8 Scanning and Recognition This chapter contains the following topics: Scanning in Kurzweil 1000. Accessing Scanning Commands. Basic Scanning Functions. Using a Document Feeder. Recognizing Currency. Scanning and Creating a Signature File Tips for Scanning. Fine-Tuning and Optimizing Scanning. Optimizing Recognition. Looking at Recognition Statistics. Batch Scanning. Scanning Shortcut Keys. Defining Hot Keys for Scanning. Configuring Scanner Buttons. Scanning from Microsoft Word. Scanning in Kurzweil 1000 You can scan any printed document. Kurzweil 1000 provides a comprehensive list of features that make scanning as easy as possible. These features include scanning optimization, rescanning and inserting pages, rerecognizing pages, repeated scanning, and flipping sides. An extensive list of options, such as page orientation, thresholding and grayscale recognition, as well as color scanning, are also included for fine-tuning scanning. These features are available from the Scanning Settings tab. Find more information in Chapter 12, Working with Settings. Here’s how scanning works. Place the document face down on the scanner, close the scanner lid, and start the scan. You’ll hear progress messages as Kurzweil 1000 scans, orients the printed material, and recognizes the scanned words. If you don’t hear the messages, the message setting may be disabled. For more information, go to Chapter 12, Working with Settings. As soon as the scan is complete, you can scan another page. It’s not necessary to wait for the recognition process to complete. Kurzweil 1000 automatically adds each page you scan to the end of the current scanning document. You don’t have to move to the end of the file to append pages. To begin scanning a separate document, close the current file or choose a different scanning document. Kurzweil 1000 suggests a name for each file you scan. You can accept the suggested name or use your own when you save the file. You can stop a scan in progress. If the scanner already scanned a page when you tried to cancel, the page will appear in the document. You can cut this unwanted page. Active and Scanning Documents You can have any number of open documents in Kurzweil 1000, but only one at a time is available for reading or editing. This is the active document. You can change the active document by opening another, or by using the next or previous document command. When you scan a page, Kurzweil 1000 adds it to the end of an open document - but which one? If it is the first page you have scanned since you started Kurzweil 1000, it adds the page to the end of your active document. However, if you have already scanned into a document, and if that document is still open, Kurzweil 1000 adds the page to the back of that document. This is what we call the scanning document. The active document and the scanning document can be the same document, but they don't have to be. This allows you to scan and read in other documents at the same time. There are two ways to change your scanning document. First, you can save and close it, then make the desired document your active document, and start scanning. Or, you can use the Rescan Page or the Insert Page command. These commands, since they are always relative to the current page number of your active document, always cause the active document to become the scanning document. Rescanning and Inserting Pages After scanning a document, you can rescan or insert pages to correct errors because of a mixed-up original or bad scan settings. These operations always take place with reference to the current page. So, if you rescan, the newly scanned page replaces the current page; if you insert a scan, the new scan is inserted immediately before your current page. When you insert a page, Kurzweil 1000 renumbers the pages to reflect the additional page. If you decide not to finish an insert or rescan operation, you can cancel before the scan is complete. Rerecognizing One or All Pages Kurzweil 1000 has two different scanning engines, and a number of settings that affect the quality of the recognized text. You may find that you want to change a recognition setting and use the Rerecognize Page feature. It is convenient to be able to do so without having to find the appropriate page in the original document. Like the Rerecognize Page command, the Rerecognize All Pages command saves you considerable time and effort. When you want to change recognition settings and rerecognize the document, you don’t have to rescan the entire document. The Rerecognize commands are available only through the Scan menu. To use either feature, you must enable the Keep Images option in the General Settings tab page. Find more information about Scanning settings in Chapter 12, Working with Settings. Scanning Repeatedly If you want to scan more than one page at