Hierarchical PDF-printing with Mentor "IC Station Schematics"?

[Joerg]

On Thu, 23 Jun 2011 10:42:56 -0700, Jim Thompson

[snip]
Image files made into PDF:

"If you did not apply OCR when you scanned the paper document, you can
apply it afterward using the Recognize Text Using OCR command."

...Jim Thompson
I just scanned an article from Wired Magazine, and the OCR appears
PERFECT!

(Adobe Acrobat Pro v7)

Well, shazam! Just found out that the paperless office software I have
on my PC (PaperPort) can import TIFF files (which IC Station can make),
concatenate them in user-selectable order and create a crisp and clean
multi-page PDF document from those.

That leaves just OCR and we can probably use Acrobat Pro for that.

Foxit's fancy package (Foxit Phantom) includes an OCR module, so if you
don't have Acrobat Pro handy, might give it a try. I haven't upgraded to
the latest release but the last one did quite a nice job on a PDF of a
scanned MIL-STD manual of some ancient vintage, turning it into a nice,
searchable document.

Yes, I've also looked at Phantom yesterday. Considering that Foxit
Reader never crashes and Acrobat Reader crashes all the time I am
leaning more towards either that or Nitro. But with Foxit I know their
stuff seems to have great stability. The only negative is that at least
Foxit Reader has lesser quality rendering than Acrobat Reader,
regardless of how I select the setups (LCD/CRT and such).

What is important in IC schematics is that the OCR also catches
lettering that is 90 degrees rotated.

 

[Joerg]

Jim Thompson wrote: [snip]
(I don't know about Foxit, I only use Adobe products ;-)

I found Foxit to be of better quality. Not the rendering which is a wee
bit inferior. But the number of crashes went from 2-3/day to zilch.
You must have DLL-hell on your machine. I don't have crashes.

Good software doesn't crash on mine either. Only two programs do,
Acrobat Reader and Orcad/PSpice. For both I am using alternatives that
never crash. So it cannot possibly be my computer. For example, for
schematics I use Cadsoft Eagle. It hasn't crashed in five year, not once.

[...]

"So it cannot possibly be my computer." Bwahahahahahaha! You need to
run a DLL scan and find the loose cannons and remove them. Something
from your past is causing you grief.

It was like that when I _got_ this computer. Same with the others here.
Same with computers at clients. And so on. Talk to Keith about it if you
don't believe me, he's 2k miles away so I can't possibly have corrupted
his registry

 

[Joerg]

Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
[snip]
(I don't know about Foxit, I only use Adobe products ;-)

I found Foxit to be of better quality. Not the rendering which is a wee
bit inferior. But the number of crashes went from 2-3/day to zilch.
You must have DLL-hell on your machine. I don't have crashes.

Good software doesn't crash on mine either. Only two programs do,
Acrobat Reader and Orcad/PSpice. For both I am using alternatives that
never crash. So it cannot possibly be my computer. For example, for
schematics I use Cadsoft Eagle. It hasn't crashed in five year, not once.

[...]
"So it cannot possibly be my computer." Bwahahahahahaha! You need to
run a DLL scan and find the loose cannons and remove them. Something
from your past is causing you grief.

It was like that when I _got_ this computer. Same with the others here.
Same with computers at clients. And so on. Talk to Keith about it if you
don't believe me, he's 2k miles away so I can't possibly have corrupted
his registry

What "brand" of PC? I can't recall when I last had a crash. Of
course I have a no-name brand... PC_Club, which doesn't even exist
anymore

All well-known and respected brands. 2x Dell, 1x Samsung, 1x Durabook.
The latter is one of those near mil-spec deals. They run very reliably
despite SPICE-tortures and so on.

But again, the same has happened at clients with all sorts of PC brands.
Mostly Dell, HP, IBM and such.

 

[Joerg]

Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
[snip]
(I don't know about Foxit, I only use Adobe products ;-)

I found Foxit to be of better quality. Not the rendering which is a wee
bit inferior. But the number of crashes went from 2-3/day to zilch.
You must have DLL-hell on your machine. I don't have crashes.

