OmniPage
Encyclopedia
OmniPage is an optical character recognition
Optical character recognition
Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...

 application available from Nuance Communications
Nuance Communications
Nuance Communications is a multinational computer software technology corporation, headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA, that provides speech and imaging applications...

.

OmniPage was one of the first OCR programs to run on personal computers.
It was developed in the late 1980s and sold by Caere Corporation, a company headed by Robert Noyce
Robert Noyce
Robert Norton Noyce , nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley", co-founded Fairchild Semiconductor in 1957 and Intel in 1968...

. The original developers were Philip Bernzott, John Dilworth, David George, Bryan Higgins, and Jeremy Knight.
Caere was acquired by ScanSoft in 2000.
ScanSoft acquired Nuance Communications in 2005, and took over its name.

Features

OmniPage converts images such as scanned paper documents and PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....

 files into document file formats used by computer applications such as Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...

, Excel
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...

, and Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat is a family of application software developed by Adobe Systems to view, create, manipulate, print and manage files in Portable Document Format . All members of the family, except Adobe Reader , are commercial software, while the latter is available as freeware and can be downloaded...

, and into HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

.

The software is compatible with standard interfaces such as TWAIN
TWAIN
TWAIN is a standard software protocol and applications programming interface that regulates communication between software applications and imaging devices such as scanners and digital cameras....

 and WIA
Windows Image Acquisition
Windows Image Acquisition is a Microsoft driver model and application programming interface for Microsoft Windows Me and later Windows operating systems that enables graphics software to communicate with imaging hardware such as scanners, digital cameras and Digital Video-equipment...

, thereby covering virtually all of the scanner and multi-function devices on the market; it is often bundled with such devices.

OmniPage supports more than 120 different languages.

The software is marketed in two different versions, one directed mainly to industrial or higher level professionals, which includes a number of additional features including advanced speech software for the production of audio-books, and a more basic version oriented for personal use. Multi-platform versions of the software are also available (which work with the various versions of the Windows and Mac OS X operating systems).

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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