-=> Mike Ross said to Greg Mayman
 -=> about "TALKING BOOKS" on 12-16-02  10:56.....

 MR> The early scanner ocr was hard to use if the font was not already
 MR> known. Then it made a lot of errors that had to be fixed manually and
 MR> spend some time with it to "learn" the font. OTOH a Palm-pilot does

Looking back, I wish I had taken more note of that machine when I
saw it. But I suspect that a lot of its operation was proprietory
secrets...

 MR> recognize scribbled block letters but one has to adapt the way a few
 MR> letters are scribed. My old one doesn't do cursive but I think newer
 MR> ones do. In any case ocr is a lot better now but I still haven't found
 MR> one that does manuscript sheet music yet! 

That's the hard part.

One of my aquaintances was looking for a computer program that
would transpose and print music -- he is a singer and not every
bit of music he can buy is in his range.

A mutual friend told him about Cakewalk, which I have been using
for about 4 years, which should do the job of transposing and
printing, but his problem is entering the music into the program.
He sure could use an ocr that would read musical scores.

I suggested that he should go to a firm I knew of that
specializes in computer music, but I don't think he ever went
there. The local comptuter shop was much more convenient.

As a result he's just paid out about $3000 for a new computer
without buying ANY of the software that he will need to do the
job.

Ah, well, he can probably afford it...

OTOH there used to be software for "reading" a musical recording
or a live pickup, and outputing it to a printed score. Byte had
an article about it, some 15+ years ago.

It could even sort out one instrument, say an oboe, from an
orchestral recording. I guess there was a lot of high speed
waveform analysis going on...

From Greg Mayman, in beautiful Adelaide, South Australia

... Soaking the brain in alcohol does not improve the mind - Bob Edwards
___ Blue Wave/386 v2.30

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