ABBYY Flexicapture Engine Wednesday, 27 October 2010
ABBYY presents ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0, an SDK for data extraction, document classification, indexing, and conversion to highly compressed searchable PDF*. If you develop software for document workflow automation, then you may need a convenient toolkit for digitizing scanned data. The range of tasks solved by ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 varies from extracting data out of polls to saving data from invoices, to classifying and indexing contracts and letters.
ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 offers extensive functionality to suit virtually any task in the Data Capture framework. No matter how complex documents in the bulk may be, FlexiCapture layouts are specially developed to analyze and identify data even when your documents are only partly structured. Flexibility of the Engine allows for stable and reliable multi-page processing and intelligent handling of long tables.
ABBYY is known for its leading positions in the OCR and linguistic software markets. ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 performance rests on the broadest OCR/ICR language support. It includes more than 180 languages for OCR and about 110 languages for ICR as well as reliable checkmark and barcode recognition.
Having the toolkit work for your customers, you help them to save money on document workflow routines. ABBYY FlexiCapture technology is a bridge between scanned paper records and pure digital data, ready to be used for various business goals.
The ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 key features include:
Advanced Processing of Multi-Page Documents and Long Tables
Most business documents, especially price lists, contracts, or surveys consist of several pages. With this Data Capture toolkit, you get the unique technology to easily process documents with multiple pages and tables that stretch over more than one page.
Handling Semi-Structured Documents
ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 extracts important data from documents like invoices, contracts, or letters which have no fixed layout. Despite the fact that invoices may have different structures, the necessary fields such as contract number, position name, or signature can be quickly located and extracted in an appropriate format.
Effective Verification Methods to Improve Data Capture Control
The toolkit offers effective and convenient instruments for checking the validity of captured data and tracking recognition errors:
- If needed, recognized data are automatically checked to determine if they satisfy certain conditions. This covers comparison with a known value (e.g., supplied as a regular expression or taken from a data base), comparison of data items against one another, or checking if data falls within pre-defined boundaries. Finally, scripts can be used to create very flexible rules.
- Extremely effective Group Verification allows reviewing similar looking symbols all together. This feature speeds up manual verification and reduces the number of human-related errors.
PDF Conversion
Thanks to the world’s largest language base and high-quality OCR, ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 is able to index a document with relevant data and convert it to PDF or PDF/A.
Automated Document Classification
ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 provides a single entry point to automatically extract valuable data from the stream of forms and documents. The documents in the bundle can vary in structure and type, but they will be precisely classified based on pre-defined templates. Thus, document sorting and templates matching are performed without any manual labor.
Handling Fixed Forms
ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 makes use of all ABBYY’s achievements in processing documents with fixed layouts like questionnaires or tests. Should your customers conduct a survey, or use a pre-defined set of financial forms, they can rely on highly accurate ICR and OMR technologies provided with the toolkit.
Widest Language Support
ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 makes use of the huge language pack of more than 180 languages for OCR and more than 110 languages for ICR
Intergating ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 in your applications, you make your software much more customer-friendly:
Adding valuable functionality
The Engine enables you to easily add functionality required from today’s document management solutions, e.g.:
- Automated data extraction from various types of fixed documents like questionnaires or insurance forms, which often come in large numbers;
- Handling semi-structured forms in which the location of key data fields (such as date, invoice number, or text block) varies across documents, providing fast and precise data extraction;
- Document indexing and classification options allow you to automate document storage and archiving routines. This makes digital documents, even unstructured ones, easily accessible and improves the entire document workflow.
The ABBYY brand works for your application
ABBYY’s reputation and high profile in the industry will help in promoting your solutions.
ABBYY's form processing and data capture end-user products are used by many government agencies and commercial organizations all over the world, including: Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club e.V. (Germany), Connecticut Braille Association (USA), UMW Toyota (Malaysia), Cargill Foods (USA), Indian Educational Institutions (India), Finansbank (Turkey), Lithuanian Tax Inspectorate (Lithuania), Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation (Russia), Trendset (USA), Ministry of Rural Development of Malaysia (Malaysia), Prodco TV (UK) and many more.
Make International and Localizable Applications
In today’s world, it is very important to have not only a local version of a product but to be ready to make localized international solutions. The Engine has a unique OCR/ICR language coverage and other features you may need:
FlexiCapture Engine is able to recognize more than 180 languages in OCR (including the Latin, Greek, Armenian, Cyrillic, and Thai alphabets) and more than 110 languages in ICR. The ABBYY team is constantly working to increase the list of available languages, both with and without dictionary support.
