I figured it out, if you are using visual studios 2010 and are using windows forms / designer you can add it easily this way with no issues
add the following projects to your project ( i am warning you once, do not add the tesseract solution, or change any setting in the projects you add, unless you love to hate yourself )
ccmain
ccstruct
ccutil
classify
cube
cutil
dict
image
libtesseract
nutral_networks
textord
viewer
wordrec
you can add the others but you don’t really want all that built into your project do you? naaa, build those separately
go to your project properties and add libtesseract as a reference, you can now that it is visible as a project, this will make it so that your project builds fast without examining the millions of warnings within tesseract. [common properties]->[add reference]
right click your project in the solution explorer and click project dependencies, make sure it is dependant on libtesseract or even all of them, it just means they build before your project.
the tesseract 2010 visual studio projects contain a number of configuration settings aka release, release.dll, debug, debug.dll, it seems that the release.dll settings produce the right files. First, set the solution output to release.dll. Click your project properties. Then click configuration manager. If that is not available, do this, click the SOLUTION's properties in the solution tree and click configuration tab, you will see a list of projects and the associated configuration settings. You will notice your project is not set to release.dll even though the output is. If you took the second route you still need to click configuration manager. Then you can edit the settings, click new on your projects settings and call it release.dll...exactly the same as the rest of them and copy the settings from release. Do the same thing for Debug, so that you have a debug.dll name copied from debug settings. wheew...almost done
Don’t try to change tesseracts settings to match yours....that wont work ....and when the new release comes out you wont be able to just "throw it in" and go. Accept the fact that in this state your new modes are Release.dll and Debug.dll. don’t stress out...you can go back when its is finished and remove the projects from your solution.
Guess where the libraries and dll’s come out? in your project, you may or may not need to add the library directories. Some people say to dump all the headers into a single folder so they only need to add one folder to the includes but not me. I want to be able to delete the tesseract folder and reload it from the zips without extra work....and be fully ready to update in one move or restore it if I made a mess of the code. Its a bit of work and you can to it with code instead of the settings which is the way i do it, but you should include all the folders that contain header files within the 2010 tesseract project folder and leave them alone.
there is no need to add any files to your project. just these lines of code..... I have included some additional code that converts from one foreign data set to the tiff friendly version with no need to save / load file. aren’t I nice?
now you can fully debug in debug.dll and release.dll, once you have successfully built it into your project even once you can remove all the added projects and it will be peeerfect. no extra compiling or errors. fully debugable, all natural.
If I remember right, I could not get around the fact I had to copy the files in 2008/lib/ into my projects release folder….darn it.
In my projects “functions.h” I put
#pragma comment (lib, "liblept.lib" )
#define _USE_TESSERACT_
#ifdef _USE_TESSERACT_
#pragma comment (lib, "libtesseract.lib" )
#include <baseapi.h>
#endif
#include <allheaders.h>
in my main project I put this in a class as a member:
tesseract::TessBaseAPI *readSomeNombers;
and of course I included “functions.h” somewhere
then I put this in my classes constructor:
readSomeNombers = new tesseract::TessBaseAPI();
readSomeNombers ->Init(NULL, "eng" );
readSomeNombers ->SetVariable( "tessedit_char_whitelist", "0123456789,." );
then I created this class member function: and a class member to serve as an output, don’t hate, I don’t like returning variables. Not my style. The memory for the pix does not need to be destroyed when used inside a member function this way I believe and my test suggest this is a safe way to call these functions. But by all means, you can do whatever.
void Gaara::scanTheSpot()
{
Pix *someNewPix;
char* outText;
ostringstream tempStream;
RECT tempRect;
someNewPix = pixCreate( 200 , 40 , 32 );
convertEasyBmpToPix( &scanImage, someNewPix, 87, 42 );
readSomeNombers ->SetImage(someNewPix);
outText = readSomeNombers ->GetUTF8Text();
tempStream.str("");
tempStream << outText;
classMemeberVariable = tempStream.str();
//pixWrite( "test.bmp", someNewPix, IFF_BMP );
}
The object that has the information that I want to scan is in memory and is pointed to by &scanImage. It is from the “EasyBMP” library but that is not important.
Which I deal with in a function in “functions.h”/ “functions.cpp”
by the way, i am doing a little extra processing here while i am in the loop, namely thinning the characters and making it black and white and reversing black and white which is unnecessary. At this phase in my development I am still looking for ways to improve the recognition. Though for my proposes this has not yielded bad data yet. My view is to use the default Tess data for simplicity. I am acting heuristically to solve a very complex problem.
void convertEasyBmpToPix( BMP *sourceImage, PIX *outputImage, unsigned startX, unsigned startY )
{
int endX = startX + ( pixGetWidth( outputImage ) );
int endY = startY + ( pixGetHeight( outputImage ) );
unsigned destinationX;
unsigned destinationY = 0;
for( int yLoop = startY; yLoop < endY; yLoop++ )
{
destinationX = 0;
for( int xLoop = startX; xLoop < endX; xLoop++ )
{
if( isWhite( &( sourceImage->GetPixel( xLoop, yLoop ) ) ) )
{
pixSetRGBPixel( outputImage, destinationX, destinationY, 0,0,0 );
}
else
{
pixSetRGBPixel( outputImage, destinationX, destinationY, 255,255,255 );
}
destinationX++;
}
destinationY++;
}
}
bool isWhite( RGBApixel *image )
{
if(
//destination->SetPixel( x, y, source->GetPixel( xLoop, yLoop ) );
( image->Red < 50 ) ||
( image->Blue < 50 ) ||
( image->Green < 50 )
)
{
return false;
}
else
{
return true;
}
}
one thing I don't like is the way I declare the size of the pix outside the function. It seems if I try to do it within the function I have unexpected results....if the memory is allocated while inside it is destroyed when I leave.
g m a i l
Certainly not my most elegant work but I also gutted the hell out of it for simplicity. Why I bother to share this I don't know. I should have kept it to myself.
What is my name? Kage.Sabaku.No.Gaara
before i let you go i should mention the subtle differences between my windows form app and the default settings. namely i use "multi-byte" character set. project properties...and such..give a dog a bone, maybe a vote?
p.p.s. I hate to say it but I made one change to host.c if you use 64 bit you can do the same. Otherwise your on your own.....but my reason was a bit insane you don't have to
typedef unsigned int uinT32;
#if (_MSC_VER >= 1200) //%%% vkr for VC 6.0
typedef _int64 inT64;
typedef unsigned _int64 uinT64;
#else
typedef long long int inT64;
typedef unsigned long long int uinT64;
#endif //%%% vkr for VC 6.0
typedef float FLOAT32;
typedef double FLOAT64;
typedef unsigned char BOOL8;
