opinions on linux ocr vs something in windows

[Janina Sajka]

Well, that commercial grade package used to be available to us at a very
good price. One could raise that issue with them again, certainly.

Adam Myrow writes:
> I've never played with any of the commercial OCR stuff, so I can't comment 
> on how good it is, but I can say this with certainty.  The free stuff 
> isn't usable.  I'd call it experimental at best, but my experience is, 
> that neither ocrad nor gocr could recognize a printout from an inkjet 
> printer without dozens of errors.  Of course, there aren't a lot of 
> programmers who are knowledgeable about how OCR works willing to write free 
> software, plus, it's a very small market.  So, I'm not holding my breath. 
> I certainly don't understand much about how OCR works, so I don't think 
> I'd be of much use.  It's really a bummer, and the commercial stuff looks 
> to be a real bear to get working, especially if you happen to use a Linux 
> distro other than Redhat/Fedora Core.  That's my biggest hold-up as well 
> and why I still have Windows XP.  That, and the numerous web pages which 
> use Java Script in some way just to make sure you are using Microsoft's 
> browser.  Mozilla will hopefully eventually level the playing field here, 
> but it's proceeding rather slowly.  I think the biggest problem is that 
> most of the big companies want nothing to do with Linux.  This ends up 
> being a mixed blessing.  The good part is, most of what you can get for 
> Linux is free, under the GPL or BSD license, but the draw-back is that 
> unless you are on an email list like this, people will be totally clueless 
> about support issues.
> 
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-- 
	
				Janina Sajka, Chair
				Accessibility Workgroup
				Free Standards Group (FSG)

janina at freestandards.org	Phone: +1 202.494.7040