Google Ocropus

New Google Project in the Works:
http://code.google.com/p/ocropus/
ocropus
open source document analysis and OCR system
OCRopus is a state-of-the-art document analysis and OCR system, featuring pluggable layout analysis, pluggable character recognition, statistical natural language modeling, and multi-lingual capabilities.
Background
The OCRopus engine is based on two research projects: a high-performance handwriting recognizer developed in the mid-90’s and deployed by the US Census bureau, and novel high-performance layout analysis methods.
OCRopus is development is sponsored by Google and is initially intended for high-throughput, high-volume document conversion efforts. We expect that it will also be an excellent OCR system for many other applications.
Release dates throughout Q1-Q3, 2007.