OCR technology update

To implement the neural network approaches in OCR technologies, ABBYY FineReader Engine was enhanced by the new features of processing the Latin symbols:

• New language model using both for a consistent choice of word variants generated by OCR
  and for the substitution of new word variants
• End-to-end recognition for Latin-based languages

Better PDF file processing

To ensure more flexible forming the PDF contents, ABBYY FineReader Engine offers the new options:

• Opening PDF Portfolios and processing their contents
• Adding custom images to the output PDF and managing their positions 

Embedded PDFium for processing PDFs

PDFium is a cross-platform native library conforming to PDF standards and controlling all operations
related to PDF, including processing, parsing, rendering, and obtaining the output.

Using grace periods for licenses

With the new option, customers can use the ABBYY FineReader Engine license for some time after the expiration date, thereby enlarging the license validity period.

New permissions for ABBYY FineReader Engine data folders

Now the user may choose what folder to use for storing the ABBYY FineReader Engine licensing data. By default, it is %ProgramData%\ABBYY\SDK\12\Licenses. But the path to the folder with licensing data can be changed:

• When installing ABBYY FineReader Engine automatically. You need to specify the
  LICENSEDATADIR option
• After installing ABBYY FineReader Engine, you need to specify the Path attribute inside the tag in the LicensingSettings.xml or use the FREngineDataFolder property of the IntitializeEngine function or method

Note: The user must have full control permissions on the folder with licensing data only if it's located on the License Server. This is no longer required for the same folders located on the workstations.

New option for licenses with expiration date

• If a license is valid and the expiration date hasn't been reached yet, the 'Expiration Date' field in License Manager contains the exact date value (Expires on %your_license_expiration_date%).
• After passing the expiration date, the grace period starts, during which the license is still valid. The duration of this period depends on a particular license (it displays in the 'Expiration Date' field for the license and in License Parameters). Upon the expiration of the grace period, the license becomes permanently invalid

Changes in the installation process

• New LICENSEDATADIR option to specify the folder with auxiliary information about licensing. This option is relevant only for automatic Runtime installation
• When specifying the SERVERNAME option during Runtime installation, LICENSESRV is automatically
  set to No

New supported special predefined language

ABBYY FineReader Engine now supports the Arabic_Amount special predefined language that is
intended for sums recognition. This language includes currency names (in Arabic and Latin), standard
European and Arabic digits, punctuation marks. A regular expression is used as a dictionary.

API Changes

• Engine API
  • New IsPdfPortfolio and IsPdfPortfolioFromStream methods to find out if an input PDF is a PDF Portfolio
  • The FREngineDataFolder property of the InitializeEngine function and method now has new default values. Now, the auxiliary engine data and license data are written into different folders that may be re-defined by a user
• Barcode API
  • BarcodeTypeEnum got the new BT_JapanPost constant which supports the Japanese Post 4-state Customer Code type
• Image-related API
  • ImageFileFormatEnum got the new constants to define the image format when using the FileFormat of the PDFAttachments object: IFF_Bmp, IFF_Dcx, IFF_DjVu, IFF_Gif, IFF_Jpeg,
    IFF_Jpeg2k, IFF_Pcx, IFF_Png, IFF_Tiff
  • New versions of LibreOffice (7.2, 7.3) in OfficeConverterTypeEnum
• Document-related API
  • New 'AddImageFileFromAttachments' method of the FRDocument object to open an image file from the attachment and add it to a document
  • PDFAttachment object was enhanced by the new 'FileFormat' property to define the image format after its opening in ABBYY FineReader Engine
  • PDFAttachmentBindingEnum now has the PAB_Portfolio constant for PDF Portfolios
  • FontEmbeddingModeEnum got the new FEM_EmbedFullWhenNeeded and FEM_EmbedSubsetWhenNeeded constants to choose whether the whole font will be embedded into the output PDF or only the subset of a font
• Text-related API
  • The default value of the 'Spacing' property of the CharParams and FontStyle objects is now 0
• Batch Processor API
  • PageFlushimgPolicy property is now available for the Linux version. When this property is set to PFP_KeepInMemory, the image documents and layouts for unused pages are not saved to disk.
• Parameter Objects
  • New versions of ALTO (4.0; 4.1; 4.2) are now supported (see AltoExportParams and
    AltoVersionEnum)
  • The DetectSpacing property of the FontFormattingDetectionParams is now FALSE by default.
  • New methods for attaching the user-defined pictures to the output PDF:
    • PDFPicture interface representing a picture itself and the methods to manipulate the picture
      position
    • PDFPictures interface representing a collection of the PDFPicture interfaces
    • New 'PDFPictures' property of the PDFExportParams object to access the PDFPictures interface
• Deprecated and removed functionality
  • GetEngineObject and GetEngineObjectEx functions and methods for loading the Engine
  • ProcessPdfInOneThread property of the MultiProcessingParams object
  • KeepOriginalCoordinatesInfo property of the PrepareImageMode object
  • BLT_Unknown constant of the BlockLayerTypeEnum
  • IsCode39WithoutAsterisk property of the BarcodeParams object