ENDING SOUND

The Sound option enables to activate a beep sound during the scanning: you will hear a beep sound when the pen scanner stops scanning and when the recognized data is being sent to the target application or clipboard.

To activate the beep sound:

• Select Sound from the Options menu.

You can choose a sound within a wide range of possible sounds. Select the sound that you prefer.

The option None is used to deactivate the ending sound.

LEFT-HANDED SCANNING

By default, the pen scanner is set to operate from left to right, but you can adapt the scanning direction and scan from right to left. You will follow this scanning direction if you are left-handed. You will also operate this way if you intend to read right-to-left text like e.g. in Hebrew.

To scan from right to left:

• Select the option Left-handed Scanning under the Options menu.

• Take the pen scanner in your left hand and turn it the other way around so as to lean it to the left. Position it at the right end of the text line and slide it over the line from right to left. Make sure you hold the pen with the right angle. See: Introducing the IRISPen, How does it work?

To scan right-to-left text (right-handed users):

• Simply take the pen scanner in your left hand and turn it the other way around so as to lean it to the left. Position it at the right end of the text line and slide it over the line from right to left. Make sure you hold the pen with the right angle. See:

Introducing the IRISPen, How does it work?

To scan right-to-left text if you are left-handed:

• Operate exactly the same way as if you were right-handed (see above).

Note: If you select Hebrew as recognition language, the option Left-handed Scanning will be grayed out.

VERTICAL TEXT (OPTIONAL)

If you intend to read some Asian vertical text, you must tell the software that the text flow is vertical rather than horizontal. The new text flow will be indicated in the Status window.

To scan vertical text:

• Select the required Asian language (see: Basic parameters, Selecting the language), then select the option Vertical Text under the Options menu.

• Rotate your document 90° counterclockwise and slide the pen scanner over the text line from left to right. Use your pen appropriately, see: Introducing the IRISPen, How does it work?.

The Scan window remains horizontal but the image is rotated.

NEGATIVE IMAGE

With the IRISPen, you can scan negative images, i.e. light text or graphics on a dark background. The image produced by scanning is automatically inverted by the software and displayed in the Scan window: the black pixels will become white, and the white pixels will become black. The recognition is carried out on the inverted image.

To scan negative images:

• Select the option Negative Image under the Options menu. Your IRISPen is ready to scan the negative images.

• Operate as for any other type of printed data: just slide the pen scanner over the text line. See: Introducing the IRISPen, How does it work?

MULTIPLE LINES

You can scan multiple lines at the same time, i.e. within the same scan. This is particularly useful if you want to capture whole excerpts of text from books, magazines, etc.

The various lines of text will be buffered, then released with the click on a pen button.

To read multiple lines:

• Select the option Multiple Lines from the Settings menu.

• Scan the various lines one by one. Make sure that each line is positioned directly in front of the pen's guide line.

Important:

The pen scanning band is 0.41" (10.5mm.) high and covers in many cases several lines of text. This does not mean that all these lines are being read. Only one line, the central one, is picked and recognized by the pen. You must thus scan each line separately and make sure it is positioned right in the center of the scanning head.

• At the end of your scan, click any pen button to trigger the output process.

SMALL PRINT

The IRISPen scanning band is 0.41" (10.5mm.) high. It can thus read characters having point sizes of 8 to 20.

If you have to read data printed in a font size smaller than 10 point, you must activate the Small print option. This will help you get optimized results with the IRISPen. 

To read small text:

• Select the option Small print from the Settings menu.

• Operate as for any other type of printed data: just slide the pen scanner over the text line. See: Introducing the IRISPen, How does it work?

Warning:

Do not use the Small print option to read text above 10 points. This would decrease the recognition accuracy and would slow down the operation substantially.

UNKNOWN SYMBOL

If characters are not properly recognized by the IRISPen, they are by default represented by a tilde, i.e. a "~" symbol, in the recognition result. If you wish to, you can choose another symbol.

You can select a different symbol than the default tilde.

To define the symbol for unknown characters:

• Select the option Unknown Symbol from the Settings menu.

• Replace the symbol in the required field, then click OK to confirm.

CHARACTER CONVERSION

Once you have recognized some data with the IRISPen, you can have this data converted by some other data before it is inserted in your active application. This is particularly interesting if you want

to use specific terms or symbols that were not present on the original document. For example, you can replace the currency "USD" that appears on the original document by the corresponding symbol "$" in your active application. You can replace an abbreviation by its full name, you can erase data, e.g. replace "$" by nothing so that "$2.99" becomes "2.99", etc.

You can convert a recognized character or character string by: other characters, keyboard commands or any combination of all.

To define character and string conversions:

• Select the option Character Conversion from the Settings menu.

• To introduce a new character conversion, type in the character to be replaced in the first field and click on Add. In the second field, select the required keyboard command from the list. If you wish to make the conversion to another character or a whole user string, select User String from the list, then type in the character/user string in the proposed field.

Click OK to confirm.

Once string conversions have been defined, you can edit or remove them. You can also browse the list of existing conversions by clicking on the down arrow of the Convert field.

TABLE FRAME CONVERSION

The IRISPen is able to detect and convert vertical lines separating data as e.g. table columns. By default, the software replaces vertical lines by the <Tab> command. This means that each time it encounters a vertical line during scanning, it executes a tabulation in your target application. If your target application is a spreadsheet, the <Tab> moves your cursor to the next cell and the various bits of data are inserted in separate cells.

Various keyboard commands are proposed for the conversion, but you will also be able to replace vertical lines by characters or any combination of characters and commands.

Tip:

How to recompose a whole table?

If on top of the default <Tab> command, you add the line suffix <Home & Down Arrow> (see: Basic parameters, Setting the text alignment), your cursor will be relocated on the next row after each scanned line. By doing so, you will be able to recompose a whole table.

To define the table frame conversion:

• Select Table Frame Conversion from the Settings menu, then select the required keyboard command.

By default, the command <Tab> is selected.

Select User String to introduce your own table frame conversion, then click OK to confirm. You can execute any other keyboard command, add characters, or any combination of all.

Tip:

If your table does not contain vertical bars, the easiest procedure is to quickly add them on the original document with a pen and a ruler.

Tip:

If your table does not contain vertical bars, remember that you can always replace scanned characters by a cursor command. To insert, e.g. "2.55$ 5.99$" in a worksheet, you can replace the symbol "$" by the cursor command <Tab> to place the individual figures in separate cells. See: Basic parameters, Character conversion.