Re: [orca-list] The new Hypra website

[Al Sten-Clanton <albert e sten_clanton verizon net>]

I'd be glad to see the era of propritary software end for good, along 
with other sorts of "intellectual property."  I go further on that track 
than I think Richard Stallman does.  That would require a massive change 
in general thinking and in the laws, change that may never come and 
certainly won't come easily.

That said, real freedom includes the freedom to use as much proprietary 
software as you want, regardless of what I or anybody else thinks of 
your reasons.  Of course, I also agree with many of the practical points 
Bert and others have made.

Al

On 8/27/2016 12:17 PM, B. Henry wrote:
> Yes, I really did not want to write about this again, but as you must not have seen the discussion in the 
> past...
> The free engines work fine for many people, and fine for some or many jobs for others, but for another groups 
> of us who do things that require near perfect
> results, i.e. to fill out paperwork that has life impacting importance, read mail that may be in much less 
> clear fonts than those you have recognized on
> your computer screen with ocrdesktop, etc, yes, there is for sure a reason to use something that gives better 
> results.
> I can't compare abbyy to teseract as I've not used the former, but I can compare the results using lios or 
> something else using teseract to the results I
> got using kurzweil, and the difference on more than one occasion, was between around 70% accuracy and 92% 
> accuracy. That is major, and not only that, but
> 70% accuracy is not good enough to do more than see what something is more or less, e.g., would you get 
> anything out of a bank statement that was only 70%
> read correctly?
> I do not get bank documents, or anything else in paper if I can get it on line as a pdf, but the whole point 
> of the program, as far as I know lios is what
> is being worked on,
> is to give folks something good enough to do as much as is possible with, i.e. not a something that won't 
> work for many people in its target user base.
> I do not use other opperating systems other than Linux on my PC(s) unless there is a document I can not OCR. 
> I honestly can think of nothing else other
> than occasional curiosity that has gotten me to use my one installed copy of windows in years, but I must 
> keep a working windows to run kurzweil, and I can
> imagine myself traveling, and traveling I'd not have my windows box with me ever, where I'd need to read a 
> paper of some kind.
> I can not say to someone who has always gotten very good results using  cuniform or teseract that that is not 
> there experience, but I've seen the
> difference in results between  the better proprietary options and the options from the FOS world.
> Also, as long as I am writing this, the one major difference between the "eloquence case" as another poster 
> called it and this is that the old ibm-tts has
> not been developed in years. Abbyy is a maintained piece of software, and there are other proprietary engines 
> that are maintained and or under development
> that might become available, or be made available for us on Linux.
> Would I prefer seeing tesseract improve to at least with in striking range of the accuracy acheived by the 
> best solutions available for personal computers,
> hell yes! If that isnot possible would I like to see some one write a new rockin FOS OCR solution, again for 
> sure and of course.
> I do not know of such work, but as I said before, then when it becomes available we can use the free 
> engine(s), but until then let's not try and tell
> people they can't work, and or must get a lot of extra sighted help.
> If you do not need the proprietary engine, then of course you are more than free not to use it, but do not 
> try and hold those who do need it back.
> I'm done, said this stuff before, tried to be clear and maybe even persuasive, but hey, the fsf has not even 
> put a priority on accessiblity that I've ever
> seen.
> What, one of their darling distros is nicely accessibler for blind folks, another completely unusable from 
> what I hear, and...can't remember about the
> other for sure.
> My point being, we are not necesarily going to get any help from the hard core free software movement, nor 
> have I seen any new free OCR projects mentioned
> in any context, so it's posibly not just a case of holding out for a few months.
> I get the propaganda because I strongly support FOS, even started a google group to promote the discussion of 
> accessible free software, but because some
> proprietary projects exist in the world, and maybe some of us need to use a few of them, that does not make 
> free software less valid, not as good or
> anything else other than what it is and can be.
> Actually there's a case to be made that a good proprietary project can put pressure on the good free project to 
> become better, not just a "poorman's
> solution".
> I apologize for the verbose conclusion, bjut really want to move on to other things and wanted to make the 
> major points and be done with it.
> Regards,