a time, you can enable Repeated Scanning mode. In this mode, the scanner repeatedly scans, delaying a certain number of seconds between each scan. This mode is ideal for scanning long documents because you do not need to manually start a scan for each page. You can scan and recognize in this mode, or you can scan to image files. Scanning to an image file is a faster input method since it initially skips the recognition step. Repeated Scanning mode and the Scan Delay setting are available only through the menu system from the Scanning Settings tab. Note: If you want to use an automatic document feeder, be sure to not have the Repeated Scanning mode selected. Keeping Kurzweil 1000 in the Foreground While Scanning By default, Kurzweil 1000 continually shifts focus back to itself during a scanning session. Suppose, however, that you prefer to use Kurzweil 1000 as a background application, scanning with a document feeder or using the scanning hot key. You can opt to suppress this feature by changing the setting labeled, Keep Kurzweil in Foreground option to Never. This setting is in the ScanConf application, which is located in the directory, Program Files\Kurzweil Educational Systems\Diags. Accessing Scanning Commands You can access scanning commands by using menus, mnemonics, where available, shortcut keys. Notes: • You can also access many scanning commands from the keypad. For more information, you can either download the document, Using the Keypad to Access Kurzweil 1000, from the Kurzweil Educational Systems website—www.kurzweiledu.com—or refer to Appendix E, Using the Keypad to Access Kurzweil 1000 in the Online Manual, ALT+H, then O. • You can set a button on your scanner to directly scan. For details, go to the section entitled, Configuring Scanner Buttons. The Scan Menu The Scan menu is located to the right of the Folder menu. To open the Scan menu: 1. Use one of the following methods: Press ALT, then the RIGHT ARROW key until you hear the name of the menu. To use mnemonics, press ALT+S. 2. Use the UP/DOWN ARROW keys to hear each menu item’s name. Each menu item has a corresponding mnemonic, and some have shortcut keys. Basic Scanning Functions Starting and Stopping Scanning Use one of the following methods to start scanning or to cancel a scan in progress: • Open the Scan menu and choose Start New Scan or Cancel Scan. • Or press ALT+S+S. • Or press F9. Note: Canceling a scan when using Repeated Scan mode also cancels that mode. Rescanning a Page 1. Place the new page face down on the scanner and close the scanner lid. 2. Open the Scan menu and choose Rescan Page, or press ALT+S+R. If you are using Two-Page mode, rescanning replaces both the current page and the page after it. Inserting a New Scanned Page Before the Current Page 1. Place the new page face down on the scanner and close the scanner lid. 2. Open the Scan menu and choose Insert Page, or press ALT+S+I. If you are using Two-Page mode, inserting a page inserts the two pages before the current page. Rerecognizing a Page Open the Scan menu and choose Rerecognize Page, or press ALT+S+C. Note: You can use this feature only if there is an image associated with the page. Refer to the Keep Images setting in Chapter 12, Working with Settings. Rerecognizing All Pages Open the Scan menu and choose Rerecognize All Pages, or press ALT+S+A. Note: The program only rerecognizes those pages that have images. Refer to the Keep Images setting in Chapter 12, Working with Settings. Scanning Repeatedly Do one of the following: • Open the Scan menu and choose Scan Repeatedly. • Or press ALT+S+P. • Or press CONTROL+F9. You can set the interval or delay between scans by using the Scanning Settings tab as described in Chapter 12, Working with Settings. Flipping Sides When pages are double sided, or when you are scanning a large book, it is sometimes convenient to scan one side at a time, then flip sides, and scan the other side. This is necessary when you are using an automatic document feeder to scan double-sided pages. Each time you add more pages to the feeder and scan, you can instruct the system as to whether or not you are flipping sides. Even when you are not using a document feeder, you can select the Flip Sides menu option to indicate that you are changing from, say, the front side to the back side of a stack of paper, or from right facing pages to left-facing pages in a book. In both cases, you need to scan odd numbered pages (that’s the right hand side in a book) first, in an ascending sequence. You can then flip sides, and scan the matching even numbered pages, beginning with the page immediately following the last odd numbered page scanned. You should then continue with even numbered pages in a descending sequence until you have scanned enough pages to match the odd numbered pages that have already been scanned. As Kurzweil 1000 completes recognition, it automatically inserts the pages into their appropriate places in the document. When you have scanned a matching number of even numbered pages, you may begin with the next group of odd numbered pages. Note: You can use this feature when the scanning mode is Scan and Recognize, or Image Scanning Only. Using a Document Feeder 1. Place the stack of pages on the feeder. 