economical linux OCR?

[Terry Cudney]

Hi Jacobb,

	I have been talking to Ralph DeWitt at vividata re OCR Shop (now called xtr and xtrclilite). I have been using the trial xtrclilite for first the 60-day trial, then Ralph renewed my licence for the trial for another 90 days. He is considering whether they can  make a single-user version available for blind users at a reasonable price. It has now been several weeks since I heard anything from him, perhaps if more of us blind, single-user people would email him (ralph at vividata.com), he would be motivated to do something in this regard.

	Previously, Vividata had a $99 single-user version available. They do not have that arrangement now.

	His primary concern is that Vividata would have to provide "han-holding" to many single-users to get them up and running. I found the current xtrclilite to be self-installing and extremely easy to use, although limited in versatility because it is the "lite" version.

	If we could convince him to make it available for ftp download and that we would not tax Vividata's resources for support, he might be more comfortable with making it available to us for a reasonable price

	My suggestion to Ralph, was that we as a blind community, associated through this mailing-list are generally capable of installing/using this software without needing tech support from Vividata. If need be, as with many other non-speakup related issues, we can support each other independent of Vividata.

	If you email Ralph, feel free to mention my name. Perhaps we can collectively persuade him to make xtr available for a reasonalbe price (free would be nice, but due to licensing with OmniPage - Scansoft, I don't believe they can make it free).

	--terry

PS I am cc'ing this to Ralph

On Tue, Jul 06, 2004 at 07:58:26AM -0400, Jacob Schmude wrote:
> Hi guys
> 	Anyone know of a reasonably priced OCR for linux? I took OCR shop 
> XTR for an evaluation run and, while I like it, it's price tag is way up 
> there--more so than any windows-based OCR at around $2300, $950 for the 
> light version. I didn't pay half that for finereader on windows, and I 
> think that price tag is just plain ludicrous. I haven't gotten anywhere 
> with gocr or ocrad, which are free. Anyone know of any other OCR programs 
> for linux? If I could find a good OCR program I could finally trash 
> windblows for good. Failing that, I just might have to see how well vmware 
> would work and run finereader in that.
> 
> 
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-- 

Name:   Terry D. Cudney
Phone:  (705) 422-0039
E-mail: terry at wasaga.dyns.net
Web:    wasaga.dyns.net