Good software doesn't crash on mine either. Only two programs do,
Acrobat Reader and Orcad/PSpice. For both I am using alternatives that
never crash. So it cannot possibly be my computer. For example, for
schematics I use Cadsoft Eagle. It hasn't crashed in five year, not once.

[...]
"So it cannot possibly be my computer." Bwahahahahahaha! You need to
run a DLL scan and find the loose cannons and remove them. Something
from your past is causing you grief.

It was like that when I _got_ this computer. Same with the others here.
Same with computers at clients. And so on. Talk to Keith about it if you
don't believe me, he's 2k miles away so I can't possibly have corrupted
his registry
What "brand" of PC? I can't recall when I last had a crash. Of
course I have a no-name brand... PC_Club, which doesn't even exist
anymore

All well-known and respected brands. 2x Dell, 1x Samsung, 1x Durabook.
The latter is one of those near mil-spec deals. They run very reliably
despite SPICE-tortures and so on.

But again, the same has happened at clients with all sorts of PC brands.
Mostly Dell, HP, IBM and such.

I have a Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad... NO crashes ;-)

I've used a Lenovo laptop at a client. Lots of crashes, and one fine day
the whole display went blinkadiblink ... kaputt. It kept working with an
external CRT but that laptop wore down a bit too fast for me.

Ok, some of my PDFs are several hundred pages, multiple tabs are open,
and I am not exactly the most patient computer user. But anyhow, if for
example Orcad crashes all the time on all sorts of PC and Cadsoft Eagle
never crashes then, for me, that leaves only one conclusion.

 

[Joerg]

[snip]

But anyhow, if for
example Orcad crashes all the time on all sorts of PC and Cadsoft Eagle
never crashes then, for me, that leaves only one conclusion.

Yep, only one conclusion: You don't know what you are doing ;-)

Nope. I am by far not the only one. As I said, ask Keith for example.

I've been just as impatient with PCs in the 1990's. Orcad-SDT, huge
designs, not a single crash in all the years. With Orcad 16.3 I've had
lots of documented crashes in very short order. Support almost pulled
their hair out. Very shortly after installation yours truly even
triggered a formal bug fix ticket. Now how do you explain that?

 

[[email protected]]

Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
[snip]
(I don't know about Foxit, I only use Adobe products ;-)

I found Foxit to be of better quality. Not the rendering which is a wee
bit inferior. But the number of crashes went from 2-3/day to zilch.
You must have DLL-hell on your machine. I don't have crashes.

Good software doesn't crash on mine either. Only two programs do,
Acrobat Reader and Orcad/PSpice. For both I am using alternatives that
never crash. So it cannot possibly be my computer. For example, for
schematics I use Cadsoft Eagle. It hasn't crashed in five year, not once.

[...]
"So it cannot possibly be my computer." Bwahahahahahaha! You need to
run a DLL scan and find the loose cannons and remove them. Something
from your past is causing you grief.

It was like that when I _got_ this computer. Same with the others here.
Same with computers at clients. And so on. Talk to Keith about it if you
don't believe me, he's 2k miles away so I can't possibly have corrupted
his registry
What "brand" of PC? I can't recall when I last had a crash. Of
course I have a no-name brand... PC_Club, which doesn't even exist
anymore

All well-known and respected brands. 2x Dell, 1x Samsung, 1x Durabook.
The latter is one of those near mil-spec deals. They run very reliably
despite SPICE-tortures and so on.

But again, the same has happened at clients with all sorts of PC brands.
Mostly Dell, HP, IBM and such.

I have a Lenovo (IBM) Thinkpad... NO crashes ;-)

I've used a Lenovo laptop at a client. Lots of crashes, and one fine day
the whole display went blinkadiblink ... kaputt. It kept working with an
external CRT but that laptop wore down a bit too fast for me.

