[PLUG] Converting PDF Document to Text

[Rogan Creswick]

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Russell Senior <seniorr at aracnet.com> wrote:
>>>>>> "chris" == chris (fool) mccraw <gently at gmail.com> writes:
>
> chris> unless your copier is smarter than any copier i've ever met
> chris> (and i do use a 6-month-old $80,000 copier daily.  it's not as
> chris> smart as it'd need to be to do what you want), [...]
>
> I want a copier that can scan a handwritten "E=mc^2" (or other
> arbitrary archane formulae) and then creates a document that explains
> to me what it means to arbitrary levels of detail.  Conform, world,
> conform!

Bah -- using paper is *so* '90's ;)

My tablet had no issues interpreting my scrawled out "E=mc^2" (ok, I
did specify the carrot, and this was stroke identification, rather
than straight-up image recognition, so it was a bit easier)  and
wolframalpha did the rest:

 http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=E%3Dmc%5E2

I was really expecting mathworld-level of detail though, so I'm a bit
dissapointed.  Maybe that level of detail is still pending for
physical formulae, or perhaps it's waiting on a general theory of
relativity ;)

For the linux relation... I was using CellWriter, which is nice and
useful, but not as convenient as either the MS handwriting app, or
ShapeWriter -- http://shapewriter.com.  Does anyone know of better
pen-based input mechanisms for linux, or does anyone have interest in
working on such a beast?

--Rogan