Subject: Re: Q: Optical Character Recognition for Chinese?

From: John McRae <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 17:44:01 -0500

>I was wondering if anyone had information about optical character recognition
>for Chinese (or Japanese) character, especially cost, accuracy and
>possible future developments?
>
>
>Thanks,
>
>
>Roger Hart
>UCLA History
============================
The only hardware/software I've heard of that works successfully
is NEC 9801 and Saijichoo [the kanji mean "select-character-notebook,"
or caizizhang in Chinese].  This is being used by colleagues in Japan
to input large sections of the Chinese Buddhist canon, which has the
virtue of being a humongous amount of text in a consistent font.

I can't really tell you much more about this software, except that
the colleagues referred to train students to run it, and once they're
familiar with it they work two computers at a time.  Each machine
buzzes along until it can't recognize a character and then displays
that character's bitmapped image on the screen, with a beep and a
message "kono ji ga wakaranai" [wo bu zhidao zhege zi].  The
operator looks it up, the machine adds it to its shape dictionary,
and goes back to buzzing.

I won't give you the rates claimed for time and accuracy.  However,
I'll be visiting these folks in a couple of weeks, so perhaps I'll
be able to send an update.  In the meantime, if there's anyone out
there with contacts in Japan, could you try to find out if this
program will be ported over from the isolated NEC standard to
JDOS/V?  I think they would sell a whole bunch of copies of it
around the world if they did!  (That's a none-too-subtle hint to
be conveyed to the software makers!)

Happy computing.

-- John M.

==================================================================
John R. McRae
Assoc. Professor of East Asian Religions
Department of Asian Studies
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY  14853-2502
607/255-1328
fax:   -1686
e-mail:  [email-masked]  (Internet)
         [email-masked]          (Bitnet)

P.S.  Mail sent to the jrm@cornella address will
automatically be forwarded to crux2.
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