) or the context rules. Filtering , Specify None to keep all filters off when you are scanning. Specify Remove Halftones to have the system filter out embedded halftone pictures and speed up recognition. Specify Enhance Dot Matrix when you are scanning draft-quality dot matrix documents. Confidence Level , The Confidence Level is an assurance value that the recognition software tries to attain for each character before it releases it as "recognized correctly." The higher the confidence level,, the greater the number of characters that the system will flag as possibly incorrect. User Dictionary , This is a non-editable text field containing the name of the currently loaded user dictionary,, if there is one. To load or unload a user dictionary,, use the Choose User Dictionary option. Choose User Dictionary , Provide the full pathname in the provided window of a user dictionary you want to use. Load Language , Specify the primary language of the document being recognized. English is the default. Specify scanner settings Generally, default scanner settings should be adequate for good-quality documents. For other documents, use scanner settings to adjust scanner controls - for example, Output Brightness. To adjust scanner settings: 1. From the Settings category in the main window, select the Scanner command. The Scanner window appears (Figure 4-3). Figure 4-3. Scanner settings window 2. Adjust settings, as appropriate, for the document about to be processed. Use Table 4-2 as a guide. 3. Click Done to accept the new scanner settings. Table 4-2. Scanner Settings for Text Scanning Setting , Tips Scanner Resolution , Use the default (400 dpi) for all text documents. 400 dpi offers the best resolution and document quality. Use Automatic Document Feeder , Leave on unless you are placing pages (either loose or bound) manually on the flatbed. Output Brightness , Original documents may vary considerably in terms of the darkness of the text,, the lightness of the background,, and the amount of noise (dirt,, smeared ink,, finger-prints,, handwriting,, and other marks) on the page. , Leave on Normal unless the input document is very dark or very light. , Try using one of the lighter settings (Light,, Lighter) if characters on your page appear too bold,, are starting to fill in or are touching,, or words are separated by very small spaces (as in some magazines). Also,, recognition of documents with a lot of background noise,, or with colored backgrounds,, may improve considerably by using a lighter setting. , Try using a darker setting (Dark,, Darker) if characters on the page appear faint,, broken,, or very thin. , Select Custom to access the slider bar so that you can adjust brightness at finer increments. Text/Line Art , This setting must be left on for processing text documents. Halftone , Leave off for text scanning. (Trying to select this when your Process mode is Text or Both generates an Alert message.) Start a new job From the main window, to start a new document, use the following procedure: 1. Specify Scanner as the Input Source. The Scanner button is highlighted. 2. Select Text as the Process type. The Text button is highlighted. 3. Select the Start command from the main window. The Start Processing window appears (Figure 4-4). Figure 4-4. Start Processing window 4. Optionally, specify a different output directory. The current directory is shown in the Directory field. Highlight the directory path and type the new directory name. 5. Specify the document name. Point to the Filename field, and type a file name. UNIX file naming conventions apply (no spaces, use underscores to delineate words, and so on). Do not include a file extension. 6. Specify the Text Format. Cycle through choices or choose from a pop-up menu by clicking with the right mouse button (Figure 4-5). Figure 4-5. Text format pop-up menu 7. Define the Text Options. Click the Text Options button to display another window. Click Done when you are done. Use Table 4-3 as a guide. Table 4-3. Text Options Type , Description Markup , Questionable: lets you specify character(s) to flag in the output file any character ScanWorX is unsure about. Flag appears directly before questionable character. , Illegible: lets you specify character(s) to flag characters ScanWorX could not read. Flag appears in place of illegible character Zones , Zone marker: lets you specify character(s) to flag the start of a zone (column) in the output file , Zone Position: lets you specify zone coordinate information in the output file (see Chapter 8,, "Tips and Techniques" for more information) Preserve , Lets you specify preservation of italic,, bold,, underlines,, font changes,, page breaks,, and subscripts and superscripts. , Note Preserve options are only available for Interleaf and FrameMaker formats. 8. Go on to process the document. Refer to the next section. Do not click Done in the Start Processing window, yet. Process the document After you complete all steps in "Start a new job," you can process your single-sided or double-sided document. For instructions, refer to one of the following subsections, as appropriate. Process a single-sided document To process a single-sided document, use the following procedure: 1. Load the document in the scanner. The scanner's ADF capacity is 50 pages, the recommended maximum of pages to process during a single job. If your document is larger, scan it as more than one job. Figure 4-6 shows you how to load pages in the scanner's ADF. Figure 4-6. Loading the ADF 2. Start scanning. Follow the steps in the previous section, "Start a new job. In the Start Processing window, click Done. The scanner scans all the pages in the ADF. When all pages have been scanned, the system displays the Out of Input window (Figure 4-7). Figure 4-7. Out of Input window 3. Continue, cancel, or end the document. To process more pages of the document, go to Step 4. To suspend processing temporarily (to change settings, for example), or to abort the document, go to Step 5. To end the document and convert the recognized text to a file formatted for your text application, go to Step 6. 4. Load more pages in the scanner, then click Continue. The system scans and recognizes the pages, then again displays the window shown in Figure 4-7. Proceed from Step 3 to continue, cancel, or end the document. 5. To temporarily suspend processing, click Interrupt. This lets you interrupt processing. You can later click Resume on the main window and provide the filename when you want to resume processing. 6. When you are done, click the End Document button. The system outputs the recognized text to the selected formatted file type that you can use with your word processing, desktop publishing, or other text application. Process a double-sided document ScanWorX features automatic collation of double-sided documents. Thus, you can scan all the odd pages first, then flip the stack and scan the reverse sides (Figure 4-8). Figure 4-8. Double-sided document scanning ScanWorX automatically collates the scanned data in the correct order in the output file. If you set up the job for processing a double-sided document, you are ready to begin processing. 1. Load the document in the scanner. Refer to Figure 4-6 for page placement directions. Place the double-sided stack in the ADF so that the first righthand page will be scanned first. The scanner's ADF capacity is 50 pages. However, it is recommended that you process no more than 50 page sides during a single job. If your document is larger, process it as more than one job. 2. Start scanning. Follow the steps in an earlier section, "Start a new job," then click Done in the Start Processing window. The scanner scans the odd sides of all the pages in the ADF. When all pages have been scanned, the system displays the Out of Input window (Figure 4-9). Figure 4-9. Out of Input window 3. Continue, cancel, or end the document. If you want to process more righthand (front sides of) pages, go to Step 4. If you want to process the reverse sides of the double-sided pages, go to Step 5. If you want to end the document before ScanWorX scanned the even pages, recognized text, converted, automatically collated, and output the document to a file formatted for your text application, go to Step 6. 4. Load more pages in the scanner, then click Continue. The system scans and recognizes the pages, then again displays the window shown in Figure 4-9. Proceed from Step 3 to continue, cancel, or end the document. 5. Process the reverse (even-numbered) sides of pages. Turn the stack over and place it in the ADF so that the last even-numbered page is in position to be scanned next. Click the Flip and Continue button. The Next Page number in the Document Settings window is updated appropriately and scanning resumes. Eventually, the Out of Input window is redisplayed. If you have scanned multiple stacks of pages, be sure to process the reverse sides in descending order. If you have very large double-sided documents (over 100 pages) to process, it is recommended that you scan the document as a series of separate jobs, then combine the multiple output files with your text processing application. Otherwise, you may generate a system error because of memory overflow. Proceed from Step 3 to continue, cancel, or end the document. 6. End the job. When you are done processing all pages of the document, click the End Document button. The system outputs the recognized text in the selected format. During the conversion process, the system performs automatic collation, during which it sequences the scanned text in the same order it appeared in the original double-sided document. Scanning Graphic Images The ScanWorX system enables you to easily scan graphics to useable image files on your workstation. You can scan line art, a photograph, or color illustration, and process the image in two ways: as binary (black-and-white) data; or as data in one of 10 dithered halftone patterns. Figure 4-10 shows examples of both types of images. Figure 4-10. Two types of image data At your direction, the image data is output to any one of a variety of industry-standard image file formats: Sun Rasterfile (Standard and Encoded); Interleaf (IGF); or TIFF (Uncompressed, CCITT-3, or CCITT-4). The following subsections provide procedures to scan an image, specifically describing how to: Specify document settings Specify scanner settings Process the image Note Because image files can take up a great deal of disk space, you may want to use preview tools to create image zones to more precisely control the image area that is processed. See Chapter 7 for information. Specify document settings For image scanning, only some of the settings in the Document Settings window are appropriate. These are Orientation and Page Size. To specify document settings for image scanning: 1. In the main window, click the Document command. The Document Settings window appears (refer to Figure 4-2). 2. Specify document settings, as appropriate for the graphic image about to be processed. Use Table 4-4 as a guide. 3. Click Done. The Document Settings window closes. Table 4-4. Document Settings for Image Scanning Setting , Tips Orientation , For all but the largest images,, you can specify Portrait orientation. , Specify Landscape only if the image is larger than can be accommodated in portrait mode on the ScanWorX scanner flatbed. , Place the image directly on the flatbed to avoid skew that can be introduced by the ADF. Size , Click on the list and select the standard page size that most closely approximates the size of your image. Other settings , For image scanning,, ignore all other settings in the Document Settings window. Specify scanner settings To specify image scanning and define scanner settings: 1. From the Process category in the main window, click Image. The Image button is turned on. 2. Select Scanner Settings from the main window. The Scanner Settings window appears (refer to Figure 4-3). 3. Specify scanner settings. Use Table 4-5 as a guide. 4. Click Done. The Scanner Settings window closes. Table 4-5. Scanner Settings for Image Scanning Setting , Tips Scanner Resolution , You can select one of three resolutions (dots per inch,, or dpi): 400 (the default); 300; or 200. ^, In general,, the highest available resolution achieves the most detailed image. To obtain the most accurate image file,, you should try to match the resolution of the scanned image with the device you will eventually use to print it. For example,, if you have a 300 dpi laser printer,, you should scan the image at 300 dpi. ^, If the image to be scanned is relatively simple,, for example,, a flowchart or a floor plan,, you can choose a lower resolution. This reduces the amount of time it takes to scan and recognize the image,, and the amount of disk space the resulting image file requires. ^, If you are scanning a continuous tone (contone) image,, the higher the resolution,, the greater the number of gray levels that can be represented by the halftone pattern,, thus the more accurate the resulting image file. Use Automatic Document Feeder , It is recommended that you click this setting off. Scan images on the flatbed to get the straightest possible image. The ADF can introduce page skew that can cause the image to be scanned at an angle. Output Brightness , Brightness determines how light or dark the scanned image is when output to a file. The default setting is Normal and is adequate for most good-quality images. ^, Select one of the other general settings to achieve a lighter or darker image. Select Custom if you want to adjust the brightness bar at finer increments. ^, For example,, if you are scanning a photograph of a person,, and the background is very dark,, select Light or Lighter (or a lighter Custom setting) to lighten the image. ^, If you are scanning a line drawing with very light lines,, specify Darker or Dark (or a darker Custom setting). ^, Of course,, you can use preview tools (Chapter 7) to scan and evaluate the brightness of an image before processing it to a file. ^, Experiment with different settings on sample scanning runs. With experience,, you should develop a good instinct for setting brightness. Text/ Line Art Halftone , Determines the type of image data that is written to the output file. ^, Select Text/Line Art if you are scanning a black and white line drawing,, or want to achieve a posterized look from a continuous-tone image. ^, Select Halftone to simulate the continuous tones of a photograph or color illustration with different bit-mapped patterns and densities of black dots. Halftone Pattern , If image type is Halftone,, you can specify one of 10 halftone patterns. These settings are dimmed (not available) if you specify Text/Line Art. Process the image After you specify document and scanner settings, you can process the image, as follows: 1. Select the Start command from the main window. The Start Processing window is displayed (Figure 4-11). Figure 4-11. Start Processing window 2. Specify the output directory 3. Specify the image file name. Point to the Filename field, and type a file name. UNIX file naming conventions apply (no spaces, use underscores to delineate words, and so on). Do not include a file extension. This is the base name that is used for the image file(s) created during a session. Because multiple images may use the same image name, the system appends a three-digit page number to the file name. For example, if you typed "monitor" as the base name, the first file name would be: monitor_pg001. ext 4. Select the Image Format. Cycle through available formats, or use the right mouse button to display a pop-up menu. These image formats are supported: Interleaf (IGF) TIFF Uncompressed TIFF CCITT3 TIFF CCITT4 Sun Rasterfile Standard Sun Rasterfile Encoded 5. Click Done. ScanWorX displays the Start Processing window and scans the image on the flatbed. Then, the system displays the Out of Input window (refer to Figure 4-7). 6. Continue or end the job. To continue go to Step 7. To end the job, go to Step 8. 7. Place another image on the scanner flatbed, then click Continue. The image is processed to the same base name. Proceed from Step 6 to scan more images. Otherwise, go to Step 8. 8. To end the image scanning document, from the Out of Input window select End Document. The image(s) that you scanned are written to image files on your Sun system. Scanning Text and Images Together During text scanning, ScanWorX creates a binary image of the page and then performs character recognition on the image. Any graphics on the page are ignored. During image scanning, ScanWorX reads all print on the page as black and white pixels (picture elements), storing the data in the specified image file format (for example, TIFF). ScanWorX also provides a method for processing a document as both text and images at the same time. This is sometimes referred to as compound scanning (Figure 4-12). Figure 4-12. Compound scanning process To specify compound scanning, you select Both from the Process category of the main window. When you process a document in this way, the system produces a text file containing the recognized text of the document, and an individual image file for each page of the document. With compound scanning, you can specify that the page images be saved only as binary (Text/Line Art) data. When to scan text and images together With compound scanning, you can process pages for a variety of reasons. For example, you might want to use compound scanning in these situations: You want to recognize the text of a document for editing or data retrieval purposes, while storing archival "snapshots" of the pages on disk. You want to quickly scan all the text and graphics in a document. Later, you intend to use an image editing application to "grab" the graphic images. Alternatively, you can use the ScanWorX preview features to accomplish the same goals. Refer to Chapter 7 for complete information. You are scanning a multiple-page document which you eventually want to output to a number of different formats. You can process the text to the first text format you want to output and the page images to TIFF files. Then, later at your convenience, you can process the text and/or images from the TIFF files to other output formats (see Chapter 5). Prepare the job Similar to preparation for text or image scanning, to prepare for compound scanning, you may need to specify document settings and scanner settings. Procedures for completing these tasks are presented in the "Scanning Text" section earlier in this chapter. Refer to that section for details. Process the document From the main window, to process a compound document, use the following procedure: 1. Load the document in the scanner, and in the main window, specify Scanner as the Input Source. Refer to Figure 4-6, which shows how to load the scanner. The scanner's ADF capacity is 50 pages, the recommended maximum of pages to process during a single job. If your document is larger, scan it as more than one job. 2. Select Both as the Process type. The Both button is highlighted. 3. Select the Start command from the main window. The Start Processing window appears (Figure 4-13). Figure 4-13. Start Processing window 4. Optionally, specify a different output directory. The current directory is shown in the Directory field. Highlight the directory path and type the new directory name. 5. Specify the document name. Point to the Filename field, and type a file name. UNIX file naming conventions apply (no spaces, use underscores to delineate words, and so on). Do not include a file extension. 6. Specify the Text Format and the Image Format. For both format settings, cycle through the choices or choose from a pop-up menu by clicking on the option with the right mouse button. 7. Define the Text Options. Click the Text Options button to display another window. Click Done when you are done. Refer to Table 4-3 earlier in this chapter as a guide. 8. In the Start Processing window, click Done. The scanner scans all the pages in the ADF. When all pages have been scanned, the system displays the Out of Input window (refer to Figure 4-7). 9. Continue, cancel, or end the document. To process more pages of the document, go to Step 10. To suspend processing temporarily (to change settings, for example), or to abort the document, go to Step 11. To end the document and convert the recognized text to a file formatted for your text application, go to Step 12. 