[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by Steve Berger

Thanks Larry,

For the record, its an HP 7280, not 7200. (I dislike it so much I don't even know the model number).

Please educate me on this. You mentioned 'text based charts'. I have four types/kinds of paper documents I need to 'get' (scan) into my iMAC. (1) selected pages (songs) from published songbooks, (2) pages from published sheet music, (3) Songs, (typically in Word format), I have typed and printed out on an old Windows computer. (4) Handwritten songs.

Aren't these all 'text-based' and doesn't the scanner / scanner program 'look' at all of these types of documents as the same? (This really seems like a dumb question and probably is).

Hi Steve...

Text based charts are typically typed in a word processor or typed and formatted and posted to a website as text, not as a picture. When we copy-paste them into a word document, they are still text based.

Handwritten charts, or pages from a book may look like text but when we scan them, they become a picture. The only way to turn them back into text based documents is to re-type them.

And yes, a scanner not only looks them all the same, it treats them all the same, and turns them into that picture. There is OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software designed to convert pictures back to text, but unless you have millions of dollars like the postal service, most OCR software requires a lot of correcting to make it useful.

This is why sometimes it just pays to retype them. If it's a well known song then you may find a text version 'out there' on the internet, and be able to copy/paste it into a word processor to format it.

The advantage of text based is we can reformat them, make text bolder so it shows up better or we can convert them to a sans serif font which is easier to read. And in the case of OnSong, once it's formatted properly, transpose keys.

If transposition is not an important feature for you, scanning is a great option. If you want it to look just like your handwritten copy, scanning or shooting a picture of it are your only options.

If it's musical notation, scanning is your only option.