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[News] fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-ExportANN.lu
Posted on 15-May-2002 11:14 GMT by Felix Schwarz21 comments
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IOSPIRIT is pleased to announce to you version 4.0 of their powerful scannersuite fxSCAN.  Among others, new features are a strongly enhanced and accelerated OCR-engine (based on gocr 0.3.5, now also PPC-native and with the ability to export embedded pictures and HTML), the all-new PDF-export, an enhanced copying function with preview and correction features, support for Turboprint® and an all-new documentation (in German and English) with many illustrations in HTML- and PDF-versions.  We're pleased to announce to you version 4.0 of our powerful scannersuite fxSCAN.  Among others, new features are a strongly enhanced and accelerated OCR-engine (based on gocr 0.3.5, now also PPC-native and with the ability to export embedded pictures and HTML), the all-new PDF-export, an enhanced copying function with preview and correction features, support for Turboprint® and an all-new documentation (in German and English) with many illustrations in HTML- and PDF-versions.  A detailed list of all new features, first screenshots, a list of supported scanners and much more can be found on the fxSCAN 4.0 site.  fxSCAN 4.0 is available starting from end of June on CD-ROM and as Downloadversion and can now be preordered from our website! Be one of the first to hold this exciting product in your hands! Orders via creditcards are charged only a few days before delivery.

See http://www.iospirit.de/ for the main IOSPIRIT site and http://www.iospirit.de/fxscan/ for the fxSCAN site.

fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 1 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Felix Schwarz on 15-May-2002 09:38 GMT
Sorry, somehow the links were lost during the post:
See <a href="http://www.iospirit.de/">http://www.iospirit.de/</a> for the main IOSPIRIT site and <a href="http://www.iospirit.de/fxscan/">http://www.iospirit.de/fxscan/</a> for the fxSCAN site.
I would be nice if the links could be added to the posting when they are changed from "Moderated" to "News".
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 2 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Budda on 15-May-2002 10:56 GMT
This is great news! I wanna buy it but guess I will have to wait until somebody releases drivers for EPP (parallel port) scanners, and ones which work on Amithlon too :-)
Is any AOS v4 integration planned when it becomes available to developers/users?
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 3 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Felix Schwarz on 15-May-2002 12:21 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Budda):
If any changes are required to make it run on AmigaOS 4 or MorphOS, they will be made. There's no risk for you when buying it now, you'll be able to use it in future with these two as well. I've tested it on Amithlon with a SCSI-board and -scanner already and it works fine.
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 4 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Budda on 15-May-2002 12:41 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Felix Schwarz):
I realise people who buy Amiga stuff are used to paying more for all their hardware, but it would be nice to use cheaper parallel port scanners too :)
The "real" classic Amigas have EPP, such as the IOBlix, and Amithlon has a parallel port device too. So it's not like the hardware is stopping people.
I've recently emailed the/a betascan driver author to ask about EPP scanner development.
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 5 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Rassilon on 15-May-2002 13:19 GMT
Wow! Great news. I have preordered my update copy already.
Its amazing, I have needed recently a facility to convert pics into pdf's and then it happens.
Cheers
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 6 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by dakang on 15-May-2002 15:27 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (Rassilon):
Once upon a time we used to say:
"Only Amiga makes it possible"
... :)
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 7 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Don Cox on 15-May-2002 16:41 GMT
In reply to Comment 3 (Felix Schwarz):
My Epson scanner works well on Amithlon with SCSI.
This is good news. I have my test scans ready for testing the improved
OCR.
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 8 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Anonymous on 15-May-2002 16:59 GMT
In reply to Comment 6 (dakang):
Hmm. Where do you think the scanner drivers come from?
I'll give you a clue, it's not Amiga, OS/2 or BeOS (but they do all use the same drivers)
If Amigans want cheap scanners on the A1G3 they need a userspace generic USB library, all those scanner drivers already support such a library on their native Linux so you only need to make one for the A1G3 running AOS 4.0 and you're away.
The same applies to the USB add-on ports for classic Amigas. Write a suitable driver library for USB and these scanner drivers will "just work".
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 9 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by anonymous nerd on 15-May-2002 17:49 GMT
In reply to Comment 4 (Budda):
..its not just hardware Amiga people seem to be willing to pay over
the top for..... paying for gocr seems wrong when the rest of the
world get it for free
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 10 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by tinman on 15-May-2002 18:01 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (anonymous nerd):
It's not *just* the OCR software you're paying for. If you really want it free, there's an old version on Aminet, just don't expect to get the rest of the bit's of fxSCAN with it.
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 11 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Aram Iskenderian on 15-May-2002 18:44 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Anonymous):
>Anonymous Wrote:
>I'll give you a clue, it's not Amiga, OS/2 or BeOS (but they do all use the >same drivers)
No, they use the same technology, but not the same drivers.
Drivers are platform, OS, and CPU specific.
>If Amigans want cheap scanners on the A1G3 they need a userspace generic USB >library, all those scanner drivers already support such a library on their >native Linux so you only need to make one for the A1G3 running AOS 4.0 and >you're away
We need a port of TWAIN, but based on discussions over the years that even known developers participated in, they have an attitude against this, since they consider it a threat to their source of income, which is selling you a package that drives scanners.
So far it seems that those nice $25-$50 scanners are out of the reach of our Amigas.
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 12 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Frank213 on 15-May-2002 18:51 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (anonymous nerd):
You are pathetic
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 13 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Felix Schwarz on 15-May-2002 19:44 GMT
In reply to Comment 9 (anonymous nerd):
1. You're free to try to compile gocr on the AMIGA yourself and optimize it to the same extent as I did (giving a big performance boost).
