Scanning the result charts.

[jotb]

Hello all:

I was just wondering if scanning the result charts from simo weekly can be done and if so, what software is needed along with the scanner. I would grab the charts each day in a different way but since I already had every SIMO WEEKLY since it's birth in the closet, I thought if I could scan the results in, I can throw away all these copies and make room for my other horse- racing literature. Thank you in advance for the help.

Joe

[GameTheory]

Why not just get the charts from Equibase in HTML form and save those?

[Buddha]

Yea, you could save the equibase charts, or drf charts online, or any scanning program should be able to scan the simo weekly. since it is a bigger piece of paper, it would just take more scans to get it all, or at least that is what i would think

[Brian Flewwelling]

I am not familiar with the Sim.. Weekly, but i suspect it is printed on newsprint. If so forget scanning it. Saving 'pictures' from scans takes a huge amount of space, and is not easy to find and read.

You would be better off taking your SW'lies to a recycle depot. For $15 you can subscribe to EqBase, and download all the charts going back to 1999. They save in HTML format, and are easy to read and fetch.

They can also be parsed, and the data put into a DB for 'easy' access and manipulation

Fleww Dude

[jotb]

Hello:

So much for the scan idea. Brian I can subscribe to Equibase for $15 and they will give me all the results in NY since the year 2000. I was wondering if they will charge me for this data on top of the $15. If so how much will it cost me to retrive all that data?

Game Theory I recently did a search on result charts and found your thread on a program you created which pertained to result charts. My problem is, I already have all the NY race results from the Dec 6 2000 till date in access 2000. I was wondering if you could help me retreive the results each day and incorporate into my database the way I have set up the database in access. As you can see I do not have a clue on how to do this. I have manually been feeding the database with results from NY each week from simo weekly. My database does not have each horse for each day but I do have the race itself with age, date, purse, type of race, gender, track, surface, and 3 points of call. I was wondering if you might be interested in taking a look at my database. I need help with this computer stuff.

Anyway, I thank everyone for their help and hopefully things will become easier for me each week. Any ideas or help will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
Joe...

P.S. I have already adjusted the raw times in my database from the 5k races I have acculmulated.

[Dave Schwartz]

Actually, we do this on a regular basis in order to build our database for the Par Times.

It is tedious, but works. We use OmniPage Pro. Understand that while we are scanning the entire chart, we are capturing very little of the data. We then run it through a very extensive error-checking program that finds 99.9 percent of the errors.

And, when we ultimately miss one of the errors, it blows up the software, allowing us to find the error and correct it. <G>

I would not suggest this as an alternative to buying downloads or capturing charts from the web. (I just happen to have a teenage son that needs a part-time job. And that is what it takes.)

Dave Schwartz

[GameTheory]

If it is in the chart (the Equibase chart), then my downloader can grab the files for you and my parser can extract the data you need and output it in practically any format you desire -- generally a delimited text file for importing into a DB. I can help you with that part -- making files that you can import from raw charts. I don't use Access and have little knowledge of it, so I can't help beyond that step.