Advice on formatting OCR'd printed to digital material.

DSpider · 11-24-2009, 07:42 PM

Hi there ! I'm working on a thesis and I would like to use a good chunk of printed material. Please help me understand why this is happening and how to fix it.

I've used ABBYY FineReader 8 which came with the scanner, corrected all mistakes but the output PDF in Acrobat looks like this:

As you can see, the Italic font is out of line. Could it be because ABBYY saves the PDF as v1.4 ? Or is it because it doesn't properly recognize the characters ? Maybe because it couldn't find a matching font ?

How can I "narrow" it down without sacrificing font size ? Is replacing the font the only option ?

My next issue is with random tables... What's with these ? I only see them using Ctrl+A. They seem to serve no function and the PDF is smaller if manually removed one by one (a real pain in the *ss).

Thank you very much.

PS: Acrobat is a very poor PDF editor. No bolding options, italic, strikethrough, etc. Very expensive for such limited functionality. I wish the scanner was cheaper and didn't include Acrobat... Can you please suggest a "better" PDF editor ? Adobe InDesign ? Wonder how much THAT will cost... Pff.

AnemicOak · 11-24-2009, 08:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DSpider

PS: Acrobat is a very poor PDF editor. No bolding options, italic, strikethrough, etc. Very expensive for such limited functionality. I wish the scanner was cheaper and didn't include Acrobat... Can you please suggest a "better" PDF editor ? Adobe InDesign ? Wonder how much THAT will cost... Pff.

Acrobat isn't really for editing PDF's in the sense of what you're doing. PDF's aren't really designed to be edited that way.

No, InDesign won't do anything as far as editing a PDF goes.

What you want is to work from a source file (RTF, DOC) and then when you get it how you want create a PDF from the source file (Acrobat will export to those formats). When I OCR I OCR to RTF and go from there. If you use Acrobat to export to RTF you can then use Word, Open Office or whatever to get it exactly how you want it and then if you want a PDF you can create one from the edited RTF.

DSpider · 11-25-2009, 01:50 PM

Is there a way to retain the original layout of the scanned material ? Line breaks and everything.

Maybe something found in ABBYY FineReader 10 and not v8 ? Also, Microsoft Word 2007 seems to display .rtf files better than OpenOffice (what a disappointment). Haven't tried exporting to .doc. You think it will make any difference ?

Kellhus · 11-25-2009, 02:13 PM

You've got a couple of options here. In FR 8.0 Go to:

Tools menu -> Options -> 4. Save
choose "Formats Settings"
In "RTF/DOC/Word XML" you've got something called "Retain layout".

I'd suggest you try either of these.

11-24-2009, 07:42 PM	#1
DSpider Evangelist Posts: 450 Karma: 343115 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Romania Device: PW2 2014	Advice on formatting OCR'd printed to digital material. Hi there ! I'm working on a thesis and I would like to use a good chunk of printed material. Please help me understand why this is happening and how to fix it. I've used ABBYY FineReader 8 which came with the scanner, corrected all mistakes but the output PDF in Acrobat looks like this: As you can see, the Italic font is out of line. Could it be because ABBYY saves the PDF as v1.4 ? Or is it because it doesn't properly recognize the characters ? Maybe because it couldn't find a matching font ? How can I "narrow" it down without sacrificing font size ? Is replacing the font the only option ? My next issue is with random tables... What's with these ? I only see them using Ctrl+A. They seem to serve no function and the PDF is smaller if manually removed one by one (a real pain in the *ss). Thank you very much. PS: Acrobat is a very poor PDF editor. No bolding options, italic, strikethrough, etc. Very expensive for such limited functionality. I wish the scanner was cheaper and didn't include Acrobat... Can you please suggest a "better" PDF editor ? Adobe InDesign ? Wonder how much THAT will cost... Pff.

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11-25-2009, 01:50 PM	#3
DSpider Evangelist Posts: 450 Karma: 343115 Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Romania Device: PW2 2014	Is there a way to retain the original layout of the scanned material ? Line breaks and everything. Maybe something found in ABBYY FineReader 10 and not v8 ? Also, Microsoft Word 2007 seems to display .rtf files better than OpenOffice (what a disappointment). Haven't tried exporting to .doc. You think it will make any difference ?

11-25-2009, 02:13 PM	#4
Kellhus Member Posts: 17 Karma: 20 Join Date: Oct 2009 Device: none	You've got a couple of options here. In FR 8.0 Go to: Tools menu -> Options -> 4. Save choose "Formats Settings" In "RTF/DOC/Word XML" you've got something called "Retain layout". I'd suggest you try either of these.

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