ocrd-tool.json

Tools MUST be described in a file ocrd-tool.json in the root of the repository.

It must contain a JSON object adhering to the ocrd-tool JSON Schema.

In particular, every tool provided must be described in an array item under the tools key. These definitions drive the CLI and the web services.

To validate a ocrd-tool.json file, use ocrd ocrd-tool /path/to/ocrd-tool.json validate.

File parameters

To mark a parameter as expecting the address of a file, it MUST declare the content-type property as a valid media type. Optionally, workflow processors can be notified that this file is potentially large and static (e.g. a fixed dataset or a precomputed model) and should be cached indefinitely after download by setting the cacheable property to true.

The filename itself, i.e. the concrete value <fpath> of a file parameter, should be resolved in the following way (with <cwd> representing the current working directory, and <mod> representing the distribution directory of the module):

If <fpath> is an http/https URL: Download to a temporary directory (if cacheable==False) or a semi-temporary cache directory (if cacheable==True)
If <fpath> is an absolute path: Use as-is.
If <fpath> is a relative path (with or without directory components): Try resolving via the following directories, and return the first one found if any, otherwise abort with an error message stating so:
- <cwd>/<fpath> (Note that the file is expected to be directly under <cwd>, not in a subdirectory)
- If an environment variable is defined that has the name of the processor in upper-case and with - replaced with - and followed by _PATH (e.g. for a processor ocrd-dummy, the variable would need to be called OCRD_DUMMY_PATH):
  - Split the variable value at : and try to resolve by appending <fpath> to each token and return the first found file if any
- $XDG_DATA_HOME/ocrd-resources/<name-of-processor>/<fpath> (with $HOME/.local/share instead of $XDG_DATA_HOME if unset)
- /usr/local/share/ocrd-resources/<name-of-processor>/<fpath>
- <mod>/<fpath> (Note that the file is expected to be directly under <mod>, not in a subdirectory)

The path of the <mod> directory is implementation specific and allows modules to distribute small resources along with the code, i.e. pre-installed files like presets.

Input / Output file groups

Tools should define the names of both expected input and produced output file groups as a list of USE attributes of mets:fileGrp elements. If more than one file group is expected or produced, this should be explained in the description of the tool.

NOTE: Both input and output file groups can be overridden at runtime. Tools must therefore ensure not to hardcode file group names. When multiple groups are expected, the order of the override reflects the order in which they are defined in the ocrd-tool.json.

