7 ms·

Microsoft OCR Library for Windows Runtime

132 points by maouida 12y ago

jamessantiago 12y ago
Off topic, but this made me think that it would be neat if libraries on places like github and nuget could someout include "cited by" data. Something that referenced open source (maybe closed source too) projects that had a dependency to the library similar to google scholar or CiteSeerX.
- asuidyasiud 12y ago
  You can get a DOI for github.
  - afandian 12y ago
    Then what? There's nothing magical about DOIs. You need someone to store the citation metadata. And generate / deposit citation metadata. And maintain the persistence of the DOI. What precisely does the DOI represent? A codebase? A fork of it? A file? A file at a particular revision? A changeset?
reallycurious 12y ago
is this better than the terrassect OCR?
- jeroen 12y ago
  Tesseract: https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/ https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/
- MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
  Thats the big question. Tesseract is pretty good, though quite slow I must say.
  - Norm-- 12y ago
    It depends on what is being scanned. Say you have a perfectly formatted image, directly taken from a scanner, it's a pretty darn quick process. But from my experience, what adds to the slowness is pre-processing the image to make it suitable for OCR, especially tesseract. I still haven't found the magic combination of filters because every image is different, especially if your source them from users camera phones.
- josteink 12y ago
  I think that's a sort of apples and pears type of comparison. Tessarect can be used everywhere, and is used dominantly on open platforms. This is a offering from Microsoft to be used on their platform only. They may both be good, but they have widely different platform targets.
  - gondo 12y ago
    what are you talking about? it is always about the results. OCR is a tool and it doesn't matter if runs on windows, linux, osx, phone, tablet, watch. if this microsoft OCR produce better results than terrassect, than people will simply create service running on windows (yes even on windows phone) and some kind of API to talk to it. the questions remains the same: does it produce better results than terrassect? so far, this microsoft OCR is just bunch of words without any prove that it actually works, what so ever. show me some pictures or videos of results.
  - RobAley 12y ago
    My guess is he meant better at actually OCR'ing text, not better for implementation.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rikkus 12y ago
It doesn't appear that you can use this in a 'normal' .NET app. Any ideas why?
- ghuntley 12y ago
  Can confirm that the actual package successfully installs into a Profile78 Portable Class Library. So whilst the marketing heavily mentions Windows Phone, in theory this library will also work on Xamarin (iOS/Android, etc) and also within standard .NET applications (ASP.NET/Console/etc). nb: haven't actually tested past installation at this stage. edit: nope :(
  - rikkus 12y ago
    Ah excellent, will try that, thanks!
    - rikkus 12y ago
      It installs - but there's no DLL reference and you don't see the WindowsPreview namespace.
- rikkus 12y ago
  I made a C# Console app and added the nuget package. It adds, but there aren't any references. Within the nuget package, though, there is are three subdirectories within 'lib', one being 'win81'. packages\Microsoft.Windows.Ocr.1.0.0\lib\win81 Within this, there are 'ARM' 'x86' and 'x64' directories and dlls within them. VS refuses to add them to my project, so I'm guessing they're native and not COM libraries. Why would I think they might be .NET libraries if they have 'x86' and 'x64' labels? Because C++/CLI has to be compiled to separate dlls, I believe.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    It has nothing to do with C++/CLI, but with marshaling, JIT and NGEN. When calling native code outside the CLR the runtime needs to know which type of marshaling code to generate. It also plays a role when using unsafe code blocks in .NET.
steeve 12y ago
We had great results using tesseract-ocr[1] with SWT (state of the art text detection algorithm, via libccv[2]) on Linux. You can use our python bindings for both[3,4], although they might be slightly outdated: [1] https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/ https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/ [2] http://libccv.org/doc/doc-swt/ http://libccv.org/doc/doc-swt/ [3] https://github.com/veezio/pytesseract https://github.com/veezio/pytesseract [4] https://github.com/veezio/pyccv https://github.com/veezio/pyccv
- MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
  Is it still possible to generate pixel correct hOCR when using SWT? Also, what is the main advantage of SWT - improving speed or accuracy?
  - steeve 12y ago
    I'm not sure about speed, but for accuracy, it's great. We've had terrible results with tesseract when giving it text that wasn't properly cropped with SWT.
    - MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
      Thanks, I use Tesseract in a product I'm developing, I'll try using SWT then.
- danbruc 12y ago
  Be aware that SWT is patented [1] if you want to use it commercially. [1] http://www.google.com/patents/US20090285482 http://www.google.com/patents/US20090285482
  - discjockeydom 12y ago
    This link shows the claims of the published application. The recently allowed claims are a lot more narrow and less problematic. Still worth reviewing though in case you are worried you infringe: http://www.scribd.com/doc/240266916/12122729 http://www.scribd.com/doc/240266916/12122729
cipher0 12y ago
"demonstrated in code snippets below". The code snippets are actually images and even worse, they're JPEGs which is the reason why the text looks horrible.
- jwr 12y ago
  You are expected to OCR them using the library.
- drblast 12y ago
  If only there were some automated way to convert those images to text.
  - allegory 12y ago
    Now that is possibly the cruellest irony I've seen for a while. Well spotted :)
- tiedemann 12y ago
  "This blog was written by Jelena Mojasevic, Program Manager at Microsoft" - I seems no one told her how to embed code snippets.
- kyberias 12y ago
  Yeah, stop being silly and just click the link on the page to the actual documentation with examples: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/xaml/windowspreview.media.ocr.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/xaml/wi...
swalsh 12y ago
This is very cool! I've been working on a receipt scanning tool in C# for keeping track of kitchen inventory (tired of calling my wife asking if we have sesame oil or some odd ball thing) I found a few libraries, but they only worked with relatively perfect scans (my goal is to be able to just use a phone). When I get home definitely going to give this a go.
jccodez 12y ago
tesseract is really looking great with google adding searchable pdf as output in the latest release candidate.
Norm-- 12y ago
So from reading the list of reasons for inaccurate results, it sounds like this library is totally useless for images taken with mobile phones, yet it is only allowed to run on mobile ;) Now I would be more interested in an image correction library ".... Blurry images Handwritten or cursive text Artistic font styles Small text size (less than 15 pixels for Western languages, or less than 20 pixels for East Asian languages) Complex backgrounds Shadows or glare over text Perspective distortion Oversized or dropped capital letters at the beginnings of words Subscript, superscript, or strikethrough text"
mdaniel 12y ago
On http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windowspreview.media.ocr.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows... they mention the supported languages and their statuses, but Korean is only "Good". I freely admit that I do not speak Korean, but if one compares "Chinese Simplified" characters (listed as "Very good") with those in the Korean alphabet, I am surprised those two entries aren't transposed. Is there something that makes recognizing Korean harder than Chinese Simplified, or was that just a product management decision?

