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I.R.I.S. Pen— Controllable OCR At Your Fingertips
by By Cliff Millward Feb 2000 Blue Chip Magazine Utah Computer Society www.ucs.org - June 16, 2000 at 12:18:54:
While at COMDEX last year I came across a very interesting Optical Character Recognition (OCR) item. As you know, OCR is something like typing in reverse — it is reading from a printed page and putting it into a word processing program — the opposite of inputting from the computer keyboard and printing a page to a word processor.Most OCR programs are software programs designed to work with a scanner such as a ScanJet, Microtex, etc. Some of the more popular OCR programs are OmniPage, TypeReader and TextBridge. I reviewed these products in the May 1998 edition of this magazine.
I mentioned the above fact to the presenter at COMDEX and he asked for my business card. Imagine my surprise when an I.R.I.S. Pen review package appeared on my doorstep. This is quite a package because it not only contains an OCR software program but a special hardware pen which you use to input text into your word processor.
Setting this up is not difficult, but some dexterity is required. It requires two connections, one to a parallel port and the other between your keyboard and your computer. It recommends that you use a second parallel port, not one shared with your printer, but provides a way to share the LPT1 port. I let it share my LPT1 port and no problems occurred.
A wire leads from the keyboard cable to the LPT1 “dongle.” Another wire leads from this “dongle” to the I.R.I.S. pen. I assume that power to run the pen is obtained from the keyboard cable and channeled through the LPT1 dongle. This may sound rather complicated, but it is really very simple to accomplish — and it works!
Sharing a parallel port between the I.R.I.S. Pen and the printer poses no problems. The printer cable is attached to the rear of the “dongle.”
The I.R.I.S. Pen software “reserves” the parallel port for use by the I.R.I.S. Pen, but the I.R.I.S. Pen’s parallel port connection functions as a “ pass-through” when the printer is being used. In other words, the parallel port is “released” again before you initiate a print job. The only limitation is that you cannot print and scan text at the same time.
The pen scanner is held like a pencil and guided along the printed text. Since I.R.I.S. Pen works through the keyboard, it imports text into any Windows program.
When you begin a line of text, you merely push down on the pen, ( just as you do when writing) the Windows bell sounds, and you steadily move the pen across the page. The bell sounds again when you lift the pen. You can then go to the next line or continue until you have scanned in all the text you desire. The text appears almost instantly in your word processor (real-time recognition). To start a new paragraph, you push a button on the side of the pen.
You can also set the software to numeric symbols recognition only for scanning into spreadsheets.
One advantage of this OCR pen is that you can easily scan non-flat text. For instance; bottles and tightly bound books that refuse to lie flat. Also, small images can be scanned and saved as a .bmp file or directly to the clipboard. This means you can scan in your signature and copy it directly into a document. (Pretty slick!)
The software installation went quickly and smoothly, asking me if I wanted the pen to be loaded automatically every time I started Windows. I said no because I don’t use the OCR quite that much. It is easy to load from the Windows Program Manager.
This is an amazing product. It not only recognizes English, but also French, German, Spanish and Italian! The only drawback is that the standard Windows character set does not contain all the required letters. You must use an international version of Windows if you want it to correctly read these languages. Actually, I.R.I.S. Pen reads 26 different languages but these other languages require a software addition which you can purchase separately. I can understand this approach as Russian, Greek, etc., have a quite different alphabet from most romance languages. I called their tech support because some of the languages did not scan correctly. The tech support agent was very helpful and told me that if I wanted to read the Eastern-European, Greek or Cyrillic languages, I must install the International Language option from the Windows 95/98 install disk. He stated that Windows 2000 will automatically support these languages
By now, some of you are saying, “What else can this product do?” Well, it has a few more tricks up its sleeve! It can recognize bar codes and be used as a bar code reader—and that’s not all—it can talk!
To quote from the manual, “Speech synthesis provides clear, natural sounding auditive feedback of the recognized text. “Hands- and eyes-busy” data entry becomes possible as the user no longer has to look up from his documents to verify the results on-screen. Encode addresses and your sound card will pronounce them, enter figures into a spreadsheet or encoding utility or enter invoices into your book-keeping software. The I.R.I.S. Pen software reads the figures aloud for verification. Secondly, speech opens a world of multimedia applications to the I.R.I.S. Pen users. The user can extend his systems speech capability further by adding additional language modules. Six languages are currently available: English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish and Italian.” (By the way, I scanned in the above quote from the manual. I didn’t have to break the back of the manual, flatten it out and put it on my scanner!)
The pen comes in four software versions—Standard—The Standard Version is basically a data entry version, but can do some of features of the other versions. Executive—The Executive adds basic bar code, speech and handwriting recognition enhancements. Translator—The Translator Version is bi-directional and comes in four languages. IBR2001—The IBR 2001 is for banking and finance. It specializes recognizing bank bar codes and bank bar code fonts.
Conclusions
• If you need to read the bar coding which appears on your checks the IRB 2001 add on is for you.
• If you work in a business which handles many foreign transactions, the translator add on is desirable.
• If you want some of the added features but not all of them, the Executive is a good buy.
For the home user it could be used to scan in magazine or newspaper sections without scanning in the entire article or page, then cutting and pasting it together. I.R.I.S. Pen recognizes up to 22 point type and does a superb job with small point text.
I can see where this OCR pen could be a valuable tool to many businesses. You could quickly scan in quotes, spread-sheet items and also read bar-code entries. It could be useful in scanning information from business cards to a client database. Also, it is not limited to flat surfaces, you could actually scan in information from a Coke can if you wanted to!
Another interesting fact is that Hewlett Packard is now including I.R.I.S. OCR software (not the pen) with their scanners. In the future I will attempt to obtain a copy of the stand alone OCR software and review it. Another interesting fact for you OCR aficionados is that ScanSoft (makers of TextBridge, etc.) has recently been purchased by Caere makers of OmniPage Pro. What will happen as a result of this union is anyone’s guess.
Finally, the I.R.I.S. Pen is a welcome addition to anyone scanning in text on a regular basis. It is an extremely versatile product well worth your consideration for purchasing.
Manufacturer: I.R.I.S. USA 1600 N. W. Boca Raton Bld. Suite #20 Boca Raton, Pl. 33432 Phone: 561-395-7831 Fax: 561-347-6267 www.I.R.I.S.usa.com
Minimum Requirements: 386 PC Parallel port 4Mb RAM 10MB free disk space MS-DOS 3.3 Windows 3.1
Prices: Standard $199 Executive add on $149 Translator add on $ 99 IRB 2001 $149
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