Software for OCR'ing paper tape?

Hmm... I wonder what the advantage is over optical units, then... I have some Trend optical readers. The HSR500 is a 500 cps bidirectional unit, the UDR700 is a Unidirectional 700cps unit (there was also a slower UDR350). These readers will get up to full speed in quite a short time (the motor runs continuously, the tape motion is started by a soleoid lifitng a pinch roller onto the tape), and when running at full speed you can stop them _on_ a chracter (in other eords, you can read a character, and if your controller is fast enough to determien that's the character you want, and then deassert the tape run signal, the tape will stop without any more characters being read, if you then assert the tape run line again, the next sproket pulse on the interface conenctor will be the next character on the tape, nothing is lost). These readers are very simple, both electroncially and mechanically. I wonder why cpacitive reading is a good thing. -tony