2. Open the Scan menu and choose Start New Scan, or press F9, to scan the first side of each page. Do not use the Scan Repeatedly feature. 3. When you are done scanning the stack, turn it over to scan the opposite side, or put the next stack on the feeder. 4. Press F9. A dialog opens and you’ll hear the options. 5. Press TAB until you hear the desired function. Continue continues scanning in single-sided mode. Flip scans and collates in double-sided mode. 6. Press ENTER to OK your choice, or press ESCAPE to stop scanning. Recognizing Currency By default, Kurzweil 1000 recognizes and speaks the denomination of any United States bill. In addition, if you have a color scanner, you can use Kurzweil 1000 to recognize Euros, British Pounds and Canadian Dollars. Notes: • It’s important to place your bill in a location where Kurzweil 1000 can find it. If Kurzweil 1000 cannot find or identify a bill, you’ll hear an error message. • You can also recognize multiple bills per session. • If you use a particular type of currency more often, you can select it from the Recognize Currency dialog, then save the setting in a Settings file. Go to the Settings chapter for information on saving settings. To place a bill so that Kurzweil 1000 can find it: The object is to place one of the bill’s corners in a specific corner of the scanner glass. Because every make of scanner is different, the trick is to find the correct corner. Once you have determined that information the first time, placing bills thereafter should be second nature. 1. First orient yourself so that you are parallel to and on the opposite side of the scanner’s hinges. You should be able to lift the lid up and away from you. 2. Next, find the light bar’s home position. If you’re not familiar with the light bar, you can run the Scan command and listen for where scanning begins on the scanner. If the hinges are on the short side of the scanner, the light bar’s home position is typically along that side. On scanners whose hinges are along the long side of the scanner, the home position may be along the left or right, short side of the scanner. 3. Determine the right corner of the light bar’s home position. For a scanner whose hinges are on the short side of the scanner, and whose light bar’s home position is along the hinged edge, the corner to use is the top right one, assuming you are still opposite the hinged edge. You should be able to feel the hinged edge. On a scanner whose hinges are on the long side of the scanner, and whose light bar’s home position is on the scanner’s left, short side, the corner to use is the top left of the scanner, assuming you are still opposite the hinged edge. You should be able to feel the hinged edge. On a scanner whose hinges are on the long side of the scanner, and whose light bar’s home position is on the scanner’s right, short side, the corner to use is the bottom right of the scanner. You should NOT be able to feel the hinged edge in this case. 4. Place the bill with its long side parallel to the light bar. Then slide it toward the corner you determined in the previous step. For a scanner whose hinges are on the short side of the scanner, and whose light bar’s home position is along the hinged edge, the long side of the bill would also be parallel to the hinged edge. And you would slide it right until you reach the corner. On a scanner whose hinges are on the long side of the scanner, and whose light bar’s home position is on the scanner’s left, short side, the long side of the bill would be parallel to the left edge of the scanner. And you would slide it up until you reach the corner. On a scanner whose hinges are on the long side of the scanner, and whose light bar’s home position is on the scanner’s right, short side, the long side of the bill would be parallel to the right edge of the scanner. And you would slide it down until you reach the corner. To identify one or more bills: 1. Place the bill on the scanner. Note: If you haven’t determined the correct location to place the bill, follow the instructions in the preceding section titled, To place a bill so that Kurzweil 1000 can find it. 2. Do one of the following: • Open the Tools menu and choose Recognize Currency. • Or press ALT+O+R. • Or press SHIFT F9. Kurzweil 1000 scans the bill and identifies it. The Recognize Currency dialog opens with your cursor at the Scan Again (mnemonic ALT+S) command button. 