Subject: Chinese OCR

From: John McRae <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 1992 10:53:02 EST

I have a colleague in Kyoto who uses a Japanese NEC 9801 computer and scanner
and software called Saijicho- to do OCR on Buddhist texts in the Japanese
edition of the Chinese canon.  He claims very high accuracy rates and good
efficiency, although the hardware/software combination is slow enough that he
trains operators the system and then has them "mind" two machines running
simultaneously.  He's very happy to distribute the character shape files that
he has generated, as well as all the texts.  Contact Urs App, International
Institute for Zen Buddhism, 8-1 Tsubonouchi-cho, Nishinokyo, Nakakyo-ku,
Kyoto 604, Japan.  You can try e-mail ([email-masked]), but his link
is erratic and unreliable for reasons I don't understand; much better to mail
to the address just given or fax to (075) 811-9664.  Voice mail (if you're
into long distance) is (075) 811-5181x280.

One of the things I would like to see happen with this software is some kind
of reverse engineering so that it would work on conventional DOS machines,
probably by using the recently released J/DOS 5.0/V.  The company that makes
Saijicho- (that's a long "o" at the end) may be thinking of doing this them-
selves -- I have no idea at all.  But since the program seems to work pretty
well, it would be a shame for others to have to recreate the wheel again, as it
were.

P.S.  Another thing I don't know about this software (my ignorance is virtually
infinite!) is what format it reads files in.  That is, there should also be
some way to figure out how to use images scanned on other equipment, even if
one had to use the NEC 9801 to do the OCR conversion.

John R. McRae, Asst. Professor, Department of Asian Studies
Director, Cornell University Chinese-Japanese-Korean Computing
     and Database Facility (CJK-CDF), East Asia Program
389 Rockefeller Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY  14853-2502
o:  607/255-1328; fax: 255-1686