ThinkPads aren't immune from crashes. This T61 has always had troubles. My
T60s and the A21, from 10 years ago, were really solid systems. Lenovo has
really f'd up the line.

Ok, some of my PDFs are several hundred pages, multiple tabs are open,
and I am not exactly the most patient computer user. But anyhow, if for
example Orcad crashes all the time on all sorts of PC and Cadsoft Eagle
never crashes then, for me, that leaves only one conclusion.

I don't have *too* much trouble with 16.3; perhaps ten crashes in six months.
OrCAD 15.7 was *really* bad, though when it crashed it almost always
recovered. 16.3 has lost all my work several times now. They want to install
16.5. I hope they waited until I get back.

 

[Joerg]

Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote: [snip]
(I don't know about Foxit, I only use Adobe products ;-)

I found Foxit to be of better quality. Not the rendering which is a wee
bit inferior. But the number of crashes went from 2-3/day to zilch.
You must have DLL-hell on your machine. I don't have crashes.

Good software doesn't crash on mine either. Only two programs do,
Acrobat Reader and Orcad/PSpice. For both I am using alternatives that
never crash. So it cannot possibly be my computer. For example, for
schematics I use Cadsoft Eagle. It hasn't crashed in five year, not once.

[...]

"So it cannot possibly be my computer." Bwahahahahahaha! You need to
run a DLL scan and find the loose cannons and remove them. Something
from your past is causing you grief.

Wasn't Jeorge the one who claimed that you only need 128 MB of RAM
for XP, and that he didn't install the updates?

Win2k ran nicely in 128MB over here. XP, not so much. IME that needs
256MB for bare bones operation but has 2GB on my PC.

 

[Joerg]

Jim Thompson wrote:
Joerg wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
On Wed, 22 Jun 2011 11:18:14 -0700, Joerg
<[email protected]>
wrote:

[...]

This CAD can spit out postscript so if push comes to shove maybe
there
is a routine that can take dozens of those files and cram all of
them
into one single searchable PDF-file.
Is the PostScript in the form of a single-document? Then the
"routine" is called Adobe Acrobat... simply double-click on a .ps
file
and Acrobat creates a single-document .pdf equivalent.

That's just the problem. This software can only spit out individual
pages. So an IC consists of a few dozen individual *.ps files, one
per
sheet :-(

Oh, and to add insult to injury, I just found that the *.ps files
seem
to already be vector-based and even in GhostView one cannot search
:-(

[...]
My Acrobat seems to even be able to scan, then OCR, then create a
search. But you're still in the 19th Century, are you not ?

No, but some CAD seems to be. Of course I can scan and OCR them all
but
to have to do that with every design iteration is going to be a pain
in
the you know what ;-)

--
Have you tried to combine them with Ghostscript? You can combine PDF
files.
It's command line stuff, you'll be in Linux heaven on your windows box
;D

Cheers

Everyone around here works "on the cheap":

Adobe Acrobat, Create PDF, From Multiple Files, Add Files, Arrange
Files, OK... just as simple as that.

Have you ever used Paperport? You can drag a stack of pages
together, then print with any PDF generator. I use it to scan and
convert old service data into PDF files. Paperport lets you straighten
crooked scans before printing, as well. It also does OCR.

I have PaperPort SE, unfortunately that version doesn't contain the OCR
part. What I found is this:

If I use it to concatenate several PDF files into a single PDF file the
result is lousy, unreadably choppy. If I take the very same contents in
the form of TIFF files, have PaperPort concatenate all those and store
into a single PDF file the result is excellent. Beats me why. And, of
course, it can't read pre-historical format such as postscript, but
almost nothing can these days.

In my case it'll be ok because I can get TIFF from this particular CAD
so I can use PaperPort to concatenat, then some other SW to OCR the
resulting file.

 

[[email protected]]

Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote: [snip]

(I don't know about Foxit, I only use Adobe products ;-)

I found Foxit to be of better quality. Not the rendering which is a wee
bit inferior. But the number of crashes went from 2-3/day to zilch.