3. If you want to identify another bill, place it on the scanner, and press ENTER. 4. Press ESCAPE when you are done. To identify another country’s currency: 1. Place the bill on the scanner. Note: If you haven’t determined the correct location to place the bill, follow the instructions in the section titled, To place a bill so that Kurzweil 1000 can find it. 2. Do one of the following: • Open the Tools menu and choose Recognize Currency. • Or press ALT+O+R. • Or press SHIFT F9. Kurzweil 1000 scans and opens the Recognize Currency dialog. If the currency type does not match, Kurzweil 1000 will not recognize the bill. 3. TAB to or press ALT+R to go to the Currency list. 4. Press the UP/DOWN ARROW keys to select the desired currency type: British, Canadian, European, or United States. 5. Press SHIFT+TAB to go to the Scan Again button, and press ENTER to scan and recognize the bill. Note: You can save your Currency setting in a Settings file. Go to Chapter 12, Working with Settings for information on saving settings. Scanning and Creating a Signature File Signature files enable you to insert a scanned image of your signature into a document. You can also add a signature into any form field that is a text box. For details on inserting a signature file, go to the Editing chapter. For details on adding a signature to a form, go to Working with Forms. Signature files are saved in TIFF format in a folder called "Signatures" in the Kurzweil Educational Systems/Images directory. To scan and create a signature file: 1. First, write your signature in the upper left portion of a blank piece of paper, making sure it is not too close to the edges, and that there is not too much spacing between the different parts of the name. 2. Next select Create a Signature File from the Scan menu. (ALT+S+C). 3. Place the paper on the scanner following directions from Kurzweil 1000, and press ENTER. 4. A dialog appears displaying the signature. You can increase or decrease magnification in this dialog by using CONTROL+UP arrow and CONTROL+DOWN arrow, respectively. If you are satisfied with the current signature, you can accept it by pressing ENTER or ALT+O for OK. To discard the current signature, press ESCAPE or ALT+C for Cancel. 5. After accepting a signature, another dialog appears asking you to enter the name you want for the signature file. If you would rather overwrite an existing signature file, use the UP/DOWN arrow keys to select the desired one. Tips for Scanning In some cases, a document’s print or layout characteristics can affect recognition quality. To get the best results: • Use documents that are clean and free from wrinkles. • If the paper feels thin when you rub a sheet between your fingers, place a sheet of construction paper behind it during scanning. This keeps print on the opposite side of the sheet from interfering with recognition, a situation known as bleed through. • When scanning a hardbound book, it may be helpful to remove its jacket cover. The inside cover often contains text that the scanner can pick up. • If text is distorted or missing in a regular pattern (for example, you have a problem every ten words or so), you are probably not pressing the center of the book flat enough on the scanner. The paper curls upward away from the scanner near the binding, darkening the image and foreshortening the text. For some books, it can take a fair amount of effort to flatten the center sufficiently. • Make sure the scanner glass is clean. Speeding Up the Scanning Process If you can consistently scan a book using the same position and orientation for every page, these steps will help you scan it as quickly as possible: 1. If you are not sure of the page orientation, change the Page Orientation setting in the Scanning tab to Set Once per Document. This allows for faster scanning than automatic page orientation. To access the Scanning tab page, open the Settings menu and select Scanning. 2. Enable Auto Size in the Scanner Margins tab. To access this tab page, open the Settings menu and select Scanner Margins. 3. If you want to read while scanning, disable tracking through the Display tab page. To access this tab page, open the Settings menu and select Display. 