Subject: categories: Scanning mathematical text

From: Charles Wells <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 15 Dec 2000 09:23:03 -0800

Steve Vickers raised the possibility of scanning mathematical text as a
start toward getting it into TeX form.  I thought I would report on my
experience with getting Triples, Toposes and Theories onto the web.  

Some dozens of pages were missing from the original TeX computer file.  I
retyped some of them and I scanned some of them and then turned the special
symbols into TeX notation when the OCR program said it didn't understand.
Scanning works fine and is faster than retyping (for me) if the
mathematical symbolism is not too dense.  Most of the part I had to redo
WAS too dense, and scanning those pages took me about the same length of
time as retyping them.  Michael Barr had retyped the diagrams so they
didn't slow me down. 

If I typed maybe 25% faster than I do scanning would not be worth it except
for things like the introduction and historical notes.  

If you do want to scan, get good software.  I use Omnipage Pro 10.0 which
you can get from 

http://www.caere.com/products/omnipage/pro/ 

for $500, but if you bought a scanner with a free version of Omnipage you
can upgrade for $100.  Do not try to use the free version, it is worth what
it costs.  Academic pricing might be lower.  There are probably other good
scanning programs out there but I don't know anything about them.

Charles Wells, 105 South Cedar St., Oberlin, Ohio 44074, USA.
email: [email-masked]. 
home phone: 440 774 1926.  
professional website: http://www.cwru.edu/artsci/math/wells/home.html
personal website: http://www.oberlin.net/~cwells/index.html
NE Ohio Sacred Harp website: http://www.oberlin.net/~cwells/sh.htm