this app can definitely help improve my Chinese. ipad 3 is coming out soon, and I plan to use that instead...hopefully they have a good camera to make this fully functional
Does this feature require internet access? Could you use it on an iPod touch when not in a wifi zone, or when in another country where you do not want to pay roaming charges?
@mmunuay It works without internet access, but unfortunately it doesn't work very well on the iPod Touch due to the iPod camera's lack of an autofocus lens - without that, it can't see close-up text clearly enough to recognize it. There are stick-on macro lenses you can buy for the iPod that can help with this, but really the best bet is to get a used iPhone 3GS (oldest model that has autofocus).
@mikexlarry Sadly no, the iPhone 3G doesn't have enough RAM to do real-time OCR without crashing, and even if we were able to fix that, the camera is so poor (low-resolution and no autofocus) that it wouldn't be able to see text clearly enough to recognize it.
@maryviscos Yes, but the iPad 1 has no camera and the iPad 2's camera is terrible so live OCR doesn't really work well on it - OCR of still images works beautifully, though.
@motherandy Not yet, but our first public Android beta-test version should be available soon and will probably include something close to full OCR functionality. Follow plecosoft on fb or twitter to be notified when it's ready.
Is there a way for the software to recognize white text on black background? I tried the demo and it worked great for white on black but not the other way around.
@omidood It should do it automatically, but it's kind of finicky in still image mode (already fixed for the next bug-fix update), so you can manually toggle by tapping on the camera button at the top of the screen, then tapping on the rightmost icon.
@beingbanana Yes, but to see text well at close range (e.g. in a book) you need an external macro lens - little gadget that sticks on the back of the iPod (which doesn't have an autofocus camera) to improve focus. You can try out the system for free to see if it works well enough for you - download our free basic app, open it, tap on the menu button at the bottom right corner of the screen, tap on "Add-ons" and "Optical Character Recognizer."
My question is.. does this technology currently work "outdoors".. by this I mean.. can I walk down the street, look at a street sign (such as at a bus stop) and point my phone's camera at it, and it translates it for me in real-time? What about shop signs that you see across the street or in front of you?
While it's nice that it can read from a book.. it's kind of limited if that's all it does..
I'd make it so that touching anything pauses the translation. That is even touching the image which currently does nothing. Otherwise the button would have to be in both upper corners as I often switch hands and my thumb is always in the upper corners when holding the phone steady.
@danielschlaug Touching anywhere in the video outside of the recognition area, in other words? (we still need the corners of that to be touchable, and in the soon-to-be-submitted 2.2.2 update we've also made the characters inside of the box tappable when paused)
@plecosoft exactly, it'd give you the feeling of temporarily "grabbing on to the current frame". From there you might readjust your grip on the phone and tap the permanent pause with a second finger (or possibly slide to that button and release to make the pause permanent).
@danielschlaug Hadn't thought of this as temporary but that's very interesting, dovetails nicely with another new 2.2.2 feature that also entails a temporary pause... have to see if we can squeeze this in for 2.2.2 but might make sense in a later release if not, thanks!
@danielschlaug Thanks! We've hired professional designers for this one (had to spend our OCR earnings on something :-) ) - should be quite stunning when it's finished.
Been using this a lot and it's great. Button placement could be better though, I always have to rearrange my grip to reach the pause button, most often losing the translation in the process.
Oh and why not add a Japanese dictionary as an add on?
@danielschlaug Thanks for the feedback. Would you prefer the pause button closer to the right edge or the left edge? (I suppose either way we'd have to provide an option to reverse it for left-handed users)
Japanese would be tricky since our system isn't designed to recognize all of the Joyo Kanji (there are some that are unique to Japanese) or any of the Kana - we've got so many other things in the works (UI overhaul, half a dozen new dictionaries, Android) that we'd rather not get distracted.
this is soooooooooo awesome! =) too bad i have an itouch 4th gen instead of a iphone 4g =( i'm currently taking a mandarin course and the OCR would have been UBER helpful in translating the text. oh well. i'll simply wait a couple more years before i can afford to get the iphone 4g hahah.
@softalpenglow We've actually seen decent results with the iPod Touch when using an external stick-on macro lens - biggest problem is getting the macro lens to stay attached since the area on the back of the iPod near the lens is curved. But you can try it for yourself by going to pleco.com/ipafoverride.html and registering your device - that'll override the lockout and let you download / try / purchase OCR on an iPod Touch 4G.
@ShakaUVM Android support coming, just had our first successful test of that last week (though the UI isn't very pretty yet). Japanese probably not, by the time we had a Japanese version ready some other company would have beaten us to the punch so we'd rather focus on our core market of Chinese learners. (also why we're not in a hurry to develop a standalone translator app for travelers etc - by March there'll be half a dozen Chinese companies offering something like that for $1)
@animefx Not unless nobody else does - there seem to be a lot of new apps appearing with similar capabilities now, so by the time we had a Japanese version ready somebody else would probably have beaten us to the punch; better to focus on Chinese since we've got 10 years of experience with that and stacks of dictionary database licenses / business connections / links / reviews / other things to keep us on top of that market.
@MoreYummy English-to-Chinese OCR we're not really sure about the usefulness of - OCRing a word in an alphabetic language like English isn't going to be much faster than just typing it on on a keyboard, at least not on a smartphone with a full keyboard.
