to me it happens often, that there is no barcode but only the isbn typed on a bookcover. what a wonderfull thing it might be to let the isight scan the numbers ....
michael.
isight: make it ocr isbn-numbers, too!
We investigated the possibility with a number of open source OCR algorithms but reading characters is even harder for computers than reading bars. We tested with the ISBN above the barcode, what your suggesting is even harder as the text could be any color; it might even be light on dark instead of dark on light.