132 points by maouida 12y ago

Off topic, but this made me think that it would be neat if libraries on places like github and nuget could someout include "cited by" data. Something that referenced open source (maybe closed source too) projects that had a dependency to the library similar to google scholar or CiteSeerX.

asuidyasiud 12y ago
You can get a DOI for github.
- afandian 12y ago
  Then what? There's nothing magical about DOIs. You need someone to store the citation metadata. And generate / deposit citation metadata. And maintain the persistence of the DOI. What precisely does the DOI represent? A codebase? A fork of it? A file? A file at a particular revision? A changeset?

reallycurious 12y ago

is this better than the terrassect OCR?

jeroen 12y ago
Tesseract: https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/ https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/
MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
Thats the big question. Tesseract is pretty good, though quite slow I must say.
- Norm-- 12y ago
  It depends on what is being scanned. Say you have a perfectly formatted image, directly taken from a scanner, it's a pretty darn quick process. But from my experience, what adds to the slowness is pre-processing the image to make it suitable for OCR, especially tesseract. I still haven't found the magic combination of filters because every image is different, especially if your source them from users camera phones.
josteink 12y ago
I think that's a sort of apples and pears type of comparison. Tessarect can be used everywhere, and is used dominantly on open platforms. This is a offering from Microsoft to be used on their platform only. They may both be good, but they have widely different platform targets.
- gondo 12y ago
  what are you talking about? it is always about the results. OCR is a tool and it doesn't matter if runs on windows, linux, osx, phone, tablet, watch. if this microsoft OCR produce better results than terrassect, than people will simply create service running on windows (yes even on windows phone) and some kind of API to talk to it. the questions remains the same: does it produce better results than terrassect? so far, this microsoft OCR is just bunch of words without any prove that it actually works, what so ever. show me some pictures or videos of results.
- RobAley 12y ago
  My guess is he meant better at actually OCR'ing text, not better for implementation.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

rikkus 12y ago

It doesn't appear that you can use this in a 'normal' .NET app. Any ideas why?

