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HOWTO: Deploy a Project Using OCR

Table of Contents

NOTE

This information is specific to DotImage at the time it was written and may change slightly in future versions.

Every OcrEngine has different requirements in terms of how it is deployed. Atalasoft has tried to formalize this process as much as possible as well as to provide guidelines on the mechanism for deployment. Licensing is covered in another topic. This topic covers how to ensure that an OcrEngine will be able to start and will be able to find its own resources.

In your SDK installation, you will find a folder named "OcrResources". This folder is the general folder for all supported OCR engines. Within it you will see a structure like this:

EngineManufacturer1


EngineManufacturer2

...
EngineManufacturerN
...

In general, most of the handling of loading and locating resources is managed by Atalasoft or by the engine itself and does not require work by the client, but in custom situations, there may be work to be done by the client to handle this.

To sort this out, let's start with a few definitions:

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Definitions

In order to run, some engines have two requirements: an engine module for some portion of OCR functionality and resource files that are used to configure the engine or otherwise provide necessary data or services. This may include such things as dictionaries, grammar rules, glyph shapes, neural networks and so on.

Engines that require engine modules typically need to have those modules loaded before attempting to construct a class that requires them. This presents an interesting issue in that the assembly that uses the engine module should contain the knowledge of how to find the engine module, but the engine module needs to be loaded before the module that should be able to find it is loaded.

Atalasoft tries to handle this for you when possible so you don't have to worry about it, but there are some cases where this simply isn't possible.

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Options for the Developer

The developer can choose to leave the engine module in the OCR resources folder as shipped. If this is the case, then the developer must put the OCR resources folder within the assembly folder. Alternately, the developer can put the OcrResources folder in any location, but it is the developer's responsibility to load the dll. If the OCR resources folder is not in the assembly folder, the developer is required to pass its location in to the ExperVisionEngine constructor.

The developer can choose to move the engine module out of the OCR resources folder. In this case, if the engine module is put into the application folder or the assembly folder, then it should be located automatically. If the engine module is located somewhere else it is the developer's responsibility to locate it and load it. If the OCR resources folder is within the assembly folder, the developer can pass in null to the engine constructor for the path, otherwise the developer must pass the location in.

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OmniPageEngine (DotImage 11.3 and newer)

OmniPageEngine is new as of 11.3. OmniPage resources must be downloaded separately, we Don't ship them with the SDK be cause the resource zip is quite large. In order to deploy an app with OmniPageEngine, you must also deploy our OmniPage Resources

  1. Download the OmniPage Resources zip file Atalasoft.OmniPage.Resources.zip

  2. Create a folder where you will store the OmniPage Resources
    NOTE: the Atalasoft.OmniPage.Resources.zip does not create a container directory when you unzip, so make sure the folder you want to use exists, such as:
    C:\Program FIles (x86)Atalasoft\DotImage 11.3\bin\OcrResources\OmniPage

  3. Copy the Atalasoft.OmniPage.Resources.zip folder to that directory and unzip

  4. Ensure that in your application code, your OmniPageLoader is pointing at the folder where you unzipped the OmniPage Resources
    EX: 

     string ocrResourcePath = @"C:\Program Files (x86)\Atalasoft\DotImage 11.3\bin\OcrResources\OmniPage";
 OmniPageLoader loader = new OmniPageLoader(ocrResourcePath);

Please see INFO: OmniPageEngine Overview for more details on OmniPageEngine?

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AbbyyEngine (DotImage 10.7 through 11.2) {#abbyy-engine)

AbbyyEngine OCR resources must be downloaded separately. We don't ship them with the SDK because the resources are rather large (about 3/4 of a GiB). In order to deploy an app with AbbyyEngine, you must also deploy our AbbyyResources

  1. Download the AbbyyResources zip file Atalasoft.ABBYY.Resources.zip

  2. Create a folder where you will store the Abbyy Resources
    NOTE: the Atalasoft.ABBYY.Resources.zip does not create a container directory when you unzip, so make the folder you want to use such as:
    C:\Program Files (x86)\Atalasoft\DotImage 11.1\bin\OcrResources\ABBYY

