Category: Geeks r Us
Please excuse the length of this post, but I wanted to explain the background to my issues, incase someone has a better idea than what I am doing now. To make a long story short, for my Greek lessons, I prefer books written prior to 1975. They are all written in what is known as the polytonic system, which uses three accents, instead of the current monotonic one, which only uses one. No speech synthesizer in the world could properly read that, until I was able to have ESpeak modified, and even then, there are a few breathing marks that must be added to it. Anyway, most of the books are in scanned pdf format, so that they look like photographs, though I have one set that is in hard copy. I have tried, with my best friend Lee, to convert the pdfs using Finereader, but no ocr software that I know of can handle polytonic, and the books in hard copy have the additional problem of Greek and English on the same page!
Last year, I bought a Tactile Image Enhancer on Ebay, and am now trying to learn both alphabets, complete with accents and punctuation. But Lee and I still need to find the right font and size so that the lines are clear and readable. Right now, we're working with 22-26 font. The problem is that the swell paper costs $100 for 105 sheets, and most of my books are several hundred pages, even in regular-sized print! I know that Tiger embossers are among the best in the world, and recently learned that they can print directly from Microsoft Word. But can they print a document as it appears on screen, without translating it to braille? If so, I found a brand new one that's under $400 that will work nicely. If not, then I'm still at a loss as to what to do.
But even if I do manage to find the solution for my books, I'm still left with the issue of writing! I think this will be solved on the computer, as soon as ESpeak is completely ready for the challenge, and when I learn the extra keystrokes needed for the various accents. But my other idea is to actually handwrite things. The problem is that the only tactile writing kids that I know of force you to write backward! Is there one that will enable me to write correctly and read at the same time? I heard of something called the Intact Drawing Board, but they didn't explain one way or the other.
I forgot to add this. I have heard of several devices, two of which are quite old, and one which is modern but not yet in production. All are basically mice that you use with a computer to feel what is on the screen. They use pins, similar to a braille display. Has anyone ever used those? If not, what about the Optacon?
You need to hirer a reader. O human to read and translate the Greek.
You'll not find a machine that can do this.
I am not looking for translation into English, but just to be able to read and/or know what the page says in Greek. But your point about conversion to rtf still stands. This is why I was trying to bypass it by using tactile large print. The Tactile Image Enhancer basically sees an image printed on the swell paper and then makes it tactile. But there is not actual ocr involved. I want to know if the Tiger can do something similar, directly from Word, if it's set to graphics mode. I have a Braille Blazer and a Versapoint Duo, and both of them can do graphics. But I believe they require separate software for the purpose. There is the Tiger Suite program, but I'm not sure if it can be used with the two embossers that I already have or not.
If I wanted to do it, I'd just hire a reader that could read and speak Greek.
Not only will you learn what is in the book, but you'll learn more about whats in the book, because you can ask the person questions.
Yes and no. For me, the best way to learn is to actually go over the letters of the word, and then write it out, either by answering questions or by creating my own sentences. I work best when I have the text in front of me. The kypros.org course that I finished a few years ago, was originally made for the radio, so had no text. They added it when they posted the course online. It was the same as the audio, so I just worked with the text. I copied the English parts into another file, but when it came time for the Greek, I wrote it out. The FSI books with English in them were designed for classroom use, so I must use the audio and the text, which is why I can't get away with just listening to the tapes. All of that said, I did consider this idea and wrote an ad seeking a reader. I will have to post it again to Craigslist, etc. My original search was actually for a teacher. But it's very difficult to find people who know Katharevousa (the formal tongue). Most speak, read, and write in Kathemiloumeni (the common tongue), and most also use the so-called spelling reforms of the 1980s, which I do not support. Still, it couldn't hurt to try another ad.
Have you checked out this software?
https://wiki.digitalclassicist.org/OCR_for_ancient_Greek
Wow! I have seen some of this, but not all of it, and certainly not in one place! Hugs and thank you! I was considering Anagnostis, but I cannot find a way to download and/or buy it, even though they have a homepage, and I heard it doesn't work that well. But I will definitely investigate these other options! *smile*