Diversions

A little off the PDF trail!

Why Performing OCR On Handwriting Doesn’t Work

Unsurprisingly, OCR is consistently a hot topic in PDF and the PDF user mind in general. In paper intense work environments, PDF conversion and OCR engines have proven to be a successful work-around for transferring paper files into word processing applications. Thus, with the help of scanners and the PDF format, any and all types of paper work can be done electronically and efficiently. Or can it?

While trying to integrate and transfer every non-digital working habit into an electronic equivalent, there are still some things that just can’t be done with ease using the same everyday tools. For instance, what about converting hand printed/written documents?

Three Flavours Of OCR

Many of you have probably wondered why such a thing can’t be done with the OCR technology in PDF conversion products. Well, this is because OCR technology and devices are only capable of recognizing the machine printed characters and fonts. And seeing as how the number of documents that are being scanned in are usually typewritten, OCR is employed in almost all cases.

In other cases, there are documents that contain handwritten sections and/or fields that are used for collecting data—a thing being slowly superseded by the fill-able PDF form. You can create a digital copy from such a document simply by scanning it in, right? Yes. However, it requires a different recognition technology altogether. Using OCR, you can perhaps get maybe one letter to “OCR” into ASCII, if it’s printed clearly and written in ink that’s thick enough to be read. But that’s about it. This is where another flavor of OCR comes in: Intelligent Character Recognition.

ICR is a more advanced form of OCR that translates hand printed letters into digital ASCII equivalents. This version of OCR is primarily used for processing applications and forms on which you “print clearly” and place individual letters in boxes. This structured method of reading a hand printed document is one of the major limitations of the technology, but controls and reduces the amount of human errors that cause misinterpretations.

In addition, there are documents that contain handwriting—aka cursive writing. Can recognition on such documents be performed? The answer: Yes. The third flavor of OCR is IR (Intelligent Recognition), the latest generation of OCR technology to date. This is used to read unconstrained writing (text not contained in boxes) and uses the same methods to translate the characters into ASCII text. From my online searching, there are a good number of companies that provide full fledged OCR/ICR/IR solutions, which can be integrated with digital workflows.

Thus, if you’re looking to OCR handwritten PDFs, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The ability to do everything and anything with technology is perhaps the ultimate goal for developers and users. Practicing it, on the other hand, is perhaps the ideal goal for every worker bee out there. It’s sad to say, but there are some cases in which you can only do so much.

The ABCs of the PDF: M to O

A lot has happened with the PDF format in the last year—submission for standardization, release of a new specification, software upgrades, and improvements with graphic and dynamic PDFs. In this series posting, you get a look at the PDF’s recent format competition and past legal issues as well as the other uses of PDF related technology. Here it is.

Macromedia

Adobe Systems, Inc. acquired Macromedia Inc. in 2006 and has, since then, injected Macromedia technology into their software. However, Adobe and Macromedia had come into close, legal contact even before the acquisition—over patent disputes.

The patent dispute according to past articles in early 2000-2002, was over a tabbed palette interface element that was awarded to Adobe. The issue dated back to 1996, right up until 2000, during which time Adobe had confronted Macromedia about the palette’s inclusion in several of the company’s products.

Yet Macromedia’s argument against the suit, filed in August of 2000, was that the patent was invalid. This escalated to a point where Macromedia countersued against Adobe in September 2000 for infringing on three of Macromedia’s own patents. After two years of back and forth legal battles, Adobe won the lawsuit and was awarded 2.8 million.

And five years later, Macromedia is now one of Adobe’s acquisitions. . . .

Native PDFs

As you know, native PDFs are ones that are generated from electronically created documents. Yet, while these native PDFs are beneficial when it comes to conversion, they can also produce just as much legal hubbub as patent disputes can. Moving the ability to create PDF files, or PDF-like formats, directly into the authoring application was definitely a complex issue that became a major headliner in PDF news this year.

Back in February, I wrote three postings on factors that made creating digital documents and native PDFs a more significant matter than ever before. There were the legal issues between Adobe and Microsoft; the PDF specification submission to ISO; and then, there was OpenOffice.org, Microsoft’s word processing app rival whose applications sport ODF creation, a format that became a statewide standard in Massachusetts.

Creating native PDFs and PDF-like formats now involves more politics at the authoring application level. Microsoft has the convenience of a widely used platform, Adobe has the ubiquity as de facto standard, and OpenOffice has the state of Massachusetts. Creating a native PDF, or PDF-like format is now, in one sense, a matter of “moral??? choice: are you an Acrobat advocate, a loyal MS Office user, or an open source supporter?

OCR

You know it by its three letter acronym, you know what it does when it comes to converting scanned PDF files. Yet, as a software that literally recognizes and translates digitally imaged characters into character codes (ASCII or Unicode), OCR isn’t just for converting scanned PDFs.

