- Introducing ABBYY FlexiLayout Studio
- What's New In ABBYY FlexiLayout Studio 12
- Installing, running, and removing ABBYY FlexiLayout" Studio
- Program interface
- Projects
- Batches
- FlexiLayouts
- Multi-page FlexiLayout
- Pre-recognition
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Elements
- Creating, copying, and deleting elements
- An overview of element properties
- Required and optional elements
- Element properties
- Search area
- Additional search constraints
- Units of measurement
- Fuzzy interval
- Specifying databases and text files in the FlexiLayout language
- Training elements
- Dependency browser
- Blocks
- Working with tables
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Hypotheses and trees of hypotheses
- Hypotheses and optimizing the search
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How hypotheses are generated and assessed
- Hypotheses for Static Text elements
- Hypotheses for Separator elements
- Hypotheses for White Gap elements
- Hypotheses for Barcode elements
- Hypotheses for Character String elements
- Hypotheses for Text Fragment elements
- Hypotheses for Date elements
- Hypotheses for Object Collection elements
- Hypotheses for Group elements
- Hypotheses for Phone elements
- Hypotheses for Currency elements
- Hypotheses for Table elements
- Hypotheses for Repeating Group elements
- Hypotheses for Labeled Field elements
- Hypotheses for Region elements
- Tree of hypotheses
- Debugging the FlexiLayout
- Classification
- Export
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FlexiLayout language
- Basic concepts
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Predefined types
- Void
- Logic
- String
- Int
- Distance
- XCoordinate
- YCoordinate
- Real
- Quality
- Area
- ImageObjectType
- DateFormats
- DayFormatVariants
- MonthFormatVariants
- YearFormatVariants
- XInterval
- YInterval
- DistInterval
- Rect
- FuzzyRect
- RectArray
- Region
- ImageObjectSet
- TextTypes
- BarcodeTypes
- BarcodeOrientations
- RecognitionMode
- Direction
- HorSearchAreaBound
- VertSearchAreaBound
- Hypothesis
- HypothesisInstances
- TableBlock
- TableBlockColumn
- TableBlockColumnArray
- TableHypothesis
- TableHypColumn
- TableColumnType
- CurrencyPositionTypes
- PageInterval
- PageArea
- PageEdge
- Page
- SearchAreaPageSetType
- IntArray
- StringArray
- IntFuzzyInterval
- DistFuzzyInterval
- AreaFuzzyInterval
- TextRotations
- Conversion of types
- Predefined constants
- Predefined variables
- Global functions
- Functions for working with named parameters
- Advanced pre-search functions
- Advanced post-search functions
- Specifying element properties
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Hypotheses and their properties
- Object Collection hypothesis
- Character String hypothesis
- Static Text hypothesis
- Paragraph hypothesis
- Barcode hypothesis
- Date hypothesis
- Currency hypothesis
- Phone hypothesis
- Table hypothesis
- Table Column hypothesis
- Repeating Group hypothesis
- First Found hypothesis
- Labeled Field hypothesis
- Region hypothesis
- Hypotheses for all types of element
- Printing to debug
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Tips and tricks
- Detecting dates in the case of low quality pre-recognition
- Setting multiple static text values. Search for static text with similar values
- Using Exclude to exclude elements
- Using Group elements to optimize FlexiLayout structure and search
- Searching for single-line Static Text elements
- Restricting the search area by means of RestrictSearchArea
- Searching for single-line fields of known or unknown format on documents of varying OCR quality
- Using Nearest and FuzzyQuality to search for elements
- Optimizing Group element search
- The "Optional" property of a Group element
- Searching for strings of digits
- Simplifying the FlexiLayout by using an auxiliary element and a null
- Describing text fields containing framed letters
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Appendix
- Shortcut keys
- Properties of image objects detected during pre-recognition
- Supported input formats
- Barcodes supported in ABBYY FlexiLayout" Studio
- OCR languages supported in ABBYY FlexiLayout" Studio
- User dictionaries
- Alphabet used in regular expressions
- Extended regular expressions
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Dialog boxes
- Options dialog box
- Fuzzy interval visual editor
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Element Properties dialog box
- General tab
- Static Text tab
- Separator tab
- White Gap tab
- Barcode tab
- Character String tab
- Paragraph tab
- Date tab
- Object Collection tab
- Phone tab
- Currency tab
- Repeating Group tab
- Columns tab
- Order tab
- Header tab
- Footer tab
- Rows tab
- Label tab
- Field Position tab
- Field tab
- Search Constraints tab
- Relations tab
- Advanced tab
- Advanced for All Instances tab
- Errors tab
- End-User License Agreement
- Patents
- How to buy ABBYY FlexiCapture
- Third-party technologies
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Tutorial
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Sample 1