@Curt1E Android yes - first half of 2011. WP7 we'll only consider if/when they allow us to develop in native code - we don't think the performance would be good enough in .NET - and Symbian we just don't think has much of a future, if we wanted our software to work on Nokias we'd write for MeeGo instead.
@Curt1E You can cross-develop for the UI, I think, but there are enough differences that it's still a LOT of work to support both. Anyway neither one has much of a third-party software market at the moment... but HTC's almost certain to roll out an Android device like the 7 Pro soon, or Microsoft might decide to open up native-code development. iPods don't support our OCR system due to their lack of autofocus lenses, unfortunately.
@RoyaleCafe Japanese would be a *lot* of work (different fonts, additional characters, kana), and to be honest we're not sure if it would ever pay off - some other company with more experience making Japanese dictionary software is probably already hard at work on a feature like this, and given that we've never done anything for Japanese before, our product might have a tough time competing with that.
@realism001 Price will be $15-$20, and no, we won't be putting it in the bundles since it doesn't work on iPods / iPads / pre-3GS iPhones; we don't want to raise prices on everyone for a feature the majority of our customers can't use.
@benhamu1 Just Chinese for the moment. In the world of OCR, Chinese is a rather unique problem; even Japanese isn't as similar as people might think, and alphabetic languages are totally different. And no internet connection is required, it works offline and instantly, though we are considering adding Google Translate support in a future update.
@nestleomega Unfortunately no, WM sales are no longer high enough to justify developing something like this for it - we'd never come close to making our money back. (Windows Phone 7 won't help since it's programmed entirely differently - even if we were planning a WP7 version, which we're not, it would be pretty much impossible to get a live OCR system to perform well on it within the constraints of the .NET/Silverlight programming environment)
@Lorp64 Scan yes - there's a "Capture Text" mode that does larger multi-line blocks, and even an experimental still image mode that can do an entire page; not quite as accurate as one-word-at-a-time but usable if the lighting etc are good.
As far as translating text, you can bring it up in our document reader and tap on words to look them up, or you can copy it to the pasteboard and stick it into another app to run it through Google Translate; no in-app Google Translate support yet, though.
@LTSV83 We'd consider a Japanese version, but we keep expecting to see a similar feature soon from one of the companies that specializes in Japanese dictionary software - if none of them do it we'll certainly think about it, though, we'd just like to go through a few releases with Chinese and refine the interface / work out the kinks first.
@Baumkuchen5000 Yes, but only the most common 5401 traditional characters - have to keep the character set limited to avoid hurting accuracy with too many false positives.
@MrGrantguy234 Coming very soon, held back by a few things beyond our control but we think we've worked them out now; releasing a second beta in a couple of days and hopefully submitting to Apple soon after.
I don´t know if it has use in a real life. All you get is translation of symbols. Though how you know which are together and which stands alone? One symbol means something, but in combination with some other it can have another meaning. And you can choose if you read 1,2,3 or 4 symbols together, it would always mean something else. What if it should be 2 and 2? Or 3 and 1?
Maybe there should be also a hint, which symbols belong together and which not...
@Availablenickname1 That's done manually with the resize box - unfortunately, since the system can't see an entire sentence at a time there's no way it can detect word boundaries accurately. Basically it searches for the longest possible word starting at the left (or, for vertical text, the top) of the box.
WOW!!! I Just discovered Pleco, due to the story ran by Engadget on your 2.2 release an more importantly about this add-on for your app! Mike do you have a more specific date in mind yet, because I just downloaded and have been familiarizing myself with how your dictionary/flashcards work - Thank You for this, I will purchase the add-on the moment it's available!!
@Wasaki86 Thanks! It's an iPhone 4, but the system seems to work quite well on the 3GS too - for all of the MHz bumps, mobile processors actually haven't gotten all that much faster in the last year.
This could potentially allow me to understand restaurant menus here in Taiwan where I've lived for many years without knowing Chinese. If I didn't have an iphone already, this OCR function alone would be a reason to get an iphone!
@GearoidOmartin It works with some signs, but it depends on the font of the sign (computer-like SongTi fonts are best - calligraphy's generally a no-no) and the color contrast / lack of any background images that might confuse the recognizer; unfortunately, it's not possible to develop a system that can recognize every sign you might encounter. Though traffic signs at least usually are high-contrast and have nice clear standard fonts, so those will probably work pretty well.
This looks amazing! I cannot wait to purchase it :) So, with the new release of the 4G iPod Touch (which does include the back camera, although I heard the quality might not be as good as the iPhone), does that mean it will also include this feature? Also, just wondering, would you be able to point this on a TV and let it scan the subtitles?
@missbrokensmile The back camera on the new iPod doesn't appear to support autofocus, so unfortunately it probably won't be able to do OCR. We're still trying to get more definitive info on this from Apple / early reviews - even without autofocus, there are a few fixed-focus lenses they could have used that might be able to work at sufficiently close range to do OCR - but the odds are that it won't work, unfortunately.
@ksmerwin TBD based on beta-tester feedback, but probably something in the neighborhood of what we charge for our fullscreen handwriting recognizer module.
this is the reason why I am buying a whole new phone just to get Pleco. The development team is obviously dedicated to improving their product which is above all other chinese electronic dictionaries. Very big fan. It is the only dictionary I use, especially because it incorporates so many other chinese dictionaries into the one software, so no need to waste time looking up several books.
@Aristotle88 Pretty close to the iPhone 4, the lower resolution occasionally hurts you a bit with very small / fuzzy characters but overall it's not that much of a step down.
@KrissiBenassi Unfortunately no - there just isn't enough interest in Windows Mobile anymore to justify developing this for it, particularly as very few Windows Mobile phones shipped with sufficiently powerful processors / high-quality cameras to make live OCR work well. (if everybody had an HD2 it might be a different story, but then again the HD2 can be re-flashed to run Android)
@awsome2theblossom Not that we're aware of, but it wouldn't be too difficult - for an alphabetic language like Spanish somebody could probably even make this work with an open-source OCR engine like Tesseract. So given the amount of idea-borrowing that goes on among iPhone software developers I imagine there could be another app doing this for Spanish by the end of the year.
@cbbjork Not right away, but if the product sells well on iPhone and Google doesn't beat us to the punch by adding built-in OCR support in Android 3.0 we certainly might consider it; we're already planning to port the rest of our software to Android.
@kaschtnsamtdiekarbln Not right away, but if a Japanese dictionary maker doesn't rapidly follow suit with their own version of this we certainly might consider a Japanese OCR product.
Just checking to see if someone else possibly might/could sue for that technology or vice versa. Just been seeing lots of software patent litigation out there among the big players but you are a better judge/expert. Thanks for making great software. Looking forward to OCR regardless. A lot has happened in only a few years. Friends used to dream of a device like the iphone4 and Pleco. Looks this year is the year...
@rdunn98 Understood, thanks! We wouldn't really have the money to sue anyone for infringement if we did have a patent for something, but a fortunate corollary to that is that we don't have the money to be worth suing for infringement either - it's pretty much a game between big companies and the occasional small-company-with-80-lawyers-and-nothing-else; even if someone won a judgement that gave them title to all of Pleco's assets it probably wouldn't be worth enough to cover their legal costs.
@rdunn98 People have been working on this sort of technology in labs for decades - the list of prior art is a mile long, we just took what they'd done a little bit further. There'll be a dozen other apps doing this by the end of the year, and we welcome that - we just want to make great software. (software patents suck in general)
(seriously, Roger, you don't build a successful software business with patents, you build it by building great products and treating your customers and partners well)
@sisone We're certainly considering a Japanese version, but honestly, given how much copying there is among app developers, now that we've shown this is possible on iPhone we fully expect another company that specializes in Japanese dictionaries to beat us to the punch - we're hoping that we'll at least be the first to release this for Chinese, but by the end of the year there could be a dozen apps offering similar OCR features for other languages.
Mike, this is awesome. Are there any plans to port this app to Android? If not, then I will purchase a next gen iPod Touch (if it has a rear camera) just for this app.
We're porting pretty much our whole app to Android, but we haven't committed to bringing OCR to it yet because 1) we want to make sure it's actually a success on iPhone, and 2) we think there's a pretty good chance that Google might build something like this into Android soon (they have the ability / interest in OCR). But if it is a success on iPhone and "Goggles Live" doesn't emerge / doesn't support Chinese / isn't very good we'd certainly plan to bring this to Android too.
Thanks for your reply. Waiting for a possible OCR implementation in Android makes a lot of sense, especially if porting the code is difficult or if a lot of space can be saved by sharing common libraries. Good luck!
nice job, actually you did my final year project (the only difference is that yours chines) did you use Tesseract as OCR engine or you implement it from scratch ?
@Hadirj Thanks! We didn't use Tesseract, no; if we ever wanted to implement the equivalent of this for English we might consider it (except that by the time we do there'll be a dozen other apps doing the same thing :-) but for Chinese I don't know if it's possible to get Tesseract's performance up to where it would need to be, at least not in the current version.
Mike, this is absolutely incredible. It's seriously going to be a game-changer for learners. And grad students trying to get through more difficult and obscure texts, I could imagine.
I wonder if it would work with things like signs on the street?
Signs on the street should work, as long as they're in a standard-ish font and are high-contrast (not lots of stuff going on in the background behind text, a limitation which unfortunately may make it difficult to use this for movie subtitles).
I'm studying Chinese in Taiwan at the moment and this dictionary is going to change everything. again. This will be one of the few paid apps I've ever purchased. I'm incredibly impressed!
It is impressive, but I wish you would have shown us it's limits. Can it recognize different kinds of fonts? can it recognize hand writing? What happens when you pull the iphone away from the page a little bit, or a lot? How far is the distance that you can hold the phone from the page before the characters can't be recognized? I want to see both good and bad aspects before I buy the thing.
@kentoakowen We're actually planning to have a free in-app demo that will show you exactly which characters it comes up with (but not let you look them up in the dictionary or copy / paste them somewhere else), so you can use that to see if it works to your satisfaction before you purchase it.
@kentoakowen It handles lots of different fonts, but unfortunately it doesn't recognize handwriting unless it's very very neat / print-like. Pulling the iPhone away from / pushing it towards the page is fine as long as it isn't so far that it puts the iPhone's lens out of focus - if it does, you can re-focus by shaking the phone or tapping on the focus button (middle of top bar). As far as distance from the page, I'd say with standard-size printed type on an iPhone 4 you can go about 2 feet.
this app can definitely help improve my Chinese. ipad 3 is coming out soon, and I plan to use that instead...hopefully they have a good camera to make this fully functional
Maxcloudy 3 days ago
Does this feature require internet access? Could you use it on an iPod touch when not in a wifi zone, or when in another country where you do not want to pay roaming charges?
mmunuay 1 week ago
@mmunuay It works without internet access, but unfortunately it doesn't work very well on the iPod Touch due to the iPod camera's lack of an autofocus lens - without that, it can't see close-up text clearly enough to recognize it. There are stick-on macro lenses you can buy for the iPod that can help with this, but really the best bet is to get a used iPhone 3GS (oldest model that has autofocus).
plecosoft 1 week ago
Fifteen dollars?
loadingscreens 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
This video went viral on Santo Domingo
cleogonzalez614 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
This video is a favorite on Dublin
dwightpaul25 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
will the OCR work on my iphone 3G?
mikexlarry 3 months ago
@mikexlarry Sadly no, the iPhone 3G doesn't have enough RAM to do real-time OCR without crashing, and even if we were able to fix that, the camera is so poor (low-resolution and no autofocus) that it wouldn't be able to see text clearly enough to recognize it.
plecosoft 3 months ago
@plecosoft what bout 3gs? SMOOTH AND GOOD?
mikexlarry 3 months ago
@mikexlarry Yes, the 3GS seems to work fine - in fact in certain circumstances it can even be a bit smoother than the 4.
plecosoft 3 months ago
Comment removed
mikexlarry 3 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Test and keep an iPhone 4s for free at fresh-phones(dot)com
gordi45able 4 months ago
Sorry if anyone knows could please answer my question.Is this application avaible also for ipad?
maryviscos 9 months ago in playlist Electronics & Gadgets
@maryviscos Yes, but the iPad 1 has no camera and the iPad 2's camera is terrible so live OCR doesn't really work well on it - OCR of still images works beautifully, though.
plecosoft 9 months ago
it's fuckin magic dude !
zbotto 9 months ago
@motherandy Not yet, but our first public Android beta-test version should be available soon and will probably include something close to full OCR functionality. Follow plecosoft on fb or twitter to be notified when it's ready.
plecosoft 10 months ago
can this work on other smart phones, say, any of the HTC or Samsung models?
motherandy 10 months ago
Is there a way for the software to recognize white text on black background? I tried the demo and it worked great for white on black but not the other way around.
omidood 10 months ago
@omidood It should do it automatically, but it's kind of finicky in still image mode (already fixed for the next bug-fix update), so you can manually toggle by tapping on the camera button at the top of the screen, then tapping on the rightmost icon.
plecosoft 10 months ago
works for itouch 4? avaliable in app store?
beingbanana 11 months ago
@beingbanana Yes, but to see text well at close range (e.g. in a book) you need an external macro lens - little gadget that sticks on the back of the iPod (which doesn't have an autofocus camera) to improve focus. You can try out the system for free to see if it works well enough for you - download our free basic app, open it, tap on the menu button at the bottom right corner of the screen, tap on "Add-ons" and "Optical Character Recognizer."
plecosoft 11 months ago
@plecosoft amazing. ill definitely purchase as soon as i can test it
beingbanana 11 months ago
how much is this app? Thanks in advance :-)
jessi95605 1 year ago
@jessi95605 $15, or $12 with an educational discount - you can try out a demo version which displays Pinyin but no definition for free, though.
plecosoft 1 year ago
My question is.. does this technology currently work "outdoors".. by this I mean.. can I walk down the street, look at a street sign (such as at a bus stop) and point my phone's camera at it, and it translates it for me in real-time? What about shop signs that you see across the street or in front of you?
While it's nice that it can read from a book.. it's kind of limited if that's all it does..
light487 1 year ago
@light487 It works if the sign is in a standard font against a flat background - with calligraphic text there isn't much we can do.
plecosoft 1 year ago
I'd make it so that touching anything pauses the translation. That is even touching the image which currently does nothing. Otherwise the button would have to be in both upper corners as I often switch hands and my thumb is always in the upper corners when holding the phone steady.
danielschlaug 1 year ago
@danielschlaug Touching anywhere in the video outside of the recognition area, in other words? (we still need the corners of that to be touchable, and in the soon-to-be-submitted 2.2.2 update we've also made the characters inside of the box tappable when paused)
plecosoft 1 year ago
@plecosoft exactly, it'd give you the feeling of temporarily "grabbing on to the current frame". From there you might readjust your grip on the phone and tap the permanent pause with a second finger (or possibly slide to that button and release to make the pause permanent).
danielschlaug 1 year ago
@danielschlaug Hadn't thought of this as temporary but that's very interesting, dovetails nicely with another new 2.2.2 feature that also entails a temporary pause... have to see if we can squeeze this in for 2.2.2 but might make sense in a later release if not, thanks!
plecosoft 1 year ago
I totally get that, well, mostly works with Japanese as is anyway. And the app needs all the UI love it can get!
danielschlaug 1 year ago
@danielschlaug Thanks! We've hired professional designers for this one (had to spend our OCR earnings on something :-) ) - should be quite stunning when it's finished.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Been using this a lot and it's great. Button placement could be better though, I always have to rearrange my grip to reach the pause button, most often losing the translation in the process.
Oh and why not add a Japanese dictionary as an add on?
danielschlaug 1 year ago
@danielschlaug Thanks for the feedback. Would you prefer the pause button closer to the right edge or the left edge? (I suppose either way we'd have to provide an option to reverse it for left-handed users)
Japanese would be tricky since our system isn't designed to recognize all of the Joyo Kanji (there are some that are unique to Japanese) or any of the Kana - we've got so many other things in the works (UI overhaul, half a dozen new dictionaries, Android) that we'd rather not get distracted.
plecosoft 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Local naughty women online benaughtyman.info
samnthikumari 1 year ago
this is soooooooooo awesome! =) too bad i have an itouch 4th gen instead of a iphone 4g =( i'm currently taking a mandarin course and the OCR would have been UBER helpful in translating the text. oh well. i'll simply wait a couple more years before i can afford to get the iphone 4g hahah.
softalpenglow 1 year ago
@softalpenglow We've actually seen decent results with the iPod Touch when using an external stick-on macro lens - biggest problem is getting the macro lens to stay attached since the area on the back of the iPod near the lens is curved. But you can try it for yourself by going to pleco.com/ipafoverride.html and registering your device - that'll override the lockout and let you download / try / purchase OCR on an iPod Touch 4G.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Woot, this looks awesome. Android support coming? I'd love a Japanese version for hiragana/katakana as well as Japanese-specific Kanji, too.
ShakaUVM 1 year ago
@ShakaUVM Android support coming, just had our first successful test of that last week (though the UI isn't very pretty yet). Japanese probably not, by the time we had a Japanese version ready some other company would have beaten us to the punch so we'd rather focus on our core market of Chinese learners. (also why we're not in a hurry to develop a standalone translator app for travelers etc - by March there'll be half a dozen Chinese companies offering something like that for $1)
plecosoft 1 year ago
Very cool. Will you make a version that can do the same thing with Japanese characters (hiragana, katakana, and kanji) ??
animefx 1 year ago
@animefx Not unless nobody else does - there seem to be a lot of new apps appearing with similar capabilities now, so by the time we had a Japanese version ready somebody else would probably have beaten us to the punch; better to focus on Chinese since we've got 10 years of experience with that and stacks of dictionary database licenses / business connections / links / reviews / other things to keep us on top of that market.
plecosoft 1 year ago 2
Awesome work right there folks! That is a really easy way to look up the words you don't know.
Any support for the traditional Chinese? I know I might be asking too much.
Khrada 1 year ago
@Khrada We do support traditional characters, yes - not the really obscure ones, but the most common 5401 at least.
plecosoft 1 year ago
@plecosoft
Holy, that's some big works you're doing the recognitions on.
Khrada 1 year ago
How about the other way around? and more languages.
MoreYummy 1 year ago
@MoreYummy English-to-Chinese OCR we're not really sure about the usefulness of - OCRing a word in an alphabetic language like English isn't going to be much faster than just typing it on on a keyboard, at least not on a smartphone with a full keyboard.
plecosoft 1 year ago
@plecosoft I see your point on speed. But using camera is faster than typing in many cases, especially on a smart phone touch screen.
Maybe some are able to type fast without typing error, but not everyone. Same goes to those who can type Chinese very fast with WuBi.
MoreYummy 1 year ago
Do you have plans for Wp7, Symbian and Android release
Curt1E 1 year ago
@Curt1E Android yes - first half of 2011. WP7 we'll only consider if/when they allow us to develop in native code - we don't think the performance would be good enough in .NET - and Symbian we just don't think has much of a future, if we wanted our software to work on Nokias we'd write for MeeGo instead.
plecosoft 1 year ago
@plecosoft thx for the fast reply
I was under the impression you can write for both symbian and meego at the same time with nokia QT.
I want this software but I dont want a Iphone I like a both hardware keyboard and touch my choice is nokia e7 or htc 7 pro
But I want this software, I study chinese in college and when I read about this I knew I must buy it.
I guess I could always buy an ipod or a cheap android when you release for that platform.
Curt1E 1 year ago
@Curt1E You can cross-develop for the UI, I think, but there are enough differences that it's still a LOT of work to support both. Anyway neither one has much of a third-party software market at the moment... but HTC's almost certain to roll out an Android device like the 7 Pro soon, or Microsoft might decide to open up native-code development. iPods don't support our OCR system due to their lack of autofocus lenses, unfortunately.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Japanese?????
RoyaleCafe 1 year ago
@RoyaleCafe Japanese would be a *lot* of work (different fonts, additional characters, kana), and to be honest we're not sure if it would ever pay off - some other company with more experience making Japanese dictionary software is probably already hard at work on a feature like this, and given that we've never done anything for Japanese before, our product might have a tough time competing with that.
plecosoft 1 year ago
cool. this will take the world by storm.
hope555joy 1 year ago
@hope555joy I agree! especially business people or tourists in China. i'm so getting this!
kockgunner 1 year ago
I LOVE IT!!! Makes making my 作业 much easier ：）
atonba 1 year ago
I LOVE IT!!! Makes making my 作业 much easier ：）
atonba 1 year ago
Just bought this update and I was literally blown away :-)
Check out my videos from China!
softizen 1 year ago
FINALLY RELEASED!!!
I've been dying to test it!
sacredforce 1 year ago
That looks incredible!
dubaobao 1 year ago
can u please add english to chinese OCR?! i think most of the chinese ppl are waiting for these kind of apps.
justinzyl 1 year ago
@justinzyl Not sure how useful that would be - even if you're fairly new at English, it doesn't take long to type in a word on a keyboard.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Is this available for purchase yet?
jaytres003 1 year ago
@jaytres003 Not yet, still waiting for Apple to approve it.
plecosoft 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Please will you email existing Pleco account holders when this is available. I can't wait!
mhm2908 1 year ago
Comment removed
mhm2908 1 year ago
How much will it cost? Will it be a part of the bundle or separate?
realism001 1 year ago
@realism001 Price will be $15-$20, and no, we won't be putting it in the bundles since it doesn't work on iPods / iPads / pre-3GS iPhones; we don't want to raise prices on everyone for a feature the majority of our customers can't use.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Amazing!!! how many languages it support? Do I need an Internet connection?
benhamu1 1 year ago
@benhamu1 Just Chinese for the moment. In the world of OCR, Chinese is a rather unique problem; even Japanese isn't as similar as people might think, and alphabetic languages are totally different. And no internet connection is required, it works offline and instantly, though we are considering adding Google Translate support in a future update.
plecosoft 1 year ago
does it available for windows mobile?
nestleomega 1 year ago
@nestleomega Unfortunately no, WM sales are no longer high enough to justify developing something like this for it - we'd never come close to making our money back. (Windows Phone 7 won't help since it's programmed entirely differently - even if we were planning a WP7 version, which we're not, it would be pretty much impossible to get a live OCR system to perform well on it within the constraints of the .NET/Silverlight programming environment)
plecosoft 1 year ago
@mmcgeary487 As soon as Apple approves it.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Pretty awesome. Congratulations for another incredible work Pleco. One question> can it scan and translate complete paragraphs_?
Lorp64 1 year ago
@Lorp64 Scan yes - there's a "Capture Text" mode that does larger multi-line blocks, and even an experimental still image mode that can do an entire page; not quite as accurate as one-word-at-a-time but usable if the lighting etc are good.
As far as translating text, you can bring it up in our document reader and tap on words to look them up, or you can copy it to the pasteboard and stick it into another app to run it through Google Translate; no in-app Google Translate support yet, though.
plecosoft 1 year ago
wao! 漢字をスキャンして同時に意味も表示させるＩＰＨＯＮＥアプリ！！日本語ではあるのかな？
muy bueno, aunque en ingles, app para iphone que detectan las etras chinas kanji y figura el significados. que salga en japones ya!
LTSV83 1 year ago
@LTSV83 We'd consider a Japanese version, but we keep expecting to see a similar feature soon from one of the companies that specializes in Japanese dictionary software - if none of them do it we'll certainly think about it, though, we'd just like to go through a few releases with Chinese and refine the interface / work out the kinks first.
plecosoft 1 year ago
greetings from taiwan, will this software support traditional characters?
Baumkuchen5000 1 year ago
@Baumkuchen5000 Yes, but only the most common 5401 traditional characters - have to keep the character set limited to avoid hurting accuracy with too many false positives.
plecosoft 1 year ago
where can i get this app ?
andrew6b13 1 year ago
@andrew6b13 Nowhere yet, but it should be available in iTunes within a few weeks.
plecosoft 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Mike - it's nice to hear from you, but it's the end of September now!! what's the dealio
MrGrantguy234 1 year ago
Mike - it's nice to hear from you, but it's the end of September now!! what's the dealio
MrGrantguy234 1 year ago
@MrGrantguy234 Coming very soon, held back by a few things beyond our control but we think we've worked them out now; releasing a second beta in a couple of days and hopefully submitting to Apple soon after.
plecosoft 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Great off-line mobile usability, amazing. Any latest updates on possibility of using this app with the new Ipod Touch by any chance?
Martijnvdenberg 1 year ago
Great off-line mobile usability, amazing. Any latest updates on possibility to use with new Ipod touch by any chance?
Martijnvdenberg 1 year ago
@Martijnvdenberg Still trying to work out something on that, but I'm not too optimistic about support in the first release...
plecosoft 1 year ago
I hope japanese version also supported.
ongaku1suki 1 year ago
@ongaku1suki Possibly eventually, but I'm inclined to think a dedicated Japanese dictionary maker will beat us to the punch.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Hey! That's the chinese version of "Merchant of Venis
zorrolizhi 1 year ago
@zorrolizhi Lord of the Rings, actually.
plecosoft 1 year ago
I don´t know if it has use in a real life. All you get is translation of symbols. Though how you know which are together and which stands alone? One symbol means something, but in combination with some other it can have another meaning. And you can choose if you read 1,2,3 or 4 symbols together, it would always mean something else. What if it should be 2 and 2? Or 3 and 1?
Maybe there should be also a hint, which symbols belong together and which not...
Availablenickname1 1 year ago
@Availablenickname1 That's done manually with the resize box - unfortunately, since the system can't see an entire sentence at a time there's no way it can detect word boundaries accurately. Basically it searches for the longest possible word starting at the left (or, for vertical text, the top) of the box.
plecosoft 1 year ago
WOW!!! I Just discovered Pleco, due to the story ran by Engadget on your 2.2 release an more importantly about this add-on for your app! Mike do you have a more specific date in mind yet, because I just downloaded and have been familiarizing myself with how your dictionary/flashcards work - Thank You for this, I will purchase the add-on the moment it's available!!
Chillin797979 1 year ago
@Chillin797979 Soon - within a couple more weeks hopefully; held up by a small not-directly-OCR-related problem but things are looking good now.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Hi very nice app, I am studying in Shanghai and this is very useful to me.
It's almost like impossible to have like this, I am gonna buy this for sure!
One question: Are you using iPhone 3G(S) or iPhone 4 in this video?
Wasaki86 1 year ago
@Wasaki86 Thanks! It's an iPhone 4, but the system seems to work quite well on the 3GS too - for all of the MHz bumps, mobile processors actually haven't gotten all that much faster in the last year.
plecosoft 1 year ago
This could potentially allow me to understand restaurant menus here in Taiwan where I've lived for many years without knowing Chinese. If I didn't have an iphone already, this OCR function alone would be a reason to get an iphone!
elburro88 1 year ago
@GearoidOmartin It works with some signs, but it depends on the font of the sign (computer-like SongTi fonts are best - calligraphy's generally a no-no) and the color contrast / lack of any background images that might confuse the recognizer; unfortunately, it's not possible to develop a system that can recognize every sign you might encounter. Though traffic signs at least usually are high-contrast and have nice clear standard fonts, so those will probably work pretty well.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Coming out this month! I can't wait for this.
JustCharlie 1 year ago
This looks amazing! I cannot wait to purchase it :) So, with the new release of the 4G iPod Touch (which does include the back camera, although I heard the quality might not be as good as the iPhone), does that mean it will also include this feature? Also, just wondering, would you be able to point this on a TV and let it scan the subtitles?
missbrokensmile 1 year ago
@missbrokensmile The back camera on the new iPod doesn't appear to support autofocus, so unfortunately it probably won't be able to do OCR. We're still trying to get more definitive info on this from Apple / early reviews - even without autofocus, there are a few fixed-focus lenses they could have used that might be able to work at sufficiently close range to do OCR - but the odds are that it won't work, unfortunately.
plecosoft 1 year ago
@plecosoft
Oh man. I hope you guys can get OCR on the new ipod touch. This news really hurts otherwise :(.
Sinoschism 1 year ago
So, how much?
ksmerwin 1 year ago
@ksmerwin TBD based on beta-tester feedback, but probably something in the neighborhood of what we charge for our fullscreen handwriting recognizer module.
plecosoft 1 year ago
this is the reason why I am buying a whole new phone just to get Pleco. The development team is obviously dedicated to improving their product which is above all other chinese electronic dictionaries. Very big fan. It is the only dictionary I use, especially because it incorporates so many other chinese dictionaries into the one software, so no need to waste time looking up several books.
Maqqie 1 year ago
@Maqqie Thank you very much!
plecosoft 1 year ago
what's the quality of the experience when using the ocr on a 3gs? were you able to utilize the touch to focus on it?
Aristotle88 1 year ago
@Aristotle88 Pretty close to the iPhone 4, the lower resolution occasionally hurts you a bit with very small / fuzzy characters but overall it's not that much of a step down.
plecosoft 1 year ago
@plecosoft thanks for the reply, I'm definitely looking forward to this!
Aristotle88 1 year ago
hey mike,
will this function available for windows mobile as well? i own an htc touch hd, thx.
KrissiBenassi 1 year ago
@KrissiBenassi Unfortunately no - there just isn't enough interest in Windows Mobile anymore to justify developing this for it, particularly as very few Windows Mobile phones shipped with sufficiently powerful processors / high-quality cameras to make live OCR work well. (if everybody had an HD2 it might be a different story, but then again the HD2 can be re-flashed to run Android)
plecosoft 1 year ago
god ! can't wait
lover40x 1 year ago
You guys are amazing! I've been looking for something like this for years! You can count me it!
kevinbeijing 1 year ago
great, thanks for the quick feedback... amazing app!
cbbjork 1 year ago
wow! do they have that for spanish? would b really helpful for school lol
awsome2theblossom 1 year ago
@awsome2theblossom Not that we're aware of, but it wouldn't be too difficult - for an alphabetic language like Spanish somebody could probably even make this work with an open-source OCR engine like Tesseract. So given the amount of idea-borrowing that goes on among iPhone software developers I imagine there could be another app doing this for Spanish by the end of the year.
plecosoft 1 year ago
amazing... not for android, right? :(
cbbjork 1 year ago
@cbbjork Not right away, but if the product sells well on iPhone and Google doesn't beat us to the punch by adding built-in OCR support in Android 3.0 we certainly might consider it; we're already planning to port the rest of our software to Android.
plecosoft 1 year ago
this is INCREDIBLE. Are there any plans for something like this for Japanese?
kaschtnsamtdiekarbln 1 year ago
@kaschtnsamtdiekarbln Not right away, but if a Japanese dictionary maker doesn't rapidly follow suit with their own version of this we certainly might consider a Japanese OCR product.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Can the OCR handle vertically written characters?
tribalsushi 1 year ago
@tribalsushi Yes, it certainly can.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Take that Android...
Kitshuo 1 year ago
want.
sympha 1 year ago
Really amazing, can't wait to load it up!
icebear 1 year ago
Just checking to see if someone else possibly might/could sue for that technology or vice versa. Just been seeing lots of software patent litigation out there among the big players but you are a better judge/expert. Thanks for making great software. Looking forward to OCR regardless. A lot has happened in only a few years. Friends used to dream of a device like the iphone4 and Pleco. Looks this year is the year...
rdunn98 1 year ago
@rdunn98 Understood, thanks! We wouldn't really have the money to sue anyone for infringement if we did have a patent for something, but a fortunate corollary to that is that we don't have the money to be worth suing for infringement either - it's pretty much a game between big companies and the occasional small-company-with-80-lawyers-and-nothing-else; even if someone won a judgement that gave them title to all of Pleco's assets it probably wouldn't be worth enough to cover their legal costs.
plecosoft 1 year ago
WOOOO~working on set phrase!AWESOME
Raphael0925 1 year ago
do u have a patent on it?
rdunn98 1 year ago
@rdunn98 People have been working on this sort of technology in labs for decades - the list of prior art is a mile long, we just took what they'd done a little bit further. There'll be a dozen other apps doing this by the end of the year, and we welcome that - we just want to make great software. (software patents suck in general)
(seriously, Roger, you don't build a successful software business with patents, you build it by building great products and treating your customers and partners well)
plecosoft 1 year ago
Awesome work !
