ABBYY FineReader Engine 12 for Mac - Release 4 Update 3 (includes Update 2)

Note: As Update 2 was skipped for the Mac version, this release contains features of Update 2 in addition to features of Update 3.

Release date: 27.10.2020 (public release)

Part#: 1377/6

Build: 12.4.7.1139

New: Code sample for command-line interface (CLI)

• This new CLI sample can be used to efficiently utilize ABBYY FineReader Engine libraries and quickly create own command-line based applications.
• The CLI code sample uses numerous keys for document processing, synthesis, recognition, and export. For best recognition results, the keys can be combined in various sequences.

New: Additional 1D barcode types

Three new 1D types of barcodes were added to the broad portfolio of supported barcodes:

• KIX barcode - used for mail sorting by the postal service of the Netherlands
• Royal Mail 4-State barcode (RM4SCC) - used for mail sorting by the postal service in the United Kingdom
• Australia Post 4-State barcode - used for mail sorting by the postal service in Australia

Significantly enhanced: 'Compare Documents' Module

The ‘Compare Documents’ module was enhanced by introducing several new options to further optimize the accuracy of the comparison results, especially by reducing the number of false positives:

• A property specifying if OCR errors can be ignored: When text is recognized per OCR, recognition hypothesis are provided. In cases, where the Engine would detect a difference in the text versions, but at the same time, in each recognized version of text at least one recognition hypothesis matches, the detected difference can be ignored and not reported as a real text deviation (as very likely, this reported difference is caused by the OCR step and is not a 'true' difference in the content.)
• A property specifying whether words containing only letters (not digits) that differ only by one letter should be reported as deviation in the text (as in such a case, one letter difference could be caused by the OCR step and not be a 'true' difference ni the content).
• A property specifying whether differences in the punctuation should be reported as deviation in the text.
• A property specifying if differences in running titles should be reported as deviation in the text. If the text repeats in the header or footer, the difference can be ignored.
• A new approach for comparing bi-lingual documents that contain the translated text in a separate column. In this type of documents, such as international contracts, the text and its translated version are typically arranged in two parallel columns. To increase the precision of the comparison algorithm, the new approach allows comparing each column (and thus each language version) separately and reduce the number of 'false positives'. This significantly improves the precision of the comparison results.

• A new method for defining the order of text blocks to improve the accuracy of comparison results was implemented: The text blocks order is now defined during the Synthesis step. (The usage of the Document Analysis step for defining the text block order was discontinued. Note: The desktop application ABBYY FineReader as well leverages the Synthesis step to define the order of text blocks in its Document Comparison module.)

Improved: Recognition of Machine Readable Zones in ID documents (MRZ)

Two new options were added to improve the results when extracting information from Machine-Readable Zones in ID documents:

• A new option allows saving recognition results from Machine Readable Zones in JSON or XML file either with the coordinates of the original image (the image in its original layout, before it was deskewed or otherwise optimized for optimal OCR results) or with the coordinates of the image that was internally altered and pre-processed.
• A new option allows to specify the accepted length of the MRZ line. This option can be used to improve the recognition results for the machine-readable zone in cropped or low-quality images. In such images, a part of the MRZ line or lines might get lost during the pre-processing step and thus not any more comply with the MRZ specifications (the missing compliancy would lead to receiving no recognition result from the MRZ area).

Enhanced: New features for export formats

ABBYY FineReader Engine 12 was enhanced by the new export options and methods for the following formats:

Enhanced recognition: New methods for customizing the recognition area

To allow customizing the recognition area, two new methods were added that allow adding or cutting out regions of specified size from the recognition blocks. Improved: Recognition of capital letters

A new option was added that allows to increase the recognition of letter case and accuratelly detect if text is written in capital letters or small caps.

Enhanced methods for saving the document layout

New methods allow to save the document layout into stream or as an array of bytes.

Faster recognition process with opening Office documents from memory

New methods for opening Microsoft Office and Apache OpenOffice files directly from memory allow increasing the speed of the document import step and accelerating the overall document processing speed. 

Support of the latest LibreOffice versions

ABBYY FineReader Engine 12 now supports the LibreOffice versions for the input of digital documents:

IMPORTANT INFORMATION

GetEngine function was deprecated in R2 ⇒ To load the Engine object, please use the InitializeEngine function. It provides the unified Engine loading procedure for all license types (including the Online License).

Customers updating from previous versions of FineReader Engine such as version 9, 10, or 11 as well as upgrading from FineReader Engine 12 Release 1 to Release 2 and higher who use the GetEngine function would receive an error message if they keep using it in later releases. Please update your code and replace the GetEngine with the InitializeEngine function.