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Suppose I use a typewriter to do some writing and then scan the pages into my computer.

Is there a way to copy that writing into a word processor? I'm about to start a writing project and I'm trying to decide what to use... I know I could use a word processor to begin with, but the internet is too much of a distraction.

Originally posted by Prabhodh
Suppose I use a typewriter to do some writing and then scan the pages into my computer.

Is there a way to copy that writing into a word processor? I'm about to start a writing project and I'm trying to decide what to use... I know I could use a word processor to begin with, but the internet is too much of a distraction.
Why not start you computer in Safe Mode so you CAN'T get on the internet and have that distraction?

Originally posted by Kelly_Bean
Why not start you computer in Safe Mode so you CAN'T get on the internet and have that distraction?

Haha, yeah, I did think of that, but there's still a whole lot of distractions on my computer.

And, really, I just want to use the typewriter.

And I know I'm just giving myself extra trouble.

Originally posted by Prabhodh
Haha, yeah, I did think of that, but there's still a whole lot of distractions on my computer.

And, really, I just want to use the typewriter.

And I know I'm just giving myself extra trouble.
Oh silly, use your will power!

Sadly to answer your quesiton, there really is no way to do that seeing as the typewriter will have already premade the words onto the paper. If you scan the paper onto your computer you will not be able to edit the words because they would have already been typed AND scanned. Hard to explain. >.<

Actually, contrary to what Kelly said, there are ways. How much you have to pay for them, or if there is valuable freeware applications, I do not know, as I was never forced to reasearch into it deeper. But...since you are...start here mate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition and report back with your findings

Originally posted by Kelly_Bean
Oh silly, use your will power!

Sadly to answer your quesiton, there really is no way to do that seeing as the typewriter will have already premade the words onto the paper. If you scan the paper onto your computer you will not be able to edit the words because they would have already been typed AND scanned. Hard to explain. >.<

I've been trying the will power thing for two years! , but to no avail.
I'm incredibly lazy and any little distraction will do.
And using a typewriter means that i wont be able to edit it immediately, which can be a good thing.

Originally posted by Bardock42
Actually, contrary to what Kelly said, there are ways. How much you have to pay for them, or if there is valuable freeware applications, I do not know, as I was never forced to reasearch into it deeper. But...since you are...start here mate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition and report back with your findings

Thanks for that, man!
Findings:
Optical charactor recognition is the electronic interpretation of handwritten, or typewritten text into machine-readable text.
I don't really know how it works, but wiki says it is researched in AI, pattern recognition, and machine vision.

There are a number of free ware programs available which can do this. According to wiki, tesseract, now owned by google, is considered one of the most accurate versions.

I will scan some stuff, try it out, and then tell you guys how it works.

Some phones have optical character recognition as a standard application...I use the samsung i8510 innov8 and it has it....although, to be honest, it's not particularly reliable as it gets about 10-20% of the characters wrong from printed page...but it does work...it saves as a word document that you can then bluetooth or usb transfer to a PC and use as a standard word doc.

Good luck with it.
I guess I was wrong!
I really thought it would be impossible with the type-writer already typing it but I guess with technology continuing to advance like this...
Anyway, you could type it out by voice, lol.