University of Glasgow

Roderic Page

Quick post on a little tool I came across,
[moz-hocr-edit](http://jimgarrison.org/moz-hocr-edit/). This Firefox
add-on lets you proofread Optical Character Recognition (OCR) output.
Given my interest in [OCR and the Biodiversity Heritage
Library](http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2010/12/bhl-and-ocr.html) I decided
to take it for a spin.  
  
**moz-hocr-edit** uses the [hOCR](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HOCR),
which is a format for representing the output of OCR software, and is
used by tools such as [OCRopus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCRopus)
(you can see the public specification for hOCR
[here](http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dfxcv4vc_67g844kf)). Basically
it\'s a microformat, that is, it\'s HTML with some additional tags.
Given some hOCR, **moz-hocr-edit** enables you to edit the OCR output
line-by-line.  
  
**Demo**  
I\'ve created a simple demo based upon [Case 3368 Eatoniella Dall, 1876
and EATONIELLIDAE Ponder, 1965 (Mollusca, Gastropoda): proposed
conservation](http://biostor.org/reference/80780). For the demo to work
you will need to use the Firefox web browser with the
[moz-hocr-edit](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11067)
installed.  
  

1.  Go to <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/639486/hocr/80780.html>
2.  You will see a simple HTML representation of the OCR text from
    \"Case 3368 Eatoniella Dall, 1876 and EATONIELLIDAE Ponder, 1965
    (Mollusca, Gastropoda): proposed conservation\". I created this HTML
    from the original [ABBYY
    FineReader](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABBYY) XML from the
    Internet Archive.
3.  On the bottom right-hand of the Firefox browser window you should
    see **hOCR**. Click on it and select \"Edit this hOCR document\":  
    ![Statusbar](http://lh6.ggpht.com/-UvG_XpBDCgw/Th2LnwmpZtI/AAAAAAAAA6g/VMW6guACy5U/statusbar.png?imgmax=800){style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;"
    border="0" width="397" height="130"}
4.  Firefox will open a new tab that will look something like this:  
    ![Screenshot](http://lh5.ggpht.com/-W1g4z7-IiDY/Th2Lo2GMvJI/AAAAAAAAA6k/_P49tsGwSUU/screenshot.png?imgmax=800){style="display:block; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;"
    border="0" width="400" height="289"}
5.  You can now edit individual lines of text, and see your edits
    applied to the HTML below.

**moz-hocr-edit** is a neat little tool. With appropriate web server
settings (and, as the tool\'s author Jim Garrison suggests,
autoversioning) it could the basis of a great tool for correcting OCR
errors in BHL.  


Quick post on a little tool I came across, moz-hocr-edit. This Firefox add-on lets you proofread Optical Character Recognition (OCR) output. Given my interest in OCR and the Biodiversity Heritage Library I decided to take it for a spin.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Correcting OCR using hOCR in Firefox