- Step 1: Creating a new project
- Step 2: Adding images to the batch
- Step 3: Setting the FlexiLayout properties
- Step 4: Pre-recognition
- Step 5: Viewing images and pre-recognition results
- Step 6: Analyzing pre-recognition results and selecting reference elements
- Step 7: Creating a form identifier
- Step 8: Testing the identifier element
- Step 9: Adjusting the properties of the identifier element
- Step 10: Describing the YOUR PLANET NAME field
- Step 11: Describing the YOUR PLANET NAME field with a PlanetNameHeader element
- Step 12: Describing the YOUR PLANET NAME field with a PlanetName element
- Step 13: Testing the YOUR PLANET NAME field
- Step 14: Describing the YOUR PLANET NAME field with a PlanetName block
- Step 15: Describing the NAME field
- Step 16: Describing the YOUR SPACESHIP NUMBER field
- Step 17: Describing the DATE YOU ARRIVED AT THE EARTH field
- Step 18: Describing the YOUR IDENTITY NUMBER ON THE PARTY field
- Step 19: Describing the ANY TEXT field
- Step 20: Describing the YOUR PHOTO IN FANCY DRESS field
- Step 21: Exporting the FlexiLayout
- Step 22: Opening the FlexiLayout in ABBYY FlexiCapture
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Sample 2
- Step 1: Creating a new project
- Step 2: Adding images to the batch
- Step 3: Setting the FlexiLayout properties
- Step 4: Pre-recognition
- Step 5: Viewing images and pre-recognition results
- Step 6: Creating a document identifier
- Step 7: Testing the identifier element
- Step 8: Specifying the order in which the field Recipe # and the name for the recipe must be detected
- Step 9: Describing the Recipe # field
- Step 10: Creating a Recipe element
- Step 11: Creating a RecipeNumber element
- Step 12: Creating a RecipeNumber block
- Step 13: Describing the field which contains the name of the recipe
- Step 14: Describing the Ingredients field
- Step 15: Describing the field which contains the cooking instructions and the field which contains the cooking time
- Step 16: Creating a CookingTimeHeader element
- Step 17: Creating a CookingTime element
- Step 18: Creating a CookingTime block
- Step 19: Creating an InvertedHeader element
- Step 20: Describing the Cooking field
- Step 21: Creating a Serves element
- Step 22: Creating a Portions element
- Step 23: Describing the Cooking field
- Step 24: Creating a CookingDescription block
- Step 25: The FlexiLayout is ready
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Sample 3
- Step 1: Preparatory settings
- Step 2: Visual analysis of the images and pre-recognition results
- Step 3: Blocks
- Step 4: Analyzing the images to decide in which order elements must be detected
- Step 5: Detecting the name of the Delivery Address field with a kwDeliveryAddress element
- Step 6: Detecting the name of the Invoice Number field with a kwInvoiceNumber element
- Step 7: Detecting the name of the Invoice Date field with a kwInvoiceDate element
- Step 8: Describing the Invoice Number field with an InvoiceNumber element
- Step 9: Describing the Invoice Date field: the grDate, InvoiceDate, and InvoiceDateAsString elements
- Step 10: Creating an grAddress element of type Group
- Step 11: Detecting the right boundary of the Delivery Address field with a wgAddressRight element
- Step 12: Describing the Delivery Address field with a DeliveryAddress element
- Step 13: Further analysis of the images
- Step 14: Detecting the auxiliary horizontal separator with an hsTableHeaderTop element
- Step 15: Analyzing the search constraints for column names with a TableHeader element of type Group
- Step 16: Detecting the name of the Quantity column with a kwQuantity element
- Step 17: Detecting the name of the Unit Price column with a kwUnitPrice element
- Step 18: Detecting the name of the Total column with a kwTotal element
- Step 19: Creating a InvertedHeader element
- Step 20: Describing the Footer group with a Footer element of type Group
- Step 21: Describing the footer of the table with a kwFooter element
- Step 22: Describing the name of the Total field with the kwTotal element
- Step 23: Detecting the name of the Country field with a kwOrigin element
- Step 24: Describing the Country field with a Country element
- Step 25: Detecting the TotalQuantity and TotalAmount fields with TotalQuantity and TotalAmount elements
- Step 26: Detecting the Table element with an InvoiceTable element
- Step 27: Exporting the FlexiLayout into ABBYY FlexiCapture
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Sample 4
- Step 1: Preparatory settings
- Step 2: Viewing the images and pre-recognition results
- Step 3: Blocks
- Step 4: Analyzing the images to determine the order in which the elements should be detected
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Step 5: Document header and InvoiceHeader group
- Step 5.1: Name of Invoice Number field, kwInvoiceNumber element
- Step 5.2: Name of Delivery Address field, kwDeliveryAddress element
- Step 5.3: Name of Invoice Date field, kwInvoiceDate element
- Step 5.4: Invoice Number field, InvoiceNumber element
