OCR

Optical Character Recognition software and hardware used to interpret scanned symbols into characters of text or numbers recognized as something other than mere graphics images. The term is commonly used in such software as OmniPage Pro (800-535-7226) to indicate options of translating scanned words and numbers into computer text files that can be read by word processing and spreadsheet software. For a review of options, see Molinari (1995) . (See also Scanner )

Often abbreviated OCR, optical character recognition refers to the branch of computer science that involves reading text from paper and translating the images into a form that the computer can manipulate (for example, into ASCII codes). An OCR system enables you to take a book or a magazine article, feed it directly into an electronic computer file, and then edit the file using a word processor.All OCR systems include an optical scanner for reading text, and sophisticated software for analyzing images. Most OCR systems use a combination of hardware (specialized circuit boards) and software to recognize characters, although some inexpensive systems do it entirely through software. Advanced OCR systems can read text in large variety of fonts, but they still have difficulty with handwritten text.The potential of OCR systems is enormous because they enable users to harness the power of computers to access printed documents. OCR is already being used widely in the legal profession, where searches that once required hours or days can now be accomplished in a few seconds.

Stands for "Optical Character Recognition." Simply put, this is what allows you to scan that paper you printed out, but lost on your hard drive, back into your computer. When a page of text is scanned into a computer, at first, all the computer sees is a bunch graphical bits. In other words, it has no idea that there's text on the page, much less what the text says. However, an OCR program can convert the characters on the page into a text document the computer can read. It isn't always a perfect translation, but the newer OCR programs are very accurate. The better ones can even keep the formatting of the document in the translation.