Converting an image of text into real text.

Patrick Keenan's icon

Hi,

Does anyone know if it is possible to convert a pdf or any other image with text in it, into a text file within max? Or would this be better done externally?

Thanks, Patrick

EMV's icon

That's called OCR, or text recognition. There are commercial, specialised programs that can do this. Saying that building your own text recognitino algorithm in Max is a challenge would be an understatement.
On the other hand, the cv library can do simple image recognition, so for very simple and clear images (say two large characters on a white background or something) you could use that.

Patrick Keenan's icon

Hi,

Yeah i thought using a commercial program would probably be the best route.

I would like to get the senders name and subject header of e-mails i receive automatically into max every time one is received. I was thinking of taking screen grabs. Anyone have any better ideas about how to get this info into max?

Cheers, Patrick

Luke Woodbury's icon

Not sure if this will do the job, but there's an mxj object called net.mail.recv which apparently reads messages from an email server. Never tried it though.

Patrick Keenan's icon

Hi,

I cant seem to get net.mail.recv or net.mail.send to open. I have tried instantiating them from the mxj object and have also tried opening there help files from the the javahelp folder but they just crash max. Every other mxj object seems to work apart from these too!

Does it open for you scatalogic?

Patrick

Luke Woodbury's icon

Doesn't crash Max for me, but doesn't work straight off and at the bottom of the help patch it says:
"This class requires the free JavaMail and the JavaBean Activation Framework libraries. Installation instructions can be found in mxj tutorial number 9."

This thread has a bit about it too:
https://cycling74.com/forums/email-alert

And searching forums for net.mail finds several more. Good luck!