4. If you are happy with a default or manually selected brightness value, disable thresholding in the Scanning tab page. This will also speed up the scanning process. Fine-Tuning and Optimizing Scanning Kurzweil 1000 offers a number of ways to fine-tune scanning to obtain the best results: • Scanner settings optimization automatically selects the appropriate scanner settings for the document you are scanning. • Brightness and Thresholding settings let you tweak the settings yourself. • Recognition statistics let you find specific problem areas to help you decide what settings to adjust. Optimizing Scanner Settings There are a lot of different settings that can improve recognition results. You can experiment with scanning settings such as Brightness and Thresholding or you can opt to have Kurzweil 1000 optimize scanning automatically. This is particularly convenient if you are about to scan and recognize a large number of pages that you have reason to expect will have consistent characteristics. Kurzweil 1000 can automatically optimize thresholding, brightness, resolution, speckle removal, text quality, and the choice of recognition engines based on the information it receives from the document you are scanning to produce the best results possible. It begins with your existing values for each of those settings, and lets you control which of those values should be optimized. To optimize scanner settings: 1. Open the Scan menu and choose Optimize Scanning. The Optimize Scanning dialog opens. Each of the controls in the dialog is a list box, and, with the exception of Text Quality and Engine, each is set to Optimize by default. Each list box shows the current value of the setting, as well as an indicator as to whether or not it should be optimized. 2. Select the settings you wish to optimize. If you want the system to experiment with the results of other possible values for the setting, choose to Optimize the setting. If you do not want the system to change the current setting, choose the option that ends with the words Do not optimize. 3. Once you have reviewed the various settings, press the ENTER key to begin scanning. Depending on the number of settings being optimized, Kurzweil 1000 may scan a number of times. Kurzweil 1000 produces the best results and retains them, as well as the settings that created them. When the process concludes, you can keep these best settings by pressing ENTER again. You can interrupt the process at any time using the cancel button or the escape key. If you do so, you will still have the choice of keeping or rejecting the best settings found. Settings You Can Optimize Thresholding. If you choose to optimize this setting, Kurzweil 1000 will choose either static, dynamic or grayscale thresholding. Note that it will not chose color. Also note that the brightness setting cannot be optimized if you do not optimize thresholding, unless the thresholding setting is set to static. Brightness. Optimizing the brightness setting is the most time consuming, but also the most important, function of this dialog. You can accelerate this process somewhat by choosing a minimum and maximum value for the brightness optimization process. These values are available in two text boxes, immediately after this list box. Resolution. Kurzweil 1000 will determine the smallest font size found on your page. Based on that information, it might choose to lower or increase the resolution setting. The choice of a higher resolution will, of course, slow down the scanning process. Speckle Removal. Depending on the nature of the material being scanned, removal of speckle can enhance or damage recognition results. Enabling optimization of this setting will let the system determine whether or not it should be used. Text Quality. Optimization of this setting will allow the Kurzweil 1000 to choose between Normal, Dot Matrix, and Degraded. Engine list box. It is difficult for Kurzweil 1000 to automatically determine which engine is better for a page, as it relies on the engines themselves for information about recognition accuracy. When optimization is enabled for this setting, both engines will be attempted, and the results will be analyzed using statistics from a spelling check. Finding the Best Brightness Setting The Brightness setting determines if the scanned image is dark or light. The best setting depends on your scanner and the type of material you are scanning. You can set the brightness value to a number from 0 to 100. Lower values result in darker images and higher values in lighter images. Try several settings to find one that works best. You can also obtain detailed information about recognition by inspecting the results. Listen for the following as they are indications that your brightness setting may be too high: • b misrecognized as h • e misrecognized as c • h misrecognized as li • m misrecognized as characters like rn, nn, or nii • u misrecognized as ii • w misrecognized as characters like iu, ui, or vi • g misrecognized as o • y misrecognized as v Indications that the brightness setting may be too low are: • Characters that don’t seem to be part of a word, especially at the beginning or end of a page. • Characters misrecognized in groups, such as no misrecognized as ma, in misrecognized as m, or ci misrecognized as d. The best brightness setting varies from book to book, and sometimes from page to page in the same book. With inexpensive paperbacks, for