🚀 go-pugleaf

First, an apology/explanation for the Japanese folks:  すみませんが，僕は日
本語が不得意だから，だいたい英語で書きます。勿論，たくさんの日本人は英語が読
めます。そして，日本に住んでいると、日本語の返事が読めます。僕のソフトと機械
は日本製ですよ。だから、fjのところにポストする理由です。(If you do write an
English public reply, it would be good of you to unlink the fj newsgroup
from that post.)

Frankly, I wasn't too impressed by the information on the www.scantips.com
site.  On the other hand, preparing and maintaining a major FAQ is a lot of
work, so I don't blame him for skimping.  But that seems to be the most
common reference for basics, and it certainly didn't help my situation...
Which is:

I have an inexpensive USB scanner with a sheet feeder, and while it's okay
for OCR work, in general it isn't so hot.  I'll describe some of the
problems, and if anyone has any suggestions or useful tips, I'd be much
obliged.  At this point I've pretty well decided I should buy a second
scanner (but a flatbed type) to handle the work this one can't.

The main problem is that most of the time the paper feeds through with a
twist.  Sometimes it's so bad that it winds up mangling the papers, but in
general it's just twisted enough to force me to rescan.  But if I have to
sit there guiding the papers so they go in straight it kind of defeats the
purpose of having a feeder, doesn't it?  At this point I've rigged a kind of
upper guideway with clothespins, and that helps a little bit.

Another problem is that it very often misjudges the width of the pages being
scanned.  Since it's easy to trim oversize images, I've tried to find a way
to disable that autosizing, but so far haven't been able to find anything.
The software is the Presto! bundle, and it doesn't give too many options
besides disabling the TWAIN interface, but that didn't help.  The hardware
is labeled Omron (though they OEM a lot), but there is nothing to set or
adjust on the scanner itself.  The scanning head is detachable for scanning
books and things, and in that mode of operation it always scans to the full
width and I just crop afterwards.

If I get a second scanner, I wanted to get a SCSI type, since I have a SCSI
card, but it looks like those scanners are much more expensive.  Here in
Japan the USB scanners are the rage, and the computer stores are full of
them, and many of them are quite inexpensive, though the cheapest scanners
are still the parallel port type.  My concerns with USB are that I'd have to
get a USB hub in order to use both scanners at the same time (and I'm
scanning a mix of documents that could benefit from that capability), and
the USB port speed would probably become an issue with that much data coming
in.  Using a parallel port scanner would probably interfere with the DCC
(Direct Cable Connection) that I'm using for backup purposes...  Maybe some
of the Mac stores will have less expensive SCSI scanners?

Now if I could just get the existing scanner to work more reliably...  Any
obvious ideas that I've overlooked?


--
.a/ssig
Spamnuts beware!  I shall decode thy email headers and trace thy routes, and
smite them, and I shall pursue thy provider and thy provider's upstream
link.  Yea, unto the seventh generation shall I pursue thy links, and thee
shall spam no more.