TextAloud and Ebooks

[john356]

Hi,
How do you set TextAloud to read Ebooks where you can highlight the text but you don't have the option of copying the text?

Your help wil be greatly appreciated.

By the way, my voices are Mike and Crystal from ATT. Text Aloud V. 2.173

Thanks

[kdwhite]

What type of file is it? Might be better if you email me at
ken@nextup.com because I may want to try the file.

[Auron]

I think I have an idea of what the problem could be, it has happened to me when I try to copy text from a PDF file which hasn't recognized the text with OCR, yet you can still select it thus causing the confusion. Try using ocr on that text.

[DaveH]

Hi,
How do you set TextAloud to read Ebooks where you can highlight the text but you don't have the option of copying the text?

Hi

It sounds like a protected PDF file. If so you can check the file properties in Adobe Reader. The protection probably stops you from using it with other software as this is standard practice with purchased downloaded e-books. If you can print it then you could use a scanner to get a txt version. In general I find it is best to download as LIT files and convert for use in TextAloud (see advanced FAQ).

Dave.

[D.Leikin]

Hi Dave,

In fact, there is no need for making hard copies and scanning the printout.

Just print the document using MS Office Document Image Writer, save the printout as an image in TIF format, and feed it back directly into OCR.

Cheers!

[DaveH]

Thanks, thats great input Dmitri. I had thought that the Adobe DRM encryption used by e-book companies was pretty well impregnable. I have an example with printing enabled and tried printing to a TIFF image file from Adobe Reader but the result would not open in my OCR or the microsoft imager. Unfortunately I have Office 2000 which does not include the image writer software. I guess its time for me to upgrade!

Dave

[D.Leikin]

Dave,

In fact, I’m not sure if this idea can work with DRM encrypted files. I just didn’t test it with this stuff.

[DLindberg49]

I tried print to TIF using MS Office Image Writer and it did work, but the translation to word with OCR translated badly. It did not reconize many words, etc. resulting in having to do some major editing. IF there are any better translators than OCR, this may still be a great option.

[D.Leikin]

OCR quality might be poor unless the Image Writer is set to “TIFF - Monochrome Fax Superfine (300 DPI)”. Please check the “Advanced” tab in the printer properties.

[D.Leikin]

Probably, I have missed making an important note on how to correctly convert PDF’s to easily OCR-recognizable TIF’s.

In addition to setting MS Image Writer to 300 DPI one should also tweak Adobe printing settings too. Namely,

(i) go to File->Print in Adobe main menu,
(ii) click “Advanced” button,
(iii) check “Print As Image” box, select “300 dpi”, and press OK

Most likely, the TIF file printed out with these setting should not pose any major difficulty even for non-professional OCR.

[SFCurley]

Another option for getting things that can't be printed or converted to a readable image format is to use ABBYY's ScreenReader, which is packaged with FineReader 8.0. OCRs anything off of the screen. I suppose you could also use screen capture program, too, and then print from that.

[D.Leikin]

Just got another idea how to convert protected PDF to text.

Is it possible to program, say, an “ANTI-TTS” voice that would redirect text chunks into a text file instead of passing them to the TTS engine?

By making Adobe “read out aloud” a protected PDF using this “ANTI-TTS” voice one would simply get the original text in TXT format.

Any comments on feasibility, please?

[kdwhite]

I think it is a very clever idea. We'll see what Jim thinks.