Daxediw 0 Posted December 30, 2016 Share Posted December 30, 2016 New user of the Moleskine Evernote notebook here. I've successfully captured a handwritten note. The servers have done their OCR stuff and it is searchable. Now I have exported the note in .enex format into a local file. Question is . . . how can I convert this file to readable text? If I open it with Word or Notepad, it is gibberish. Obviously I need some software to translate this file. What software should I use? Thanks in advance. Link to comment
Level 5* EdH 1,670 Posted December 30, 2016 Level 5* Share Posted December 30, 2016 Evernote. That is what ENEX files are for. The format is XML. If you want to tear into it, you'll need to look at their developer pages. An OCR handwritten note though will have binary file attachments encoded as text in the ENEX export, so have fun with that. Link to comment
Level 5* DTLow 5,721 Posted December 30, 2016 Level 5* Share Posted December 30, 2016 2 hours ago, Daxediw said: Question is . . . how can I convert this file to readable text? If I open it with Word or Notepad, it is gibberish. You don't want to export to .enex format. I believe you have a note with an attachment in PDF or image format You need to save the attachment. You can also export the note to html format - it's much more readable than the enex format and the attachments are exported intact The Evernote ocr process is only for search purposes. To make your attachment readable text, you need to process it with ocr software (actually ICR software) Link to comment
Level 5* jefito 5,586 Posted December 30, 2016 Level 5* Share Posted December 30, 2016 An ENEX file won't do it. All it contains are guesses at words that it may have recognized at particular locations in the image (your handwritten note, in this case), in no particular order. That is, if it looks at a particular section of the image and see something that might be, say, "company" at some pixel location, there's an entry for that, but maybe it might equally be, say, "compass", in which case there's an entry for that, at the same pixel location. As noted above, this helps in search, but there's no stream of text produced that you could read left-to-right and top-to-bottom like you could a paragraph. Link to comment
Daxediw 0 Posted December 30, 2016 Author Share Posted December 30, 2016 48 minutes ago, DTLow said: You don't want to export to .enex format. I believe you have a note with an attachment in PDF or image format You need to save the attachment. You can also export the note to html format - it's much more readable than the enex format and the attachments are exported intact The Evernote ocr process is only for search purposes. To make your attachment readable text, you need to process it with ocr software (actually ICR software) Thanks for your input. So, what you are saying is that even though Evernote has created a file that is searchable (as in, all the handwritten words in the note have been converted into searchable text) there is no way to export that file in such a way that it can be displayed as the actual digitized text. That in fact I would need to scan this note with some other OCR (or ICR) software and not attempt to use the Evernote OCR-created file at all? Link to comment
Daxediw 0 Posted December 30, 2016 Author Share Posted December 30, 2016 2 minutes ago, jefito said: An ENEX file won't do it. All it contains are guesses at words that it may have recognized at particular locations in the image (your handwritten note, in this case), in no particular order. That is, if it looks at a particular section of the image and see something that might be, say, "company" at some pixel location, there's an entry for that, but maybe it might equally be, say, "compass", in which case there's an entry for that, at the same pixel location. As noted above, this helps in search, but there's no stream of text produced that you could read left-to-right and top-to-bottom like you could a paragraph. Thank you for a very clear explanation of this process. I now understand how this functions and I don't need to chase down a path that leads to a dead end. Link to comment
Level 5* jefito 5,586 Posted December 30, 2016 Level 5* Share Posted December 30, 2016 You're welcome. Note that this discussion relates only to Evernote's OCR. Other OCR might be able to produce such a stream; I'm not really a big OCR user, so I can't testify any further. BTW, "company"/"compass" were taken from some OCR of my own handwriting... Link to comment
Level 5* DTLow 5,721 Posted December 30, 2016 Level 5* Share Posted December 30, 2016 On 2016-12-30 at 0:36 PM, Daxediw said: That in fact I would need to scan this note with some other OCR (or ICR) software and not attempt to use the Evernote OCR-created file at all? That's right I use the Evernote search-OCR, but many user's have OCR built into their scanners and they skip the Evernote process. Handwriting is even more tricky and less reliable (or it might be my handwriting skills) Link to comment
Daxediw 0 Posted December 30, 2016 Author Share Posted December 30, 2016 24 minutes ago, DTLow said: That's right I use the Evernote OCR, but many user's have OCR built into their scanners and they skip the Evernote process. Handwriting is even more tricky and less reliable (or it might be my handwriting skills) So, are you saying you can obtain a digitized OCR text file of your written notes using the Evernote OCR? Or are you simply referring to the process that Evernote uses to create the search-ability of your note? Link to comment
Level 5* DTLow 5,721 Posted December 30, 2016 Level 5* Share Posted December 30, 2016 1 minute ago, Daxediw said: So, are you saying you can obtain a digitized OCR text file of your written notes using the Evernote OCR? Or are you simply referring to the process that Evernote uses to create the search-ability of your note? That's what I'm referring to - I use the Evernote OCR search process I don't have digitized OCR'd text files Link to comment
Daxediw 0 Posted December 30, 2016 Author Share Posted December 30, 2016 1 minute ago, DTLow said: That's what I'm referring to - I use the Evernote OCR search process I don't have digitized OCR'd text files Good information. Thanks for your help on this. Link to comment
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