example, the ink density varies from page to page. For these cases, Dynamic or Grayscale thresholding may work best. Finding the Best Thresholding Setting The sensors in a modern scanner don't actually see in black and white, or dark and light. Each spot on a page, called a pixel, is a shade of gray. Most scanners can differentiate 256 different shades of gray. What Kurzweil 1000 does with those shades depends upon your thresholding setting. There are three thresholding options: Static, Dynamic, Grayscale, and Color. Thresholding options are in the Scanning Settings tab. For more information, go to Scanning Settings in Chapter 12, Working with Settings. Static Thresholding Setting Each pixel is a shade of gray having a value between 0 and 255. A pixel whose value is zero is completely white. The higher the number, the darker the pixel. With Static thresholding, Kurzweil 1000 simplifies that number into one of two states: zero for white, and one for black. The resulting pixel, or the image made up of those pixels, becomes a binary image. All shades of gray higher than a particular number, called the threshold, Kurzweil 1000 considers black. Shades below or equal to the threshold are white. When you use Static thresholding with the brightness setting, the higher the brightness value the more gray values convert into white pixels, so the resulting image is brighter. Static thresholding has its advantages. It gives you the greatest possible control over the brightness of the final image. It is also very fast because a binary image is smaller than a grayscale one. Dynamic Thresholding Setting Dynamic thresholding, the second approach, breaks up each page into regions, and then tries to decide what would be the best threshold for each region. One page can end up with several different thresholds, which reduces the control you have over the brightness of the final image. This setting is particularly well-suited for multi-colored pages. However, because more data has to go from the scanner to the software, this setting can slow down the scan process. Grayscale Setting The Grayscale option does away with thresholding altogether. The full grayscale image is sent to the character recognition engine. This option increases the size of the file when you save the full grayscale image. You can also expect that this will be the slowest approach to scanning and recognition. When you use the Grayscale setting with the latest version of the FineReader Engine, however, you can improve recognition of difficult documents. Color Setting Select color scanning if you want the image to be viewable in color or to create a color TIFF format file. In color scanning, Kurzweil 1000 uses black and white mode, while retaining the color data. This can greatly reduce the speed of the process. This option also affects the resolution of the resulting color image, which displays at one half the resolution of the original scanned image. For example, if you scan at 300 DPI, the resulting image is at 150 DPI. Optimizing Recognition Like Optimize Scanning, Optimize Recognition directs Kurzweil 1000 to automatically find the best settings for producing optimal OCR results for an open page. Accessible from the Scan menu, this command opens a dialog containing two settings: Text Quality and Engine; both are set by default to Optimize. When Kurzweil 1000 completes the recognition, you can opt to keep the newly recognized page by pressing the ENTER key or discard it by pressing the CANCEL or ESCAPE key. A few notes about this feature: • Because this feature works with a page image, the Keep Images setting in General Settings must be enabled when scanning the page. • Optimize Recognition is not savable to a Settings file. • If you opt to Not Optimize in one session, Kurzweil 1000 does not keep that setting for the next session, instead it resets the setting to the Optimize default. Looking at Recognition Statistics An important tool for choosing the appropriate scanning settings, such as brightness, is a recognition statistics report. There are three types of reports that give you information about the performance of the character recognition engine: • Last Page provides statistics about the last page that was recognized. • Cumulative provides statistics about all the pages the system has recognized. • Poorly Recognized gives you a list of those pages in the current document whose Confidence level fall below a threshold that you set. To view Recognition Statistics: Choose Recognition Statistics from the Tools menu or use the mnemonics ALT+O+O. If you do not have a file open, the Cumulative dialog opens. If you have a file open, use the UP or DOWN ARROW key to select Last Page, Cumulative, or Poorly Recognized, or press their mnemonic, L, C, or P, respectively, then press the ENTER key. Recognition