You must have DLL-hell on your machine. I don't have crashes.


Good software doesn't crash on mine either. Only two programs do,
Acrobat Reader and Orcad/PSpice. For both I am using alternatives that
never crash. So it cannot possibly be my computer. For example, for
schematics I use Cadsoft Eagle. It hasn't crashed in five year, not once.

[...]

"So it cannot possibly be my computer." Bwahahahahahaha! You need to
run a DLL scan and find the loose cannons and remove them. Something
from your past is causing you grief.

Wasn't Jeorge the one who claimed that you only need 128 MB of RAM
for XP, and that he didn't install the updates?

I have the same issues as Joerg does (except for Adobe Reader, which has been
banned from my systems for over a decade) and they're all 2-4GB, with all
updates. At work they do all the updates whether I want them to or not.

 

[Joerg]

Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
[snip]
(I don't know about Foxit, I only use Adobe products ;-)

I found Foxit to be of better quality. Not the rendering which is a wee
bit inferior. But the number of crashes went from 2-3/day to zilch.
You must have DLL-hell on your machine. I don't have crashes.

Good software doesn't crash on mine either. Only two programs do,
Acrobat Reader and Orcad/PSpice. For both I am using alternatives that
never crash. So it cannot possibly be my computer. For example, for
schematics I use Cadsoft Eagle. It hasn't crashed in five year, not once.

[...]
"So it cannot possibly be my computer." Bwahahahahahaha! You need to
run a DLL scan and find the loose cannons and remove them. Something
from your past is causing you grief.

Wasn't Jeorge the one who claimed that you only need 128 MB of RAM
for XP, and that he didn't install the updates?

I have the same issues as Joerg does (except for Adobe Reader, which has been
banned from my systems for over a decade) and they're all 2-4GB, with all
updates. At work they do all the updates whether I want them to or not.

It's not just us, it's lots of others, too.

 

[[email protected]]

On Sun, 26 Jun 2011 01:02:41 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell"

Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
Jim Thompson wrote:
[snip]
(I don't know about Foxit, I only use Adobe products ;-)

I found Foxit to be of better quality. Not the rendering which is a wee
bit inferior. But the number of crashes went from 2-3/day to zilch.
You must have DLL-hell on your machine. I don't have crashes.

Good software doesn't crash on mine either. Only two programs do,
Acrobat Reader and Orcad/PSpice. For both I am using alternatives that
never crash. So it cannot possibly be my computer. For example, for
schematics I use Cadsoft Eagle. It hasn't crashed in five year, not once.

[...]
"So it cannot possibly be my computer." Bwahahahahahaha! You need to
run a DLL scan and find the loose cannons and remove them. Something
from your past is causing you grief.

Wasn't Jeorge the one who claimed that you only need 128 MB of RAM
for XP, and that he didn't install the updates?

I have the same issues as Joerg does (except for Adobe Reader, which has been
banned from my systems for over a decade) and they're all 2-4GB, with all
updates. At work they do all the updates whether I want them to or not.

It's not just us, it's lots of others, too.

Shall we take a vote? How many experience crashes with Adobe Reader
versus how many of us don't?

How about Crapture? It's repeatable.

 

[[email protected]]

They own the computers, so it's their choice, as long as they aren't
dedicated controllers.

They are but we're still supposed to get some work done.

It would be a mess if they let everyone do
whatever the hell they wanted with their hardware.

It would be more of a mess if they locked down the computers so tightly that
you had to play "Mother May I" to get your job done. I've seen that, too.

Just be glad that
it's not like one school I know of where the IT crew wiped the hard
drives daily, and copied a mirror of the OS and other software to the
computer each night.

I used to do that when I was teaching (hands-on lab stuff). Teaching was
impossible when all the systems were different.

I've never seen a problem with Adobe reader, and have used it for
well over a decade.

It's a pig. ...and that's when it does work. There are far better
alternatives.

