Support for Lexmark Pro 805 in DTPO

DEVONthink Tips
1

Hi,

anticipating my purchase of a new all-in-one-printer (a Lexmark Prestige Pro 805 with ADF) I wonder if DTPO would be able to interface properly with it scannerwise? Any idea?

I’d need
• scanning of multiple page-documents being recognized as such – and turned into one,
• OCR of these
• smart framing – I mean a copy of a book – two sides on one page need to be recognized a such, if necessary telling the software to scan first half and then second half of the page e.g. two frames consecutively turned back into two seprate pages of one document. I can do this in AcrobatPro, needing to set up the frames for scanning manually. Otherwise OCR runs across lines across two pages…

Of course, everything should end up in DTP(O) afterwards… but that should be easy.

Thanks for a speedy response because tomorrow is the day (of 25%)

Happy Thanks giving

Rolf

2

Assuming that the scanner is compatible to Image Capture and/or TWAIN, it should be at least possible to either use the internal scanner interface, the embedded ExactScan application or the Image Capture application and send its output to DEVONthink.

3

For one reason or another, not all scanners are compatible with the scanner control modes of DT Pro Office.

However, there’s another way to set up your scanner to send scanner output (preferably PDF) to a folder in the Finder, which will then result in automatic OCR by DT Pro Office.

  1. Create a new Finder folder that is to receive your scanner’s output. For the sake of illustration, I’ll call that folder “Harry”.

  2. In the Finder, Control-click on “Harry” and choose the contextual submenu “Services”, then select “Folder Actions Setup”.

  3. Choose the script named “DEVONthink - Import, OCR & Delete”. You will find this script at ~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/.

  4. Attach that script to “Harry”.

Now operate your scanner using its provided driver software after configuring it to save scanner output to “Harry”. DT Pro Office should be running.

Each time a new scanner output file is saved into “Harry”, the attached Folder Action script will send it to DT Pro Office for OCR and storage of the resulting searchable PDF, then send the original image file to the Trash. The folder “Harry” will therefore be emptied as each image-only PDF is sent to it and then forwarded to DT Pro Office for Import and OCR.

About “frames” in PDFs: Yes, selecting text on a multi-column page will result in run over selection. Solution: Hold down the Option key and “draw” a box around the column from which the selection is desired.

Options for choice of merging multiple scans into a single document or as page-by-page individual PDFs are built into the DT Pro Office scanner controls (Image Capture, ExactScan Capture), and should also be available in your scanner’s own driver software.

4

Hi!

Thanks for your responses! Yes I know about the in-folder/scripts workaround.

In my limited testing (the Lexmark is on its way but has not arrived yet) with my trusty Canon 8600F (flatbed) the important trick within the ExactScan-Inteface is to check “open scanner-driver-interface” (sorry, German system) to access proper features.

My limited testing of DTPO/AbbyFineReader is that AFR IS able to recognize a two pages on one page-layout properly when doing OCR BUT struggles with footnotes, which (partially) seem to belong to a different pages… (see attached screenshots a and b) Separating the pages when scanning prior to ocr not only overcomes this but creates much easier to handle digital material in my opinion.

I expect to setup the new all-in-one scanner with ADF to a) first scan a page and set up frames etc. and then b) scan the rest of the stack.

By the way, this Thanksgiving discount was exactly what I have been waiting for :smiley:

regards,

Rolf


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5

Hello!

I’d like to add some information on my experiences so far with my new scanner. I am aware that this piece of hardware is far off from a dedicated scanner like the ScanSnap 1300 et. al. nevertheless it is the best compromise for me.

Well this scanner does not support multiframe-selections at all using the ADF or not. So it is single-pages or longer documents just as they are. After updating the firmware this works reasonably well: I can send scans either from a menu (touchscreen) on the printer or through the “scan-center” to my mac, to folders of my choosing or (in)to application like DTPO or Acrobat. OCR does indeed takes care of the double-pages scan and recognizes properly the layout.

Unfortunately scanning from within DTPO vis ExactScan does not work so well, it is more or less working on and off. ImageCapture works better but is clumsy and slow at the least…

I have not yet set up a folder-action-script to work with the incoming scans.

Now what happens within DTPO with the scans is a different story, already told in this thread: (http://www.devon-technologies.com/scripts/userforum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5225).

File size is HUGE and adding OCR to a 30 (double-)pages scan (300DPI) took more than two hours on my MBP C2D 2.33 GH 3GB RAM! AcrobatPro 9.x took but a fraction of that time with no worser results.

So I will use Acrobat until DTPO improves (a lot) in this respect.

Regards,

Rolf