2. The modified sourcecode of gocr for fxSCAN 4.0 will be released with it (as was already for 3.0 BTW).
3. The price of fxSCAN contains a donation that is transfered to the developer of gocr.
4. fxSCAN includes MUCH MORE than "just" the OCR. The OCR is one piece of it but far from being the whole product. Have a look at what a PDF-creator alone costs for e.g. Windows or MacOS .. you can buy several dozen fxSCAN CDs for that price. But then again, you just have a PDF creator, nothing else.
5. fxSCAN offers much more on the OCR part than a recompile of gocr could offer to you. This includes HTML-export with pictures, layout- and font-size-recognition as well as some very useful text-tools, not to forget an easy-to-use and intuitive GUI. Still, if you want OCR for free, be invited to try to recompile gocr and use it on the command line, but don't demand all these advantages.
So what are you complaining about? Reading comments like yours it seems it is a horrible crime to work nearly all round the clock (yepp, currently I'm working on AMIGA projects nearly 14 hours a day) to support the AMIGA and its users, truely keeping the platform alive and then even dare to charge a little fee (if you compare it to the prices of mostly less powerful but more pricy PC software, it's even smaller than little :) for the hard work of months. But as you seem to work for free, you're invited to send an application to jobs@iospirit.de. Your help is very welcome!
Kind regards,
Felix Schwarz
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 14 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Oliver Hannaford-Day on 15-May-2002 21:06 GMT
Hi,
This is great, I have FXScan 3.0 and it looks cool (Doesnt work on my parallel Epson GT6500 though but I have other Amiga Software that does so its no big loss), Some nice new features in the update and only £15 for the upgrade, That is cheap.
I wonder if I should E-Mail the guy who wrote the GT driver again...
Scanning in docs as PDF, MMMmmm
Anyway great to see.
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 15 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Steve Folberg on 15-May-2002 23:57 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Felix Schwarz):
Felix --
I'm glad to see that you're still developing FX Scan! I wrote the review of version 3.0 for AmigActive (may it rest in peace!) While 3.0 had some fine features, the OCR needed quite a bit of work. Can you tell us about improvements to the OCR engine in terms of speed and accuracy?
Thanks for sticking with Amiga,
Steve
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 16 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Rimmerz on 16-May-2002 00:19 GMT
Great piece of software! Works like a charm with my SCSI Epson Perfection. This new OCR stuff will make it really professional.
Fantastic work Felix!
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 17 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by kjetil on 16-May-2002 05:36 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Anonymous):
It’s true the only problem not every one are capable of rewriting there own drivers and some need to go to work and have not time for it, some have it has an hobby and don’t care if they get money for there hard work, and some have no job need money and like to make it there biz.
The work worth paying for if you count the time and energy you be using on it if you where to make you’re own drivers, how ever if I needed to Pay for every driver and tool out there to get things running, I will be broke.
How about making it free to download and add an gov tax for the software, that software developers can live of.
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 18 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Bill Panagouleas on 16-May-2002 06:19 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Felix Schwarz):
Thanks for all your hard work Felix, I will be buying two of your ptducts soon. Nice to see that you have OCR working well on the Amiga and have a nice PDF export feature. Don't let the negitive minority get you down, they are just trolls and I bet no longer use Amiga OS anyway. Your Pyro plug-in for fxPaint looks cool. The Video Toaster Flyer sourcecode will be available soon, I would like to help you add support for it in your products.
Best regards
Bill Panagouleas
Developer of the
Video Toaster/Amiga
version of Pyromania
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 19 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by alan buxey on 16-May-2002 08:58 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Felix Schwarz):
well said!!
pity it takes a negative comment to be posted before all the wonders
of fxSCAN are mentioned 8-)
(i'd be careful though - there are free PDF creators on all platforms)
alan
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 20 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Tim Doty on 16-May-2002 10:34 GMT
In reply to Comment 13 (Felix Schwarz):
I don't normally read Amiga boards anymore, but stumbled across this and couldn't help commenting: AFAIK I'm responsible for the amiga gocr port on aminet. Sure, its there and anyone is welcome to download it but guess what? When I still had an amiga I used a commercial scanning product and after finding gocr I recommended to them that they approach the gocr project to see about including it with their software.
Now fxScan (a different program) has done this. I think its great and if I ever use an amiga-like OS again I will probably buy it. I thought, and still think, its a great idea. Just because you *could* get software for free (and I certainly enjoy a lot of GPL'd software) doesn't mean that that is the best way to utilize it. Having ocr capabilities integrated into a scanning suite is, IMO, worth paying for.
Tim
fxSCAN 4.0 with enhanced OCR-engine and PDF-Export : Comment 21 of 21ANN.lu
Posted by Felix Schwarz on 18-May-2002 10:37 GMT
@ Steve:
Recognition has become a lot more reliable and supports more characters.
As on the speed a betatester measured a speed up of 400% when compared to V3,
I haven't done any benchmarks on my own though, but expect that for the final
release :)
@ Alan:
Name *one* with easy-to-use GUI on Windows or MacOS :) I know there are free ones
on the command line, e.g. Ghostscript, but then again their installation is too difficult
for the average enduser and the speed is way slower than fxSCAN :) .. e.g. convert a
page to Postscript and then to PDF using Ghostscript, you'll end up with a much larger
file and lot more time spent .. Ghostscript needed up to a minute on my 1.4 GhZ
Athlon Linux box (serving as a fileserver) for just one page .. I wrote a small tool for
Linux for my documents database, using my iPDFlib (internal working title) that is also used in fxSCAN 4.0, and what
shall I say, it created a 52 pages PDF file out of JPEGs in a couple of seconds
(about 3 or so :) .. little difference :)
Best regards and have a nice weekend,
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