If you do not use OCR then you cannot determine where the boundaries are between letters. For example on the 6th line near the end, the spacing is enough between the left stroke of the 'H' and the right-stroke together with horizontal bar, that without ocr one would tend to count that as two different letters. Then by using average width one might perhaps break apart the horizontal bar and right vertical stroke of the 'H' from the following 'e', but if you do so then you would have arrived at 3 characters, the left stroke of the H, the horizontal and right stroke of the H, and the 'e'. It requires OCR to recognize that the horizontal and right stroke does not form a character and that you need to "back up" to the left stroke to piece together an 'H'.
Therefore the task cannot be done accurately without using OCR.
