.pdf, Optical Character Recognition of documents DevonThink

DEVONthink Tips
1

Maybe, I’m not a Professional.

I’m work to fill my database with documents.

I let scan a lot of paper originals in my coompany from our own scan service office.

They should use a optical character recognition.

I can read the .pdf output with Adobe Acrobat.

I can open the .pdf in DT database.

But if I open different .pdf in DevonThink sometimes there is nothing to see, sometimes I see text.

What can be the reason, what must I check.

Jochen (.de)

2

Jochen,

what’s displayed when you open such a document in Preview? Because DT should be able to display everything that can be displayed via Preview (as both of them use the Quartz engine of Mac OS X).

3

I I click on info of the document there ist type PDF+Text
The document have 20 pages

If I click on the document in DT I see only blank pages
If I open the document in DT I see blank pages
If I open the document in DT with Adobe Acrobat reader 7.0 I see the text
If I open the document in DT with Adobe Acrobat reader 5.0 I see the text
If I open the document in DT with Apples Preview I see blank pages, but in the sidebar on the right I can see the text

If I search in Preview to words in the sidebar the words are listed and in the main window of Preview there is a marked field to this word, but I cannot see the word.

I use Mac OS X 10.3.9 and DT pro 1.0.2 (license)

Jochen (.de)

4

Sounds that the documents use a PDF version which the Quartz engine of Mac OS X 10.3.x can’t display (Tiger is able to display the latest versions). There are only two solutions: Converting the documents via Acrobat to an older version or upgrading to Tiger.

5

Thanks for quick answer.

If I open the document with problem with Acrobat Reader 7 I see following in the menue / file / document properties
PDF created with Adobe Acrobat 6.02 (Paper Capture Plug in)
PDF version 1.5 ((Acrobat 6.x)

An other document with no problem show.
PDF created with Adobe Acrobat 7.05 (Paper Capture Plug in)
PDF version 1.6 ((Acrobat 7.x)

Both documents are scaned in our service office.

I have send the original with problem again to our service.
They will repeat the work with the never Acrobat and I will see what happend.

Thanks

Jochen (.de)

6

As far as I remember Mac OS X 10.3.x supports only PDF versions up to 1.4. And if a PDF document uses important features of later versions (1.5/1.6), displaying them might not be possible.