🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec22.133710.22267@ncs.com>, werner@ncs.com (Paul Werner)
wrote:
> 
> 
> Let me give you the scenario first and then my questions.  (NOTE:
> the platform is restricted to either a PC or IBM RS/6000.)

OK, the advice I'm about to give is for the Mac, but (one hopes) the
platforms are converging towards the Power PC technology, so maybe it isn't
tooo off the wall.

There are plenty of good OCR products, and no end of scanners out there.
The Nikon slide scanner (which we use here) is _excellent_. Microtech has a
far more inexpensive slide scanner, without the same high resolution, which
you may not need anyway. We occasionally use OmniPage, which is also quite
good, and I think there is a PC version, as well.



> 	3.  Is there any way to take the document just created via 
> 	    OCR and automatically turn it into a multi/hyper media
> 	    application?  For instance, could an ASCII file be run 
> 	    through a program which will turn it into a Toolbook
> 	    application (or any other multi/hyper media format)?


Voyager's Expanded Book Toolkit for the Mac/HyperCard converts text
documents into HyperCard format. My understanding (haven't seen it in
action yet) is that it converts paragraphs to individual cards, retains
formatting such as bold and italic, and provides a wealth of hooks for
hypertext scripts, etc. I believe it opens Microsoft Word files, so you
should be able to port files from the PC environment easily (if the
roundabout sketched here really is a solution). You can convert HyperCard
stacks to ToolBook format using a utility from Heizer Software Exchange
(P.O. Box 232019, Pleasant Hill, CA 94523, 1-800-888-7667). Reports are
that it works okay, but requires subsequent tweaking, especially of
graphics. 

There probably aren't any truly automatic solutions for converting a
document to hypertext--all of them require you to edit and use authoring
tools, and possibly even get into scripting.




  /\\ | Paul Hertz 
/ \\  | Advanced Technology Group, Northwestern University
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