ghuntley 12y ago
Can confirm that the actual package successfully installs into a Profile78 Portable Class Library. So whilst the marketing heavily mentions Windows Phone, in theory this library will also work on Xamarin (iOS/Android, etc) and also within standard .NET applications (ASP.NET/Console/etc). nb: haven't actually tested past installation at this stage. edit: nope :(
- rikkus 12y ago
  Ah excellent, will try that, thanks!
  - rikkus 12y ago
    It installs - but there's no DLL reference and you don't see the WindowsPreview namespace.
rikkus 12y ago
I made a C# Console app and added the nuget package. It adds, but there aren't any references. Within the nuget package, though, there is are three subdirectories within 'lib', one being 'win81'. packages\Microsoft.Windows.Ocr.1.0.0\lib\win81 Within this, there are 'ARM' 'x86' and 'x64' directories and dlls within them. VS refuses to add them to my project, so I'm guessing they're native and not COM libraries. Why would I think they might be .NET libraries if they have 'x86' and 'x64' labels? Because C++/CLI has to be compiled to separate dlls, I believe.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  It has nothing to do with C++/CLI, but with marshaling, JIT and NGEN. When calling native code outside the CLR the runtime needs to know which type of marshaling code to generate. It also plays a role when using unsafe code blocks in .NET.

steeve 12y ago

We had great results using tesseract-ocr[1] with SWT (state of the art text detection algorithm, via libccv[2]) on Linux. You can use our python bindings for both[3,4], although they might be slightly outdated: [1] https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/ https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/ [2] http://libccv.org/doc/doc-swt/ http://libccv.org/doc/doc-swt/ [3] https://github.com/veezio/pytesseract https://github.com/veezio/pytesseract [4] https://github.com/veezio/pyccv https://github.com/veezio/pyccv

MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
Is it still possible to generate pixel correct hOCR when using SWT? Also, what is the main advantage of SWT - improving speed or accuracy?
- steeve 12y ago
  I'm not sure about speed, but for accuracy, it's great. We've had terrible results with tesseract when giving it text that wasn't properly cropped with SWT.
  - MrBuddyCasino 12y ago
    Thanks, I use Tesseract in a product I'm developing, I'll try using SWT then.
danbruc 12y ago
Be aware that SWT is patented [1] if you want to use it commercially. [1] http://www.google.com/patents/US20090285482 http://www.google.com/patents/US20090285482
- discjockeydom 12y ago
  This link shows the claims of the published application. The recently allowed claims are a lot more narrow and less problematic. Still worth reviewing though in case you are worried you infringe: http://www.scribd.com/doc/240266916/12122729 http://www.scribd.com/doc/240266916/12122729

cipher0 12y ago

"demonstrated in code snippets below". The code snippets are actually images and even worse, they're JPEGs which is the reason why the text looks horrible.

jwr 12y ago
You are expected to OCR them using the library.
drblast 12y ago
If only there were some automated way to convert those images to text.
- allegory 12y ago
  Now that is possibly the cruellest irony I've seen for a while. Well spotted :)
tiedemann 12y ago
"This blog was written by Jelena Mojasevic, Program Manager at Microsoft" - I seems no one told her how to embed code snippets.
kyberias 12y ago
Yeah, stop being silly and just click the link on the page to the actual documentation with examples: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/xaml/windowspreview.media.ocr.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/xaml/wi...

swalsh 12y ago

This is very cool! I've been working on a receipt scanning tool in C# for keeping track of kitchen inventory (tired of calling my wife asking if we have sesame oil or some odd ball thing) I found a few libraries, but they only worked with relatively perfect scans (my goal is to be able to just use a phone). When I get home definitely going to give this a go.

jccodez 12y ago

tesseract is really looking great with google adding searchable pdf as output in the latest release candidate.

Norm-- 12y ago

So from reading the list of reasons for inaccurate results, it sounds like this library is totally useless for images taken with mobile phones, yet it is only allowed to run on mobile ;) Now I would be more interested in an image correction library ".... Blurry images Handwritten or cursive text Artistic font styles Small text size (less than 15 pixels for Western languages, or less than 20 pixels for East Asian languages) Complex backgrounds Shadows or glare over text Perspective distortion Oversized or dropped capital letters at the beginnings of words Subscript, superscript, or strikethrough text"

mdaniel 12y ago

On http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windowspreview.media.ocr.aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/windows... they mention the supported languages and their statuses, but Korean is only "Good". I freely admit that I do not speak Korean, but if one compares "Chinese Simplified" characters (listed as "Very good") with those in the Korean alphabet, I am surprised those two entries aren't transposed. Is there something that makes recognizing Korean harder than Chinese Simplified, or was that just a product management decision?