As you know, I run old hardware, but I do keep the
software up to date, and run the required RAM. This computer currently
has 3 GB. I use the proper tools to removed failed installs or obsolete
software, which prevent a wide variety of problems.

I don't blame the hardware. I don't believe Joerg is either.

 

[[email protected]]

They have to manage software licenses, and need the computers to have
the same OS and updates so they can replace a failed computer, without
spending days or weeks figuring out exactly how you had it set up. Even
then, it would be impossible to know what traps were buried in the
registy without a mirror of your hard drive and that would only work
with identical hardware.

They can do backups without mirroring drives.

AKA: Vista.

What a mess. OTOH, I'm not real happy with Win7 on my NetBook, either.

Just like maintaining a lot of computers that you don't use on a
daily basis.

Perhaps, but those systems are being used for more than one purpose. They're
called *Personal* computers for a reason.

Use whatever you want. Like a network administrator, I have to use
what the users want. Adobe works for the average home computer user and
you'll never convince most of them to change to anything else.

I do! ...except for Crapture, where I have no choice. You, however, seem to
be saying that the network admin knows more about my job than I do.

My point was that even on old hardware, you can run a system with few
or no real problems.

We weren't talking about hardware problems, new or old, just sucky software.

here is part of a recent Belarc Advisor run on theis computer:

Point?

 

[[email protected]]

Backups, yes, but that is most often just the data to be reloaded
after the OS is reinstalled and I've seen too many corrupt backups that
were either made so long ago that they are missing important
information, or the entire backup is corrupt.

At least the backup I use here allows the OS to be reinstalled without
touching the Apps or data, or the entire shebang.

I like 7 a hell of a lot more than Vista. I have a working
Inspiration 531S sitting under the desk. it's a real dog, and demands
permission to run every program, then a lot of them tell you that you
don't have authorization to use, even as the administrator. I've only
seen three Vista computers, and that has been plenty. I may 'downgrade'
it to XP pro to get some use out of it.

SWMBO has Vista on her ThinkPad. She hated it when I got it. She had to
replace about half the apps and lost most of her games. I offered to
"downgrade" it (I got the disks from IBM) but she'd already thrown everything
that wouldn't run away so chose to stick with Vista. I hate it.

There are a *lot* of things I don't like about Win7. I'd much rather have XP
on the NetBook. I won't be upgrading this system.

If it's a 'Personal' computer, the company wouldn't supply it.

Wrong. If it wasn't a "personal" computer they'd use a mainframe and
terminals.

There you go, trying to put words into my mouth. You want to do
their job as well as yours, rather than go through channels to get what
you need.

Now *you're* putting words in my mouth. I want them to get the thing to work
and get out of my way. ...and stop futzing with things. Get the servers
working, if they have nothing to do. Do something to *HELP*.

To give you an idea of the age and capability of the system that
behaves for me.

Again, the problem *isn't* hardware. Software sucks.

 

[Joerg]

Gents,

The saga continues. Client has tried to OCR a file using Adobe Acrobat 9
(the paid program) and it refused, with a message "The object contains
renderable text". But Adobe Acrobat Reader cannot find any of the text
in it.

What gives?

Regards,

Joerg

 

[Rich Webb]

Gents,

The saga continues. Client has tried to OCR a file using Adobe Acrobat 9
(the paid program) and it refused, with a message "The object contains
renderable text". But Adobe Acrobat Reader cannot find any of the text
in it.

What gives?

From the interwebs, it looks like AA throws this error if there is
vector text instead of, or in addition to, bitmapped text. Since, if I'm
correctly following the adventure so far ;-) you have *only* vector
text, you're SOOL. The apparent fix is to export the whole thing as a
TIF or other bitmapped format, reimport into Adobe, and /then/ OCR it.

 

[Joerg]

From the interwebs, it looks like AA throws this error if there is
vector text instead of, or in addition to, bitmapped text. ...

Yes, it's vector graphics. But Jim was touting Acrobat as the ultimate
cat's meouw. And then it can't decipher very clean vector graphics? Even
the free OCR program that came with the old Logitech Scanman could do
that and that was written in the 80's.

