ScanSoft OMNIPAGE PRO X FOR MACINTOSH User manual

LEGAL NOTICES
©2001 by ScanSoft, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted,
transcribed, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or translated into any language or
computer language in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, magnetic, optical,
chemical, manual, or otherwise, without prior written consent from the Legal Department at
ScanSoft, Inc., 9 Centennial Drive, Peabody, Massachusetts 01960. Printed in the United
States of America and in the Netherlands.
The software described in this book is furnished under license and may be used or copied only
in accordance with the terms of such license.
IMPORTANT NOTICE
ScanSoft, Inc. provides this publication "as is" without warranty of any kind, either express or
implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a
particular purpose. Some states or jurisdictions do not allow disclaimer of express or implied
warranties in certain transactions; therefore, this statement may not apply to you. ScanSoft
reserves the right to revise this publication and to make changes from time to time in the
content hereof without obligation of ScanSoft to notify any person of such revision or
changes.
TRADEMARKS AND CREDITS
ScanSoft, OmniPage, OmniPage Pro, OmniPage Pro X, True Page, Direct OCR and Language
Analyst are registered trademarks or trademarks of ScanSoft, Inc. in the United States and in
other countries. Mac and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. in the
U.S. and in other countries.
All other trademarks and trade names mentioned herein are hereby acknowledged and
recognized as property of their respective owners.
ScanSoft Inc.
9 Centennial Drive
Peabody, MA 01960
U.S.A.
ScanSoft Europe BV
Randstad 22-139
1316 BW Almere
The Netherlands
Part Number: 50-941001-00A

OmniPage Pro X User’s Guide iii
CONTENTS
Welcome 7
Chapter outline 7
Using this Guide 8
How to use online Help 8
Other online resources 9
New features in OmniPage Pro X 10
1 Installation and setup 11
System requirements 12
Installing the software 12
Running the program under Mac OS 9 13
Starting OmniPage Pro 14
Selecting your scanner 14
Registering OmniPage Pro 18
Removing OmniPage Pro 18
2Introduction 19
What is Optical Character Recognition? 20
Beyond OCR 20
Basic steps in the OCR process 21
The OCR Toolbar 22
The full OmniPage Pro interface 23
The Document window 24
The Thumbnail window 24
The Zone Info and Tools palettes 25
The Preferences dialog box 26

iv Contents
3 Processing documents 27
Basic processing steps 28
Automatic processing 28
To prepare for automatic processing 29
To process a new document automatically 30
To process an existing document automatically 31
Manual processing 32
Steps for manual processing 32
Using automatic and manual processing together 33
Using the OCR Assistant 34
Bringing page images into OmniPage Pro 36
Scanning pages 36
Loading image files 36
Opening OmniPage Documents 38
Using drag-and-drop 38
Creating and modifying zones 39
Creating zones automatically 40
Specifying zone types 41
Drawing zones manually 44
Modifying zones 46
Table zones 49
Performing recognition 50
Performing OCR 50
Proofreading OCR results 51
Verifying recognized text 53
Color markers 54
Getting page information 54
Working with documents 55
Resizing a page display 55
Saving a document as you work 56
Moving to other pages 56
Reordering pages 56
Deleting a page 57
Undoing edits 57
Modifying images 57
Modifying text 58
Printing a document 59

OmniPage Pro X User’s Guide v
Listening to a document 60
Closing a document 60
Quitting OmniPage Pro 60
Exporting documents 61
Saving an OmniPage Document 61
Saving images 61
Saving recognition results 62
Saving to Portable Document Format (PDF) 64
Copying a document to the Clipboard 64
Using drag-and-drop functionality 65
Direct OCR 66
Using Direct OCR 67
4Settings 69
OCR Toolbar options 70
Get Page options 70
Original Layout options 72
Style Set options 73
OCR options 75
Export options 75
Preference settings 76
Scanner settings 76
OCR settings 80
Spelling settings 82
Miscellaneous settings 85
5CustomizingOCR 87
Specifying the style set 87
Specifying a global style set 90
Creating style sets 90
Applying and editing zone styles 91
Font mapping 94
Zone templates 96
Training OCR 97
User dictionaries 101
Settings files 102

vi Contents
6 Technical information 103
Troubleshooting 104
Solutions to try first 104
Low memory situations 104
Low disk space situations 105
Improving accuracy 105
Improving fax recognition 108
Interface problems and solutions 109
System failure during OCR 109
Supported languages 110
Supported saving formats 111
Supported image file formats 112
Index 113