Statistics for the Last Page The Last Page dialog contains the following indicators: • Scan Time (ALT+N) tells you the time elapsed, in seconds, between the press of the Scan button and scanning complete. • Speed (ALT+S) at which the page was recognized. • Confidence level (ALT+C) tells you how confident the system is about the recognition process. The higher the number, the more confident Kurzweil 1000 is about the accuracy of the process. • Spelling Accuracy (ALT+L) tells you the percentage of words on the last recognized page that were spelled correctly. • Character Count (ALT+H) is the number of characters recognized. • Illegible Characters (ALT+I) are counted when a recognition engine thinks that a particular blob on the page is probably a character, but it has no idea what that character is. • Questionable Characters (ALT+Q) are counted when a recognition engine thinks that it has recognized a character, but is not particularly certain of its recognition. • Touching Characters (ALT+T) and Broken Characters (ALT+B) are useful in determining what brightness setting to use. A high count of touching characters is an indication that your brightness setting may be too low. A high count of broken characters is an indication that your brightness setting is too high. These two statistics are available only for the RTK engine. • Elapsed Time (ALT+E) is measured in seconds, and only includes the time it took to do automatic orientation, despeckling, column finding, and recognition. It does not include scanning time. • Automatic Corrections (ALT+A) indicates the number of errors Kurzweil 1000 corrected. • The number of Images Remaining (ALT+R) is available if you are doing batch recognition, and indicates how many page images remain to be recognized. Cumulative Recognition Statistics The Cumulative dialog contains all the controls in the Last Page dialog, except for Touching Characters and Broken Characters. It presents statistics for all recognized pages since recognition began on your system. A Clear button allows you to reset values to zero. Poorly Recognized Pages By default, the Poorly Recognized Pages list (ALT+P), in the Poorly Recognized Pages dialog, lists pages in the current document whose Confidence level falls below a certain threshold. The pages are sorted by ascending Confidence level, so the topmost page is likely to be the most poorly recognized. You can, however, sort by a number of other parameters available from the Sort by list, and you can group the pages within the list using the Group by options. The controls in this dialog are: • Sort by list (ALT+S). Select Confidence Level, Page Number with the confidence threshold, Spelling Percentage, and Page Number with the spelling threshold. If you are in the Poorly Recognized Pages (ALT+P) list, you can use CTRL+S to cycle through the Sort by options, thereby changing the pages included on the list and their ordering. A page’s presence on the list is based on either it’s Confidence or Spelling Threshold value, and the list order is either by ascending page number or threshold value. The order is also affected by the option selected in the Group by list. When you exit Kurzweil 1000, the system does not save this selection. • Group by list (ALT+G). You can select: Nothing to leave the pages ungrouped. Image State to group the pages so that those with images are presented first, followed by those without images. Note: Pages only have images when the Keep Images option in the General settings is enabled during recognition. Edit State to group pages so that those that have not been marked as "edited" are presented first, followed by those that have been edited. Both Image State and Edit Status to split the list into four groups: unedited pages with images, unedited pages without images, edited pages with images, and edited pages without images. • Confidence Threshold text box (ALT+T). Enter a threshold from 0 to 100. • Spelling Threshold text box (ALT+L). Enter a threshold from 0 to 100. • Toggle Edit Status button (ALT+E). Mark the page as edited. You can also toggle a page’s Edit Status by pressing CTRL+E when you are positioned in the list of poorly recognized pages. • Apply button (ALT+ENTER) Allows you to change the Confidence Threshold, Spelling Threshold, Group and Sort settings without leaving the dialog box by choosing OK. To open and edit a poorly recognized page: 1. Select the page you want from the list and press the ENTER key. 2. In the page, you might change some recognition parameters, rerecognize (if the page has an image), and/or rescan the page. During recognition, if the Confidence level falls below the threshold, the system immediately announces the threshold level value, which indicates a poorly recognized page. 3. After you have finished working on the page, press ESCAPE to