Tutorial for OCR program for Yiddish

Start the OCR program for Yiddish via the Start menu.

Making required settings before using the program

Set the filenames for the .img and .dat file by clicking on Options and Configure image and data file used for shortcut buttons in toolbar....
The .img and .dat files should be in the same path and given the same name before the file extension.
Via clicking on the Browse... button, the path and filename can be selected with the Windows File Save dialog.

The .img and .dat files are used to associate images to letters of the Yiddish alphabet.
Since the .img and .dat files are dependent on the specific font style of the source, different .img and .dat files are needed for different sources.

Opening picture file with the text

Open the picture file with the text by clicking on File and Open Bitmap (BMP), TIFF, PNG or JPEG file....

The screen with the opened file - this is a screenshot of a text in PDF format from Raphael Finkel's great Yiddish website: https://www.cs.uky.edu/~raphael/yiddish.html

The OCR program for Yiddish processes images with only black and white pixels so that it automatically converts the image into black and white by setting all pixels to black which are darker than a customizable threshold, all other pixels are set to white.
This threshold is set by clicking on Options and Set Threshold for converting gray into black/white....

Associating images to letters

IMPORTANT: The Latin letter i and the Hebrew letter Alef without any nikud must be assigned to at least one image, otherwise the spaces between the letters cannot be recognized properly.

Click on the button Add images.

Then a rectangle which covers a line of text has to be created by placing the mouse cursor at the left top of the rectangle, pressing the left mouse button, keeping it pressed, moving the mouse cursor to the right bottom of the rectangle and releasing the left mouse button.

In subsequent mouse movements, the rectangle's width and height will remain the same so that it can be used for subsequent lines easily.
For setting a new width and height with the next mouse action, press Ctrl+R and then create a new rectangle.
In order to refresh the screen, press F5.

The rectangle is both used in associating images to letters and character recognition.

In order to associate images to letters, place the rectangle over the line and click on the left mouse button.

An image can be associated to a letter in the following ways:

• Entering a letter via the keyboard
  
  By clicking on the 2, the image is selected for association
  
  
  
  
  By typing 2 in the edit field Enter directly and then clicking on Store letter!, the character 2 is associated to the selected image
  
  
• Choosing a letter via the combo box
  
  By clicking on the final kaf, the image is selected for association
  
  
  
  
  By clicking on Select, the name of the Hebrew letter can be selected which you want to associate
  
  
• Choosing a letter with nikud via the combo box
  
  By clicking on the alef with qamats, the image is selected for association
  
  
  
  
  If associating a letter with nikud, the Unicode character which contains the letter and nikud together should be selected
  
  

Removing associations of images to letters (e.g. if a wrong association was accidentally made) can be done with the following steps:

• Open the .img file for viewing/removing by clicking on Preparing and Show/Remove images for preparation....
  
  
• In order to remove a single image associated to a letter, select the letter in the listbox Letters, then the image in the listbox Images and click on Remove Image....
  In order to remove all images for a letter, select the letter in the listbox Letters and click on Remove Letter....
  
  

Performing character recognition

Click on the button Prepare and start recognition.

Create a new text file by clicking on Recognition and New Text Window!.

Place the two windows so that they can be accessed easily by clicking on the menu Window, menu item Tile Horizontally.

By placing a rectangle over the text to be recognized with the mouse and pressing the left mouse button (or use the Return key to read subsequent lines easily), the recognized text appears in the status bar and in the text window if one is open. The text can be saved with Recognition, Save Text in Unicode 16-Bit format.