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OCR in RightNote
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Posted by WSP
Dec 11, 2018 at 09:15 PM
Playing around with RightNote this afternoon, I made a pleasant discovery, and I’m mentioning it here because others may have perhaps overlooked this feature too.
If you right-click on a text image (such as a clipping from a printed page in a book or a newspaper article) in one of your notes, and then select “Miscellaneous,” you will see a box containing “Alternate text.” It’s easy to copy that text and paste it into your note, which gives a text version of the image. After doing this with some sharp images (where it was extremely accurate), I then compared a rather blurry sample in both RightNote and OneNote (since I’ve always thought this kind of conversion was one of OneNote’s most attractive features), and I found that the (imperfect) texts generated in both programs were identical, so I assume there must be some underlying OCR software in Windows that both programs are using.
Posted by Donovan
Dec 12, 2018 at 08:08 PM
WSP wrote:
Playing around with RightNote this afternoon, I made a pleasant
>discovery, and I’m mentioning it here because others may have perhaps
>overlooked this feature too.
>
>If you right-click on a text image (such as a clipping from a printed
>page in a book or a newspaper article) in one of your notes, and then
>select “Miscellaneous,” you will see a box containing “Alternate text.”
>It’s easy to copy that text and paste it into your note, which gives a
>text version of the image. After doing this with some sharp images
>(where it was extremely accurate), I then compared a rather blurry
>sample in both RightNote and OneNote (since I’ve always thought this
>kind of conversion was one of OneNote’s most attractive features), and I
>found that the (imperfect) texts generated in both programs were
>identical, so I assume there must be some underlying OCR software in
>Windows that both programs are using.
>
News to me! Is this something new in Rightnote? Version 4?
Posted by Alexander Deliyannis
Dec 12, 2018 at 11:35 PM
To me as well. I checked the website, RightNote PDF sheet and messages from the developer since I registered a few years ago, and there is no mention of this. I assume that it’s relatively new and experimental and that he’ll announce it once he’s sure it works well, or that he simply did not consider it newsworthy—which I would find surprising.
Donovan wrote:
>News to me! Is this something new in Rightnote? Version 4?
Posted by Donovan
Dec 13, 2018 at 12:04 AM
I just upgraded my license to the latest version of Rightnote Pro (4.9.0.1).
I don’t see anything in the Alternate Text box. Here is what I did:
- Right-clicked on an image with text
- Selected ‘Object Properties’
- Selected ‘Miscellaneous’
At that point, I see the ‘Alternate Text’ box—but it’s empty. I’ve tried several different images with text - all very sharp, excellent samples - and I don’t see anything. I needed to upgrade the license anyway, but I just checked my old version (3.5.6) and it has the same feature, with the same results. Like Alexander, I couldn’t find a word in the documentation, online, or anywhere else about OCR in Rightnote. Duplicating what you described, it’s all there except for any text in the AT box that somehow you are seeing. A mystery.
Posted by Donovan
Dec 13, 2018 at 12:10 AM
One other thought. It’s possible this feature only works if you have an OCR engine Windows Service (or its Mac equivalent) running from another program.