Create One-Click Applications
Applications built on the Engine, offer automatic processing of incoming documents, simplifying input, recognition, verification, and export into just one action performed on a bundle of records. The whole process can be configured for operating in standalone mode for maximum stability and smoothness.
Get Cost-Effective Solutions
Applications powered by ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine cut down expenses on labor force and related risks. They help you to save hours of employees’ work on inputting and re-inputting data if they were incorrectly recognized. All this is possible due to:
- the high quality of OCR and ICR that reduces the amount of data correction work;
- rule-based automated verification process;
- extremely effective error-proof group verification.
Stay Up-to-Date
ABBYY is constantly developing existent and searching for new technologies that respond to every day challenges faced by end-users. FlexiCapture 8 is offers multiple examples of radical improvements:
- New and emerging approach handling a document not as just a bundle of pages but as a single entity with uniform processing options for every page;
- Export of images along with extracted data for classifying and indexing purposes;
- Support for recurrent items in documents, including complex tables, to speed up processing of groups of identical fields.
Single Supplier of All Technologies
ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 delivers a full-range of state-of-the-art technologies for data capture and archiving scenarios. This allows developers to stick to one SDK supplier for different tasks, having a single approach to developing, maintenance, and training for the SDK.
ABBYY provides not only traditional data capture utilities but also instruments for document conversion. These tasks are highly interconnected and the customer benefits from having only one supplier for all of them.
Quick Learning Curve
FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 has a clear and easy-to-use API. Nevertheless, to shorten the learning curve the distribution package contains:
- Training courses and certification questions on ABBYY FlexiCapture technology
- Professional Services to help you quick-start your development
- Single and integral API;
- Full and clear developer’s Help.
Use the Programming Language You Are Accustomed To
The Engine API conforms to the COM standard and can be easily used in C/C++, Visual Basic, .Net, Delphi, or any other development tools supporting COM components.
With minimum effort, the Engine can be adopted for use in scripting languages such as VBS, JS, and Perl.
The distribution package contains samples for C/C++, VB 6, VB.Net, C#, and Delphi programming languages.
ABBYY Is Always in Contact
ABBYY is an international company with a wide geography of local offices ready to provide you with technical support:
- At the time which is most convenient to you, as we are able to respond during your office hours;
- In many cases in a language you are familiar with;
- With a minimum response time, since we provide technologies we are developing ourselves
OCR and ICR Languages
OCR
ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 recognizes more than 190 OCR languages, including:
- 37 main languages with Latin, Cyrillic, Greek or Armenian characters, for which FineReader Engine provides dictionary support: Armenian (Eastern, Western, Grabar), Bashkir, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch (Netherlands and Belgium), English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German (new and old spelling), Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian (Nynorsk and Bokmal), Polish, Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tatar, Turkish and Ukrainian
- 133 additional languages with Latin, Cyrillic or Greek characters: Abkhaz, Adyghian, Afrikaans, Agul, Albanian, Altai, Avar, Aymara, Azerbaijani (Cyrillic), Azerbaijani (Latin), Basque, Belarusian, Bemba, Blackfoot, Breton, Bugotu, Buryat, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chechen, Chukchee, Chuvash, Congo, Corsican, Crimean Tatar, Crow, Dakota, Dargwa, Dungan, Eskimo (Cyrillic), Eskimo (Latin), Even, Evenki, Faeroese, Fijian, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz, Galician, Ganda, German (Luxemburg), Guarani, Hani, Hausa, Hawaiian, Icelandic, Ingush, Irish, Jingpo, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karachay-balkar, Karakalpak, Kasub, Kawa, Kazakh, Khakass, Khanty, Kikuyu, Kirghiz, Koryak, Kpelle, Kumyk, Kurdish, Lak, Latin, Lezgi, Luba, Macedonian, Malagasy, Malay, Malinke, Maltese, Mansy, Maori, Mari, Maya, Miao, Minangkabau, Mohawk, Moldavian, Mongol, Mordvin, Nahuatl, Nenets, Nivkh, Nogay, Nyanja, Ojibway, Ossetian, Papiamento, Provencal, Quechua, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romany, Rundi, Russian (old spelling), Rwanda, Sami (Lappish), Samoan, Scottish Gaelic, Selkup, Serbian (Cyrillic), Serbian (Latin), Shona, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Sunda, Swahili, Swazi, Tabasaran, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tajik, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tswana, Tun, Turkmen, Tuvinian, Udmurt, Uigur (Cyrillic), Uigur (Latin), Uzbek (Cyrillic), Uzbek (Latin), Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yakut, Zapotec, Zulu
- 4 artificial languages: Esperanto, Interlingua, Ido and Occidental
ICR
ABBYY FlexiCapture Engine 8.0 provides ICR for 112 languages, including:
- 28 languages with morphology/dictionary support (languages with Latin characters, 3 Cyrillic languages and Greek)
- 84 languages without dictionary support
- Supports 22 styles of hand-writing of different countries and areas: European, American, Canadian, Russian, Japanese, Arabic and Thai.