... Since, if I'm
correctly following the adventure so far ;-) you have *only* vector
text, you're SOOL. The apparent fix is to export the whole thing as a
TIF or other bitmapped format, reimport into Adobe, and /then/ OCR it.

Thanks, we'll try that next. Kind of sad that one has to do such
contortions but I guess that's life then

 

[Joerg]

Gents,

The saga continues. Client has tried to OCR a file using Adobe Acrobat 9
(the paid program) and it refused, with a message "The object contains
renderable text". But Adobe Acrobat Reader cannot find any of the text
in it.

What gives?

Regards,

Joerg

[snip]

"a file"? That's really informative. What kind of file? And what
does, "But Adobe Acrobat _Reader_ cannot find any of the text in it"
mean?

We had talked about PDF here, so naturally what I meant is a PDF file.
Acrobat Reader not finding text is rather simple: You key M15 into the
li'l text box, hit "find next" and it won't find M15. But M15 is clearly
there.

I'm sure glad I don't contract you to conduct experiments and
accurately log the data ;-)

You don't have to. My clients do and the are quite happy with me.

I find you lacking in providing accurate details when you encounter
problems with your system. Zeroing in on the _facts_ with you is like
pulling hen's teeth ;-)

Maybe you should "go modern" and resort to documenting everything in
hardcopy form, using a tractor-feed dot-matrix printer ?

How come that Rich completely and correctly understood my post and came
up with an answer that hit the nail on the head?

 

[Joerg]

Jim Thompson wrote:
Gents,

The saga continues. Client has tried to OCR a file using Adobe Acrobat 9
(the paid program) and it refused, with a message "The object contains
renderable text". But Adobe Acrobat Reader cannot find any of the text
in it.

What gives?

Regards,

Joerg

[snip]

"a file"? That's really informative. What kind of file? And what
does, "But Adobe Acrobat _Reader_ cannot find any of the text in it"
mean?

We had talked about PDF here, so naturally what I meant is a PDF file.
Acrobat Reader not finding text is rather simple: You key M15 into the
li'l text box, hit "find next" and it won't find M15. But M15 is clearly
there.


I'm sure glad I don't contract you to conduct experiments and
accurately log the data ;-)

You don't have to. My clients do and the are quite happy with me.
I find you lacking in providing accurate details when you encounter
problems with your system. Zeroing in on the _facts_ with you is like
pulling hen's teeth ;-)

Maybe you should "go modern" and resort to documenting everything in
hardcopy form, using a tractor-feed dot-matrix printer ?

How come that Rich completely and correctly understood my post and came
up with an answer that hit the nail on the head?

Have you OCR'd yet? Searchable?

A re-imported TIFF file? Not yet, we have other pressing issues today,
more chip-design related ones. Got to get this thing into layout.

 

[Joerg]

Jim Thompson wrote: [snip]

Have you OCR'd yet? Searchable?

A re-imported TIFF file? Not yet, we have other pressing issues today,
more chip-design related ones. Got to get this thing into layout.

I've lost track. You couldn't do searchable PDF from Mentor? Correct?

Correct, the PDFs coming from there are not searchable.

How about from Crapture?

PDF schematics generated with Orcad are searchable.

I just fired up Crapture. It's obscure, you have to click Print, then
Setup to choose a different printer than default. I printed to PDF,
text searches just fine. (Now I _did_ use Adobe PDFwriter as the
printer.)

I don't have Adobe PDF Writer or any other Adobe SW other than Acrobat
Reader, yet I can generate searchable PDF schematics with Orcad without
a problem.

My client has Adobe Acrobat 9 and it was unable to OCR the PDF file from
Mentor. The lettering in those files is clearly vector-style. So as soon
as we get some other pressing work out of the way we'll try to import
TIFF into Acrobat 9 instead of PDF as Rich suggested, to see if that
makes it work.

Some CAD software is so last century :-(