The digit-eyes seminar this morning included a demonstration of Openbook
the Ruby Edition, presented by Theresa Sacco of Arkenstone. And you should
see the things it does!

     In addition to operating with the number pad keystrokes used by
previous editions of OpenBook, the Ruby Edition supports the Windows screen
structure, with the menu bar (file  edit  view  tools  help) and associated
drop down menus that we have all come to know and love.  It is, in fact, a
fully functional, 32-bit windows application, supporting a much wider range
of scanners than the non-windowsversions of the program.  Using not only
the CARE Optical character recognition engine but elements of Fine Scan,
recognized by 'PC Magazine' as outstanding software for maintaining format
of scanned material, the Ruby Edition creates documents that not only
reproduce the words on the page, but retain their format, as well.  The
decolumnization feature has been refined so that the scan of a book placed
open on the scanner will not only read the facing pages separately, but
will distinguish that they are two different pages, not two columns on the
same page.  The Ruby edition uses IBM's Via Voice to produce speech, and
multi-tasks easily with other running applications including screen reading
programs.

Some nifty things you can do with the program include
1. Combine separate pages into a single file, rather than saving each as a
separate file in a folder.
2. Use the Ruby edition to read documents from such other applications as
faxing software and word processors.
3. Edit the document, using the standard windows word-processing
commands-cut, copy, paste, etc.
4. Spell check the scanned document to aid in discovering mis-scanned words.
5.  Book mark the document in order to return to places of interest.
6. Scan and save pictures as well as text.

Whereas the off-the-shelf software I have used requires that you save a
file, then open it to read, OpenBook begins reading as soon as the document
is ready.  Whereas Text Bridge Pro requires an intermediate recognition
step before text is ready (push another button, please), ruby goes from
scan to recognize to read without human intervention; and it takes about a
third as much time to do it.

     OpenBook, the Ruby edition, is $995 for a first purchase.  Upgrading
from version 3.x, however, is $100; from version 2.x is $200, from version
1.x is $300. There is a price reduction, as well, if the purchaser wishes
to convert to OpenBook from a different adaptive scanning package.  By the
end of May Arkenstone will be shipping thirty-day-trial CD's of the
program.  I recommend checking it out.


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