Gothic/Fraktur OCR

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Ivan Popov

Question

What is Gothic/Fraktur font?

Answer

Gothic/Fraktur OCR

Gothic letters (as well known as "Fraktur" are specific fonts that were used in documents in the beginning of the 19th century – these letters cannot be recognized with standard OCR technologies. ABBYY is a pioneer in this area and provides recognition of old fonts in several of its products and technologies. 

The below animation demonstrates the difference in recognition results: Using "standard OCR" vs. using a special technology for recognition of historic fonts*.

banner-historic-700x167px-3.gif

*The original image was processed with ABBYY Recognition Server 3.0 R1 with the Gothic/Fraktur module disabled (standard OCR used) and the Gothic/Fraktur module enabled (Historic font OCR)

ABBYY started providing recognition of Gothic fonts already back in 2003 and its core recognition technologies are being continuously improved by optimizing the individual areas of the recognition process:

  • Image-Preprocessing
  • Document Analysis
  • Character Recognition
  • Language and Dictionary Support

 

ABBYY’s role in the IMPACT project

ABBYY was the main OCR technology provider for the IMPACT project funded by the European Commission to significantly improve access to historical text and to take away the barriers that stand in the way of the mass digitization of the European cultural heritage.

ABBYY provided the relevant OCR technology for the IMPACT members, developed further improvements in image preprocessing, layout (or page), and analysis of documents, added OCR-XML output for the recreation of logical document structure, and adapted the core OCR components for a full variety of different historical printing materials in European languages. The improvements in ABBYY technologies were implemented in many ABBYY products, such as the SDK FineReader Engine, the corporate-wide automation solution FineReader Server, and the individual application FineReader PDF.

Impact Press Release: ABBYY Empowers European Commission's Digitisation Research Project

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    WNHung

    Is this feature supported by FineReader Pro for Mac?

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