Updates in OCR software
Apr. 20th, 2017 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
weirdquarkSo this is something I found as I was going through old LJ entries and deleting things.
From Nov. 2007: Plz die in a fire, k thx.
Typewriters must have been
exciting
when they were
new .
But I dont understand why
leaving big spaces between
punctuation
is something
you should do.
This sort of thing . is it really
necessary . ?
And (sometimes) you leave out
apostrophes
in contractions . (see above example
which makes the spell check sad)
These things . are they dots
or periods in bold . .
I'm so confused.
. . . . . .
Please to explain
why
please why
this
IN
venshun
O.KAY really I'm curious here
Why the
. . Invenshun of the indent key
makes you do this.
. . . . . .
Maybe
I
would hate your poem
less
If I didn't have to go line by line
by line . to keep the formatting
lost by the OCR software.
The context for the original post is that I was working in disability services attempting to convert poetry with extremely fiddly formatting. I was remembering the William Carlos Williams and how much I had hated it recently (though not this poem) because I am once again working for disability services and had to convert a speech by John Cage, the modernist composer.
He had written a talk, which was formatted in four columns, each with two or three words. In an introduction, he explained that each line was meant to be one second long and that the large gaps between blocks of text (in some cases an entire blank column) was so music could be played in between the different bits of the talk.
Two things made this less annoying than the William Carlos Williams.
1) As you may have noticed, Cage explained what the purpose of the formatting was.
2) OCR technology has sufficiently advanced so that I didn't have to manually put in all of the spaces -- the software placed the words in more or less the correct places on the page, thus preserving the formatting.
As the student for whom I was converting this has low rather than no vision, they could see the gaps as they were following along while their screen reader read the text to them. Perhaps the screen reader even took one second to read each line as was intended.
From Nov. 2007: Plz die in a fire, k thx.
Typewriters must have been
exciting
when they were
new .
But I dont understand why
leaving big spaces between
punctuation
is something
you should do.
This sort of thing . is it really
necessary . ?
And (sometimes) you leave out
apostrophes
in contractions . (see above example
which makes the spell check sad)
These things . are they dots
or periods in bold . .
I'm so confused.
. . . . . .
Please to explain
why
please why
this
IN
venshun
O.KAY really I'm curious here
Why the
. . Invenshun of the indent key
makes you do this.
. . . . . .
Maybe
I
would hate your poem
less
If I didn't have to go line by line
by line . to keep the formatting
lost by the OCR software.
The context for the original post is that I was working in disability services attempting to convert poetry with extremely fiddly formatting. I was remembering the William Carlos Williams and how much I had hated it recently (though not this poem) because I am once again working for disability services and had to convert a speech by John Cage, the modernist composer.
He had written a talk, which was formatted in four columns, each with two or three words. In an introduction, he explained that each line was meant to be one second long and that the large gaps between blocks of text (in some cases an entire blank column) was so music could be played in between the different bits of the talk.
Two things made this less annoying than the William Carlos Williams.
1) As you may have noticed, Cage explained what the purpose of the formatting was.
2) OCR technology has sufficiently advanced so that I didn't have to manually put in all of the spaces -- the software placed the words in more or less the correct places on the page, thus preserving the formatting.
As the student for whom I was converting this has low rather than no vision, they could see the gaps as they were following along while their screen reader read the text to them. Perhaps the screen reader even took one second to read each line as was intended.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-28 09:12 pm (UTC)I actually quite like William Carlos Williams (and the similarly fiddly-formatting-poet ee cummings), but Christ, I understand how trying to format their poetry would drive one to hate. Everytime I've tried to post one of their poems and had to hand-HTML all the fiddly bits has driven me nuts.