10. Load more pages in the scanner, then click Continue. The system scans and recognizes the pages, then again displays the window shown in Figure 4-7. Proceed from Step 3 to continue, cancel, or end the document. 11. To temporarily suspend processing, click Interrupt. This lets you interrupt processing. You can later click Resume on the main window and provide the filename when you want to resume processing. 12. When you are done, click the End Document button. The system outputs recognized text to the specified format for use with your text application. In addition, page images are stored in image files on your hard disk in the specified format. 5 ScanWorx User's Guide Delayed Processing with TIFF Files ScanWorX User's Guide Suppose you have a large document that you want to scan and recognize. You could load your scanner, select Scanner as the Input Source and Text as the Process type. Then, as described in Chapter 4, you could direct ScanWorX to process the document. ScanWorX would scan the first page and recognize the text from this page. Then it would scan and recognize the second page. For each additional page, it would repeat the process. You would have to remain close by to monitor the process, reload the document feeder, correct any paper jams, and so on. Alternatively, you could scan the pages as binary page images and store them in individual TIFF files in considerably less time. After all page images are stored as TIFF files on your hard disk, you could direct ScanWorX to start processing the TIFF files. While ScanWorX processed the files, you could perform other tasks, or go home. This ScanWorX capability is referred to as delayed processing, designed to let you take full advantage of your equipmenteven during off-peak hours when you are away from your office. TIFF (for Tag Image File Format) was developed as an industry-standard format in which scanned (and other) images could be stored and used in supporting applications. In the main window, the TIFF Queue command is central to the system's delayed processing capabilities. It lets you select and define the order in which multiple TIFF files are to be processed. The clear advantage of delayed processing is that you do not have to be present to monitor the recognition and conversion processthe most computer-intensive (and time-consuming) part of capturing documents. Delayed Processing with TIFF Files You need only be present for the time it takes ScanWorX to produce the TIFF files, which is considerably faster than actually performing text recognition. Then, you can direct ScanWorX to process the TIFF files just as if they were page images coming in from the scanner. ScanWorX automatically recognizes the text and converts and outputs it to a file that you can use with your desktop publishing or text application. When you return, you can immediately begin editing or otherwise processing the file. In addition, you can retain the page images in TIFF files for other purposes, such as on-line imaging. ScanWorX supports output and input of TIFF files in TIFF Uncompressed, TIFF CCITT-3, and TIFF CCITT-4. (Thus, you can process TIFF files from other systems, as well.) Note An 8.5-by-11-inch page image may take up to 1.5 million bytes when stored as TIFF Uncompressed. To save disk space, use the compressed forms of TIFF (CCITT-3 or CCITT-4) that ScanWorX supports. This chapter describes how to create and process TIFF files via the TIFF Queue. Specifically, these topics are presented: Getting started Scanning pages into TIFF files Preparing the TIFF Queue Processing the TIFF Queue Getting Started To start the system from the OPEN LOOK desktop, type the following command in a UNIX shell window: icr The ScanWorX splash screen is displayed. Click on the splash screen and in a few moments, the main window appears on your desktop (Figure 5-1). You can now scan documents for delayed processing Figure 5-1. Main window Scanning Pages into TIFF Files This section describes how to scan a document for delayed processing, specifically describing how to: specify document settings specify scanner settings process the document Specify document settings For TIFF file creation, only some of the document settings need be specified. To specify document settings for TIFF file creation: 1. In the main window, click the Document command. The Document Settings window appears (Figure 5-2). Figure 5-2. Document Settings window 2. Specify document settings, as appropriate for the TIFF files to be created. Use Table 5-1 as a guide. 3. Click Done. The Document Settings window closes. Table 5-1. Document Settings for TIFF File Creation Setting , Tips Orientation , For all but very large pages,, you can specify Portrait orientation. Specify Landscape only if pages are larger than can be accommodated in portrait mode by the ScanWorX ADF. Size , Select the standard page size that most closely approximates the size of your pages. Pages , If you are creating TIFF files from a single-sided document,, select Single-sided. If you are creating TIFF files from a double-sided document,, select Double-sided. Other settings , For TIFF file creation,, ignore all other settings in the Document Settings window. Specify scanner settings To specify image scanning and define scanner settings for TIFF file creation: 1. As the Process type in the main window, click Image. The Image button is turned on (refer to Figure 5-1). 2. Select Scanner Settings from the main window. The Scanner Settings window appears (Figure 5-3). Figure 5-3. Scanner Settings window 3. Specify scanner settings. Use Table 5-2 (next page) as a guide. 4. Click Done. The Scanner Settings window closes. Table 5-2. Scanner Settings for TIFF File Creation Setting , Tips Scanner Resolution , In general,, the highest available resolution (dots per inch,, or dpi) achieves the most detailed image. ^, You can select either 400 (the default) or 300. Do not select 200 dpi or character recognition can suffer measurably. ^, For best results in later text recognition,, leave at 400 dpi. ^, If you have limitations in disk space,, you can specify 300 dpi to produce 25% smaller TIFF files. Character recognition should be acceptable with 300 dpi resolution. Use Automatic Document Feeder , Click this on if you intend to use the ADF (the fastest method). Click it off if you prefer to place pages directly on the flatbed. ^, ScanWorX can correct for skew (up to five degrees) in the page image introduced by the ADF. Output Brightness , Brightness determines how light or dark the scanned page image is when output to a file. The default setting is Normal and is adequate for most good-quality documents. ^, Select one of the other general settings to achieve a lighter or darker page image. Select Custom if you want to adjust the brightness bar at finer increments. ^, For example,, if you are scanning a document with dark print,, and type looks heavy with touching characters,, select Light or Lighter (or a lighter Custom setting) to lighten the scanned page images. ^, Also for documents printed on a screened background,, specify a lighter brightness setting. ^, If you are scanning a document with faded or light print,, specify Darker or Dark (or a darker Custom setting). ^, Of course,, you can use preview tools (Chapter 7) to scan and evaluate the brightness of an image before processing it to a file. ^, Experiment with different settings on sample scanning runs. With experience,, you should develop a good instinct for setting brightness. Text/ Line Art , For TIFF files from which you want to recognize text at a later time,, you must specify Text/Line Art. Halftone Halftone Pattern , Avoid these settings for TIFF files that you are creating for delayed processing (text recognition). Process the document After you have specified settings for TIFF file creation, you are ready to process the document. Use the following procedure to create TIFF files from scanned pages: 1. Load the document in the scanner. Figure 5-4 illustrates how to load pages in the scanner's ADF. The ADF capacity is 50 pages. For a more detailed discussion of loading pages in the scanner, refer to Chapter 2. Figure 5-4. Loading the ADF 2. In the main window, Specify Scanner as the Input Source. The Scanner button is highlighted. 3. Select Image as the Process type. The Image button is highlighted. 4. Select the Start command from the main window. The Start Processing window appears (Figure 5-5). Figure 5-5. Start Processing window 5. Specify the output directory in the Directory field. The current directory is shown in the Directory field. Output file are stored here. Type another directory path if you want your TIFF files stored elsewhere. It is a good idea to store all TIFF files for a particular document in their own directory. 6. Specify the file name for the TIFF files to be created. Point to the Filename field, and type a file name. UNIX file naming conventions apply (no spaces, use underscores to delineate words, and so on). Do not include a file extension. This is the base name that is used for the image file(s) created during a session. Because multiple images may use the same image name, the system appends a three-digit page number to the file name. For example, if you typed "monitor" as the base name, the first file name would be: monitor_pg001. ext 7. Select the preferred Image Format. Cycle through available formats, or use the right mouse button to display a pop-up menu. Select one of: TIFF Uncompressed TIFF CCITT-3 TIFF CCITT-4 TIFF CCITT-3, CCITT-4 are compressed forms of TIFF. Files stored in these formats take up considerably less space than TIFF Uncompressed, and actually take less time to process. Table 5-3 provides some statistics that may help you decide which TIFF format to choose. Table 5-3. Choosing a TIFF Format; Format , File Size* (approximate) , Time To Process (approximate) TIFF Uncompressed , 1.8 million bytes , 40 seconds TIFF CCITT-3 , 84,000 bytes , 11 seconds TIFF CCITT-4 , 33,500 bytes , 13 seconds * Based on one 8.5-by-11-inch,, single-column page scanned by ScanWorX and written to disk on a networked Sun SLC workstation. , +, + 8. Click Done in the Start Processing window to begin scanning and creation of the TIFF files. ScanWorX displays the Processing Document window and begins scanning the pages in the scanner. After each page is scanned, it is immediately converted to TIFF and written to disk. The scanner scans all the pages in the ADF (or the first page on the flatbed if you are not using the ADF). When all pages have been scanned, the system displays the Out of Input window (Figure 5-6). Figure 5-6. Out of Input window 9. Continue or end the document. To process more pages of a single-sided document, go directly to Step 10. To process the reverse sides of a double-sided document, go to Step 11. To end the document, go to Step 12. 10. Load more pages in the scanner, then click Continue. The system scans the pages and creates TIFF files, then again displays the window shown in Figure 5-6. Proceed from Step 9 to continue or end the document. 11. Flip the stack of double-sided pages in the ADF, then click Flip and Continue. The system scans the reverse sides of pages, performs auto-collation, and creates and names the TIFF files correctly. It then redisplays the window shown in Figure 5-6. Proceed to Step 12 to end the document. 12. To end the document, click End Document. All scanned pages have now been successfully written to TIFF files. Preparing the TIFF Queue To define the TIFF files that the system is to process, and the order in which they are processed, you use the TIFF Queue Manager. First, from the main window, select TIFF as the Input Source, then select the TIFF Queue command in the Main window. This displays the TIFF Queue Manager (Figure 5-7). Figure 5-7. TIFF Queue Manager Specifically, the TIFF Queue Manager enables you to: Show TIFF files in the current directory Select TIFF files in the current directory Add TIFF files to the queue Remove a TIFF file from the queue Clear the queue (remove all files ) Accept or cancel changes and close the queue Note You cannot remove TIFF files from your hard disk using the TIFF Queue Manager. For this, use the UNIX rm (remove) command in a OPEN LOOK shell tool. Show TIFF files in the current directory With the TIFF Queue Manager open on your desktop, you can specify a directory, and list the files in this directory, as follows: 1. Point to the Directory field. The diamond cursor becomes the flashing inverted triangle, indicating you can edit the Directory field. 2. Specify a new directory. Type Control-U to clear the Directory field. Type a new directory in the Directory field. 3. Click the Show Files command: The TIFF files in the directory appear in the middle window of the TIFF Queue Manager (refer to Figure 5-7). Select TIFF files to add to the queue After you show TIFF files in the current directory, you can select files to add to the TIFF Queue. The TIFF Queue manager provides several ways to select files: one at a time multiple files in sequence with the Select All command Select TIFF files one at a time In the middle window, point to a file and, using the left mouse button, click on it. The file is highlighted. You can do this as many times as necessary to highlight multiple files in random order. To deselect a highlighted file, click on it with the right mouse button. Select multiple files in sequence To select multiple files in sequence, point to the first file, click and hold the left mouse button, and drag the mouse downward across the files to be selected. The files in the sequence are highlighted. You can also point to a file, click and hold the left mouse button, and drag the mouse upward. Select all TIFF files in the current directory To quickly select all files in the current directory, click the Select All command: It is recommended that you store all TIFF files relating to a single document in their own directory. This way, you can simply click Select All to add them to the queue in the correct processing order. You can also quickly deselect all selected files by clicking: Add files on the queue After you highlight files, the TIFF Queue Manager enables you to add them to the queue. These can be TIFF files that you create using ScanWorX, or TIFF files from other sources. To load TIFF files into the TIFF Queue, click the Add command: Be careful not to add halftone or grayscale TIFF files to the queue. Only binary TIFF files should be used for delayed processing. Otherwise, ScanWorX will have difficulty recognizing them, and may generate an error. After you add selected files in the current directory to the TIFF Queue, you can change to another directory, list and select more TIFF files, and add these to the queue, as well. The horizontal line in the TIFF Queue indicates the insertion point where files will be added (Figure 5-8). It also indicates the current file. By clicking on a file in the TIFF queue, you move the horizontal line directly beneath it. Figure 5-8. Horizontal line in the TIFF Queue Remove a file from the queue The TIFF Queue Manager lets you remove files, one at a time, from the TIFF Queue. To do so, use the following procedure: 1. Click on the file with the mouse. The horizontal line moves to directly beneath the file you selected. This indicates the current file (refer to Figure 5-8). 2. Click the Remove button: The file is removed from the TIFF Queue, and the numbers indicating processing order are updated. Observe that the horizontal line is now beneath the previous file in the queue list, making it the current file. You can insert a new file at this stage, or click Remove again to remove this file. Clear the queue To remove all files from the TIFF queue, click the Remove All command: Close the queue When the TIFF Queue is set up the way you want it, click Done to accept the changes and close the window: You are now ready to process the TIFF Queue. To close the window without accepting the changes you have made to the queue, click the Cancel command: Processing the TIFF Queue After you use the TIFF Queue Manager to load TIFF files into the TIFF Queue and click Done, you can direct ScanWorX to recognize the files. For recognition purposes, ScanWorX treats each file in the queue the same as a page image coming in from the scanner. Therefore, processing the TIFF queue requires many of the same steps as scanning a document. Specifically, you will need to: Specify document settings Process the TIFF Queue Note One way to streamline the setup process for a job is to load a settings file. Use the Load command from the main window. For more information, refer to Chapter 3. Specify document settings Document settings inform the system about the document you intend to process from the TIFF files. Document settings include page settings (such as orientation, page size, and column layout) and recognition settings, which describe the text about to be processed. Refer to the "Settings" section in Chapter 3 for more information about document settings. To specify document settings, use the following procedure: 1. Select the Document Settings command from the main window. The Document Settings window appears (refer to Figure 5-2). 2. Specify document settings, as appropriate for the document about to be processed. Use Table 5-4 (next page) as a guide. 3. Click Done. The Document Settings window closes. Table 5-4. Document Settings for TIFF Recognition Setting , Tips Orientation , Specify Portrait unless you know that the TIFF file was scanned in a landscape orientation. In this case,, specify Landscape. Page Size , Click on the list and select the same page size you specified when you created the TIFF files. If the TIFF file is from another application,, specify a page size that will accommodate the TIFF file. Columns , Specify an explicit number of columns (1,, 2,, 3, or 4) for pages that have evenly-spaced columns of equal width. ^, Specify Auto Detect when processing page images with an irregular layout or more than four columns. Next Page , Specify the number of the next page you want scanned. In general,, if the next page is a new document,, use the default setting,, 1. Pages , Specify single-sided. Blank Pages Separate Documents , Turn on if you plan to process multiple documents and you have inserted blank TIFF files in the queue to separate documents. ScanWorX will interpret blank TIFF files as the start of a new document and open a new output file automatically each time it encounters one. Text Type , Use Alphanumeric if your input document has both numbers and letters. ^, Select Numbers Only if you are scanning financial data. ^, Select Letters Only if your input has no numbers. Lexical Context , Select Enabled to specify that the system's language dictionary and context rules are to be used during character recognition. If you load a user dictionary,, it will be used,, as well. ^, Select Disabled to prevent the system from use the system (or user) lexicon. ^, Select No Rules to tell the system not to use either the lexicon(s) or the context rules. Filtering , Specify None to keep all filters off. ^, Specify Remove Halftones to have the system filter out embedded halftone pictures and speed up recognition. ^, Specify Enhance Dot Matrix when the TIFF files contain draft-quality dot matrix print. Confidence Level , The Confidence Level is an assurance value that the recognition software tries to attain for each character before it releases it as "recognized correctly." ^, The higher the confidence level,, the greater the number of characters that the system will flag as possibly incorrect. Choose User Dictionary , Provide the full pathname in the provided window of a user dictionary you want to use. Load Language , Specify the primary language of the document being recognized. English is the default. Process the job From the main window, to process the TIFF queue and have ScanWorX recognize and convert text to the desired output format, use the following procedure: 1. Specify TIFF as the Input Source. The TIFF button is highlighted. 2. Select Text as the Process type. The Text button is highlighted. 