OCR has been used for a wide range of data processing systems. It’s been used by the Standard Oil Company of California for credit card imprints for billing purposes. At the Ohio Bell Telephone Company, OCR was used for reading bill stubs. Even the United States Air Force used OCR for reading and transmitting typewritten messages.

Another big use for OCR technology is postal office work. The first use of OCR in Europe was by the British General Post Office for automating the mail sorting process. OCR scanners read the routing barcodes marked upon the envelopes that are based on corresponding postal codes, resulting in faster organization and shipment times. In 1965, the United States Postal Services adopted the method, followed by Canada Post in 1971.

Today, OCR is being further enhanced as a data input method ranging from simple text to digital scanning processes to sophisticated ICR (Intelligent Character Recognition), a more advanced version of OCR that recognizes hand printed documents.

Whether the PDF world is buzzing with long standing issues from the past or just slowly unfolding with new developments, the PDF world, can be an interesting place, indeed.

The ABCs Of The PDF: J-L

First off, my apologies. It has been awhile since the last posting in this series, and there is still yet more to uncover and discover. So for this posting, its about the figures behind the PDF world and information behind PDF links and some tips. If you’re stalking up on some backgrounder bits and PDF facts in preparation for the 2007 Conference, then by all means, read on.

John E. Warnock

The name, the man, the father behind the PDF, Dr. John E. Warnock. Along with Charles Geschke, he co-founded Adobe Systems, Inc. in 1982. Before that, he worked as a computer scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1978, where he first developed the Post Script language (aka “Interpress” in its early Camelot development), the page description language which would be the building blocks of the PDF.

For the first two years of the company, Warnock served as president of Adobe Systems Inc. and then was CEO until his retirement from that position in 2000. Warnock has led an active career of achievements in computer technology, being highly distinguished in numerous associations and winner of countless awards for his innovation and influence. He is now co-chairman of Adobe with Charles Geshcke.

Also interesting to note is that he has an Adobe typeface named after him—Warnock Pro. Here is a quoted description: “Warnock Pro’s structure is both rational and dynamic, striking a balance between innovation and restraint.” I wonder if the look of the typeface design reflects his personality. . . .

Kurt Foss

As regular day-to-day PDF user, you hardly notice how quickly names can stick in your head—Kurt Foss being one of them. I first came upon Kurt Foss in the beginning of my PDF research, when I read many blogs and searched many articles (I still do). And his were among the top of the research piles.

And doing a bit of research on Foss himself, you’ll find that he has a major presence in the PDF world too. As a long time veteran of the PDF industry, his attraction to the PDF world was a passion for the format, a curiosity about the potential uses and users of the format: “I became increasingly aware of looming technological changes that seemed poised to change the way my profession worked. So I immersed myself in learning about it.” One of his most “notable notables,” in fact, was being one of the first to globally publish newspaper pages in the PDF format, experimenting with how the digital format could work for the printed word.

Foss started out as an Adobe evangelist with the company from 1993-2003 when Acrobat was still in its first version. Since then, he has been web editor of both PDFZone and Planet PDF, and has written articles on issues surrounding the uses of the PDF format. Currently, Foss is the online editor of the Acrobat User Community, a site you may have heard of or been to at one point or another for resources and tips. He has written numerous posts, commenting, reviewing and reporting anything and everything having to do with PDF.

Links

Linking within a PDF file itself is a great way in which to include more background content within your file. Yet, the hypertext link, itself, has a background history of its own, one associated with Vannevar Bush’s influential work ,“As We May Think.”

The paper contained the first rough concept of the computer, called the Memex, an idea which inspired the creation of the actual hypertext as we know it today. The term “hypertext” was first coined by Ted Nelson in 1965, and its invention is usually accredited to him and American scientist, Douglas Engelbart. In 1968, with Engelbart’s historic “Mother of All Demos,” the first hypertext interface was demoed. And by 1980, Tim Berners-Lee, also another famous name, created a hypertext database system, a system created out of a motivation that became the same driving force behind the World Wide Web and the Internet—to meet the demand of automatic information sharing. The implementation of such hypertext link databases in the late 80’s eventually led to the first stages of the World Wide Web.

Of course, needless to say, when you add links within your PDF, you create the same mini-network of information resources and sites. However, behind the convenience of endless information resources, is the frustration of usability. Web usability guru, Jakob Nielsen , has a few words on the use of links and the PDF, which might come in handy in making that PDF user-friendly and informative.

Hope this helps out with that small talk. ‘Till next time!

How The PDF Made Stephen King An Internet Star

Being a newbie to the PDF world, I like digging up things that I never knew about the PDF format. Well, here’s another one I just recently learned about and wanted to share—just in case you need a good ice breaker when your supply of anecdotes run out at a cocktail party. Although you may not connect the PDF with mainstream commercial fame nor with big names outside the “who’s-who” circle of PDF faces, here’s one to add to the list: Stephen King.