  3. Copy the Atalasoft.ABBYY.Resources.zip folder into that directory and unzip

  4. Ensure that in your application code, your AbbyyLoader is pointing at the folder where you have unzipped the Abbyy Resources
    EX:

    string ocrResourcePath= @"C:\Program Files (x86)\Atalasoft\DotImage 11.0\bin\OcrResources\ABBYY"; AbbyyLoader loader = new AbbyyLoader(ocrResourcePath);

    Please see INFO: AbbyyEngine - Overview for more details on the AbbyyEngine

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GlyphReaderEngine (v5.0 for DotImage 11.2 and newer)

NOTE: this section is referring to GlyphReader v5.0 which is found in version 11.2 and newer. Please see the section on GlyphReader v4.0 for 10.3.1 through 11.1 and the section on GlyphReader v3.0 for older than 10.3.1

OcrResources folder with a GlyphReader sub-directory which itself has a v5.0 sub-directory containing the following 13 files and two folders:

the x86 and x64 folders each contain the following files (of the correct "bitness")

You will need to create a folder called OcrResources in your bin directory of your application, and copy the GlyphReader folder from

C:\Program Files (x86)\Atalasoft\DotImage 11.2\bin\OCRResources\

into it (where x is the version of DotImage such as 11.2 etc... )

You will also need to have a reference in your project to Atalasoft.dotImage.Ocr.GlyphReader.dll, but set the CopyLocal property to false, you then will need to physically place a copy of the correct version (x86/x64 and 3.5/4.5.2 for bitness and .NET framework respectively) of Atalasoft.dotImage.Ocr.GlyphReader.dll in the OCRResources folder

So, your application's bin folder will have

Due to the architecture of the GlyphReader engine, to specify a location other than a default search path such as System32, you'll need to create an instance of the OcrResourceLoader or GlyphReaderLoader in a static constructor before any OCR code is loaded. This is the case even if the resources are in the assembly folder. There you can specify an alternate location of the resources if desired.

GlyphReaderLoader loader = new GlyphReaderLoader( "PathToFolderContainingGlyphReaderResources" );

NOTE: When deploying GlyphReader to a Web Application, Web Service, or WCF service you need to load by Reflection.

Please see HOWTO: Load GlyphReaderEngine by Reflection

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GlyphReaderEngine (v4.0 for DotImage 10.3.1 through 11.1)

NOTE:: this section is referring to GlyphReader v4.0 which is found in DotImage 10.3.1 through 11.1. Please see the section on GlyphReader Engine v3.0 for older version, and GlyphReader4Engine v5.0 for 11.2 and newer

The 4.0 GlyphReader engine requires an OcrResources folder with a GlyphReader sub-directory which itself has a v4.0 sub-directory containing the following 3 files and two folders:

the x86 and x64 folders each contain the following files (of the correct "bitness")

You will need to create a folder called OcrResources in your bin directory of your application, and copy the GlyphReader folder from

C:\Program Files (x86)\Atalasoft\DotImage 10.x\bin\OCRResources\

into it (where x is the version of DotImage such as 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 and so on)

You will also need to have a reference in your project to Atalasoft.dotImage.Ocr.GlyphReader.dll, but set the CopyLocal property to false, you then will need to physically place a copy of the correct version (x86/x64 and 2.0/4.0 for bitness and .NET framework respectively) of Atalasoft.dotImage.Ocr.GlyphReader.dll in the OCRResources folder

So, your application's bin folder will have

Due to the architecture of the GlyphReaderEngine, to specify a location other than a default search path such as System32, you'll need to create an instance of the OcrResourceLoader or GlyphReaderLoader in a static constructor before any OCR code is loaded. This is the case even if the resources are in the assembly folder. There you can specify an alternate location of the resources if desired.

GlyphReaderLoader loader = new GlyphReaderLoader( "PathToFolderContainingGlyphReaderResources" );

NOTE: When deploying GlyphReader to a Web Application, Web Service, or WCF service you need to load by Reflection.

Please see HOWTO: Load GlyphReaderEngine by Reflection

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GlyphReaderEngine (v3.0 for DotImage 10.3.0 and lower)

NOTE:: This section is referring to GlyphReader v3.0 which is found in DotImage 10.3.0 and older... as of 10.3.1 and newer, we use GlyphReader 4.0 which has a significantly different deployment profile.