3. Select the Start command from the main window. The Start Processing window appears (Figure 5-9). Figure 5-9. Start Processing window 4. Optionally, specify a different output directory. The current directory is shown in the Directory field. Highlight the directory path and type the new directory name. 5. Specify the document name. Point to the Filename field, and type a valid UNIX file name. Do not include a file extension. 6. Specify the Text Format. Cycle through choices or choose from a pop-up menu by clicking with the right mouse button (Figure 5-10). Figure 5-10. Text format pop-up menu 7. Define the Text Options. Click the Text Options button to display another window. Click Done when you are done. Use Table 5-5 as a guide. Table 5-5. Text Options; Type , Description Markup , Questionable: lets you specify character(s) to flag in the output file any character ScanWorX is unsure about. Flag appears directly before questionable character. , Illegible: lets you specify character(s) to flag characters ScanWorX could not read. Flag appears in place of illegible character Zones , Zone marker: lets you specify character(s) to flag the start of a zone (column) in the output file , Zone Position: lets you specify zone coordinate information in the output file (see Chapter 8,, "Tips and Techniques" for more information) Preserve , Lets you specify preservation of italic,, bold,, underlines,, font changes,, page breaks,, and subscripts and superscripts. , Note Preserve options are only available for Interleaf and FrameMaker formats. 8. Click Done in the Start Processing window. The Reading TIFF File window appears on the desktop, indi-cating that ScanWorX is reading the first TIFF file from disk (Figure 5-11). Figure 5-11. Reading TIFF File window After the file is read into memory, ScanWorX displays the Start Processing window. It recognizes the text from the TIFF page image, and redisplays the Reading TIFF File window for each file it reads from the TIFF Queue. When all TIFF files from the queue have been recognized, ScanWorX displays the Out of Input window (Figure 5-12). Figure 5-12. Out of Input window 9. Continue, cancel, or end the document. To process more TIFF files, go to Step 10. To suspend processing temporarily (to change settings, for example), go to Step 11. To end the document and convert the recognized text to a file formatted for your text application, go to Step 12. 10. Load more TIFF files on the TIFF Queue, then click Continue. In general, you should not process more than 50 TIFF files in one document. If you have more than 50 TIFF files from the same document, process them as multiple jobs. Then merge the recognized text with your text application. This should assure that ScanWorX will not run out of memory while processing. The system reads and recognizes the page images, then again displays the window shown in Figure 5-12. Proceed from Step 9 to continue, cancel, or end the document. 11. To temporarily suspend processing, click Interrupt. This lets you interrupt processing. You can later click Resume on the main window and provide the filename when you want to resume processing. 12. When you are done, click the End Document button. The system outputs the recognized text to the selected formatted file type that you can use with your word processing, desktop publishing, or other text application. 6 ScanWorX User's Guide Verifying Text ScanWorX User's Guide ScanWorX achieves unsurpassed character recognition accuracy over a wide range of documents. However, certain document characteristics can cause character recognition accuracy to decline. For example, documents printed in ornate, thin-stroke typefaces, in which character segments do not always connect, can cause recognition problems (Figure 6-1). Figure 6-1. Type quality and recognition Documents that can also cause recognition problems are ones that contain noise (dirt, smudges, handwritten notes in the margins); are second- or third-generation photocopies; or which are too darkly or too lightly printed. To enable the best possible character recognition, even on problem documents, ScanWorX provides interactive text verification tools collectively called the Verifier. The Verifier is a subsystem that enables you to view and interact with the system's Intelligent Character Recognition to verify recognized text, and to correct errors. By verifying the first one or two pages of a long document, you assure that ScanWorX will achieve an extremely high accuracy rate for the entire document. In addition, you can save the results of a verification session, called verification data, in a reusable file. Whenever you are about to process the same type of document, you can reload this verification data file. Thus, you attain the same high recognition rate for multiple documents without having to repeat interactive verification for each document. Verifying Text This chapter describes the features of, and how to use, the Verifier subsystem, covering these topics: About the Verifier window About the Verification toolbox How verification works Getting started Verifying a document Saving and loading verification data About the Verifier Window When you click the Verifier checkbox in the main window, ScanWorX opens the Verifier window and toolbox (Figure 6-2). When you initiate text recognition, the system displays and highlights questionable characters in the Verifier window. Figure 6-2. Verifier window; and toolbox The large image in the Verifier window is the graphic display, a representation of the scanned text. This is the scanned binary image that the system "sees" and attempts to recognize. Displayed below the graphic image is the recognized text. This text display is usually in context with one or two adjacent words. Characters that are questionable to the system are marked within a gray rectangle. The current character (the one ready for verification) is highlighted (white type in a black rectangle). About the Verifier Toolbox Above the Verifier window is the verification toolbox used to perform a variety of verification tasks (refer to Figure 6-2). The toolbox provides nine icons that you can click with the mouse to perform different verification tasks in the Verifier window. Table 6-1 describes these tools and their keyboard equivalents. Table 6-1. Verifier Toolbox Tool , Key , Function , R7 , Accept the whole word without saving verification data. Generally,, use this function after making corrections to a character block that included noise. , R8 , Ignore the highlighted character group,, as it is simply noise on the page. , R9 , Undo any operations to the previous entire group (usually a word,, or a word with punctuation). , R10 , Move the cursor left one character within the block. Cursor is now in overstrike mode,, and anything you type will replace the one character. , R11 , Accept the character with verification. This informs ICR that it has correctly recognized the character. , R12 , Move the cursor right one character within the block. Cursor is now in overstrike mode,, and anything you type replaces the one character. , R13 , Join this character (or group of characters) with the previous character. Cursor is now in overstrike mode,, and anything typed replaces the characters. , R14 , Accept the entire group with verification. , R15 , Join this character (or character group) with the next character. Cursor is now in overstrike mode,, and anything typed replaces the joined characters. How Verification Works During text verification, the system requests your input whenever the recognition software is uncertain of a character, or cannot identify a character at all. In the Verifier window, uncertain characters are emphasized in both the graphic display and the text display. The questionable character is black in the graphic display. At the same time, in the text display, the related character is in reverse video (Figure 6-3). Figure 6-3. Character ready for verification During recognition, the system decides that an image segment is one of several things: A correctly recognized character Noise (not a character at all) A questionable character An illegible character The Verifier provides tools that let you deal with any one of these types of recognition decisions. Thus, you can verify that a recognition decision is correct, and if not, use one of several methods to make the correction. Characters that need to be verified During character recognition, the system uses a number of methods, and sometimes multiple passes, to determine a character's identity. Eventually, the recognition software "releases" a character (no longer tries to recognize it). Most characters that are released are correctly recognized. As Figure 6-4 shows, the Verifier marks characters that the system is unsure about or is unable to identify. These are the characters that need to be verified. Figure 6-4. Characters needing verification Some characters are released as questionable characters, ones that the system is uncertain about. A questionable character may or may not be correctly recognized. In the Verifier window, a questionable character is displayed in black within a word in the text display. Occasionally, the system determines that an image is a character, but is not able to recognize it. Thus, the system releases the image as an illegible character. In the Verifier window, the system outputs a tilde (~) character in place of an illegible character. In addition to questionable and illegible characters, the system sometimes interprets an image as noise. Noise may be caused by dust, a smudge, or some other mark on the scanned page image. However, it may also be a poorly printed character. The system outputs a checkerboard character in place of the image that it interprets as noise. The system may also interpret noise as an actual character. As you advance through text in the Verifier window, ScanWorX automatically stops at each questionable, illegible, and noise character, and highlights the character (or character group) in reverse video. In all cases, you must correct a highlighted character group with at least one character. You cannot simply "delete" a character. The verification cursor begins in overstrike mode. Thus, you are able to correct the recognition error, or you can simply accept the character as correctly recognized. As soon as you type one character, the system goes into insert mode, and you can insert up to six characters to corrected the highlighted character group. Sometimes the system releases a character as "correctly recognized" when it is, in fact, incorrect. In the text display, such characters show up as normal, unmarked characters. The Verifier provides tools that let you highlight and correct these recognition errors, as well. For example, the Verifier might show two words joined as one word. So, you can cursor to the last character in the first word, and correct it as "character plus space." As you are verifying characters, you can accelerate the process with a tool that lets you accept an entire word, or a word with accompanying punctuation, such as quotation marks, hyphens, periods, question marks and exclamation marks. Confidence level A setting available in the Document Settings window lets you adjust the system's sensitivity to questionable characters. This setting is Confidence Level, which accepts a number between 0 and 10, inclusive (Figure 6-5). Figure 6-5. Confidence level During recognition, the system uses a number of artificial intelligence techniques to identify a character. Based on these techniques, the system assigns a value to each character. This is the system's confidence level for that character. If the assigned value is less than the Confidence Level you have specified, the system marks the character as questionable. If the value is greater than the specified Confidence Level, the system releases the character as correctly recognized. The higher the Confidence Level you specify, the more strict the system is in releasing characters as correctly recognized. Thus, during verification, you will generally need to verify a greater number of questionable characters. The lower the Confidence Level, the less strict the system will be in releasing characters as correctly recognized. Thus, during verification, you will generally have fewer questionable characters to evaluate. The default Confidence Level is 5, and this is usually fine for most standard, good-quality documents. However, you may want to increase the Confidence Level to 6 or 7 before you begin a verification session. This will give you more opportunity to interact with the recognition software to insure the best possible recognition. You can change this setting at any time during verification. Getting Started With an understanding of verification features and capabilities, you are ready to begin a verification session. This section describes how to specify a new document and to adjust the display for verification purposes. The procedures in the following sections assume that your hardware and software has been completely installed. With those tasks accomplished, you can start ScanWorX. In OPEN LOOK, to start the ScanWorX system from a UNIX shell tool window, type: icr In a few moments, the ScanWorX splash screen appears on your desktop. Click on the splash screen and the main window appears (Figure 6-6) Figure 6-6. Main window Adjust the display When verifying text, you may also want to click Feedback, which opens the Feedback window. The Feedback window provides a contextual look at your page. Thus, while the Verifier focuses in on individual characters and words, the Feedback window shows the related area of the page image and highlights the related word. When you open all these windows, however, you may have to adjust your display so that the Feedback, Verifier, and Toolbox windows are usefully positioned on your desktop (Figure 6-7). Figure 6-7. Feedback, Verifier and Toolbox windows All ScanWorX windows are standard OPEN LOOK windows. Thus, you can move, layer, and resize them. Note Avoid resizing the main window and Verifier toolbox window, especially downsizing them, as commands in those windows are of a fixed size. For information on moving and resizing windows, consult the appropriate Sun Microsystem's documentation. Process the job After you prepare your desktop for text verification, you can begin processing your document. To begin a verification session, use the following procedure. Note This procedure assumes that you have already opened the Verifier window and toolbox on your desktop,as discussed in the previous subsection. 1. From the main window, select the Input Source. The Verifier accepts input from the scanner or from the TIFF queue. If the document you are processing is in the scanner, select Scanner. Refer to Chapter 4 for complete information about loading the scanner and scanning documents. If the document is a group of existing TIFF files loaded in the TIFF Queue, select TIFF. After you select TIFF as the Input Source, you can view and edit the TIFF Queue. For complete information about processing TIFF files from the TIFF Queue, refer to Chapter 5. 2. Select the Process type. If the document you are scanning is all text, select Text. If you want to process both text and images during this session, select Both. You cannot use the text verifier on graphic images, therefore, do not select Image. 3. Start the job. Click the Start command in the main window. Specify the file name, output directory, output format(s), and text options, then click Done. ScanWorX scans the first page (or gets the first page image from the TIFF Queue), and begins recognition. When ScanWorX encounters its first questionable or unrecognizable character, it displays it in the Verifier window for verification. 4. Go on to verify text. Consult the next section, "Verifying a Document," for details about using text verification tools. In general, you only need to verify the first one or two pages of a document to optimize Intelligent Character Recognition for that document. You can turn the Verifier off at any time by clicking the Verify checkbox in the main window. When you do, ScanWorX processes the rest of the document automatically, using the verification data it compiled from your verification session. When ScanWorX has scanned all pages in the scanner (or read all TIFF files in the TIFF Queue), it displays the Out of Input dialog. 5. Process more pages, or end the document. To process more pages, reload the scanner (or TIFF Queue), then click Continue in the Out of Input window. To end the document, and store recognized text to the specified output directory and file name, click End Document in the Out of Input window. To save verification data, click the Save Verification Data command in the Out of Input window. Do this before ending the document, or you will lose the verification data. For complete information, see "Saving and Loading Verification Data" later in this chapter. Verifying a Document The previous subsection summarizes the steps to process a document through verification to completion. While you are actually verifying the document, however, you can perform a variety of verification tasks. The following subsections describe how to perform verification tasks, specifically how to: Accept a character group Accept a whole word Make corrections and accept changes Make corrections without verification Enter foreign characters using the extended character set Identify noise Join characters Undo an operation End verification Accept a character group A character group is a single character or a sequence of two or more characters that the system highlights for verification (Figure 6-8). Figure 6-8. A highlighted character group The most typical verification task is accepting a questionable, though correctly recognized, character or character group. To accept a highlighted character group, use this Verification tool: Use the Accept Character tool when the highlighted character or character group is correct, or after you have typed the correction. If you prefer to use the keyboard, press R11. The character group is confirmed and the next character group is highlighted. Accept a whole word During verification, ScanWorX may display a word with a number of questionable, although correct, character groups (Figure 6-9). Figure 6-9. Word with multiple character groups In such cases, to speed up the process, you can accept the entire word without having to accept each character individually. To accept an entire word, use the following Verification tool: If you prefer using the keyboard, press the (R14) key. When you do, the entire word is accepted and the next character group is highlighted. Make corrections and accept changes Occasionally, the recognition software incorrectly recognizes, or is unable to recognize, a character. In these cases, you type the correct character(s) and accept the changes. When the system highlights a character group in the Verifier window, the highlight cursor is in overstrike mode. If the highlighted character(s) are incorrect, you can simply type the correction (Figure 6-10). Figure 6-10. Correcting a recognition error Note that the cursor remains in overstrike mode only for the first character in the highlighted character group. After you type the first corrected character, the cursor goes into insert mode. Thus, you can insert as many as six characters to correct the highlighted character group. For example, in Figure 6-10, two characters are needed to correct the illegible character symbol. After you make the corrections, you can accept the character, or the entire word, using the appropriate Verification tool: If you prefer to use the keyboard, you can type the R11 or R14 keys, respectively. Make corrections without verification Sometimes you may need to make a correction without accepting it for verification purposes. That is, you do not want the system to consider the correction as part of the verification data that it is compiling for the document. For example, a character might be incorrectly recognized because of noise on the page, such as ink spots (Figure 6-11). Figure 6-11. Recognition error caused by noise In Figure 6-11, a mark on the page makes recognition of the "nd" impossible. ScanWorX highlights this character group as illegible. You can correct the illegible character group simply by typing the "nd" over it. However, because other "nd" character groups in the document are not likely to look the same, you should not accept the correction for verification purposes. Rather, you should simply move on to the next character group needing verification. To do so, you use this verification tool: If you prefer using the keyboard, you can press the R7 key to perform the same operation. Identify noise Occasionally, the recognition software mistakes a mark in the graphic display for a character, and outputs the character in the text display. In such cases, you should identify the character as noise, and accept the correction for verification (Figure 6-12). When you do, the character is marked as noise in the text display. Figure 6-12. Correcting noise mistaken for a character You cannot simply delete such a recognized character, but must identify it as noise. To identify a character as noise, use this verification tool: If you prefer to use the keyboard, you can type the (R8) key. Note also that the system sometimes correctly recognizes noise as noise and outputs the noise character. Once you make the correction, or to validate a correct decision, you can accept the character group or entire word with: Join characters Poor-quality documents sometimes have broken characters, with gaps that cause recognition errors. One result of this is that the system recognizes a broken character as two (Figure 6-13). Figure 6-13. Broken characters When the system outputs a broken character image as two characters, you can correct this problem in the Verifier. To do so, you use the Join Left or Join Right tool: If you prefer to use the keyboard, use the R13 or R15 keys. When only a part of a character image in the graphic display is black, this indicates the need to join characters. After you join the characters, you can type the correction and accept the change. Insert non-keyboard characters for verification Occasionally, you may find that a character not available from the keyboard needs correction and verification (Figure 6-14). Figure 6-14. Non-keyboard characters ScanWorX uses the Sun Microsystem's character set, which is based on the ISO (International Standards Organization) 8859/1 Character Set. To insert a non-keyboard character, you use a key sequence that involves the Meta ( META ) key plus a standard keyboard character. Use the following procedure. 