Stephen King is a name that’s become a huge part of mainstream culture with his published novels, short stories and books-turned-movies— Carrie (Doubleday, 1974), The Shining (Doubleday, 1977), Firestarter (Viking, 1980), and Dolores Claiborne (Viking, 1992), just to name a few. And apparently this name has also seen its day as part of the PDF culture.

He was the first major writer to exclusively web-publish his books and played a role in exposing the world to the PDF e-book format. His series “The Plant,” which was begun in the 1980’s, was distributed as an e-book in 2000, hit the 40, 000 mark in the first week, but petered off in sales after awhile. The web distribution of the work was then discontinued as well as the series’ completion as King wanted to finish work on different projects first.

He published his novella, “Riding the Bullet”, in 2000 as well, exclusively for the Internet and was later on made into a movie in 2004. Although these attempts occurred six years ago, this may prove to be a good PDF tip for budding authors with Digital Editions having been released– “Riding the Bullet” got 400, 000 downloads in 24 hours. And this was when the e-book industry was just getting started and when the Adobe Acrobat e-book Reader was known as Glassbook.

However, the e-book industry was pushed into the shadows after legal issues with piracy and DRM security measures (protecting both content and copyrights of the author) proved to be bad publicity for the use of e-books themselves. Nonetheless, popular “Must Haves,” like Harry Potter for instance, still get pirated and distributed illegally online. It’s an issue that won’t disappear overnight.

Yet, seven years later, Stephen King’s Internet success with publishing e-books says something about today: the PDF e-book format has a good chance of coming out stronger this time around. With Google’s e-book search, Digital Editions, better viewing GUIs, digital devices for entertainment on the go, and virtual libraries replacing physical books. . . .

So, if you’re looking for a book, try out an e-book and download instead.

The ABCs of the PDF: G-I

Veering away from XPS this week, I’ve got the next posting in the ABCs series for you. It’s been a while, but here it is. This week, it’s about the history, the mechanics and the product. A little vague? What does this have to do with the PDF?, you ask. Read on.

GUI

From creation to manipulation and accessibility to view-ability, the GUI’s function is crucial to working with PDFs. Yet have you ever wondered about the history behind the interface you use? The first rough idea of a GUI was conceived of by American engineer, Vannevar Bush (1890-1974) in the early 1930s. In his essay “As We May Think,” published in 1945, Bush describes a device he called the “Memex” that would transform physical gestures into technical commands. A user could call up and display multiple “book” files on a desktop screen and jump through pages of content with the movement of one’s hand. Yet, it was only theorized about until Douglas Engelbart (1925-2013),  inspired by Bush’s idea, decided to develop and implement the idea into a prototype. In 1968, the first working GUI was demonstrated.

The first marketable GUI using computer was invented by Xerox PARC in 1973 with the Xerox Alto computer. It was further enhanced by Apple’s revolutionary Apple Lisa PC ten years later in 1983. And by the 1990’s, the GUI of Microsoft’s Windows OS improved the functioning of the GUI into the one you know today. Of course, the interface has also been developed and used by a number of individual computer companies over the years, and it has come a long way in terms of looks and usage.

The goal for the GUI nowadays is to provide the most functionality within the least amount of space. And Adobe Reader 8 is just one example in its simplicity. Perhaps in the future our PDF viewers will do away with the GUI altogether, and use virtual reality as a way of “handling” PDF documents!

Hash Function

So far, we’ve made it so that electronic docs would be an easy way of storing and recording data. In addition, it prevents data from being physically lost or stolen– invisible and intangible until opened and printed. Yet, that also means that security has transferred from playing a physical role to a digital one. And just as you need a sense of security when physically locking doors, you also need it when securing electronic documents.

You already know that information security is important to the PDF and can be done with the click of a mouse. Yet, one of the things behind that simple move is something called a Hash function . Hash functions or algorithms play a role in creating a digital signature which you’ve undoubtedly used in the past to secure your PDFs. It is that digital signature which is made up of a hash and encryption key.

A textual message or document is made into a smaller data version of itself through a “hashing” process. When this happens, the content of the message is encoded, using a hash function. The hashed version of the message is called a message digest, which is, in turn, encrypted with the author’s private key. The resulting encryption of the message digest is the digital signature that you attach to the original PDF Document. All of this is done behind that one deceptive click.

And although the term “hash” may seem a funny word to refer to a security/encryption element, according to definition sources, it caught on in the 1960’s because it described the way in which hashing algorithms work—they “chop and mix” up the data being secured.

Investintech

The ever changing nature of the electronic world is not a new concept. Software and gadgets continually evolve within the fast paced environment of technological innovation. And Investintech has also been caught up in that forward momentum with the recent release of Sonic PDF Creator v.2.0. And, with its more-advanced-than-v.1.2 features (support for more formats, document toolkits and formatting capabilities), you can now create better PDF documents than you did before.

Of course, we’ll aim to surpass this 2.0 version in the future as well and continue to push the PDF creation envelope. It’s just a matter of checking in frequently to see what new creation features we’ll have in store!

‘Til next time. Stay tuned!