Supported Image Formats
- PDF:
Files in PDF format (Version 1.6 or earlier) - BMP:
uncompressed black and white,
uncompressed gray,
uncompressed color - PCX, DCX:
2-bit - black and white
4- and 8-bit - gray
TrueColor - JPEG:
gray, color - JPEG 2000:
grey, 8-bit
color, RGB or YСС colorspace, 8 bit per channel
color, encoded using 8-bit palette in RGB colorspace - TIFF:
black and white - uncompressed, CCITT3, CCITT3FAX, CCITT4, Packbits, ZIP, LZW
gray - uncompressed, Packbits, JPEG, ZIP, LZW
TrueColor - uncompressed, JPEG, ZIP, LZW
Palette - uncompressed, Packbits, ZIP
multi image TIFF - GIF:
black and white - LZW-compressed
gray - LZW-compressed
TrueColor - LZW-compressed - PNG:
black and white, gray, color - DjVu:
black and white, gray, color
Message Languages
Dialogue captions, text, error and other program messages are available in English, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Polish, Czech, and Hungarian.
Export Formats
- XLS
- DBF
- CSV
- TXT
- PDF and PDF/A
- XML
Barcode types
1D Barcodes:
- Codabar
- Code 128
- Code 39
- Code 93
- EAN 8
- EAN 13
- IATA 2 of 5
- Industrial 2 of 5
- Interleaved 2 of 5
- Matrix 2 of 5
- PostNet
- UCC-128
- UPC-A
- UPC-E
1D Barcodes with checksum:
- Code 39
- Interleaved 2 of 5
- Codabar
1D Barcodes with supplemental:
- EAN 8
- EAN 13
- UPC-E
2D Barcodes:
- PDF417
Developer Environments
- Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2005
- Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
- Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0, 6.0;
- Microsoft Visual C++ 4.x and above;
- VB Script, and other scripting languages;
- Borland Delphi 2.0 and above;
- Any other development environment that supports COM and ActiveX objects correctly.
System Requirements
Standalone Runtime or Developer License Installation
- PC with Intel® Pentium®/Celeron®/Xeon™, AMD K6/Athlon™/Duron™/Sempron™ or compatible processor with a minimum clock speed of 200 MHz
- Operating System: Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008, Windows Vista®, Windows Server 2003, Windows® XP, Windows 2000, and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP.
- Memory: 128 MB RAM.
- Hard disk space: 365 MB for full developer installation and 70 MB for program operation
- Video card and monitor (min. resolution 800×600)
- Keyboard, mouse or other input device
- The user must have read/write permissions to the following registry branches:
o HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ABBYY
o HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ABBYY
Network Runtime Installation
Server Requirements
- PC with Intel Pentium/Celeron/Xeon, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron or compatible processor. Processor must be 200 MHz or higher
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP.
- 10 MB of free hard-disk space
Workstation Requirements
- PC with Intel Pentium/Celeron/Xeon, AMD K6/Athlon/Duron/Sempron or compatible processor with a minimum clock speed of 200 MHz
- Operating System: Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP.
- Memory: 128 MB RAM.
- Hard disk space: 365 MB for library and 70 MB for program operation
- Video card and monitor (min. resolution 800x600)
- Keyboard, mouse or other input device
- The following registry branches should be accessible from the workstation:
o HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT – full control access
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\ABBYY – full control access
o HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ABBYY – full control access
o HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID – full control access
o HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib – full control access for installation and activation only - The following folders should be accessible from the workstation:
o %TEMP% folder – full control access - The following components should be installed:
o Microsoft® Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher