I have a list of 42 languages to select as my Primary OCR language in the Recognize Text general settings dialogue (see below image). But I cannot find Arabic in there. Is it possible to include Arabic?
Certainly it must be available. If they are going to have languages as obscure as Galician and Nynorsk, then they must have Arabic, a global language spoken by roughly 200 million people. I am confident they would not have neglected Arabic, especially given booming business in the Arabian Gulf. It is just a matter of finding out to install Arabic. Perhaps there is a language pack? Or some kind of separate installation?
Those two languages use the western alphabet, so it is not much work to add them. It would be nice if Adobe included all languages, but each different alphabet is a complete new challenge. There doesn't appear to even be an Arabic version of the software yet, perhaps the market is not so profitable.
I observe on http://shop.adobe.com/DRHM/store that there is a version described as "English (Arabic Enabled)" available for purchase. I have no idea what that is.
The second link (http://shop.adobe.com/store/adbehme/en_IE/pd/ThemeID.29250800/productID.255001800) worked for me. However, I did not find the reference to “English (Arabic Enabled).” The only reference to Arabic I found was on the download tab (“Mac – Arabic” and “Windows – Arabic”). But I wonder if that means that the interface is in Arabic or that it supports Arabic OCR or both?
Also, I am not so happy with the price of $240.00 for an upgrade or $540.00 for the full version. I just bought CS6 seven months ago and thought all my needs would be met for a while to come. I was not expecting an upgrade to Adobe Acrobat Professional XI would be necessary so soon.
I don't think you can purchase this as an upgrade if you already have Acrobat XI. That is not a valid upgrade path. But call Adobe, perhaps there is a "crossgrade" path.
Arabic (and other Middle Eastern languages) are hard OCR challenges. Right to Left issues as well as characters that look often like our "cursive" handwritten characters make it a challenge. The one used in the region and by the US government when accuracy is important is NovoVerus http://www.novodynamics.com/novoverus/ and it does create PDF's that can then be used in Acrobat. It also offers both English and Arabic UI
I have Acrobat Version 10.0 (Adobe Acrobat X Pro), which is what comes with Adobe CS6. I could not find the price of NovoVerus on its web site, but I was able to find the price of ABBYY FineReader 11 Professional Edition, which also supports Arabic. It is $222.37 (169 €) with Arabic OCR.
But then I am in the same boat—having to buy yet another program to do what I was hoping I could get in Acrobat. Paying $222.37 isn’t much less than Acrobat’s $240.00 upgrade. Moreover, I already have two software programs, Acrobat and Bluebeam and really want to avoid shelling out another $200. What I really want is a single one-stop-shop pdf program that can do everything.
We'd all like that, but it doesn't make it happen. Acrobat is already an enormous program with an endless feature list, but I'm sure Adobe are happy to know there are still things they can add (and charge for an upgrade!)
I'd agree with Test Screen Name. Acrobat is used by a huge audience of users who have wildly divergent ideas of what they need to use it for—from OCR to legal to engineering to general office work to print production, and dozens or hundreds of others. And all these features have to be translated into multiple platforms and languages. The market for OCR of Arabic would probably be used by only a relatively tiny number of people, and isn't ever going to make it to the top of the new feature list, I'm afraid. It would have to be coded, QC'd, and beta tested, and everytime a new version of the program comes out any of those features could break so they have to be retested again.
. But I cannot find Arabic in there. Is it possible to include Arabic?
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