Bring documents to mobile
devices – the new ePUB
output for eBooks
Zoltan Urban, Director of R&D
Nuance Document Imaging Developers
Conference 2013
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Agenda
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E-books
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New technology in OmniPage Capture SDK 19
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Popular formats
Issues with PDF and image formats
Workflow
Scanning
API and settings
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Popular E-book
formats
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Popular e-book formats
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In order of popularity
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PDF (normal, scanned)
ePub
KF8 / PRC (Amazon Kindle)
DJVU (scans with high compression)
Usability on mobile devices?
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Original PDF on iPhone
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Original PDF on iPhone
Readable
font size
Full text line
can be seen
But text
must scroll
horizontally
line by line
But small
font size
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ePub created by OmniPage SDK 19
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E-book conversion problems
Original e-book as PDF
Line End
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E-book conversion problems
Converted to ePub using a free PC application
Line End
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E-book conversion problems – Solved!
Converted using OmniPage SDK 19
Line End
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E-book conversion problems
Original e-book as PDF
Title
Picture
Caption
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E-book conversion problems
Converted by a popular PC application
Title
Picture
Caption is on the next page
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E-book conversion problems – Solved!
Converted by OmniPage SDK 19
Title
Line End
Picture
Caption
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New technology in
OmniPage Capture
SDK 19
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ePub 3.0
This is the latest standard version for ePubs
– Supported by iOS
– Almost every ePub reader can display it
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PC, Mac, Android
Necessary for fancy floating footnotes (see later)
– Amazon’s Kindle readers can consume it after conversion
(send ePub as e-mail to the device)
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Technology challenges
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The basis for creating good quality flowing representation
of documents is to determine well its logical units and
their properties, like
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paragraphs (even if they cross pages)
columns
tables
graphics (non-textual areas)
headers, footers, page numbering
headings (also needed for table-of-contents generation)
footnotes
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Workflow for ePub creation
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Setting the new Book mode
Finding headers and footers
Finding footnotes and their references
Finding the headings and their level
Generating table-of-contents from the headings
Using the new ePub output converter
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Book mode
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A new approach to determine the logical units of the document
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Switches to flowing mode as opposed to page layout fidelity
 The latter is the usual default for text outputs
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Paragraph line spaces gets normalized rather than being
precisely defined
 Single, 1.5x, double
Finds paragraphs crossing pages and links the parts together
– Finds footnotes and their references
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Can be selected using a new setting
ON: set "Kernel.Processing.Mode“ to PROCESSING_BOOK
– OFF: set "Kernel.Processing.Mode“ to PROCESSING_NORMAL
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ePub-specific formatting
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Multi-columns cannot be used
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Font size scaling is relative by default (no absolute point sizes)
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Tables can be utilized for placing objects side-by-side, like text
and graphics
100% is for detected sizes of 9-13 pts, others are expressed
as 50%, 75%, 100%, 133%, 150%, 200%. This makes the
output more uniform
Uses special properties to control the formatting details
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CharFont, CharSize, CharStyle, ParAlignment, ParIndent,
ParFirstIndent, ParLinespacing, ParSpacing, FootNotes,
Cross-references, Bullets/Numbering, LineBreaks.
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ePub-specific formatting (continued)
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Do not assume specific dimensions for target device
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Using relative scaling where possible, like column widths,
indents, picture sizes
Dimensions are relative to each other or to the page size,
e.g.: table columns are defined as percentages of full width
Do not specify right margin in left aligned paragraphs or
vice versa
– Do not specify horizontal or vertical cell alignment
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Table sample
Original PDF type e-book
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Table sample
Converted using a common
free PC application
Text is laid out as individual
paragraphs for each line of
each cell, no table structure
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Table sample
Converted using OmniPage
SDK 19
Text is laid out in a table,
cells contain multiple lines
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Table sample
Table and column
widths are relative to
the page width
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Handling of footnotes
Original PDF type e-book
Footnote flags
Footnotes
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Handling of footnotes
Converted by OmniPage SDK 19
Footnote flags with link
Footnotes
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Handling of footnotes
In iBooks on iPhone
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Handling of footnotes
In iBooks on iPad
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Dual table-of-contents (TOC)
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Existing table of contents cannot be used
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We need to create two TOCs – ePub2 and ePub3
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They are not links for scanned documents
The page numbers do not apply in ePub readers
Necessary for older readers
We analyze paragraph properties and assign heading
levels (h1, h2) to them
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The heading levels control the generation of the table-ofcontents
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Table-of-contents
Original PDF type e-book
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Table-of-contents
Converted to ePub using a free PC application
Generated TOC
Original text of the TOC
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Table-of-contents
Converted to ePub using OmniPage SDK 19
Generated TOC
Original text of the TOC
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ePub output converter – file splitting
ePub files are zipped packages
– The actual text of the book is contained in several HTML
files
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We impose a limit of 256kB
 Some readers have memory problems with larger files
 It speeds up the loading of the text
– If we detect chapter headings we try to break the text
there
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But we don’t go below 8kB (except for the end of
document)
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Improvements to help document
scanning
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Improved handling of facing pages (“open book”)
Camera input
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Auto detection of the source
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Resolution estimation for optimal text size
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Improved binarization
 Using EXIF information in JPEG files
 Can be overridden with a new camera flag setting
 Resolution enhancement for small characters
 Subsampling for zoomed-in text
 method selected automatically
 Correction for uneven lighting
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Processing image only PDF
Note
• the facing
pages
• the headers
and footers
• the paragraph
split by the
page break
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Processing image only PDF
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API and settings
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API and settings
Setting of the book mode
– Three ePub output converter modes
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Regular
Simple
Poem
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ePub Simple mode
Recommended for lower quality scans or for documents with a very
simple structure
– Does not try to preserve too much formatting, the output is even
more portable between readers
– Its output format name is "Converters.Text.ePubSimple”
– Internally defaults to the following
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Converters.Text.ePubSimple.CharFont = FALSE
Converters.Text.ePubSimple.CharSize = FALSE
Converters.Text.ePubSimple.CharStyle = FALSE
Converters.Text.ePubSimple.ParAlignment = FALSE
Converters.Text.ePubSimple.ParIndent = FALSE
Converters.Text.ePubSimple.ParLinespacing = FALSE
Converters.Text.ePubSimple.ParSpacing = FALSE
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ePub Poem mode
Recommended for poems where the line endings do have
importance
– Its output format name is "Converters.Text.ePubPoem”
– Internally defaults to the following
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Converters.Text.ePubPoem.LineBreaks = TRUE
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ePub Poem mode
Original e-book as PDF
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ePub Poem mode
Converted to ePub using OmniPage SDK 19
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ePub Regular mode
For good quality input (like normal PDFs) this delivers the
best fidelity
– Especially useful if the formatting is complex with varying
font sizes, indentations etc.
– Its output format name is "Converters.Text.ePub”
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Thank you
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