Gudrun,

            Thanks for the kind words.  You are in a uniquely thorny position as far as scanning goes because you're trying to work in material that is in two separate languages.  OCR has gotten extremely good, even on pretty sketchy copy, for material in a single language but I don't know whether the same can be said for things in two languages.  As you know from our private exchanges, I've tried scanning one of the books you refer to in both Swedish and English and neither gives satisfactory results in both languages at once.

            This is an instance where you could be the avant garde for your own needs and those of others, too.  I know you've given Tracker Software's PDF XChange Viewer a try, and what they provide for free is pretty remarkable, but not enough to get what you need.  I do not know whether one of their paid products might work, but it would be worth getting in touch with them to ask about that.  If they claim that one would, I think it would be entirely reasonable to ask them to process a single file using that software and returning the result to you so that you can actually evaluate the result before considering purchase.  I can't believe that the need for bilingual OCR is frequent, but it certainly is something that's going to occur for someone other than yourself.  I would be shocked if someone has not developed something that supports this, but I'd have to do the same digging as you will to determine who.

             As to finding the right assistant, no matter how much we love our loved ones and they love us in return, they're generally not the best option for several reasons.  This is particularly so if someone is easily frustrated with technology that doesn't function perfectly all the time.  A big part of it all is dealing with the inevitable issues that arise when you are putting software layer upon software layer and expecting them all to seamlessly communicate with each other.  While we've come a long way in that department, you know better than most that we're not "there yet" as far as true seamlessness goes.

             These days you can pretty much configure monolingual OCR to handle most of the formatting eventualities you typically see in print.  Most can be easily set up to handle columns like in a newspaper, or tables.  There are still problems, though, when a table is presented in columns but with no structure surrounding the table itself.  Then the software has to make a guess as to whether it's something in "newspaper columnar" format or "table row and columnar" format and that's not easy to do absent clear delimiters that suggest one versus the other.

Brian

Brian, I meant to reply to this very nice post of yours. Yes, collaboration
would be great, but I haven't quite found the ideal constellation yet. My
partner, Rob, is very helpful, has a great eye for graphical aspects.
Unfortunately, he gets very upset with "the system not working right," That
is, when there is no feedback with JAWS in some situations, that Adobe hangs
when I'm opening a huge file from someone, etc. If I can give him very
specific situations, like "I'm having to fill in a forms for a translation
agency that wants me to possibly work for them, but I can't fill out the
subject areas I'm supposed to check off," stuff like that, he's fine. But if
it turns into a run-around and wild goose chase with information blackout,
system hangs, and so forth, he gets really furious, and I hate having him
get so worked up. I tell him not to let it eat his liver, and he hears me,
but it doesn't help in the final outcome. It takes what we Swedes call "ice
in the stomach" to deal with not-so-perfect accessibility.

I hear what you say, nothing equals sight when it comes to speed and
frustration avoidance when we're up against deadlines. I've had a reader,
Sandra, for a while, and I saved all those videos to describe, programs with
tricky installations, hard-to-read manuals, agency online sign-up sheets
(they want you to work for them, and "will you please click here to fill out
our application for new translators..." I had a transcription/translation
project consisting of 86 files, and she and I went through them together to
make sure all the names corresponded to what the source files were called,
how long each file was according to my time stamps and actual file lengths,
etc.... Rob would have gone nuts having to deal with that. She took a lot of
that frustration off our minds here. These are things that may look so awful
to the person who hires you. They may actually be pretty negligible as far
as practical importance, and most of your work may be perfect. Only, those
little lapses may give the impression of sloppiness and does not at all
reflect the hours and hours you've actually spent making sure that the stuff
that's crucial is absolutely perfect. She has now gotten other work, so
she's no longer available.

Anyway, thanks for those kind words.

I did uninstall Adobe DC and installed Adobe XI. I did try opening that
file. It opened all right, and Adobe starting going through the typical
recognition process. So, thinking I could do some other things while that
was happening,, I alt-tabbed away, and, ooops, system hang. I tried closing
programs, but the response was like 20 seconds off. I hit as many alt-f4 as
I could, went to have dinner and listened to the radio for an hour or two.
Now, my system is responding as normal. I'll try once more to open that
file, and leave the recognition process alone, without making any attempts
at simultaneous activities.

Gudrun

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Vogel [mailto:britechguy@...]
Sent: Saturday, February 06, 2016 2:59 PM
To: jfw@groups.io
Subject: Re: textbook scanning for teaching purposes

On Sat, Feb 6, 2016 at 01:39 pm, Gudrun Brunot <gbrunot@...>
wrote:


information blackout

I can't, and don't take credit for that particularly succinct and accurate
turn of phrase. That goes to Joseph Lee.

Gudrun, not that no one works alone, but most of us don't. With your
talents a collaboration might solve that "toe biting" provided the person
you're working with is on the same metaphorical page as you are about
deadlines. There are times when there is no substitute for sight when
speed, and lack of frustration, are of the essence for a project. What you
bring to the table goes beyond mere editing, and getting a decent
editor/format-checker would, I hope, be possible. I'd love to be able to do
that with someone. A friend of mine is an author, but her work goes through
"standard editing" as part of the publication process. Being able to
produce press-ready material is a real challenge for everyone.

Brian, been there, done that on a limited basis

List rules can be found as the first (and only, at the moment) item in the JFW Wiki pages.

I see that some others, like myself, are somewhat confused by the fact that the "Daily Digest" is often sent more than once daily.  In my recent interaction with groups.io technical support with regard to the "Mute this Thread" function the following was stated:

Digests are generated at 10 PM Pacific or if there are 25 messages ready for a digest, whichever comes first.

This approach seems sensible, if not entirely intuitive, to me.  It prevents the digests from becoming huge during the periods of "hot and heavy" activity.

Brian