OmniPage Pro X User’s Guide 7
Welcome
Welcome to OmniPage Pro X ™, and thank you for buying our
software! This User’s Guide has been provided to help you get started
and give you an overview of the program.
Chapter outline
Chapter 1, Installation and setup, tells you how to install and start the
program and select a scanner. It lists the system requirements and
provides guidance on registering the product.
Chapter 2, Introduction, explains the OCR process and how it forms
part of the OmniPage Pro workflow. It also presents the program’s
main working areas and controls, starting with the OCR Toolbar.
Chapter 3, Processing documents, tells you how to do automatic and
manual processing and how to combine them. It details processing
steps: acquiring pages, zoning, recognizing, proofing and exporting.
Chapter 4, Settings, gives detailed information on each of the choices
offered by the pop-up menus in the OCR Toolbar. It also guides you
through the choices in the panels of the Preferences dialog box.
Chapter 5, Customizing OCR, provides information on some more
advanced features, such as style sets and their zone styles, zone
templates, training, user dictionaries and settings files.
Chapter 6, Technical information, gives troubleshooting advice and
details the supported file formats and languages.

8Welcome
Using this Guide
This Guide supposes that you know how to work in the Macintosh®
environment. Please refer to your Macintosh help resources if you
have questions about how to use dialog boxes, menus, scroll bars, and
so on. The following conventions are used in this Guide.
How to use online Help
OmniPage Pro X has an extensive HTML-based online Help system.
Click Help Contents or Help Index in the program’s Help menu to
open it. The Help system provides you with three tabbed panels:
uContents: A three-level table of contents. Click a topic.
uIndex: A two-level, alphabetical index. Enter a keyword or scroll
to the desired location and click an entry.
uSearch: Search keywords through the whole text of all help topics.
It lists all topics containing the specified word(s).
For advice on other Help facilities, please consult the documentation
for your HTML viewer.
Online help contains some topics not included in this User’s Guide:
an indexed glossary of terms, settings guidelines for a variety of
document types, a Quick Start Guide for reading a sample image file,
and documentation on Apple Event support and scripting.
Convention Purpose
Italicized text • Emphasizes menu commands, dialog box options, button
and file names: “Choose Open... in the File menu.”
• Names sections in this Guide.
• Emphasizes new terms the first time they are used.
Command key
symbol (z)Illustrates keyboard shortcuts. For example: zC means
hold the Command key down as you press the letter “c”.
Note or Tip Introduces a tip or an item of note.

How to use online Help 9
tTo get help on buttons and pop-up menus
Brief help is available without opening the online Help system. Hover
the cursor over any button or pop-up list in the OCR Toolbar or the
palettes. A concise description of the control appears in the status line
along the base of the OCR Toolbar.
tTo get help on topics and procedures
Select Help Index in OmniPage Pro’s Help menu. Begin to type in a
keyword you want to find. Asyou type inthe first letters of a keyword,
the Help system automatically shows you the first top-level index
entry beginning with the letters typed in. OmniPage Pro’s structured
index helps you to quickly find answers for your questions.
Click an index entry to display its related topic. If an entry is linked to
more than one topic, a pop-up list appears. Select the desired topic.
tTo browse through a series of topics
Use the Previous and Next buttons top right of each topic. These allow
you to view topics in the order they appear in the table of contents.
tTo view recently viewed pages
Use the Back button to retrace your steps to your previously viewed
topics.
tTo print a topic
Select the Print button, specify a printer to be used and print settings.
Other online resources
Readme files, in plain text and PDF formats, are located on the
installation CD. They contain last-minute information about
OmniPage Pro X. Please read one of them before installing the
application.
ScanSoft’s web site www.scansoft.com includes a Scanner Guide with
regularly updated information about supported scanners and related
issues. Access the site from the online Help topic Getting Help.