1. Hold down the Meta key. 2. Type the correct keyboard character. See Appendix A for a complete list of character combinations to access non-keyboard characters. 3. Release the Meta key. The non-keyboard character is inserted at the cursor position in the text display of the Verifier window. Verify text in box format Occasionally, the system releases the image of a known character group because it has a high degree of confidence that it has correctly recognized the associated characters, and needs to reclaim the system memory for other uses. However, if the system subsequently associates the recognized character group with a questionable character or punctuation mark, the new character group is displayed for verification. The system displays the group whose image has been released as a series of boxes (Figure 6-15). Figure 6-15. Box format The graphic boxes represent the position and size of each letter of the released group. The actual text is shown in the text display, as usual. Generally, this should rarely happen. When it does, you need only verify the character group that is highlighted in the text display. You can re-verify the character values associated with the boxes, but normally this is not necessary. Undo an operation As you verify text, you can undo any verification operations that you have made to a word (or a word with adjoining punctuation). To do so, you use the Undo tool: If you prefer using the keyboard, you can type the R9 key to undo an operation. When you use Undo, all changes made so far to the character group are restored to their original state, and the highlight returns to either the first character in the character group or the previous character group needing verification. End verification When you have finished verifying the first page or two of your document, you can process the rest of the document without using the verifier. The verification data that the system compiled with your help enables the system to recognize the rest of the document with extremely high accuracy. To end verification, simply deselect the Verify box in the main window. The Verifier window and toolbox close, and ScanWorX automatically processes the rest of the document (all pages in the scanner or TIFF files in the TIFF Queue). The verification data generated to this point is used until the document is finished being processed. Refer to Chapter 4 for complete information about document scanning. Refer to Chapter 5 for information about TIFF file processing. If you regularly process the same type of document, you may want to save the verification data for that document, and reuse it for later documents. Refer to the next section, "Saving and Loading Verification Data," for information. Saving and Loading Verification Data If you regularly process documents that are printed in the same typefaces, styles, and point sizes, you do not have to perform verification for each document. Rather, you can save verification data from one document and reload it each time you process the same type of document. After you process a document, and the Out of Input window appears, you can save the verification data to a named file. Later, when you are ready to process another document of the same type, you can use the Load Verification Data command. Save verification data The Save Verification Data command enables you to save the results of a verification session to a named . @cs file. To save verification data to a named file, use the following procedure: 1. Start a new job, and use the Verifier to compile verification data. Usually, verifying one or two pages of a document is enough to compile sufficient verification data. 2. Stop verifying. After verifying one or two pages, simply turn off the Verifier by deselecting the Verify box in the main window. The Verifier window disappears and processing continues without interruption. When you have finished processing all pages of your document, the Out of Input window is displayed (Figure 6-16). Figure 6-16. Out of Input window 3. Select Save Verification Data. The Save verification data window appears (Figure 6-17). 4. Specify the output directory and file name. 5. Click Save. The verification data file is written to the specified directory with the specified file name. Use the Load Verification Data command from the main window to use the file for future text recognition jobs. Figure 6-17. Save verification data window Load verification data After you save a verification data file, you can use the Load Verification Data command to prepare for text recognition of another document. Important Reload verification data only for a document that is very much like the document for which the data was originally created. Documents should use the same typefaces, type styles, and point sizes. Otherwise, the will not be effective for the new document. To load a verification data file, use the following procedure: 1. Select Load Verification Data from the main window. The Load verification data window appears (Figure 6-18). Figure 6-18. Load Verification Data window 2. Specify the directory that contains the verification data file. 3. Click the Show Files command. Verification data (. @cs) files in the specified directory are listed in the bottom area of the window. 4. From the list, click the file name to load. The file name is highlighted and added to the Filename field at the top of the window. 5. Click the Load command. The window closes and the verification data from the file is loaded. 6. Start a new job (with or without the Verifier). Typically, if you intend to load verification data, you do not need to use the Verifier. However, you can use the Verifier to add to the verification data loaded previously. 7. Go on to process the document, using the specified verification data. Important Verification data remains loaded for the duration of the ScanWorX session. If you process multiple documents during a session, it will use the same verification data file until you explicitly unload it. To unload verification data, click the Load Verification Data command again, and from the window, click the None command. 7 ScanWorX User's Guide Previewing Documents ScanWorX User's Guide Chapters 4 and 5 focus mainly on automatic document processing: You load your scanner or the TIFF queue, specify document and scanner settings, the output directory and file name, and let ScanWorX process the document automatically. This chapter describes previewing tools, which let you interact more closely with ScanWorX to process documents (Figure 7-1). With previewing tools, you can control how each page of a document is processed. You can view a page and create text, image, and ignore zones to identify data to be recognized and saved. In addition, you have the option of zoning each page, or creating a page template for all pages of the document. Figure 7-1. Previewing tools About the Document Preview Window The Document Preview window opens on your desktop when you click the Preview box in the main window (refer to Figure 7-1). Like other OPEN LOOK windows, the Document Preview window has a standard Frame menu. Previewing Documents Thus, you can move, resize, layer and close the window (collapse it to an icon on the desktop). Avoid resizing the Document Preview window horizontally, as you can obscure some of its commands and tools, which have a fixed size. Organized in three distinct sections, the Document Preview window provides commands, a toolbox, and a preview window (Figure 7-2). Areas of the Document Preview window are discussed in the next three subsections. Figure 7-2. Document Preview window Preview commands At the top of the Document Preview window, directly below the title bar, are 12 commands and options. Table 7-1 summarizes these commands. Later sections in this chapter describe how to use them. Table 7-1. Preview Window Commands; Command , Function Process , Recognizes the current page,, scans the next page of the document (if you are using the ADF) and displays it in the Preview window. Scan Page , Scans a page at any time. Interrupt , Saves all the intermediate character recognition and format analysis files for pages of the document that have been recognized so far. Processing of this document can be resumed later. Cancel Page , Cancels the page being processed. All previous pages are retained. End Document , Converts all pages of the document that have been recognized so far. Brings the system back to the idle mode and recognition processing and scanning are no longer in progress. Cancel Document , Cancels processing of this document,, removes all temporary files,, and clears the document preview window. Load Template , Loads a set of zones previously saved in a template file. Save Template , Saves the set of zones currently displayed in the preview window to a named template file that you can reload for future jobs. Clear Template , Removes the set of zones and links currently displayed in the preview window. Dim Image , "Grays out" (de-emphasizes) the page image in the preview window so that zones stand out better. in. and cm. , Displays the rulers at the top and to the left of the preview area in inches or centimeters. Preview toolbox The toolbox is the series of icons seen near the top of the preview window directly beneath the commands (refer to Figure 7-2). The toolbox provides nine icons that enable you to perform a variety of operations in the preview window. When you click one of the toolbox icons, and move the cursor within the preview window, the cursor takes the shape of the icon. You can then perform the intended operation. Table 7-2 describes the tools in the preview toolbox. Later sections in this chapter describe how to use these tools. Table 7-2. Preview Toolbox Icon , Name , Function , Edit Zone , Lets you select , Zoom In , Zooms in on the previewed page , Zoom Out , Zooms out on the previewed page , Text Zone , Makes the pointer a "T" with which you can outline text areas to be recognized , Image Zone , Makes the pointer a paint brush with which you can outline areas to be processed as image files , Ignore Zone , Makes the pointer an Ignore Zone icon with which you can outline areas to be ignored during processing , Delete Zone , Lets you delete text zones , Link Zones , Lets you link the order in which zones of the same type are to be processed , Zone Attributes , Lets you specify recognition settings for individual text zones. Preview window The largest part of the Document Preview subsystem is the preview window. This is your work area for page display and previewing tasks (Figure 7-3). Figure 7-3. Preview window In the preview window, you can display a scanned page (or TIFF page image), zoom and scroll the image, and create zones and links to determine how the image is to be processed. The rulers at the top and to the left of the preview window serve as guides to page size, zone position and sizing. When you use the Zoom In tool from the toolbox to magnify the previewed page image, the scroll bars at the bottom and to the right of the window let you shift the page image. If you use the Dim Image command, the previewed page image is de-emphasized (grayed out) so you can see zones and links more clearly. Previewing a Document With previewing tools, you can display a scanned page image and specify in precise detail how it is to be processed. You can identify zones on the page to pinpoint text areas and graphic images, as well as areas to be ignored. Specifically, with previewing tools you can: Scan and preview a page Adjust the preview display Specify text zones Specify recognition settings for individual text zones Identify image zones Link text or image zones to specify processing order Specify ignore zones Zoom in and out on the page Move and resize zones The following subsections each describe how to perform one of these tasks. Preview a page To begin a new job, and display a page image in the preview window, use the following procedure: 1. From the Options category in the main window, click the Preview checkbox. The Document Preview window opens (refer to Figure 7-2). 2. Select the Input Source. If you intend to scan pages, click Scanner. If you intend to use the TIFF Queue, click TIFF. 3. Prepare the scanner or TIFF Queue. If your input is the scanner, refer to Chapter 2 for information about loading pages in your scanner. Refer to Chapter 4 for complete information about scanning. Refer to Chapter 5 for complete information about loading the TIFF Queue for delayed processing. 4. Select the Process type that applies to this job. If you want to process text only, click on the Text box in the main window. If want to process images only, click Image. If you want both text and image output, click Both. 5. Specify document and scanning settings. For a description of document and scanner settings, refer to Chapter 3. 6. Click the Scan Page command at the top of the Document Preview window. The Start Processing window is displayed (Figure 7-4). Figure 7-4. Start Processing window 7. Specify appropriate entries in the Start Processing window, then click Done. The page image is scanned (or read from a TIFF file) and is displayed in the preview window. Adjust the preview display As shown in Figure 7-1, the preview window initially opens at a default size and position. However, you can use standard OPEN LOOK tools to reposition and resize the preview window. You can also zoom in and out on the preview display, scroll the display (when zoomed in), and dim the page image to make zones more clearly visible (Figure 7-5). Figure 7-5. Adjusting the preview display Zoom the page display To evaluate the quality of your page image, you can zoom in on (magnify) it. Zooming is useful, for example, to determine if you used the right brightness setting for scanning a poor quality page. Two zoom tools (shown below) are available from the toolbox. To zoom in on the page display, select the Zoom In tool from the toolbox. Move the cursor into the preview window, point to the area of the page that you want to magnify, and click the mouse. Each click zooms in further on the display. When you reach full magnification, the cursor automatically changes to the Edit Zone tool. Click on the Zoom Out tool to zoom out incrementally. Scroll the page display After you magnify the page display with the zoom tool, notice that the scroll bars at the bottom and to the right of the preview window become active. Thus, you can scroll the display both horizontally and vertically. Drag the scroll box (the darker rectangle within the scroll bar) in either direction to shift the display. Alternatively, click and hold any of the scroll arrows at the ends of the scroll bars to shift the display incrementally. The different buttons on the mouse affect the way the scroll arrows work. For complete information about scrolling in OPEN LOOK windows, refer to your appropriate Sun Microsystem's documentation. Dim the image When you create multiple zones and links on the page image, you may find it easier to see these items if you use the Dim Image command located in the upper right corner of the Document Preview window. Click the Dim Image checkbox on. When you do, the page image in the preview window is dimmed (de-emphasized). Identify text zones Identifying precise areas of a page to be processed is referred to as manual page segmentation - or, more simply, as zoning. One of the tools in the toolbox enables you to identify text zones on the previewed page (Figure 7-6). Figure 7-6. Text zone Using text zones can speed up the recognition process by excluding areas of the page not to be processedheaders, footers, and page numbers, for example. You can identify up to a total of 40 zones on the previewed page (including text, image, and ignore zones). To create a text zone: 1. With a page displayed in the preview window, click the Text Zone icon in the toolbox. The mouse pointer becomes the "T" symbol icon. 2. Draw the text zone rectangle. Click and hold on the upper left corner of the text zone to be defined. Drag the mouse toward the lower right corner of the zone. Notice a zone rectangle being drawn around the text area. Release the mouse button when the rectangle outlines the text zone. Use the Edit Zone tool (below) to select and edit zones. The small solid boxes in the four corners of the text-zone rectangle are handles for resizing. Select the Edit Zone icon from the toolbox, then click and hold on any handle, and move the mouse in any direction, to stretch or shrink the rectangle. To move the zone, click and hold inside the zone rectangle, and move the mouse in any direction. Use the Zoom In tool to magnify the page display so you can fine-tune the edges of the rectangles for precise definition of the recognition area. Use Zoom Out or the scroll bars to display the next area to zone. 3. Repeat Step 2 for each text zone. You can create a text zone that overlaps another zone. The last text zone created takes precedence over the zone that it overlaps. Any text contained in both zones belongs to the topmost zone. Specify text zone-specific recognition settings Without specific instructions, ScanWorX recognizes all text zones on a previewed page with default recognition settings. These include the text type (alphanumeric, numbers only, or letters only); and whether to use context verification (dictionaries and rules) during recognition. To control how individual text zones of a page are to be processed, you can specify zone-specific recognition settings (Figure 7-7). Figure 7-7. Settings for individual text zones When all text on the previewed page is generally the same type, you can specify Document Settings in the main window for all zones. You need not specify zone-specific recognition settings. However, occasionally, a text zone contains a financial table, or non-lexical text such as a parts list that includes both text and numbers. In the case of a financial table, you may want to specify the content to be Numbers only and Context Verification off. For the non-lexical parts list, you may want to specify text type as Alphanumeric and Context Verification off. In both cases, recognition should be faster and more accurate than with the same recognition settings as normal text. For both types of content, dictionary look-up is irrelevant and would only slow the process down. In the case of the financial table, specifying Numbers only would cut down errors, especially in cases where certain numbers are very similar to existing alphabet characters. For example, "0" (zero) is similar to "O" (the capital letter), "1" (one) is similar to the letter "l"; "5" is similar to "S; and so on. To specify zone-specific recognition settings, use the following procedure: 1. Use the Text Zone tool to identify the text zone(s). You can specify all text zones on a page before defining recognition settings for individual zones. 