- Step 5.5: Invoice Date field, grDate, InvoiceDate, and InvoiceDateAsString elements
- Step 5.6: Delivery Address field, grAddress, wgAddressAbove, and DeliveryAddress elements
- Step 6: Document Footer, InvoiceFooter group
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Step 7: Table column names, TableHeader group
- Step 7.1: Name of Designation column, kwDesignation element
- Step 7.2: Name of ExtraQuantity column, ExtraQtyTag element
- Step 7.3: Name of Quantity column, kwQuantity element
- Step 7.4: Name of UnitPrice column, kwUnitPrice element
- Step 7.5: Name of Total column, kwTotal element
- Step 7.6: Name of Reference column, kwReference element
- Step 7.7: Name of Sales column, kwSales element
- Step 7.8: Name of Unit column, kwUnit element
- Step 8: Table element, InvoiceTable element
- Step 9: TotalAmount field, SumGroup group element
- Step 10: Company field, CompanyGroup group element, Company element
- Step 11: Exporting the FlexiLayout into FlexiCapture
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Sample 1
- Technical support
- Glossary
Tips and tricks
This chapter describes several typical ways to create FlexiLayouts that would look for data fields on low-quality images. Such images are fairly common, with different scanning defects mostly caused by wrong scanning settings. For instance, an image may be too bright or too dark if brightness settings are not correct. As a result, some information on the image may be lost, or parts of the image may be noisy.
It is not always possible to rescan the documents, and the user often has to extract data from corrupted images. Moreover, some documents may have notes handwritten over useful information, which often causes recognition errors.
All the described instances of damage done to the text severely impair the quality of pre-recognition. The quality of pre-recognition may be improved by changing the recognition mode to Thorough. Unfortunately, this does not always help and greatly extends the pre-recognition time.
When a FlexiLayout is created in FlexiLayout Studio, the following method is usually used. The user can specify in the FlexiLayout that pre-recognition results may be inaccurate, i.e. differ from the source text. This fact is reflected in the standard settings of an element, for example, in the maximum number of errors in an element of type Static Text, or the percentage of non-alphabetic characters in a Character String element. High pre-recognition quality is not actually required when searching for data fields. It is required, however, when the detected fields are recognized in FlexiCapture. These programs offer specialized data types for each field, significantly improving the quality of recognition. Pre-recognition in FlexiLayout Studio is full-page OCR, and practice has shown that this is usually enough to detect the data fields on a document.
In real life projects, it is usually enough to create just a few elements to get a FlexiLayout that can successfully process good-quality images. Any user can easily create a FlexiLayout that will detect the required data fields on about 70% of the images. Such a FlexiLayout can be used in FlexiCapture. A FlexiLayout can be updated and 'taught' to extract data from low-quality images. The degree of such modification depends on the task at hand and the time available to the user.
The modification of a FlexiLayout includes detection of previously undetected elements and the attempt to find them with the help of additional elements (maybe of a different type) with less strict search constraints.
There are also other situations which require modifications to the FlexiLayout, including creation of additional elements. The user often has to process similar documents received from different sources, for example, documents created in different regional branches of a government institution. Such documents, despite their apparent likeness, may differ in the layout of data fields. In such cases it advisable to create one FlexiLayout instead of several slightly different FlexiCapture Document Definitions.
Documents may differ by the types of separators used on them or they may be filled in not only by hand but also by means of a printer. When teaching the program to find such fields, use methods described in this chapter.
A FlexiLayout Studio project which contains test images and a tested FlexiLayout can be found in %public%\ABBYY\FlexiCapture\12.0\Samples\FLS\Tips and Tricks.
Detecting dates in the case of low quality pre-recognition
Setting multiple static text values. Search for static text with similar values
Using Exclude to exclude elements
Using Group elements to optimize FlexiLayout structure and search
Searching for single-line Static Text elements
Restricting search area with RestrictSearchArea
Search for single-line fields of known or unknown format on documents of different quality
Elements search with Nearest and FuzzyQuality
Optimizing Group element search
The property "Optional" of a Group element
Simplifying the FlexiLayout with an auxiliary element with a null hypothesis
1/14/2021 2:17:19 PM