10 Welcome
New features in OmniPage Pro X
The family of OmniPage®products is now augmented by OmniPage
Pro X for Macintosh. Here we summarize its most important new
features compared to OmniPage Pro 8 for Macintosh.
uA better recognition engine has been integrated, capable of
delivering greater accuracy, particularly on degraded documents.
uSupport for the Mac®OS X operating system. A revised user
interface exploits the improved display techniques of the new
system. Support is maintained for Mac OS 9.
uA new Assistant facility provides interactive step-by-step guidance
for users new to the world of OCR processing.
uImproved parsing of page elements to retain the formatting and
layout of the original pages, in particular better retention of color
graphics and smarter text/graphics detection.
uBetter auto-detection and handling of tables and spreadsheets.
uDetection and recognition of reverse text (white or pale letters on
black or dark backgrounds).
uPortable Document Format (PDF) files can be opened and their
contents transformed to editable text.
uRecognized pages can be saved to Portable Document Format
(PDF) files, ready for display, use on the Web or for file transfer.
uExport support added for MS Word 98, 2001 and X and MS
Excel 98.
uImproved export support for HTML (upgraded to HTML 4.0).
uVoice read-back facility for texts in English and Spanish.

OmniPage Pro X User’s Guide 11
Chapter 1
Installationandsetup
This chapter provides information on installing OmniPage Pro X and
selecting a scanner to use with it.
Please consult the Readme file which provides the most up-to-date
information on installing and running the program. Readme is
supplied in plain text and PDF formats. These files are copied from
the CD to the OmniPage Pro X folder during installation.
This User’s Guide is also supplied in PDF format. It is copied to the
sub-folder User’s Guide. The Mac OS X operating system includes a
PDF viewer. Under Mac OS 9, please use Adobe Acrobat. The PDF
files can be navigated easily using the bookmarks (table of contents),
page thumbnails and hyperlinks on cross references and index entries.
Please continue reading this chapter for the following information:
uSystem requirements
uInstalling the software
uRunning the program under Mac OS 9
uStarting OmniPage Pro
uSelecting your scanner
uRegistering OmniPage Pro
uRemoving OmniPage Pro

12 Installation and setup
System requirements
The minimum system requirements for OmniPage Pro X are:
uiMac, iBook, PowerBook, Power Macintosh or PowerPC
compatible computers with at least a G3 processor
uMac OS 9.0 or later, Mac OS X (10.1 or above) and QuickTime
4.1 or later (this is normally included in OS X)
u128 MB of memory (RAM) on Mac OS X; 64MB on Mac OS 9
with 32 MB allocated to OmniPage Pro (or 64 MB allocated to
handle full-page color images with more than 256 colors)
u80 to 100 MB of free hard disk space
uA color monitor with at least 256 colors and 800x600 pixel
resolution
uA Macintosh-compatible pointing device
uA supported and correctly installed scanner, if you plan to scan
documents.
Performance and speed will be enhanced if your computer’s processor,
memory and available disk space exceed minimum requirements.
Installing the software
tTo install OmniPage Pro X:
 Insert the OmniPage Pro CD in the CD-ROM drive.
 Double-click OmniPage Pro X Setup.
 Select a language and then click Continue. This language will be
used for installation and also as the program’s interface language.
 Read the license agreement. If you click I Agree, you can continue
installation.

Chapter 1
Running the program under Mac OS 9 13
 Personalize your copy in the dialog box that appears.
Type in your name, the name of your company and the serial
number. You will find the serial number on the CD case.
 Click OK.
 Click Install in the next dialog box to proceed. A further dialog
box lets you choose where the OmniPage Pro files will be
installed. Select a drive and optionally a folder location (using
Open or New) and click Choose. The program will be installed in a
folder named OmniPage Pro X. If you want to keep a previous
OmniPage version, install your new version to a different location.
All the program files will be copied to the chosen drive and
location. Some sub-folders will be created, including
Components, Help, Sample Files, Training Files, User
Dictionaries, User’s Guide, and Zone Templates.
Note Under Mac OS 9 you may get a warning message if you have no CarbonLib
installed on your machine. In this case double-click the CarbonLib Setup. The
required CarbonLib will be installed, the computer will then restart and the
OmniPage Pro installation will start automatically.
Running the program under Mac OS 9
This User’s Guide and the online help describe the use of the program
under the Mac OS X operating system. Some dialog boxes have a
slightly different appearance under Mac OS 9. Mac OS X supports an
Application menu: it includes Preferences... which is in the Edit menu
under Mac OS 9 and Quit which is in the File menu in Mac OS 9.
Online Help highlights all differences between Mac OS X and Mac
OS 9 with an OS 9 icon.
The Help menu under Mac OS 9 allows you to show or hide balloon
help. This relates to system-wide balloon help, which can appear
within OmniPage Pro X under OS 9.

