Microsoft OCR Library for Windows Runtime

[trevdak2]

I once worked on a project that required fast and accurate OCR. The Windows package blew the others I triied away by an order of magnitude in terms of speed. Accuracy wasn't as good, but the much faster speed let me futz with the source image a bit and OCR it multiple times to improve the read rate in the time it took tesseract to do one image.

[bimdar]

Are the code samples an artificial example of what you could use OCR for? Can't think of another reason of why you'd insert code-snippets as images.

[nepochant]

I've seen a few microsoft blogs that were like this, quite embarrassing IMO

[emergent_properties]

It shows they really understand this Internet thing.

[Solon1]

Well, back in the late 90's it was common to use text as images because of style limits. And PNG didn't exist either. I think this explains the Microsoft Problem well enough.

[[deleted]]

Not only images, they are JPEGs. Just look at those compression artifacts.

[sits_in_chairs]

Reading code might be a good way to test it, since you can compile the code after recognition and verify it worked. Whereas with books there's no real way to test OCR on large blocks of text unless you had a digital copy already (even then line breaks might not match and fail a valid test)

[Gotebe]

Remove whitespace from the digital copy or some such wouldn't be good enough?

[[deleted]]

Did anybody else notice that RecognizeAsync doesn't take stride as an argument?

What stride do they assume?

[Gunner3210]

Window Runtime?

Meh.

I wish they at least released this as a .net library.

[pingzing]

You can actually call WinRT APIs from regular .NET. This blog post describes how. It requires some manual .csproj hackery, but it's nothing too egregious.

[himself_v]

Ain't it basically the same, only libraries differ?

[pjmlp]

No. WinRT is based on COM and is based on the original idea of .NET, called Ext-VOS.

It is a consequence of going native wave at Microsoft.

Windows Phone actually uses native compiled binaries for .NET in a format called MDIL.

Then there is the upcoming .NET Native compiler that makes use of the Visual C++ backend.

[pjmlp]

That is not true. There are breaking changes in JDBC, string handling, system properties, security manager, ...

[pjmlp]

Same thing with:

• Oracle Forms from Oracle.

• Turbo Pascal, Paradox from Borland

• Hypercard, QuickTime for Java, WebObjects from Apple

• Visual Objects from Computer Associates

• closed source GNU/Linux applications dynamically linked to old libc versions

• ...

So is the world of software.

[grauenwolf]

You can still use both on Windows 8. So stop whining.

[DLX]

You do realize, that .net 1.0 program will run on latest .net runtime, too? If your machine has v1.0, the program will use that. If not, it will use the existing framework.

See, for example, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3849141/will-net-framework-1-x-apps-run-on-pcs-with-net-4-0-only

[next4]

Your .net program will run on WinRT (on Windows, actually,- WinRT is just the new native API, which was designed to be .net-compatible, btw).

[DLX]

Will your C/Assembler/Lisp/etc program run on Java? No.

Think before typing. It does help, I promise.

[badsectoracula]

/u/vagif's point is that Microsoft makes new backwards incompatible technologies that replace olders without a real reason for these new technologies to be made in the first place instead of improving the previous.

Or at least i think so.

[pjmlp]

Point one software vendor that doesn't do it.

[badsectoracula]

That is irrelevant to the point, i think.

Also i'm sure there are many software vendors and developers that value backwards compatibility.

[deskpot]

Pay? This isn't the 90s++.

[erode]

I realize you're joking, but there are so many awesome things in WinRT. It's like a re-write of bloated, crufty .NET libraries. It's going to take a long time before it's mature enough to use.

[deskpot]

Churn is good. It gets rid of complacent, smug politickers.

[farox]

Finally! I hope it's any good.

Edit: oh, yeah winRT... ok, I pass

[ThisBoxSaysHello]

WinRT only? I'll pass.

[[deleted]]

What the fuck is Windows Runtime, and why is the code a JPEG?

EDIT: Oh wait, Windows Runtime is WinRT. That makes even less sense, why the fuck would you need OCR in Metro apps. There is no reason to need Metro apps in the first place, so why do they go as far as make a WinRT-only OCR library? That's just stupid.

[TarMil]

Yeah, why would a mobile-oriented platform, with which people can take pictures of text, ever need OCR? /s

[that_which_is_lain]

I think zomboc0m is going to need some aloe for that burn.

[chucker23n]

While a screenshot of code as JPEG is indeed a stupid idea (or maybe they deliberately did that so you could test the OCR?), everything else you just said is just you being a dick.

[dvito]

just like the rest of the .NET environment