Scanning in Chinese on English XP

[akortiz]

Hi All-
I am not sure if I am in the right forum, but I am attempting to scan
in Chinese text with a hand held scanner (Penpower Super Scaneye). I
have set up the Asian support in XP Pro (English) and can type in with
the soft keyboard (i.e. 是丣两伻) and Chinese characters do appear
in any document I wish.
My problem is when inputting Chinese via the hand held scanner, all I
get is jibberish.
Can the IME be configured to read from a scanner, instead of a
keyboard?
Also, when I scan in English, that works properly.
I have installed the accompanying software.
If any one has any suggestions, they would be most appreciated.
Thanks!
Alex-

 

[Mike Williams]

Hi All-
I am not sure if I am in the right forum, but I am attempting to scan
in Chinese text with a hand held scanner (Penpower Super Scaneye). I
have set up the Asian support in XP Pro (English) and can type in with
the soft keyboard (i.e. 是丣两伻) and Chinese characters do appear
in any document I wish.
My problem is when inputting Chinese via the hand held scanner, all I
get is jibberish.

Does your software have Chinese OCR capability? Have you approached
Penpower?

Can the IME be configured to read from a scanner, instead of a
keyboard?

No and it wouldn't really help as the scanner is scanning pictures, not
known characters (in any languages).

 

[akortiz]

Hi Mike-
Thank you for the reply.
The scanner is a handheld unit and it performs the OCR as it scans.
Unlike a flatbed scanner which uses OCR software like Omnipage Pro.
I also spoke with someone else that has this scanner and they stated
that they have the Chinese version of Windows XP and they had no
issues.
I googled and came across multilanguage user interface pack (MUI).
Have you tried using this before?
I'll check with Penpower if they have any suggestions.
Thanks again.
Alex-

 

[Mike Williams]

Hi Mike-
Thank you for the reply.
The scanner is a handheld unit and it performs the OCR as it scans.
Unlike a flatbed scanner which uses OCR software like Omnipage Pro.
I also spoke with someone else that has this scanner and they stated
that they have the Chinese version of Windows XP and they had no
issues.
I googled and came across multilanguage user interface pack (MUI).
Have you tried using this before?
I'll check with Penpower if they have any suggestions.
Thanks again.
Alex-

The version of Windows is slightly tangential. The OCR software needs to
be able to handle Chinese characters. Windows does not come with OCR
software. The MUI pack for Windows (which is only available for
corporate licenses) will only change the user interface language for
Windows and will not add OCR capabilities to a third-party program.

The issue is with the Penpower software.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

Hi All-
I am not sure if I am in the right forum, but I am attempting to scan
in Chinese text with a hand held scanner (Penpower Super Scaneye). I
have set up the Asian support in XP Pro (English) and can type in with
the soft keyboard (i.e. ????) and Chinese characters do appear
in any document I wish.
My problem is when inputting Chinese via the hand held scanner, all I
get is jibberish.
Can the IME be configured to read from a scanner, instead of a
keyboard?
Also, when I scan in English, that works properly.
I have installed the accompanying software.
If any one has any suggestions, they would be most appreciated.

A scanner creates a *picture* of the document you scan. To turn that
picture into text requires a program of a type called Optical Character
Recognition (OCR). Such a program has the ability to look at the picture and
recognize text characters within it. For example, I use an OCR program
called OmniPage to do this. It recognizes English on a scanned document and
converts it to text.

As far as I know, OmniPage doesn't recognize Chinese characters, but there
are probably other OCR programs that do. I've never had any need of one, so
I can't tell you which programs can do what you want. I'm not familiar with
the software you are using, so can't tell you whether it can recognize
Chinese characters, but it would seem from what you say that it can not.

Setting up Asian Language support in Windows XP is completely irrelevant.
The only thing relevant is whether the particular OCR software you are using
supports Chinese Characters. If it doesn't, you'll need to buy another
product to do this.

 

[James E Middleton]

You'll need OCR software that supports the language you want to scan. I
often scan Japanese documents on an English OS. However, before placing the
scanned text into a word document, I process it with Japanese OCR software
that came bundled with the scanner. A possible solution: Go to the support
site for your scanner - look for the drivers and tools for the scanner in
Chinese - download, install & test. Note: the drivers will not do the OCR,
but usually, the manufacturer also offers 'tools' basic picture scanning,
document organizing, OCR utilities. Both Canon and Epson have software
available on their sites. The OCR tools that are available are not as
powerful as a 3rd party programs, but do the basics.