Will you release a Japanese version in the future ?
sisone 1 year ago
@sisone We're certainly considering a Japanese version, but honestly, given how much copying there is among app developers, now that we've shown this is possible on iPhone we fully expect another company that specializes in Japanese dictionaries to beat us to the punch - we're hoping that we'll at least be the first to release this for Chinese, but by the end of the year there could be a dozen apps offering similar OCR features for other languages.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Awesome work !
Will you release a Japanese version in the future ?
sisone 1 year ago
This is really good! Please consider porting the OCR to Android, I'm sure it will be a hit!
sagech888 1 year ago
Mike, this is awesome. Are there any plans to port this app to Android? If not, then I will purchase a next gen iPod Touch (if it has a rear camera) just for this app.
amagawa05 1 year ago
@amagawa05 Thanks!
We're porting pretty much our whole app to Android, but we haven't committed to bringing OCR to it yet because 1) we want to make sure it's actually a success on iPhone, and 2) we think there's a pretty good chance that Google might build something like this into Android soon (they have the ability / interest in OCR). But if it is a success on iPhone and "Goggles Live" doesn't emerge / doesn't support Chinese / isn't very good we'd certainly plan to bring this to Android too.
plecosoft 1 year ago
@plecosoft
Thanks for your reply. Waiting for a possible OCR implementation in Android makes a lot of sense, especially if porting the code is difficult or if a lot of space can be saved by sharing common libraries. Good luck!
amagawa05 1 year ago
Starting at Tsinghua University in 2-3 Weeks.
AWESOME.
beatsiz 1 year ago
nice job, actually you did my final year project (the only difference is that yours chines) did you use Tesseract as OCR engine or you implement it from scratch ?
Hadirj 1 year ago
@Hadirj Thanks! We didn't use Tesseract, no; if we ever wanted to implement the equivalent of this for English we might consider it (except that by the time we do there'll be a dozen other apps doing the same thing :-) but for Chinese I don't know if it's possible to get Tesseract's performance up to where it would need to be, at least not in the current version.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Awesome work! If there was similar for Russian alphabets and I would but it immediately.
redrooster82 1 year ago
Dude. Godsend. Too bad I don't have a camera :(
manyhappyreruns 1 year ago
That's pretty amazing!
Calozor 1 year ago
Mike, this is absolutely incredible. It's seriously going to be a game-changer for learners. And grad students trying to get through more difficult and obscure texts, I could imagine.
I wonder if it would work with things like signs on the street?
bflatnine 1 year ago
@bflatnine Thanks!
Signs on the street should work, as long as they're in a standard-ish font and are high-contrast (not lots of stuff going on in the background behind text, a limitation which unfortunately may make it difficult to use this for movie subtitles).
plecosoft 1 year ago
@plecosoft
Very cool. I imagine it could also work with vertical text too, right?
bflatnine 1 year ago
@bflatnine Yes, works with both horizontal and vertical text.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Mike, you have outdone yourself! great stuff!
eschelar 1 year ago
I'm studying Chinese in Taiwan at the moment and this dictionary is going to change everything. again. This will be one of the few paid apps I've ever purchased. I'm incredibly impressed!
XimenDinforJesus 1 year ago
wow! aint this something!!!!!
buhlemama 1 year ago
Wow Mike - this is very impressive! This truly is taking Pleco to the next level - bravo!
benshiza 1 year ago
This is extremely impressive. I can't wait to use it.
mangochutnet 1 year ago
this is just... awesome!!! incredible...
funaki1978 1 year ago
It is impressive, but I wish you would have shown us it's limits. Can it recognize different kinds of fonts? can it recognize hand writing? What happens when you pull the iphone away from the page a little bit, or a lot? How far is the distance that you can hold the phone from the page before the characters can't be recognized? I want to see both good and bad aspects before I buy the thing.
kentoakowen 1 year ago
@kentoakowen We're actually planning to have a free in-app demo that will show you exactly which characters it comes up with (but not let you look them up in the dictionary or copy / paste them somewhere else), so you can use that to see if it works to your satisfaction before you purchase it.
plecosoft 1 year ago
@kentoakowen It handles lots of different fonts, but unfortunately it doesn't recognize handwriting unless it's very very neat / print-like. Pulling the iPhone away from / pushing it towards the page is fine as long as it isn't so far that it puts the iPhone's lens out of focus - if it does, you can re-focus by shaking the phone or tapping on the focus button (middle of top bar). As far as distance from the page, I'd say with standard-size printed type on an iPhone 4 you can go about 2 feet.
plecosoft 1 year ago
Amazing!
cacahahacaca 1 year ago
This is so cool Mike! been a Pleco fan since you released the software for PalmOS. This is the biggest reason why I should get an iPhone.
zotium 1 year ago
that is so cool!!! LOVE IT!
tu71586 1 year ago
Awesome Mike! Can't wait!
ciaocibai 1 year ago
awesome!
crow610 1 year ago
哇。。。 very impressive !!
brycerice1 1 year ago
wow. that is really impressive.
JustCharlie 1 year ago
Too cool for school. Can't wait to get my hands on it!
coljac 1 year ago