As other (more relevant) forums are being annoying with restricting posts for new users etc. I thought hell, why not try it here.

 

I was wondering about the following:

 

Does anyone know whether perhaps computer technology exists that can analyze a piece of text for specific, given elements? E.g. I would instruct the software to look for "colors" in a text, making sure to provide a coded definition of a "color" - simplest being a list of colors.

 

If yes, is this technology widespread? Could it be offered as a service online?

 

Thank for the input guys.

Look for colors where? In any open text visible on your screen, or certain types of documents?

Do you mean taking/scanning text written on paper and digitalizing it using means of detection?

it exists for written text from scans and video but that is a behaviourist/criminologist tool for profiling people and it is dependent on what writing tool was used(meaning, pencile, pen, chalk, etc). i doubt it is widely used/accessed for/by the common man. what do you want it for.

I didn't understand your question very well, but its called OCR, and its fairly easy to access(it's not like CIA or FBI and such lol), look it up

About the online services, I googled a bit and came up with this, don't know if it works well or not, but it claims to be the best ocr API

http://ocrapiservice.com/

Hey, thanks for the replies!

 

No, I'm not looking to convert an image to text. I am exploring possibilities for a service that will let you upload a text doc, the service then scans it for something specific, and give you the results of that scan.

 

Personally I think it should be technologically feasible, though I've never seen it and am no IT expert whatsoever.

 

Cheers

Hey, thanks for the replies!

 

No, I'm not looking to convert an image to text. I am exploring possibilities for a service that will let you upload a text doc, the service then scans it for something specific, and give you the results of that scan.

 

Personally I think it should be technologically feasible, though I've never seen it and am no IT expert whatsoever.

 

Cheers

But scans for what ? what will the service scan for ? What the text is about ? Who wrote it ? I still don't get it lol

Hey, thanks for the replies!

 

No, I'm not looking to convert an image to text. I am exploring possibilities for a service that will let you upload a text doc, the service then scans it for something specific, and give you the results of that scan.

 

Personally I think it should be technologically feasible, though I've never seen it and am no IT expert whatsoever.

 

Cheers

But scans for what ? what will the service scan for ? What the text is about ? Who wrote it ? I still don't get it lol

I think this is what he means... So, you send a Status update to Facebook, but you route it through a service. For example.. "At my grandpas house playing croquet..." The service will recognize certain words and reorganize it by its settings... Depending on what the settings are... For example... "My grandpas playing croquet" See? It filters out certain words and reorganizes them according to the settings, then after its done it uploads the newly edited copy to you status update on Facebook... (correct me if i'm wrong...)

Haha. Sorry 'bout the confusion.

 

Let's say you have a BIG text. In that text you have some quotes from other people: ".....".

 

Let's say you would want to make a list of those quotes.

 

Going through the text by yourself and making that list could easily take an hour.

 

What about a service that recognizes those quotes and lists them for you?. So you would instruct the system to recognize quotes by looking for these things: "......", extract them, and make a list of them.

 

Si?

It's called searching ;P And some advanced searching you want to perform is called regular expressions (regex in short). Here is an example of selecting only the quotes from the text: http://regexr.com?30l2k. You can search for regex tutorials on the internet to get to know how to put together the queries. You can use a text editor like Notepad++ to do that as well.

http://www.mediafire.com/?t375gyjxxa7x334

 

https://www.virustotal.com/file/a0e9f00 ... 334431386/

 

made it in 2 min, it extracts quotes from text files, could also work for rtf's and similar.

I'm mighty impressed! Thanks @karololszak and @DOZ3R