[Athen] Scanning and Read and Write Gold for Mac

[normajean.brand]

Sean, if I understand you correctly you have a document that is already in  PDF format and are trying to get Read and Write Gold to scan/read it? 

Looking at the training documentation online http://texthelp.com/page.asp?pg_id=10017 or http://www.texthelp.com/webfiles/US%20RWG%20for%20Mac%20V3%20Training%20guide.pdf  , (pgs 13-14) it appears that there is a "PDFAloud" toolbar that you may need to bring up in order for RWG to properly process it and read it.
Pg 13: Reading PDF documents
In this exercise you’ll learn how to read text aloud from PDF documents, using PDFaloud. You’ll also learn how to set up which colors you would like to use to read text aloud, using the Preferences in Read&Write 3 GOLD For Mac.
􀀉
For further information on using PDFaloud, refer to the PDFaloud help located in the PDFaloud3 menu.
1.Start Adobe Acrobat and then open a PDF document. You can see the PDFaloud3 Toolbar displayed, as shown in Figure 3-7.
Figure 3-7 PDFaloud3 Toolbar
Calculator button
Fact Finder button
Speak button
Click-and-Speak button
Type of text drop down list
Speech buttons

2.Click on the drop down list on the toolbar and select the Select text one word at a time option.

3.Click on the button. PDFaloud reads aloud the first word in your document.

4.Click on the drop down list on the toolbar and select the Select text one sentence at a time option.

5.Click on the button. PDFaloud reads aloud the first sentence in your document.
􀀣
You can click on the button at any time to stop the system from reading the text aloud.

6.Click on the button to activate the Click-and-Speak facility.

7.Click on any sentence in your document. The system reads the sentence aloud.
􀀣
You can access any of the Speech options from the PDFaloud3 menu.

8.Close your PDF document.
There is more information after this on setting some other options. 



Now, if you mean you are trying to scan TO a PDF (create a PDF) this same documentation (pgs 80-81):

In this exercise you’ll learn how to set up scanning options and scan documents to PDF.
1.Click on the Tools menu, select the Scan Options sub-menu and then make sure the following options are selected:
•Scan to PDF
•Auto Open Output
•Load from Scanner.
2.Place a page into your scanner and then click on the button.
􀀣 You see the scanning options window displayed. The window you see depends on the scanning software you have installed on your Apple Mac. Set up your scanning options to continue.
The image is scanned and opened as a PDF document.


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I trialed Read and Write Gold several years ago. For the most part I liked it, but the students felt like the learning curve was a bit steep and preferred WYNN or Kurzweil over RWG so we didn't pursue it any further. It still seems like a great product with more advancements since my first trial. I hope this helps.

Regards,
Norma Jean

-----------------------------------------------
NJ Brand
Houston Community College-Northwest
ADA Technician
Technology and Instructional Computing
Room RC13
1010 W. Sam Houston Pkwy N.
Houston TX 77043
VM/Office: 713.718.5604                    
FAX: 713.718.5430 
Email: normajean.brand at hccs.edu
http://northwest.hccs.edu 
SkypeMe: nj.brand 


-----Original Message-----
From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org [mailto:athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On Behalf Of Sean J Keegan
Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2009 9:02 PM
To: altmedia; athen
Subject: [Athen] Scanning and Read and Write Gold for Mac

Hello all,

I have been playing with the new version of Read and Write Gold 3 for Mac to test out its functionality and general usability.  I have encountered a bit of an issue when attempting to scan, however, and wanted to know if anyone else has experienced this situation.

I have an image-based PDF document; that is, a PDF with just an image of text.  Using Read and Write Gold for Mac, I am unable to scan/OCR the PDF.  It seems that Read and Write Gold for Mac is only able to scan file types identified as "Image Files" (e.g., TIFF), but PDF does not seem be considered an "image file" type.

Has anyone else had this experience on the OS X platform?

Changing the file name is not an option (e.g., from .PDF to .TIF) as it is a multi-page PDF and Read and Write Gold for Mac would not process the file.  It would show the .TIF version as an "acceptable" file type, but would not actually *do* anything to the file.  I was able to get a single-page TIFF file to work and Read and Write Gold for Mac was able to scan/OCR the file, but this is not a real solution as there are A LOT of multi-page, image-based PDF documents.

I also tried out Read and Write Gold version 9 for Windows and it had no problems at all opening a multi-page, image-based PDF file and then performing the scan/OCR.  In fact, it actually worked far better than previous experience as did the PDF Aloud component.  That being said, using Windows is not an option (on the Mac OS and the VM Ware Windows partition is not functioning properly) and us processing alternate media is not going to work in the short term as the individual will be traveling throughout the summer months doing research.

Am I missing something on the Mac platform and what is considered to be an "image file" type?  Has anyone had successful experience using Read and Write Gold for Mac with image-based PDF documents?

Take care,
Sean

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