14 Installation and setup
Starting OmniPage Pro
There are several ways of starting OmniPage Pro®:
uOpen the OmniPage Pro X folder and double-click the OmniPage
Pro X icon.
The program launches and the OCR Toolbar will be displayed.
For quicker access, place an alias program icon on your Desktop.
uDrag and drop one or more image files onto the OmniPage Pro X
icon.
The program launches and loads the dropped image files. It does
not immediately recognize them.
uDrag and drop an OmniPage Document icon onto the OmniPage
Pro X icon or double-click an OmniPage Document icon.
The program launches and opens the previously created
OmniPage Document. See page 56 and Saving an OmniPage
Document on page 61.
uUse the Direct OCR feature. See Direct OCR on page 66.
Selecting your scanner
Before you can select a scanner in OmniPage Pro X, its driver must
already be installed on your system. It should also be tested, to be sure
it is working properly with the scanning software supplied by its
manufacturer. Consult the documentation supplied with your
scanner.
You can either let OmniPage Pro auto-detect your scanner or you can
select a scanner type manually in the Select Scanner dialog box. If you
cannot find your scanner model in the scanner list in this dialog box,
OmniPage Pro allows you to select a driver from one of the two

Chapter 1
Selecting your scanner 15
general scanner driver types supported by the program. You can select
either a Photoshop plug-in or a TWAIN driver depending on your
scanner.
For specific scanner types which work with a TWAIN driver, you can
choose whether to use their own interface or use OmniPage Pro’s
interface. For scanners using a Photoshop plug-in driver, its interface
is always displayed while scanning.
Each scanner driver provides a different user interface, so the available
options may vary.
Tip See an overview table in the online Help topic Selecting a scanner. This summarizes
the user interface differences depending on which type of scanner driver is chosen.
tTo auto-select a scanner for OmniPage Pro:
 Switch on your scanner and start OmniPage Pro.
 Choose Preferences…from the Application menu (Mac OS 9: Edit
menu) then click the Scanner icon to display the Scanner panel.
 Click the Select…button to get the Select Scanner dialog box.
 Click the Auto-Select Scanner button.
 Click Verify to be sure the auto-detected scanner is correctly
configured.
 If an auto-detected scanner has a TWAIN driver, you can select
the option Show TWAIN User Interface. For more detail see point
6 in the section To access a scanner through a TWAIN driver.
 Click OK, then Save.
If OmniPage Pro cannot recognize your scanner automatically,
select it manually as described in the next section.

16 Installation and setup
tTo select a scanner manually:
 Follow instructions 1-3 listed above.
 Select a scanner manufacturer under Manufacturer in the Select
Scanner dialog box.
 Select a scanner model under Scanner.
 Check the driver name under Driver. If you have more than one
driver, select the one you want to use.
 Click Verify to be sure the selected scanner is correctly configured.
 Click OK to close the Select Scanner dialog box.
 Click Save in the Preferences dialog box.
If the displayed scanner list does not contain the manufacturer or type
of your scanner, you have two more choices under Manufacturer
(Photoshop plug-in) and (TWAIN driver). To decide which of these
general scanner drivers your scanner supports, refer to the
documentation supplied with your scanner. See the next two sections
for more details on selecting (TWAIN driver) or (Photoshop plug-in).
Tip If you do not have a scanner at all, you can select (Test) under Manufacturer in the
Select Scanner dialog box to simulate scanning.
tTo access a scanner through a TWAIN driver:
 Follow instructions 1-3 from thesection To auto-select a scanner for
OmniPage Pro.
 Select (TWAIN driver) under Manufacturer.
 Select a driver name under Scanner.
 Check that your scanner driver delivered by the manufacturer has
appeared under Driver and select it, if it is not already selected.
 Click Verify to check the functioning of your scanner.

