Hi, thank you for submitting your question to Google Answers, I hope I
can provide the information you are seeking.
Of course I can?t say for certain without actually seeing and probably
even testing the documents in question but it is certainly possible,
at least for the hand printed material.
Unfortunately, unless you are actively creating the document using a
digitizer most software can only deal with non-connected handwriting
which I would call printing but the vendors seem to call it
handwriting.
You did say that some of the data was printed as opposed to script.
There are scan services which can do this.
http://designpresentation.com/handwriting.htm
I mention this because even these companies point out that you may be
better off hiring someone to simply key in the data.
SimpleOCR costs about $60
www.simpleocr.com
Doesn?t appear to work very well but you might try it.
Characttell?s SoftWriting can be downloaded free for a trial.
It is under $70 and only requires a standard TWAIN scanner (many
inexpensive scanners are TWAIN compliant.)
http://www.charactell.com/SoftWriting.html
http://www.charactell.com/
http://www.charactell.com/SoftWritingDataSheet.pdf.
Other software is intended for developers and may or may not work with
scanned images. It is also difficult to determine a price.
Ligature sells a handwriting recognition engine (software)
http://www.ligatureltd.com/english/3_ocrhandwriting.htm
Creesoft also offers handwriting recognition software
http://www.ceresoft.com/freestyle.html
XP Tablet edition, which is used on a lot of Tablet PCs includes
handwriting recognition as do some PDAs if you want to try out the
possibilities but they don?t work with scanned images.
If you have XP (even on a desktop) click on Start, Settings, Control
Panel, Regional and Language, Languages, Details, and, under installed
services, click ADD to see if handwriting recognition is installed
already.
If not, and you have Office XP installed, go to Add or Remove
Programs, click on Office XP, then Change, then Add or remove
features, then Next, then Office Shared Features, Alternative User
Input, Handwriting.
I know that isn?t any real help in your situation but I thought you
might like to see the capabilities since you probably already have the
software.
Scanning the machine-generated text is no problem, most scanners come
with decent OCR software.
The hand printed text should also be convertible to text using either
SoftWriting or SimpleOCR as listed above.
As for the connected, cursive handwriting, the chances of being able
to convert that are slim. However, depending on the volume and value
of the documents you might want to check with designpresentation.com ?
I believe they will accept a faxed sample for testing.
You will probably be better off hiring some student typist or even a
professional to key in the handwritten portion of the documents.
Thank you again for turning to Google Answers for help. |
