TextBridge Pro 9.0 (TBP), produced by ScanSoft, is a full fledged OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program. Installation from the CD was straightforward, trouble free, and the program folder racked up 28.7M on my hard drive; this was a custom installation without about 4M for a Scheduling utility. ScanSoft maintains an Internet site (scansoft.com) with a minimal amount of support for TBP. The site does have a long list of supported scanners and their TWAIN drivers.

Most people unfamiliar with OCR technology know that it's used on scanned documents and naturally think of it as simply performing the character recognition of text, numbers and symbols. After all it's called OCR. However, all major modern OCR software enable you to convert whole paper documents to computer editable formats. TBP not only converts text but also converts headlines, columns, tables, headers and footers, retaining their formats. It captures graphics, line drawings, and any type of photo, and recognizes about 10 different image-file formats. It will provide highly accurate OCR on degraded or dirty documents, with point sizes ranging from 5-72 points in practically any typeface and, in it's transfer from scanner to PC, TBP can even retain the complex layout of an original document. This software also supports 56 languages and can recognize text on tinted background.

TBP has a useful utility called Instant Access (IA), which invokes TBP from another program (like a word processor) and brings the processed material directly into the program. Programs with Instant Access have a TextBridge command in the program's File menu. It was not in the File menu of my Lotus Word Pro, although the User's Guide did stipulate that Instant Access would automatically be installed in this word processor and, furthermore, it was automatically installed in Write. However, TBP does offer a way get Instant Access into the Lotus word processor. Following instructions, I played around with the IA setup which, although allowing the designation of 'Lotus Word Pro', did not bring IA into the File menu of my word processor. But when I designated 'Word Pro', IA did appear in the File menu ... and disappeared whenever I booted up?.

However, TBP is basically a conventional, stand-alone, document-oriented, Win program, activated via the 'Start/Program' route. When this was done, TBP, specially set up to turn on ScanWizard, my scanner TWAIN software, allowed me to set up all the scanner parameters of the ensuing scan.

In the case of OCR, setting up the scanner to get a good scan may not seem important since the scanning of alphanumerics appears straightforward and simple. This is true if OCR is done on an image coming from standard-sized text, printed well, on clean white paper; few if any errors would occur. In less than ideal cases, many character-recognition and formatting errors occur ... a mess correcting. Such can be appreciably avoided by setting up suitable scanning techniques (beyond the scope of this review).

I scanned a number of professional letters received, and it was a breeze. There were next to no mistakes. In one letter, the OCR designated only the word MEMBERSHiP as a possible error. Errors are easily corrected in the TBP window itself. All questionable errors in a diaplayed OCR'd document are first color highlighted, then sequentially presented for correction, along with the raw scanned image of the word in question (easily recognized). The correction is simply typed in. The documents were saved in my Lotus Word Pro format, and TBP automatically opened the word processor (by set up) and transferred the documents beautifully for any further editing, if desired.

I scanned an obit paragraph in 7 point type (very very small) from the newspaper. A straight scan produced many bad errors. Adjusting the scan parameters reduced the questionable OCR'd words to only two real errors ... two l's instead of two i's. Again, the OCR'd text was transferred into Lotus Word Pro, in 7 point type, without and fault.

I found TextBridge Pro 9.0 a pleasure to use, full of options that allowed one to produce excellent outputs. I scanned documents with background tints and with color graphics. Results are highly dependent on scanner setup parameters. Some other OCR programs do not let you control your scanner software but, instead, automatically carryout this setup. This software allows you to adjust the scanner. When I let TBP do the scanner set up automatically (its default mode of operation) the more complicated OCR's came out problematic. To do such scans, you need, also, to read the TBP User's Guide ... or the result will be a hodgepodge.