Chapter 1
Selecting your scanner 17
 Decide which user interface you want to use for your scanner: the
driver’s own interface or OmniPage Pro’s interface. See the
overview table in the online Help topic Selecting a scanner which
summarizes the user interface functioning for different scanner
drivers.
•Select Show TWAIN User Interface if you want to use the user
interface of your scanner driver.
•Deselect Show TWAIN User Interface if you want to start
scanning from OmniPagePro usingthe scanner settingsin the
Scanner panel of the OmniPage Pro Preferences dialog box.
 Click OK to close the Select Scanner dialog box.
 Click Save in the Preferences dialog box.
tTo access a scanner through a Photoshop plug-in:
 Copy your scanner driver from the Plug-Ins folder of the Adobe
Photoshop program to the OmniPage Pro X: Components:
Scanner Support: Plug-Ins folder.
It is assumed that the scanner driver delivered by the manufacturer
has already been copied to the Adobe Photoshop program’s Plug-
Ins folder during scanner installation.
 Follow instructions 1-3 from thesection To auto-select a scanner for
OmniPage Pro.
 Select (Photoshop plug-in) under Manufacturer.
 Select the driver just copiedunder Scanner. Check the driver name
under Driver.
 Click the Verify button if you want to display the info panels. The
driver’s info panel will appear first, then the Scanner Info panel.
Inspect and then close them.
 Click OK to close the Select Scanner dialog box.
 Click Save in the Preferences dialog box.

18 Installation and setup
tTo scan in the Classic Environment:
•Select Scan in Classic Mode in the Select Scanner dialog box if
it is not already selected. Please wait while the program
compiles a scanner list.
This option enables you to scan pages even if your scanner has
a driver for Mac OS 9 only. If the option is selected, scanning
will be performed in the Classic Environment. If the option is
deselected, scanning can only be performed with a scanner
driver developed for Mac OS X. The Scan in Classic Mode
option is not selectable under Mac OS 9.
Registering OmniPage Pro
ScanSoft’s registration Wizard runs at the end of installation. We
providean easy electronic form that canbe completed in less than five
minutes. You are asked to enter OmniPage Pro’s serial number, which
appears on a sticker on the CD sleeve.
When the form is filled and you click Send, the program will search an
Internet connection to immediately perform the registration online.
If you did not register the software during installation, you will be
periodically invited to register later. You can go to www.scansoft.com
to register online. Click on Support and from the main support screen
choose Register in the left-hand column.
For a statement on the use of your registration data, please see
ScanSoft’s Privacy Policy.
Removing OmniPage Pro
Move or copy any files you want to keep from the OmniPage Pro X
folder. These might be settings, training, template, user dictiorary,
export or OmniPage Document files. Then drag the folder to the
Trash.

OmniPage Pro X User’s Guide 19
Chapter 2
Introduction
You probably do business correspondence and other written projects
on your computer. However, certain sources of information may not
be immediately available for use. For example, if you want to
incorporate part of a magazine article into a document in your word
processor, you somehow have to get its text into your computer.
Painstakingly retyping the article is not an appealing solution.
OmniPage Pro X offers a smart solution to increase your productivity.
Its optical character recognition (OCR) technology accurately and easily
convertstextfromscanned pagesand imagefilesintoeditableformfor
use in your favorite computer applications. You do not have to retype
whole texts —OmniPage Pro does it for you.
Please continue reading this chapter for information on these topics:
uWhat is Optical Character Recognition?
uBasic steps in the OCR process
uThe OCR Toolbar
uThe full OmniPage Pro interface
The OCR Toolbar is the control center for the program. The other
main working areas appear when a document is started:
uThumbnail view: this displays small images of each page.
uImage view: this displays an image of the current page.
uText view: this displays the recognition results of the current page.

20 Introduction
What is Optical Character Recognition?
Optical character recognition (OCR) is the process of extracting text
from images. Images can result from scanning paper documents or
opening image files. Images do not have editable text characters; they
have many tiny dots (pixels) that together form character shapes.
These present a picture of the text on a page.
During OCR, OmniPage Pro analyzes the character shapes in an
image and determines character solutions to produce editable text. In
other words, the OCR program ‘reads’the page.
After OCR, you can export the recognized text to a variety of word-
processing, desktop publishing, and spreadsheet applications.
Beyond OCR
In addition to text,OmniPage Pro X can retainthe following elements
in a document after OCR for display and export.
tGraphics
Photos, logos and drawings are examples of graphics. The program
cannot recognize handwriting, but signatures can be saved as graphics.
tText formatting
Font types, sizes, and styles (such as bold or italic) are examples of
character formatting. Indents, tabs, margins and line spacing are
examples of paragraph formatting.
tPage formatting
Column structure, paragraph spacing, and placement of graphics are
examples of page formatting.
The elements that are retained depend on settings you select before
OCR and on the capabilities of the saving format you choose. See
chapter 4, Settings, for more information.