return to the Poorly Recognized Page dialog to continue editing additional pages. Don’t forget to mark the pages you’ve edited by using CTRL+E. Batch Scanning Batch scanning lets you scan a number of pages at once without recognizing or reading them. Instead, you can store them as image files, which are like snapshots of the original document, then perform the recognition process later. Batch scanning saves time during the actual scanning process, as the system does not recognize each page as it is scanned. Since the recognition process is completely automated, Kurzweil 1000 can perform this step while the system is unattended. To perform a batch scan using menus: 1. Open the Settings menu and choose Scanning. In the tab page that appears, press TAB to go to the Mode option. Use the arrow keys to choose Image Scanning Only, then press ENTER. 2. Place your document on the scanner. Open the Scan menu and choose Start New Scan, or press the F9 key. Instead of scanning to documents that you can read, the system scans to image files. 3. When you have finished scanning to image files, you can perform any other tasks that you wish. You can change settings, read documents, and even leave the Kurzweil 1000 altogether. However, you cannot read the image files until the system has recognized them, as described in the next step. 4. Open the Settings menu and choose Scanning. On the Scanning tab page, press TAB to go to the Mode option. Use the arrow keys to choose Recognize Image Files, then press ENTER. 5. Open the Scan menu and choose Start New Scan, or press the F9 key. The system starts recognizing the image files in the Images folder, one after another. As each image file is recognized, it is deleted. Choose Start New Scan or press F9 again at any time to stop recognition. If you stop recognizing at any point, you should save the current file. You can later reopen the saved file, return to Recognize Image File mode, and begin recognizing again from that point. Scanning Shortcut Keys F9 to start and stop scanning. CONTROL+F9 to scan repeatedly. SHIFT+F9 to recognize currency. Defining Hot Keys for Scanning By default, the hot keys for scanning are: CONTROL+ALT+S, but you can define another key combination that must include either the CONTROL or the ALT key. Avoid using common shortcut key combinations for these hot keys. For example, if you specify the combination CONTROL+S, you will be unable to use it to save files in any other program while Kurzweil 1000 is running. To define a hot key combination for scanning: 1. Open the Settings menu and select Configuration, or press ALT+T+F. 2. Press TAB until you hear “Hot key for scanning,” or press ALT+H. Your cursor is in the Hot Key for Scanning text box. 3. Press the key combination you want to use. Then press ENTER. To scan a document using a hot key: 1. Start Kurzweil 1000 if you have not already done so. 2. Switch to another application. If you need to use the same device for speech in your other application, minimize Kurzweil 1000 by pressing ALT+LEFT ARROW, then ENTER, then letter N. 3. Place a page face down on the scanner and close the scanner lid. 4. Press the hot key combination you have defined or use the default CONTROL+ALT+S. Configuring Scanner Buttons Some scanners come with one or more buttons. You can now assign those buttons to functions within Kurzweil 1000, such as starting a scan, starting Kurzweil 1000 Photocopier or FAX applications. Note that this works only if the scanner manufacturer supplied software conforms to certain Microsoft specifications; not all of them do. To configure Kurzweil 1000 Scan, press the desired scanner button; select Scan with Kurzweil. If you have both Kurzweil 1000 and Kurzweil 3000 applications on your system, and both are currently running or neither are running, you will have to specify with which of the two you want the Scan function associated. To set the next button for either Scan and Print or Scan and Fax, press the desired button and select the desired option. Once configured, you can press the button to perform the designated function. For Scan, Kurzweil 1000 begins scanning and its window opens if it isn't already. For Scan and Print, the Kurzweil 1000 Photocopier application window opens and you can specify the number of copies and complete the Make Copies process. For Scan and Fax, the Kurzweil 1000 Fax application window opens and you can specify a recipient and complete the Send process. If you want to reconfigure the buttons, use the ScanConf application in the Diags folder in the Kurzweil Educational Systems folder in your Program Files. Scanning from Microsoft Word You can use Kurzweil 1000 to scan a page while in a Microsoft Word document. Kurzweil Scan and Recognize is on the Insert menu. To choose a scanner from Microsoft Word, open the Tools menu.