I’m trying to figure out how to read “outlined” text in Illustrator/Freehand with Applescript. Essentially, I want to know what letters/numbers/symbols they were before they were outlined. I realize they are vectors and I’m trying to see if there is a way to read the coordinates and determine what the shape represents in terms of which letter, number, symbol. Or, maybe there isa simpler method than reading coordinates. Any help would be greatly appreciated, in fact I’ll pay you to figure it out!
Browser: Firefox 1.5.0.9
Operating System: Mac OS X (10.4)
A possible route that I have yet to try would be to save file as PDF then use Acrobats 'Recognize Text using OCR" I think this is Versions 7 Pro & 8 (which is now pro only for the mac)
Any good OCR program would work. You would have to rasterize the file (with a good resolution - at least 300 dpi, better 600 dpi) for most programs - I don’t know about Acrobat though (although I doubt it extrapolates info from the actual vectors). During the OCR process you would also have to check to see if everything’s been done correctly. If you could send me a file I could try it out.