The GlyphReaderEngine requires the following resource files:

They are located by default in: SDK folder\OcrResources\GlyphReader\v3.0\

Due to the architecture of the GlyphReader engine, to specify a location other than a default search path such as System32, you'll need to create an instance of the OcrResourceLoader or GlyphReaderLoader in a static constructor before any OCR code is loaded. This is the case even if the resources are in the assembly folder. There you can specify an alternate location of the resources if desired.

GlyphReaderLoader loader = new GlyphReaderLoader( "PathToFolderContainingGlyphReaderResources" );

NOTE: When deploying GlyphReader to a Web Application, Web Service, or WCF service you need to load by Reflection.

Please see HOWTO: Load GlyphReaderEngine by Reflection

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Tesseract5Engine (11.4 and newer)

Tesseract5Engine replaces Tesseract3Engine

For this engine, the default constructor will search the current bin directory for an OcrResources folder containing Tesseract\v5.3.0\Tessdata and containing one or more xxx.traineddata files. If it doesn't find them it will try searching the default Atalasoft OcrResources location:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Atalasoft\DotImage 11.4\bin\OCRResources\

looking for the Tesseract folder and resources

You can also use the constructor overload that takes an OcrResources path and point it at a location where you've placed the Tesseract OCR files

example, you copy the CONTENTS OF
C:\Program Files (x86)\Atalasoft\DotImage 11.4\bin\OCRResources\Tesseract\v5.3.0 folder to

d:\OcrResources\
then 

Tesseract5Engine engine = new Tesseract5Engine(@"D:\OcrResources\");

engine.Initialize throws an exception you may need to check your path and ensure the full structure is present

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Tesseract3Engine (Deprecated - Consider moving to Tesseract5Engine available in 11.4 and newer)

The Tesseract3Engine replaces TesseractEngine

For this engine, the default constructor will search the current bin directory for an OcrResources folder containing Tesseract\v3.04\Tessdata and containing one or more xxx.traineddata files. If it doesn't find them it will try searching the default Atalasoft OcrResources location:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Atalasoft\DotImage 11.2\bin\OCRResources\

looking for the Tesseract folder and resources

You can also use the constructor overload that takes an OcrResources path and point it at a location where you've placed the Tesseract OCR files

example, you copy the
C:\Program Files (x86)\Atalasoft\DotImage 11.2\bin\OCRResources\Tesseract\ folder to

d:\OcrResources\
then 

Tesseract3Engine engine = new Tesseract3Engine(@"D:\OcrResources\");

engine.Initialize throws an exception you may need to check your path and ensure the full structure is present

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TesseractEngine (OBSOLETE)

NOTE: TesseractEngine was completely removed from our SDK in 11.1 - please move to Tesseract3Engine if you wish to continue using Tesseract

The TesseractEngine requires its resource files to be pointed at by an environment variable "TESSDATA_PREFIX". Install the "tessdata" folder to a location on the deployment machine and then in your project set the environment variable to the absolute path of "tessdata's" parent folder. You can use this call to accomplish this:

System.Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("TESSDATA_PREFIX", absolutepath,EnvironmentVariableTarget.User);

RecoStarEngine (OBSOLETE)

NOTE: RecoStarEngine was retired in 10.7 - this information provided for legacy support only

The RecoStar engine requires RecoStar Resources which are not distributed with DotImage by default, but which may be downloaded from here:

10.6.1 and newer:
http://www.atalasoft.com/download/Atalasoft.RecoStarResources.zip

10.6.0 and older:
http://www.atalasoft.com/download/DotImage-RecoStarResources.zip

Once downloaded, you can unzip (it will create a folder called RecoStar with a 7.2 (new as of 10.6.1 and newer... for older versions it will be 5.0) sub-directory and place several files and folders under there) and place the entire RecoStar folder into the default location ( C:\Program Files (x86)\Atalasoft\DotImage 10.x\bin\OCRResources\ )

You'll need a RecoStar Loader as well:

RecoStarLoader loader = new RecoStarLoader( "PathToFolderContainingRecoStar" );

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Original Article

Last Update

2025-06-13 - TD

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