2. Select the Zone Attributes icon from the toolbox. 3. Define zone information for a particular text zone. Place the mouse pointer (now displayed as the Zone Attributes icon) inside a text zone on the previewed page, then press the mouse button. The Recognition Settings window is displayed (refer to Figure 7-7). Specify Recognition settings, as appropriate, for the selected text zone. Click Done. 4. Repeat Step 3 for each zone requiring specific recognition settings. Identify image zones In addition to defining text zones to be processed, you can also identify image zones on a previewed page (Figure 7-8). Figure 7-8. Image zones When you process the page, each image zone is output to a separate file that you can use with compatible OPEN LOOK applications. Make sure that, from the main window, you select either Image or Both as the Process type. Otherwise, image zones are not processed. To create image zones, use the following procedure: 1. With a page displayed in the preview window, click the Image Zone icon in the toolbox. The icon appears in reverse video, indicating it is selected. The mouse pointer becomes the Image Zone icon: 2. Draw the image zone rectangle. Click and hold on the upper left corner of the image zone to be defined. Drag the mouse toward the lower right corner of the zone. Notice a zone rectangle is drawn around the image area. Release the mouse button when the rectangle outlines the image zone. Handles appear in the corners of the image zone, indicating that the zone is currently selected. Use the Edit Zone tool (below) to select and edit zones. To stretch or shrink the zone rectangle, click and hold on any handle, and move the mouse in any direction. To move the zone, click and hold inside the zone rectangle, and move the mouse in any direction. Use the Zoom In tool to magnify the page display so you can fine-tune the edges of the zones for precise definition of the image area. Use Zoom Out or the scroll bars to display the next image area to zone. 3. Repeat Step 2 for each image zone. A total of 40 zones (of all types) can be created. You can create an image zone that overlaps another zone. The last image zone created takes precedence over the zone that it overlaps. This means that any part of the image contained in both zones belongs to the topmost zone. Image files zoned from a page use the document name as the base name. Because multiple images may use the same image name, ScanWorX appends a three-digit page number and a two-digit figure number. For example: base_pg001_fg01. ext In the example, "base" is the base name, "001" is the page number, "01" is the figure number on that page, and ". ext" is the extension that identifies the output format (for example, ". ras" for a Sun Raster file.) Link text or image zones Normally, ScanWorX processes zones on a page from left to right, top to bottom. The preview toolbox provides a tool that lets you link zones to force the order in which they will be processed (Figure 7-9). Figure 7-9. Linking zones Thus, you can link multiple text zones to determine the order in which the recognized text will be output to a text file. With images, which each are output to a different file, you can control the order in which they are processed and, by extension, the figure numbers that are appended to image file names. Note You can link text zones only to other text zones, and image zones only to other image zones. To link two zones, use the following procedure: 1. From the toolbox, select the Link Zones tool: The icon is highlighted and the mouse pointer changes to the Link icon when you move it into the preview window. 2. Position the cursor in the zone that you want processed first. 3. Hold down the left mouse button and drag the cursor into the second zone. Notice that the cursor draws a arrow from the first to the second zone. This arrow indicates the order in which the zones are processed. The second zone must be of the same type (text or image). 4. Position the cursor in the second zone, hold down the left mouse button and drag the cursor into the third zone to be processed. Another zone link arrow is created, located from the second to the third zone. 5. Proceed as in Step 4 to link other zones. Each subsequent link further defines the processing order of the zones. If any zones are left unlinked, they will be processed after all linked zones. Specify ignore zones Occasionally, you may want to specify areas on the previewed page to be ignored when the job is processed. For this purpose, you can use the ignore zones (Figure 7-10). Figure 7-10. Ignore zones For example, in magazines, key passages from an article are sometimes pulled out and displayed in large type in the middle of columns. You could draw a text zone around a column and use an ignore zone to mask the text displayed in large type. In other cases, you might have a logo or drawing in your text. If ScanWorX is not told to ignore such line art, it might try to process it as text and slow down recognition. To create ignore zones in the preview window, use this procedure: 1. Click the Create Ignore Zone icon. The mouse pointer is displayed as the Ignore Zone symbol: 2. Create the ignore zone. With the mouse, click and hold on the upper left corner of the text or image area to be ignored. Drag the mouse toward the lower right corner of the area. As you do so, an ignore-zone rectangle (divided into four quarters by a thin, solid line) is drawn around the area (Figure 7-10). Release the mouse button when the ignore-zone rectangle fully encloses the area to be ignored. The small solid boxes in the four corners of the ignore-zone rectangle are handles for resizing. Select the Edit Zone icon from the toolbox; then click and hold on any handle to stretch or shrink the rectangle. Zoom in on the page display to fine-tune the edge locations of the ignore-zone rectangle for precise cropping. Zoom back out or use the scroll bars to scroll the display if necessary. You can move an ignore-zone rectangle with the mouse. To do so, click on the Edit Zone icon, place the point of the arrow in the ignore zone rectangle, click and drag the rectangle to the new location, and release the mouse button. 3. Repeat Step 2 for each ignore zone to be identified. Process a document After you display the first page of your document in the preview window, you are ready to begin processing. You have two options for processing a document. You can: display and zone each page individually; or set up a page template (set of zones) on the first page, and process all pages with the same template. With the first page of your document displayed, use the following procedure to process the document: 1. Create zones and perform other previewing operations, as necessary, for the displayed page. Refer to previous sections of this chapter for details. To process each page individually, go to Step 2. To process all pages with the same page template, go to Step 4. 2. Leave the preview window open, and select the Process command at the top of the window. Text and/or images from the page are processed, then ScanWorX displays the Out of Input window (Figure 7-11). 3. Click Continue. The next page in the scanner (or on the TIFF Queue) is displayed in the preview window. Proceed from Step 1 to process each additional page. Proceed to Step 5 to end the document. Figure 7-11. Out of Input window 4. Click the Preview checkbox in the main window. The preview window closes, and all pages in the scanner (or TIFF Queue) are processed according to the same template. When all pages are finished, ScanWorX displays the Out of Input window (Figure 7-11). 5. End the job. Select End Document in the Out of Input window. A single text file is converted and saved in the specified directory and pathname. Image files are saved in the specified format, as well. Saving and Loading Templates As previous sections of this chapter indicate, the system's previewing tools provide considerable power and flexibility in interactive document processing. To process a page, or all pages of a document, you can create and edit text, image, and ignore zones, and define zone-specific attributes. If you process multiple documents that are of the same design and layout, you can combine the power of previewing with the system's automatic processing capabilities. To do so, you create and reuse template files. Two tools of the system enable you to save a group of zones and their attributes in a reusable template (. @tm) file, and then load the template file before processing a job (or a page). These are: Save Template Load Template These commands are available in the Document Preview window's menu bar. In addition, the Load Template command is available in the main window. The following two subsections provide information about saving and loading template files. Save a template The Save Template command at the top of the Document Preview window enables you to save a set of zones (and any zone-specific attributes) to a named template (. @tm) file. To create and save a template, use the following procedure: 1. Display the first page of your document in the preview window. For instructions, refer to the section "Preview a page" earlier in this chapter. 2. Create zones and zone-specific attributes, as necessary, for the document. This is the page template that will be saved to the named template file. 3. From the group of commands at the top of the preview window, select Save Template. A window appears, enabling you to specify a target directory and name for the template file (Figure 7-12). Figure 7-12. Save Template window 4. Optionally, specify a different destination directory. The new directory appears as the current directory. 5. Type a file name using OPEN LOOK filename conventions. Do not add an extension. 6. Click Save. The window closes and the template file is written to the specified destination directory. Load a template After you save one or more template files, you can reuse them when processing other documents; series of pages within a document; or on a page-by-page basis within a document. The system provides access to the Load Template command in the main window, and from the Document Preview window. Thus, you can load a template and process a document without opening the preview window. To load a template file, use the following procedure: 1. Select the Load Template command. If you are working in the Document Preview window, select Load Template from the top of the window. If the preview window is closed, select Load Template from the main window. The Load Template window box appears (Figure 7-12). 2. Specify the template file to load. Type the file name directly, or locate and select a template file from the Files list. The Directories box lets you change the current directory, if need be. Use the Show Files command to display the . @tm files in the new directory. 3. Click Done. The page template stored in the template file is put in place for processing. If the preview window is open, the zones are visible in the window. Figure 7-13. Load Template window 4. Start a new job (with or without previewing). Refer to "Preview a page" earlier in this chapter for information. If you are processing pages without previewing, refer to Chapter 4, "Scanning Documents" or Chapter 5, "Delay Processing" for relevant information. 5. Go on to process a page, a block of pages, or the entire document, using the specified page template. You can load a new template while page processing is in progress. 8 ScanWorX User's Guide Tips and Techniques ScanWorX User's Guide Previous chapters of this manual focus mainly on overview, system features, and procedural information. This chapter provides pointers to get the best results from your ScanWorX system. Specifically, this chapter covers the following topics: Getting the best text recognition Tips for efficient processing Optimizing column recognition Interrupting and resuming a job Text conversion in ScanWorX Specifying zone markup in text files Using the command line interface Getting the Best Text Recognition The system's Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) software achieves a very high degree of character recognition accuracy over a wide range of documents. However, because documents vary in quality, you can help the system's ICR software do the best possible job of capturing a document by understanding how to use its functions together with the scanner. This section offers some tips for optimizing text recognition. Use and maintain your scanner properly How you use and maintain your scanner can make the difference between a successful and unsuccessful scan. Follow these tips: Know your scanner. Refer to the Installation Guide for complete information about your scanner. Maintain the scanner. Keep your scanner clean and dust-free. Keep your scanner's glass platen (flatbed) free of dirt or marks that might be captured during scanning. Load the scanner correctly. Make sure your document is not scanned at an angle. This makes character recognition more difficult. When using the document feeder, make sure paper guides are aligned properly for the pages you are scanning (Figure 8-1). If you are using the flatbed, make sure the page image is flush against the platen, and is straight. Sometimes the actual image is skewed relative to the paper it is printed on. Correct for this as much as possible before scanning. Figure 8-1. Page placement in the scanner Adjust scanner brightness During scanning, one of the most important settings affecting successful character recognition is scanner brightness. Tips and Techniques As Figure 8-2 illustrates, the original documents you scan may vary considerably in terms of the darkness of the text, the light-ness of the background, and the amount of noise (dirt, smeared ink, fingerprints, handwriting, and other marks) on the page. In the Scanner Settings window, you can adjust the brightness dial to compensate for the print quality and document background (Figure 8-3, next page). Try increasing the brightness level if characters on your page appear too bold, are starting to fill in or are touching, or words are separated by very small spaces (as in some magazines). Recognition of documents with a lot of background noise, or with colored backgrounds, may improve considerably by increasing the brightness setting. Try decreasing the brightness if characters on the page appear faint, broken, or very thin. Another way to tell if the Brightness setting is adequate is to preview a page and zoom in to full resolution in the preview window. This, in effect, lets you view the scanner output that the system "sees" (Figure 8-3). Figure 8-3. Preview display magnified If the previewed image does not appear to have the proper brightness, you can adjust the setting and rescan the document. If you find that recognition is not improved by changing the brightness setting, try using a photocopier to darken or lighten your original before scanning. Adjust for colors All scanners have one or more colors that they do not read. These are called drop-out colors. The drop-out color for the ScanWorX scanner is green. In addition to drop-out color, there may be other colors with which your scanner has difficulty. If the text (or image) you are scanning is colored, or is printed on a colored background, you can try adjusting the brightness setting. If that does not work, try photocopying the page and scanning the black and white copy. Adjust the confidence level Raise the Confidence Level in the Document Settings window to assure higher accuracy in text recognition. Raising Confidence Level instructs ScanWorX to be more thorough in its evaluation of characters and words. The trade-off is that the document may take longer to process. When you raise the Confidence Level, it is also advisable to turn off Questionable Character markup in Text Options, which is found in the Start Processing window. Thus, you avoid having to go into your final document and edit all the questionable character markups that ScanWorX might leave. Use text verification Some documents - because of type styles, print quality, or other factors - may be particularly difficult to recognize. In such cases, you should use the interactive Verifier to help the system "learn" about type characteristics. The Verifier lets you view and interact with the system's Intelligent Character Recognition to verify recognized text, and to correct errors (Figure 8-4). Figure 8-4. The Verifier By verifying the first one or two pages of a document, you assure that the system will achieve a higher accuracy rate for the entire document. Create and load a user dictionary For a job that contains many special terms (for example, a legal document, technical manual, and so on), you may want to create and load a user dictionary. A user dictionary is an ASCII file that lists technical terms not typically found in a standard dictionary. It can greatly help ScanWorX correctly recognize unusual terms in your document. You can create your own user dictionaries, using the vi editor or other text processing application on your workstation. Simply open a new file and enter the words. Separate each word by a space and let the editor's word-wrap feature take effect. Alternatively, place each word on a line by itself and end the line with a carriage return. As you type in your list of words, make sure of the following: Words are separated by a space or carriage return. Each word contains letters only; no spaces, numbers, special characters, hyphens, or punctuation, except for apostrophes, are allowed. Accented letters specific to the language of the document being scanned are okay.) Each word is entered in lower case, except for words that are typically capitalized or in all capital letters. Each word contains four or more characters. The entire file does not exceed 10,000 words. Save the file in ASCII format in any directory on your hard disk. The filename must end with the following identifying extension: . @lx To load a user dictionary from within ScanWorX, use the following procedure: 1. Click on the Document Settings command in the main window. The Document Settings window is displayed (Figure 8-5). Figure 8-5. Document settings 2. Click the Choose User Dictionary command. The Load User Dictionary window is displayed (Figure 8-6). Figure 8-6. Load User Dictionary window 3. Locate and select the user dictionary to load. If necessary, change to the directory that contains the user dictionary. Type the file name directly, or use the mouse to select the user dictionary from the file listing. 4. Click Load when you have selected the file. The Load User Dictionary window closes. Only one user dictionary can be loaded at a time. To unload a user dictionary, click the None button in the Load User Dictionary window (refer to Figure 8-6). The Document Settings window is still open. 5. From the Document Settings, make sure the Lexical Context setting is enabled. With the right mouse button, click and hold on the Lexical Context setting. A pop-up menu with three selections appears: Enable Disable No Rules Click Enabled. This assures that ScanWorX will use the user dictionary during character recognition. 6. Click Done in the Document Settings window. The Document Settings window closes. 7. Go on to process your document. Refer to Chapter 4 for scanning instructions. Refer to Chapter 5 for information about delayed processing with TIFF files. Tips for Efficient Processing When you first start using ScanWorX, you may find it easier to scan a document without adjusting the default settings. In many cases, using the system defaults provides acceptable results. However, if you want to get the best performance from your scanning system, there are a few measures you can take before processing a document: Save and load settings file Use ignore zones in preview Use the Remove Halftones filter These features can help to assure that the system processes only the parts of a page that are essential, and processes them appropriately. Over the course of an entire document, or multiple documents, using these features can translate to valuable time savings. Save and load settings files Chapter 3 introduces the concept of settings files, in which you can save command settings to reload and use for specific types of jobs. For example, suppose you regularly process three different types of documents: multiple-column newsletters; one-column reports; and numerical spreadsheets. Ordinarily, you would specify new settings before scanning each type of document. However, you could save the settings for each type of job in a settings file. The next time you have the same type of job to process, you can load the customized settings file. A settings file contains a snapshot of all the system's command settings in place at the moment the file is saved. However, seldom will two jobs be exactly alike. Therefore, even after you load a particular settings file, you may want to fine-tune the settings for the current job. Refer to Chapter 3 for a description of commands and settings. Refer to Chapters 4 through 7 for information about specifying settings to accomplish different tasks. To save a settings file To prepare for and save a settings file, complete the steps in the following procedure: 1. Specify settings for a particular document. Use the Document and Scanner settings commands in the main window to select the settings. 2. Select the Save command in the main window. The Save Settings window appears (Figure 8-7). Figure 8-7. Save Settings window 3. Enter the file name and destination directory. 4. Click Save. The settings file of the given name is written to the specified directory, and the Save Settings window closes. To load a settings file 1. Select Load from the main window. The Load Settings window appears (Figure 8-8). Figure 8-8. Load Settings window 2. Locate and select the settings file to load. If necessary, change to the directory that contains the settings file. Click Show Files to list the settings (. @in) files in the new directory Use the mouse to highlight and select the settings file from the Files list. 3. Click Load. The Load Settings window closes and the settings in the settings file are put in place. Use ignore zones in preview Some elements on a page image can slow down recognition speed, as the ICR software spends time analyzing them. These include rotated text, graphics, logos, lines, handwritten notes, smudges, and so on. The preview toolbox provides a tool - ignore zone - that lets you cover up unwanted text or graphics on a page and prevent the system from trying to analyze and process the data (Figure 8-9): In the preview window, you create ignore zones just as you create text and image zones: 1. Select the Ignore tool from the Document Preview toolbox. 2. In the preview window, point to a corner of the area to be ignored. 3. Hold the left mouse button, drag the cursor diagonally to the opposite corner, then release the mouse button. The ignore zone appears (Figure 8-9). Figure 8-9. Ignore zone in preview window Use the Remove Halftones filter On a printed document, a halftone is made up of different-sized black dots. Ordinarily, the system's Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) would spend some time trying to recognize halftones as text. In a few moments, ICR would figure out that it was trying to recognize a halftone and would then ignore it. To speed up text recognition on documents that also contain halftones, you can use the Remove Halftones filter. With Remove Halftones selected, ScanWorX quickly scans the page image and masks out halftones before beginning character recognition (Figure 8-10). Thus, actual character recognition is faster and more efficient. Figure 8-10. Remove Halftones filter To use the Remove Halftones option, click the Document command in the main window. Select Remove Halftones as the Filtering setting. In the preview window, you can watch the Remove Halftones filter in action, as halftones are automatically removed from the previewed page. Optimizing Column Recognition If your document has columns of text, be sure you have chosen the Columns option in the Document Settings window. If you have not selected the correct setting, the system may insert tab characters when it finds the space between columns. This slows down performance, and can make your file extremely difficult to edit. In such cases, it is better to rescan the job, making sure to specify the correct column setting. (Refer to Chapter 3 for information about the Document Settings window.) Also, even if you do specify the correct number of columns, the location of the columns relative to the edges of the page can affect the systems column-recognition performance. Normally, to calculate where columns begin and end, the system simply takes the specified page width and divides it evenly by the specified number of columns (Figure 8-11). Figure 8-11. How the system locates columns However, real-world documents differ in their left and right margin and gutter sizes. Thus, the actual column width and positions may differ from the system's estimate. This can slow down processing somewhat. Therefore, for best column recognition, you may want to use the system's preview tools to create a zone template for the document. By drawing zones to indicate actual column width and position, you can optimize the system's column recognition performance (Figure 8-12). If you decide to zone your document, rather than use the Columns option, you must set the Columns option to 1. If you have Columns set to 2, 3, 4, or Auto Detect, the zoning tools are dimmed (unavailable) in the preview window. Figure 8-12. Column template in the preview window After you draw the zone template, you can close the preview window and process the rest of the document. The zone template will remain in effect for the entire document. Alternatively, if the pages of your document vary in column position and size you can process one page at a time and individually zone each page. For complete information about preview tools, refer to Chapter 7. Interrupting and Resuming a Job ScanWorX is capable of treating text recognition and text conversion as separate processes. One benefit of this is the ability to temporarily interrupt and resume the text recognition of a document and still have all recognized text output to the same converted document when you resume. For example, you might be in the middle of scanning a 100-page document when you want to leave for the day, or you suddenly need to process a higher-priority document. Simply choose a convenient break point, then you can interrupt the first job and save it for later processing. You can go home or process the higher-priority job. Interrupt a job There are several ways to interrupt a job. However, in all cases, you must wait until at least the first page of the document has finished processing. Then, you can access the Interrupt command in one of three ways: Wait until the scanner is empty, then click Interrupt in the Out of Input window (Figure 8-13). All pages processed so far are included in the interrupted output file. Figure 8-13. Out of Input window Click the Pause command in the main window, then click Interrupt in the ensuing window. If you use this method, the page currently being processed is discarded (not included in the interrupted file). If you are previewing, click Interrupt from the top of the Document Preview window. If you use this method, the page currently being processed is discarded (not included in the interrupted file). In all cases, the system interrupts the document and saves the recognized text as a group of associated temporary files. Thus, the document can be resumed whenever you are ready. Recognized text is saved to an unconverted document file with this extension: . @tc A . @tc (temporary contents) file is stored in a proprietary format that contains recognized text, page number, page layout, and character formatting information. However, a . @tc file is not usable as a text processing document. In addition to the . @tc file, other associated temporary files are saved, which have the same document (base) name. These include files that store the settings, verification data, and other related information at the time you interrupted the document. Refer to Chapter 2 for more information about file types in the system. See the next subsection for information about resuming a job. Resume a job When you are ready to resume scanning pages as part of the same job, you can open the unconverted file and continue processing. Select the Resume command from the main window. This displays the Document to Resume window (Figure 8-14). Figure 8-14. Resume window Specify the directory and the interrupted document file name, then click Done. When you do, ScanWorX opens the file and resumes processing pages, either from the scanner or the TIFF Queue, as appropriate. For complete information about scanning, refer to Chapter 4. For information about TIFF Queue processing, refer to Chapter 5. Text Conversion in ScanWorX This section discusses the ScanWorX text conversion process, provides notes on supported text formats, and describes how to use the Convert command. ScanWorX provides two options for converting scanned documents to a text format that you can use with your desktop publishing or other text application: specify automatic conversion when you process the document specify the document to be saved as Format Analyzed Text, a ScanWorX internal format With the first option, you simply specify the final text format in the Start Processing window (Figure 8-15). Figure 8-15. Text formats With the second option, recognized text is saved as Format Analyzed Text, an unconverted document with associated . @dc and . @fa files. Thus, you can use the Convert command to convert the document to any of the final formats, while maintaining the document in unconverted format. Supported text formats ScanWorX supports output of recognized text to five final formats, and two proprietary formats for later conversion. Supported formats are described here. Text with Line Breaks Choose Text with Line Breaks if your scanned document contains mostly text in a simple format. The Text with Line Breaks setting outputs end-of-line and end-of-paragraph codes to maintain line and paragraph breaks. In addition, all tabs used in the original document are replaced by spaces. Therefore, if your document contains any tabular information that you want to maintain, choose Tabs Delimited for this document. Text Only Choose Text Only if your document contains only text with little or no formatting. The Text Only setting outputs end-of-paragraph marks only. It does not output end-of-line codes and will wrap text continually until it reaches an end of paragraph mark. Line length (number of characters per line) is determined by the application you use to import and edit the scanned text. Tab Delimited Choose Tabs Delimited if you are scanning documents with tabular formats, such as spreadsheets or tables. The Tabs Delimited setting recognizes and outputs tabs in the document. It also outputs end-of-line and end-of-paragraph codes. FrameMaker When you select FrameMaker as your text format, recognized text is output to Maker Interchange Format (MIF), Frame Technology's ASCII format with embedded markup codes. MIF files can be imported to all versions (1.0 and beyond) of FrameMaker on the Sun system. In addition, these files can be transported to other computers that support FrameMaker. Interleaf When you select Interleaf as your text format, recognized text is output to Interleaf ASCII Format, Interleaf's ASCII format with embedded markup codes. Interleaf ASCII Format files can be imported to Interleaf TPS 4.0 and later on the Sun system. KDOC KDOC is a ScanWorX-proprietary interim format for eventual conversion to CALS (Computer Acquisition and Logistics Support), and other third-party formats. Format Analyzed Text Format Analyzed Text is an interim (unconverted) format for eventual conversion to one of the five supported final formats - Text with Line Breaks, Text Only, Tab Delimited, FrameMaker, and Interleaf. The benefit of saving recognized text as Format Analyzed Text is that you can use the Convert command to convert it to more than one format (see the next subsection, "Use the Convert command," for information). For example, you might want to convert the file to Text with Line Breaks to use in an on-line database. Then, you could also convert it to FrameMaker for desktop publishing purposes. The Format Analyzed Text file remains intact on your system until you remove it manually. Use the Convert command When you scan and recognize a document, you can save it as Format Analyzed Text. Then, you can use the Convert command to convert it to one of the three ASCII formats, FrameMaker, or Interleaf. To convert a Format Analyzed Text file, use this procedure: 1. From the main window, select the Convert command. The Convert window appears, letting you locate and select the unconverted file to convert (Figure 8-16). Figure 8-16. Convert window 2. Locate and identify the unconverted file to convert. Change the directory, if necessary, then click Show Files to list the unconverted files in the new directory. Click on the file to insert it in the Filename field. 3. Specify the Text Format. Cycle through the available options, or click the right mouse button to display a pop-up menu with these five options: Text with Line Breaks Text Only Tab Delimited FrameMaker Interleaf 4. Specify Text Options. Click the Text Options command to display a window with Markup, Zones, and Preserve formatting options (see Figure 8-17, next page). Specify the options. The full set of options is available only for FrameMaker and Interleaf formats. Refer to Chapter 3 for a summary of text options. Refer to the next section for a discussion of the Zones category. Click Done. The Text Options window closes, and the Convert window remains open. 5. Click Done in the Convert window. The Convert window closes and the Processing Document window appears, indicating that the file is: Converting In a moment the Processing Document window closes, indicating conversion is complete. 6. Proceed from Step 1 to convert the file into another format. The Format Analyzed Text file remains intact on your system. Thus, you can convert it as many times as necessary. Specifying Zone Markup in Text Files One of the primary applications of the system is to scan documents and create text files that you can edit or import to other applications. If you are interested in saving page layout information in addition to the text of a document, you can specify zone markup. For all text formats supported by the system (except KDOC and Format Analyzed Text), Text Options in the Start Processing window provide two settings for zone markup (Figure 8-17). Figure 8-17. Zone settings The Zone Marker text box lets you identify a start-of-zone string that ScanWorX will write in the output file at points where new columns or zones in the original hard copy begin. For example: &lab;z> Click the Zone Position checkbox on if you want the system to include a zone position code to describe where each column begins on the original page. For example: [190;0;167;738;t;0] Each zone position code has six values, separated by commas and enclosed in square brackets. The syntax of the zone position code is as follows: [lm,tm,w,h,t,0] Table 8-1 describes what each of the zone position codes means. Table 8-1. Zone Position Codes Value , Description lm , the distance from the leftmost edge of the original page to the left edge of the zone,, in points tm , the distance from the topmost edge of the original page to the top edge of the zone,, in points w , the width of the zone,, in points h , the height (vertical length) of the zone,, in points t , a fixed value set by the system , a fixed value set by the system Using the Command Line Interface The command line interface lets you invoke ScanWorX without going into OPEN LOOK and using the standard menu system. The command line interface is useful if you are using a batch environment. By using a series of options, you can direct ScanWorX to perform a number of functions. Using the command line interface does not provide all of the functionality of the menu-driven version of ScanWorX. For example, if you want to write a command script that would scan 100 pages as TIFF files, recognize those pages, use a specific settings file, and save them as an ASCII document you would enter: icrcl -b -o filename -r -s settingsfile The command line options are summarized in Table 8-2. Table 8-2. Command Line Options Option , Function icrcl , Invokes the command line interface. For example,, icrcl -o filename -b , Output mode option. If this command is not used,, text is output. If -b is used,, both text and image is output. For example,, icrcl -b -o filename -g , Output mode option. If this command is not used,, text is output. If -g is used,, images are output. For example,, icrcl -g -o filename -o, Specifies the name of the output file,, assuming standard Sun extensions. For example,, icrcl -o filename -w , Informs the system to automatically overwrite an output file if a file with the specified name already exists. For example,, icrcl -o filename -w -r , Specifies that TIFF files are used as output. Follow this command with a list of TIFF files separated by spaces. Wild cards may be included. For example,, icrcl -o filename -r tifile_pg001. tif -s , Specifies the name of the settings file. Use this option only if you are not using the default settings. For example,, icrcl -o filename -s settingfile. @in -f , Tells the system to get recognition feedback. When recognition is in progress,, this option displays a count of recognized characters and words. For example,, icrcl -o filename -f ScanWorX User's Guide Glossary of Terms ScanWorX User's Guide This glossary defines terms and concepts used in this manual. For readers who are new to scanning and character recognition concepts, this glossary may be useful not only as a reference, but as a primer on scanning technology, as well. Some definitions provided here contain terms in bold letters. This means that these terms are also defined elsewhere in the glossary. A Alphabetic only - A setting that you can specify for Text Type under the Document Settings command. Alphanumeric - Text that has both alphabet characters and numbers. Also a setting that you can specify for Text Type under the Document Settings command. ASCII - Acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, a 128-code set for representing characters and symbols in a computer system. Auto Detect - An option that you can specify for the Columns setting in the Document Settings command enabling ScanWorX to correctly recognize text on multiple-column pages with complex or irregular layouts. automatic document feeder (ADF) - A device that can be added onto a flatbed scanner to automatically feed pages, one at a time, into the scanner and then eject each page after it is scanned. B background - The state where a computer activity is in process without help from the computer operator. For example, you can initiate scanning and recognition on the ScanWorX system, then operate some other OPEN LOOK application in the foreground. Scanning and recognition will continue in background. Glossary of Terms base name - The document name that you assign to output files that are created during text and/or image recognition. To the base name, the system appends zone and page numbers to identify specific image files that are created during recognition. baseline - The imaginary line on which the bases of characters are printed so that they align vertically on a line of text. binary - In general, the computer number system that uses only 0 and 1 (off and on). binary image - In the context of image data, binary refers to an image made up of fully black ("1") and fully white ("0") picture elements (pixels). See also line art and halftone. bitmap - In computer memory, the bit-by-bit representation of a scanned (or other) image. brightness - An adjustable setting on a scanner that determines how light or dark an image will be when scanned and processed to an output file. The ScanWorX system lets you adjust brightness in the Scanner Settings window to compensate for different original documents. broken character - Any character on a printed document that is not fully formed, for whatever reason. For example, on a laser-printed document, some characters may appear broken because the toner cartridge is low on toner. In character recognition, broken characters can be difficult to recognize correctly. Thus, you can use the Verifier to help the system recognize such characters. byte - A group of bits treated by the computer as a single unit of information. In electronic publishing, a byte is often regarded as equivalent to a single character, so that a five megabyte storage disk may be said to store five million characters of information. C CALS (Computer-aided Acquisition and Logistics Support) - a long-term project sponsored by the United States Department of Defense to develop standards for computerized information interchange. See also KDOC format. carriage return - The computer (ASCII) code generated in a text file when the Return key is pressed. character group - A single character or a sequence of two or more characters that the system highlights in the Verifier window for text verification. Choose Language - A command available in the Document Settings window to load a language pack for recognition of text in a particular language. Columns - A setting in the Document Settings window to define the number of columns in the document to be recognized. column recognition - The capability to recognize text in multi-column documents in proper sequence. The ScanWorX system supports column recognition, and writes recognized text to the output file in a single-column, galley format. compound scanning - The process of recognizing both the text and the images of a document simultaneously. compressed - Data, usually image data, that has been encoded in such as way as to reduce the amount of physical disk space that it takes up. For example, several compression methods are available for TIFF files, two of which are supported by the ScanWorX system: Group III and Group IV. confidence level - A value that the system assigns to a character during recognition, based on a number of factors. If the assigned value is less than the Confidence Level you have specified, the system marks the character as questionable. If the value is greater than the specified Confidence Level, the system releases the character as correctly recognized. conversion - The ScanWorX function of processing recognized text to a formatted file that can be read by a desktop publishing, or other text application. D defaults - The command settings in place when you first launch the ScanWorX application. They are stored in a default settings file that comes with the system. delayed processing - A capability of the ScanWorX system whereby you can scan page images into TIFF files, then process the text and images from those pages at a later time. diagonal - A type of halftone pattern supported by some ScanWorX scanners. Dim Image - An option in the preview window that de-emphasizes ("dims") the scanned page image in the window so that zones stand out better. digitize - To convert a scanned image to binary form for output and/or storage on a computer. dithering - In scanning, a digital process of simulating the gray tones of an original image (photograph or color drawing) by writing the ratio of black dots to white dots in a given area in the same proportion as the gray tone. See also halftone. document - In broad terms, any group of pages that represents a whole. A document can be a one-page memo, a 20-page report, a 300-page bound book, and so on. The term "document" is also used to refer to a related group of TIFF files listed in the TIFF Queue, because these TIFF files each contain a page image from a scanned document. A document may also refer to the output file that is created as the result of a scanning session. document separator - A blank page or blank TIFF file used to indicate to ScanWorX the end of one document and the start of the next document. dots per inch (dpi) - The number of picture elements (pixels) per inch that a scanner takes in, or a screen or printer outputs. drop-out color - A color that a scanner cannot scan. It varies from scanner to scanner, and usually depends on the scanner's light source. For example, if the scanner's light source is green, then the drop-out color is green. The ScanWorX scanner's drop-out color is green. E Edit TIFF Queue - See TIFF Queue. Enhance dot-matrix - An option of the Filtering setting in the Document Settings window that enables the system to recognize text printed by a draft-quality dot matrix printer. F Feedback window - The window that opens when you select Feedback in the main window. It shows a graphic representation of the text recognition process. file extension - A string of three characters following the name of a file, separated from the file name by a period (.). filter - A setting that is applied to the page image before the recognition software attempts to recognize the page. The ScanWorX system supports a number of filter settings to improve recognition accuracy and speed on certain types of documents. fine dot - A type of halftone pattern supported by the ScanWorX scanner. Flip Document - A command in the Out of Pages window that lets you inform ScanWorX that the pages to be processed are the reverse sides of the pages just scanned. This enables the system to perform automatic collation. font - A set of type characters of a particular design and size. The plain (roman), italic, bold, and bold italic versions of a particular typeface in each available point size are fonts. format - See text format and image format. format analysis - Software in the ScanWorX system that detects the format of the scanned document and preserves that formatting in the output file. forty-five degrees - A type of halftone pattern supported by some ScanWorX scanners. G galley format - The single-column format in which the ScanWorX system outputs text recognized from multiple-column documents. gray scale - The image data that is derived when your scanner measures the gray level of each picture element, or pixel, then stores this information directly to a file, rather than first converting it to a bitmap. H halftone - An image composed of differently-sized black dots spaced in such a way as to simulate the different gray tones of an original photograph or color drawing. In the Scanner Settings window, you can specify a scanned image to be output as dithered halftone data. See also binary image, dithering, and screen. halftone pattern - The general arrangement of black dots (pixels) used to simulate the continuous tones of an original photograph or other image. The ScanWorX system supports a number of dithered halftone patterns. See also dithering. handles - The small, black squares at the corners of the a text zone, image zone, and ignore zone rectangles in the preview window. By clicking on one of these handles with the Edit Zone tool you can resize the rectangle or zone. Help - An option in the main window and throughout the ScanWorX interface that lets you display general and context-sensitive information about system commands and menu options. hexadecimal (hex) - A number system using a base of 16. Decimal numbers 10 through 15 are represented by the letters A through F. For example, decimal 11 is represented by hexadecimal A; decimal 16 is hexadecimal 10. high contrast - A type of halftone pattern supported by the ScanWorX scanner. high gradation - A type of halftone pattern supported by the ScanWorX scanner. horizontal - A type of halftone pattern supported by some ScanWorX scanner. I IGF - Stands for Interleaf Graphics Format, an image format proprietary to Interleaf Corporation's electronic publishing systems. ignore zone - A rectangle that you can size and place in the preview window. It enables you to define an area of the previewed page that is not to be processed. illegible character - In Intelligent Character Recognition, a character that the system cannot recognize, typically because the original copy is of poor quality. image - The optical, file, or print representation of an object produced by a scanner. image format - One of the image file standards supported by the ScanWorX system: TIFF Uncompressed, TIFF CCITT-3, and TIFF CCITT-4, Sun Raster Standard, Sun Raster Encoded, and Interleaf Graphics Format (IGF). image zone - In the preview window, a defined area on the previewed page to be processed into a separate image file. input source - The origin of page images being recognized: either the scanner or the TIFF Queue. insert mode - In a text entry system (such as a word processor), a state where text being typed is inserted in front of existing text at the current cursor location. See also overstrike mode. Intelligent Character Recognition - The Xerox Imaging Systems' exclusive software built into the ScanWorX system and based on artificial intelligence techniques, which provides unsurpassed character recognition accuracy of scanned text files. interrupt - Ending a job before you have finished processing all pages of a document. The ScanWorX system lets you resume jobs that you have interrupted. K kerning - The removal of space between selected pairs of characters to improve the appearance of typeset copy. keyboard interface - The built-in facility for accessing menus and executing commands in the system by means of the keyboard. KDOC format - A ScanWorX proprietary file format for eventual conversion to CALS (or some other third-party) format. L landscape page - A page on which text or an image is printed horizontally across the length of the paper. See also Orientation and portrait page. language pack - A dictionary file provided with the ScanWorX system for recognition of a particular language. language rules - A set of guidelines built ScanWorX that aids in determining the identity of a character by examining the characters around it and checking words in the built-in lexicon. Legal - A common paper size in the United States measuring 8.5 by 14 inches. See also Page Size. Letter - A common paper size in the United States measuring 8.5 by 11 inches. See also Page Size. Lexical Context - An option in the Document Settings window that controls whether the system's built-in dictionary and language rules (and a user dictionary, if you load one) are used in character recognition. line art - A black and white illustration with no color or shades of gray. See also halftone. lined - A type of halftone pattern supported by the ScanWorX scanner. M main window - The top-level window that appears on your OPEN LOOK desktop when you launch the ScanWorX application. manual page segmentation - A feature of ScanWorX that lets you identify different text zones and image zones on a page in the preview window to determine which areas on the page are to be processed, and the order in which they are processed. Markup - Settings that let you assign markup codes to flag characters that the ScanWorX system deems as questionable or illegible during character recognition. These settings are available in the Text Options window for certain conversions. markup codes - A character string that you can define to identify text format conditions in a formatted text file. See text settings. mini-help - The one-line descriptive message that appears in the status bar when you select a menu command. moire pattern - A usually undesirable result of scanning a halftone original and specifying halftone output to the scanned file. The original halftone pattern of dots conflicts with the scanner's digital halftone (dithering) pattern, creating an image with a noticeable criss-cross pattern. mouse - The cursor-movement and pointing device connected to your Sun system. N noise - Random marks (such as dirt, smudges, handwritten annotations, and so on) on hard copy documents that can be interpreted as characters by the recognition software. noise - Random marks (such as dirt, smudges, handwritten annotations, and so on) on hard copy documents that can be interpreted as characters by the recognition software. non-lexical - Data in the form of letters, numbers, or both, that are unrelated to words in a language, for example, part numbers. Numbers only - A value of the Text Type setting in the Document Settings window to inform the system that a document (for example, a spreadsheet) contains numbers only. O omnifont - Literally meaning all fonts, the capability in ScanWorX Intelligent Character Recognition to recognize virtually any type style. Orientation - A setting in the Document Settings windows that lets you specify pages to be scanned as portrait or landscape. overstrike mode - In text-entry systems (such as a word processor), a state wherein text being typed overwrites existing text. See also insert mode. P page contents - The data (text and graphics) recognized from scanned pages. page footer - Also known as the running footer, this refers to the text that is repeated at the bottom of every page of a document or chapter (or sometimes every right or every left page). page header - Also known as the running header, this refers to the text that is repeated at the top of every page of a document or chapter (or sometimes every right or every left page). page image - The binary image that the system reads into memory when a page is scanned. With this image, the system can perform character recognition. page orientation - See Orientation. page rotation - The operation that the ScanWorX system performs in system memory in order to recognize landscape documents. The system rotates the image of the turned page 90-degrees into portrait orientation before it begins recognition. Page Size - A setting in the Document Settings window that enables you to specify the size of the pages about to be processed. page skew - The condition whereby a page is improperly aligned in a scanner when scanned, and thus may cause difficulty in character recognition. The ScanWorX system can recognize documents that are skewed up to five degrees. page source - The origin from which the recognition software receives page images, either the scanner or the TIFF Queue. page template - In the preview window, any combination of text zones, image zones, and ignore zones which describes how a page (or group of pages) are to be processed. See also template file. pause mode - In ScanWorX, a state whereby a process has been suspended temporarily. You can place a process in pause mode by selecting the Pause button in the main or preview windows. picture element - Also called a pixel, the smallest unit in which a computer can display, or a printer can print, image data. point - A typographic unit of measurement equal to approximately 1/72 of an inch. portrait page - A page on which text or an image is printed horizontally across the width of a page. See also landscape page and Orientation. previewing - In the ScanWorX system, the capability to scan a page and display it in a preview window where you can instruct the system exactly how to process it. preview toolbox - A group of iconic tools in the preview window from which you can select to perform a variety of previewing tasks. preview window - In the ScanWorX system, a window you can open on your screen, in which you can display scanned pages or TIFF images before processing them. In the preview window, you can create zones and perform other operations to control how the information is to be processed. You can open the preview window by selecting Preview in the main window. primary language - The language in which most (if not all) of a document is printed. For example, a document printed in the English language may contain passages in other languages; however, the primary language is still English. The primary language of a document determines the language pack to use for the job. Q questionable character - In Intelligent Character Recognition, a character that the system is not sure has been identified correctly. The recognition software provides a capability that lets you specify that questionable characters are to be flagged in the output file. R random - A type of halftone pattern supported by some scanners. Ready mode - The condition whereby the scanner is prepared to start scanning. recognition experts - In ScanWorX Intelligent Character Recognition, the artificial intelligence components that work together to analyze character shapes, correlate data, and perform other tasks that assure excellent recognition accuracy. Remove Halftones - A Filtering option in the Document Settings window that enables the system to mask out halftones before initiating character recognition. This makes the recognition process faster and more efficient. resolution - The degree of detail, measured in dots per inch, with which a device can input or output an image. resume - The ScanWorX system provides the ability to open an interrupted document and continue processing text into that document. rules - See language rules. S screen - A device used in the mechanical halftone process, wherein a grid of a given line resolution is placed over an original image which is then photographed with a photostatic camera. The resulting photograph is a halftone made up of differently sized and spaced black dots. Halftone screens come in various reso-lutions measured in lines per inch. A 60-line screen produces a somewhat coarse image as in newspapers. A high-quality screen (for example, a 133-line screen) results in a more finely resolved image typical in magazines and books. See also dithering. scroll bars - Tools for shifting the view of the preview window, located to the right of, and below, the window. scroll box - In a scroll bar, a gray rectangle that you can drag up and down (or back and forth) to shift the window display. settings file - A file containing ScanWorX command settings that can be saved with the Save command and reloaded with the Load command. small spiral - A type of halftone pattern supported by the ScanWorX scanner. spiral - A type of halftone pattern supported by the ScanWorX scanner. spreadsheet application - A program, such as Lotus 1-2-3, which is designed for working with tabular financial information, such as budgets and financial reports. system lexicon - A list of over 50,000 words in the ScanWorX language pack which helps in character recognition. See also language rules. T Tag Image File Format (TIFF) - A standard developed by Aldus Corporation for storing image data electronically. Several variations of TIFF have been developed, three of which are supported by the ScanWorX system: TIFF Uncompressed, TIFF TIFF CCITT3 and TIFF CCITT4. The latter two variations use data compression techniques for storing image files, which tend to take up a lot of disk space. template file - A file in which you can store zone information for later re-use. When you preview a page and draw zones to specify how the page is to be processed, you in effect create a page template. The Save Template command in the preview window lets you save this information in a named template file, so that you can use it for other documents. text conversion - See text format. text format - The desktop publishing or other text file format to which recognized text will be converted and output. The ScanWorX system supports seven text formats, which you can specify in the Start Processing window. Text Options - A group of settings, dependent on the text format, that control how recognized text is formatted when it is output to a text file. You specify Text Options in the Start Processing window. text verification - The process of viewing the system's recognition decisions and correcting them, if needed. See also Verifier. text zone - In the preview window, a rectangular outline of an area of text to be processed separately or in a specified sequence with other text zones. See also previewing. TIFF - See Tag Image File Format. TIFF Queue - A proprietary ScanWorX system file in which is stored "bookkeeping" information about TIFF files created for delayed processing. The TIFF Queue command in the main window enables you to prepare and edit the TIFF Queue to define TIFF files for text recognition. Loading TIFF files on the TIFF Queue is analogous to loading a stack of pages in your scanner's ADF. toolbox - See preview toolbox and Verifier toolbox. U unconverted text file - A file in a format proprietary to the ScanWorX system that contains raw recognized text and other data about the scanned document. user dictionary - In the ScanWorX system, a word-list file that you can prepare in a certain format and load to improve character recognition. A user dictionary can help the system better recognize text in technical, scientific, and other atypical documents. V verification data file - A file that contains character recognition data for a particular document. ScanWorX provides commands that let you save and load verification data files, so you can quickly set up the system for recognition of a particular type of document. Verifier - A window and toolbox in ScanWorX that lets you view and correct the system's recognition decisions. By doing so, you help the system learn about a document's print characteristics, so that on subsequent pages of the document, the system's recognition accuracy will improve. Verifier toolbox - Usually displayed with the Verifier window, a window of icons that you can choose from to perform various text verification tasks. W word wrap - A feature built into most word processing and text editing applications that automatically breaks lines at word breaks so that the person typing the text does not have to do it manually. Z zone - The area on a multiple-column page containing one column of text or data. The term zone is also used in the context of previewing operations in the ScanWorX system's preview window, wherein you identify text zones, image zones, and ignore zones on a previewed page. zone markup - See Zones. zone position code - See Zone. Zones - A setting for some text formats to have the conversion software output a markup code containing column position (coordinate) information as reflected in the original document. A Character Set ScanWorX User's Guide For text verification, to access special characters shown in the six right-hand columns, type the meta ( META ) key plus a standard keyboard character from the left columns, as shown below. B ScanWorX User's Guide Error Messages ScanWorX User's Guide Occasionally, during ScanWorX operation, you may receive an error message. ScanWorX error messages are designed to be self-explanatory. You can simply correct the situation and proceed. However, sometimes you may require more detail about the meaning of an error message and how to correct it. This appendix lists each ScanWorX error message, describes what can cause it, and suggests a course of action. The error messages that can be generated during a ScanWorX work session are organized in seven categories, as follows: Collating errors Converting errors Previewing errors Processing errors Reading TIFF file errors Scanning errors Other errors Thus, this appendix is organized in sections with these same titles. When you need information on a particular type of error, you can refer directly to the related section for details. However, first read the following section, "Correcting an Error Condition." Correcting an Error Condition This section discusses the format of a typical ScanWorX error message and discusses how to proceed in correcting an error condition. Error messages are typically displayed in an alert window, as shown in Figure B-1. Figure B-1. Error message example Error Messages The window usually displays a general message followed by the error category, and a description of the error condition. For example, in Figure B-1, the error category is "while reading a TIFF file," and the error condition is "Unable to read TIFF file." This appendix is organized in sections titled by error category. Thus, you can consult the section for information about the error. Table B-1 (facing page) describes the categories of errors. Most errors that are generated by ScanWorX during a work session are self-explanatory. Usually, you can simply read the message in the dialog, click Confirm, correct the error condition, and proceed with the task at hand. When you encounter an error that is not self-explanatory, or that you cannot seem to correct, consult this appendix in the appropriate section. Table B-1. Error Categories Category , Related to Collating , the system's automatic collation capability,, wherein pages scanned out of order can be output in the correct sequence in the recognized text file Converting , the ScanWorX text conversion process,, wherein recognized text is converted to the specified output format Previewing , the ScanWorX previewing capability Processing , the ScanWorX text recognition process Reading TIFF file , the ScanWorX TIFF reader Scanning , the ScanWorX scanner interface Other , All other error messages that do not fall in one of the seven categories listed above Generally, this appendix provides suggestions for correcting error conditions. If all else fails, and you cannot correct the error condition, call Xerox Imaging Systems Technical Support at: (800)-777-5350 If you should need to call XIS Technical Support, be ready to provide the following: your software registration number (the serial number on your original ScanWorX tape cartridge) the "While" message and description of the error message a description of the steps that led up to the error condition. Subsequent sections of this appendix describe actual error messages. Collating Errors The errors in this section are related to the system's automatic collation functions. Sorry an error occurred while collating. Invalid page number. You must specify a new page number by changing the `Next Page' setting in the Document Settings window This error typically results when you are scanning the reverse sides of a two-page document, and the Next Page number in the Document Settings window is incorrect. The page number should be one greater than the last odd page number processed. Converting Errors The errors in this section are related to the ScanWorX conversion process. Sorry an error occurred while converting: Source document does not exist You have tried to open an unconverted document that is somehow corrupted. You should never get this error. If you do, call XIS Technical Support. Sorry an error occurred while converting: Document parsing error, bad format analysis file ScanWorX tried to open an unconverted document whose associated . @fa or . @dc file is corrupted. You should never get this error. If you do, call XIS Technical Support. Sorry an error occurred while converting: Format conversion system error This error occurs when the conversion software within ScanWorX terminates as a result of a file permission condition or an unknown system error. Consult your system administrator. If you cannot resolve this problem, contact XIS Technical Support. Sorry an error occurred while converting: Unexpected end of file ScanWorX tried to convert an unconverted document whose associated . @fa file is corrupted. You should never get this error. If you do, call XIS Technical Support. Previewing Errors The errors in this section are related to the system's previewing functions. Sorry an error occurred while previewing: Link is invalid You are trying to link two zones that are not of the same type (for example, a text zone with an image zone). ScanWorX will beep twice when you try this. On the third try, it displays this message. Sorry an error occurred while previewing: Maximum number of zones has been reached. Maximum number is 40 You are trying to create more than 40 zones in the preview window, which is the maximum allowed. ScanWorX will beep twice when you try this. On the third try, it displays this message. Processing Errors The errors in this section may occur while the system is recognizing a document. Sorry an error occurred while processing: Could not read language file ScanWorX tried to recognize a document with a corrupt language file. You may have to reinstall your software. If you get this error message, contact XIS Technical Support. Sorry an error occurred while processing: Could not read verification data ScanWorX tried to read a corrupt verification data file while processing a document. Do not use this verification data file for future jobs. Sorry an error occurred while processing: Could not read . @fa/@tf file ScanWorX tried to read an unconverted document that is somehow corrupted. You should never get this error. If you do, call XIS Technical Support. Sorry an error occurred while processing: Could not open . @dc file ScanWorX tried to read an unconverted document that is somehow corrupted. You should never get this error. If you do, call XIS Technical Support. Sorry an error occurred while processing: Could not read the template file You have specified a template file for which you do not have read permission. Consult your system adminstrator. This message may also occur because the template file is in some way damaged. Sorry an error occurred while processing: Could not write the template file ScanWorX is attempting to save a template file to a directory for which you do not have write permission. Use another directory, or consult your system administrator. Sorry an error occurred while processing: Out of memory This error may occur when you are processing a very large document, or a document that has a very complex layout from page to page. ScanWorX is unable to obtain any more memory (or swap space) from your Sun system. XIS recommends that you have your Sun system configured with at least 22Mb of swap space. Check with your system administrator to assure that your system is configured with this amount. In general, XIS recommends that you do not process more than 50 pages at a time. If your document is longer, you should process it as multiple jobs, and merge the files with your text application. This will assure that you do not lose data that has been scanned. Sorry an error occurred while processing: &lab;1008,1007> These errors may occur when you are processing a very large document, or a document that has a very complex layout from page to page, and there is not enough swap space on your system. Check with your system administrator to assure that your system is configured with 22Mb (or more) of swap space. In general, XIS recommends that you do not process more than 50 pages at a time. If your document is longer, you should process it as multiple jobs, and merge the files with your text application. This will assure that you do not lose data that has been scanned. If you get one of these errors, make note of the number and call XIS Technical Support. Sorry an error occurred while processing: Unable to process image You are attempting to process an image that is too large. Sorry an error occurred while processing: File system error or out of disk space During a process, ScanWorX could not write the output file. This is most likely because there is some file permission problem. It may also be caused because you are out of disk space. Consult your system administrator. Reading TIFF File Errors The errors in this section are related to the TIFF reader in ScanWorX. Sorry an error occurred while reading TIFF file: Unable to read TIFF file The file you loaded on the TIFF Queue is not a valid TIFF file. The file may be corrupted. Try copying the file from its original source, reloading it on the queue, and processing it again. Sorry an error occurred while reading TIFF file: Please finish with the TIFF queue first! This error occurs when you try to start processing with the TIFF Queue Manager still open. Close the TIFF Queue, and try again. Scanning Errors The errors in this section are related to the ScanWorX scanner driver. Sorry an error occurred while scanning: Scanner error This error may occur when the scanner is not powered on, or when the connections between the scanner and your Sun system are not secure. Check to make sure that the scanner is powered on, and that the connections are secure. Then try again. If you continue to get this error, you may have a hardware problem. Contact your authorized XIS representative. Sorry an error occurred while scanning: Scanner not available The scanner is powered off. Turn the scanner power on, and try again. Sorry an error occurred while scanning: Automatic Document Feeder jammed. Press the Clear button on the scanner to clear the jam. Remove the jammed page from the scanner's ADF. Replace the pages properly in the ADF, then press the Clear button. Click Confirm in the Alert box, then click Continue in the Out of Input dialog. Sorry an error occurred while scanning: Automatic document feeder not ready You should not get this message during normal use. It could indicate a hardware problem. Call XIS Technical Support. Sorry an error occurred while scanning: Automatic document Feeder open. Close the Automatic Document Feeder. The ADF latch was moved to open the ADF cover. Close the ADF cover, then click Confirm in the Alert box. Click Continue in the Out of Input dialog. Other Errors The following errors are not related to one of the specific categories described in previous sections. Could not read the zone information in the file: &lab;name> This error may result from a file permissions problem. Consult your system adminstrator. This error may also happen when you try to load an invalid template file using the Load Template command. The file may be damaged or may be some other type of file with the . @tm extension. Or the Show Files field may have been changed to show some other type of file. Could not interpret contents of verification data file: &lab;name> This error may result from a file permissions problem. Consult your system adminstrator. This error may also happen when you try to load an invalid verification data file using the Load Verification Data command. The file may be damaged or may be some other type of file with the . @cs extension. Or the Show Files field may have been changed to show some other type of file. TIFF queue size exceeded. Additions ignored. Max size: 200 You have attempted to add too many files to the TIFF Queue Manager. The maximum number is 200. Could not load TIFF queue from file This happens when you are trying to resume an interrupted document, and your . @tq file is missing or corrupted. The Directory does not exist or write permission was denied. You have specified in one of the command windows that a file be written to a directory that does not exist, or for which you do not have write permission. Specify a valid directory. The `Directory:' field contains the following invalid directory path: &lab;name>. Please supply a valid path. You have specified in one of the command windows that a file be written to or read from a directory that does not exist in your file system. Specify a valid directory path. No filename entered. To try again, enter a new filename and press Load. Select Cancel to exit without loading &lab;type of file>. You are trying to load a template file, settings file, or verification data file, and no name is entered in the Filename field. Enter a valid filename. The file, &lab;pathname> does not exist. To try again, enter a new filename and press Load. Select Cancel to exit without loading the &lab;type of file>. You are trying to load a template file, settings file, or verification data file, and an invalid name is entered in the Filename field. Enter a valid filename. Please finish with the window labelled &lab;name> This message is generated when you have one "filer" window open, and you attempt to open another one. Close the first one before opening the second one. Unable to access the file. You are trying to read a file for which you do not have read permission. Consult your system administrator. Unable to open output file. You are trying to create a file for which you do not have write permission. Consult your system administrator. No help exists for &lab;command name> You have tried to access context-sensitive help for a menu item or entry in a command window, and no help for that item exists. Context-sensitive help is available for all ScanWorX commands and menu options. You should not get this message unless a help file was corrupted, moved, removed, or had its name changed. Can't find file: splash. rasterfile You have started the ScanWorX application, or clicked the About ScanWorX button, and the appropriate splash screen file could not be found. You should not get this message unless the file splash. rasterfile was corrupted, moved, removed, or had its name changed. Could not create image output file for document Could not open image output file for document Could not open the specified settings file Could not write the default settings to the file Could not interpet contents of user dictionary: &lab;pathname> Could not interpret contents of language file: &lab;pathname> These errors relate to file permission or file system problems. Contact your system adminstrator. If you cannot resolve these problems, contact XIS Technical Support. Invalid extension - could not load specified file: &lab;pathname> The extension in the Show Files field of the command window is inappropriate for the type of file to be loaded. Make sure the file extension is correct, then click Show Files in the command window. Select from the valid names in the file listing and click Load. Incorrect value for Unknown Field ignored. Do you wish to continue loading settings? You are trying to load an invalid settings file. Although the file has the correct extension, something is wrong with it. Click Yes in the alert box. All the settings in the file except for the incorrect one will be loaded. If the Alert box does not go away, click No instead. Your settings file is corrupt. Could not load language file: &lab;path>/&lab;languagename>. lc ScanWorX is trying to load a lexicon for a specific language that is no longer at its default location on the disk. Or, possibly, the file name was changed. Click Confirm. If you need this language for character recognition purposes, you may have to reinstall the ScanWorX application. Call XIS Technical Support. Could not load user dictionary: &lab;pathname> ScanWorX is trying to load a user dictionary that it is unable to locate. This may result from having had a user dictionary loaded when you saved settings. If you move or delete the user dictionary, then try to load the settings file that contains the user dictionary name, this error results. Simply click Confirm to proceed. All settings in the file (except, of course, the user dictionary) will be loaded. The user lexicon contains too many words You have specified a user dictionary (sometimes referred to as a user lexicon) that has more than 10,000 words in it. Edit the user dictionary to reduce its maximum to 10,000 words or less. Then try the process again. Page number may not exceed 999. Please specify a next page number from 1 to 999. In the Document Settings window, you are trying to specify a value greater than 999 for the Next Page setting. This is the highest allowable page number. Zero was specified as the next page number. Specify a number from 1 to 999. In the Document Settings window, you are trying to specify a Next Page setting of 0. The allowable range is 1 to 999. Can only select halftone if processing image output only. The Process type set in the main window is Text or Both, and you are attempting to access the Halftone setting in the Scanner Settings window. In ScanWorX, you must process text as Text/Line Art (binary data). Click Confirm in the Alert box. If you want to process halftone data, select Image as the Process type in the main window. Then select Halftone in the Scanner Settings window. Must turn off halftone before making selection. This is the inverse of the previous error condition. You are trying to select Text as the Process type in the main window, and Halftone is turned on in the Scanner Settings window. If you want to process text, open the Scanner Settings window and select Text/Line Art. Then in the main window, select Text (or Both) as the Process type.