Definition

type: object
description: Schema for tools by OCR-D MP
required:
  - version
  - git_url
  - tools
additionalProperties: false
properties:
  version:
    description: "Version of the tool, expressed as MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH."
    type: string
    pattern: '^[0-9]+\.[0-9]+\.[0-9]+$'
  git_url:
    description: GitHub/GitLab URL
    type: string
    format: url
  dockerhub:
    description: DockerHub image
    type: string
  tools:
    type: object
    additionalProperties: false
    patternProperties:
      'ocrd-.*':
        type: object
        additionalProperties: false
        required:
          - description
          - steps
          - executable
          - categories
          - input_file_grp
          # Not required because not all processors produce output files
          # - output_file_grp
        properties:
          executable:
            description: The name of the CLI executable in $PATH
            type: string
          input_file_grp:
            description: Input fileGrp@USE this tool expects by default
            type: array
            items:
              type: string
              # pattern: '^OCR-D-[A-Z0-9-]+$'
          output_file_grp:
            description: Output fileGrp@USE this tool produces by default
            type: array
            items:
              type: string
              # pattern: '^OCR-D-[A-Z0-9-]+$'
          parameters:
            description: Object describing the parameters of a tool. Keys are parameter names, values sub-schemas.
            type: object
            default: {}
            patternProperties:
              ".*":
                type: object
                additionalProperties: false
                required:
                  - description
                  - type
                  # also either 'default' or 'required'
                properties:
                  type:
                    type: string
                    description: Data type of this parameter
                    enum:
                      - string
                      - number
                      - boolean
                      - object
                      - array
                  format:
                    description: Subtype, such as `float` for type `number` or `uri` for type `string`.
                  description:
                    description: Concise description of syntax and semantics of this parameter
                  items:
                    type: object
                    description: describe the items of an array further
                  minimum:
                    type: number
                    description: Minimum value for number parameters, including the minimum
                  maximum:
                    type: number
                    description: Maximum value for number parameters, including the maximum
                  exclusiveMinimum:
                    type: number
                    description: Minimum value for number parameters, excluding the minimum
                  exclusiveMaximum:
                    type: number
                    description: Maximum value for number parameters, excluding the maximum
                  multipleOf:
                    type: number
                    description: For number values, those values must be multiple of this number
                  properties:
                    type: object
                    description: Describe the properties of an object value
                  additionalProperties:
                    type: boolean
                    description: Whether an object value may contain properties not explicitly defined
                  required:
                    type: boolean
                    description: Whether this parameter is required
                  default:
                    description: Default value when not provided by the user
                  enum:
                    type: array
                    description: List the allowed values if a fixed list.
                  content-type:
                    type: string
                    default: 'application/octet-stream'
                    description: >
                      The media type of resources this processor expects for
                      this parameter. Most processors use files for resources
                      (e.g.  `*.traineddata` for `ocrd-tesserocr-recognize`)
                      while others use directories of files (e.g. `default` for
                      `ocrd-eynollah-segment`).  If a parameter requires
                      directories, it must set `content-type` to
                      `text/directory`.
                  cacheable:
                    type: boolean
                    description: "If parameter is reference to file: Whether the file should be cached, e.g. because it is large and won't change."
                    default: false
          description:
            description: Concise description of what the tool does
          categories:
            description: Tools belong to these categories, representing modules within the OCR-D project structure
            type: array
            items:
              type: string
              enum:
                - Image preprocessing
                - Layout analysis
                - Text recognition and optimization
                - Model training
                - Long-term preservation
                - Quality assurance
          steps:
            description: This tool can be used at these steps in the OCR-D functional model
            type: array
            items:
              type: string
              enum:
                - preprocessing/characterization
                - preprocessing/optimization
                - preprocessing/optimization/cropping
                - preprocessing/optimization/deskewing
                - preprocessing/optimization/despeckling
                - preprocessing/optimization/dewarping
                - preprocessing/optimization/binarization
                - preprocessing/optimization/grayscale_normalization
                - recognition/text-recognition
                - recognition/font-identification
                - recognition/post-correction
                - layout/segmentation
                - layout/segmentation/text-nontext
                - layout/segmentation/region
                - layout/segmentation/line
                - layout/segmentation/word
                - layout/segmentation/classification
                - layout/analysis
          resource_locations:
            type: array
            description: The locations in the filesystem this processor supports for resource lookup
            default: ['data', 'cwd', 'system', 'module']
            items:
              type: string
              enum: ['data', 'cwd', 'system', 'module']
          resources:
            type: array
            description: Resources for this processor
            items:
              type: object
              additionalProperties: false
              required:
                - url
                - description
                - name
                - size
              properties:
                url:
                  type: string
                  description: URLs of all components of this resource
                description:
                  type: string
                  description: A description of the resource
                name:
                  type: string
                  description: Name to store the resource as
                type:
                  type: string
                  enum: ['file', 'directory', 'archive']
                  default: file
                  description: Type of the URL
                parameter_usage:
                  type: string
                  description: Defines how the parameter is to be used
                  enum: ['as-is', 'without-extension']
                  default: 'as-is'
                path_in_archive:
                  type: string
                  description: If type is archive, the resource is at this location in the archive
                  default: '.'
                version_range:
                  type: string
                  description: Range of supported versions, syntax like in PEP 440
                  default: '>= 0.0.1'
                size:
                  type: number
                  description: "Size of the resource in bytes to be retrieved (for archives: size of the archive)"

Example

This is from the ocrd_tesserocr project:

{
  "version": "0.10.0",
  "git_url": "https://github.com/OCR-D/ocrd_tesserocr",
  "dockerhub": "ocrd/tesserocr",
  "tools": {
    "ocrd-tesserocr-deskew": {
      "executable": "ocrd-tesserocr-deskew",
      "categories": ["Image preprocessing"],
      "description": "Detect script, orientation and skew angle for pages or regions",
      "input_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-IMG",
        "OCR-D-SEG-BLOCK"
      ],
      "output_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-DESKEW-BLOCK"
      ],
      "steps": ["preprocessing/optimization/deskewing"],
      "parameters": {
        "dpi": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "float",
          "description": "pixel density in dots per inch (overrides any meta-data in the images); disabled when negative",
          "default": 0
        },
        "operation_level": {
          "type": "string",
          "enum": ["page","region"],
          "default": "region",
          "description": "PAGE XML hierarchy level to operate on"
        },
        "min_orientation_confidence": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "float",
          "default": 1.5,
          "description": "Minimum confidence score to apply orientation as detected by OSD"
        }
      }
    },
    "ocrd-tesserocr-fontshape": {
      "executable": "ocrd-tesserocr-fontshape",
      "categories": ["Text recognition and optimization"],
      "description": "Recognize font shapes (family/monospace/bold/italic) and size in segmented words with Tesseract (using annotated derived images, or masking and cropping images from coordinate polygons), annotating TextStyle",
      "input_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-WORD",
        "OCR-D-OCR"
      ],
      "output_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-OCR-STYLE"
      ],
      "steps": ["recognition/font-identification"],
      "parameters": {
        "dpi": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "float",
          "description": "pixel density in dots per inch (overrides any meta-data in the images); disabled when negative",
          "default": 0
        },
        "padding": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "integer",
          "default": 0,
          "description": "Number of background-filled pixels to add around the word image (i.e. the annotated AlternativeImage if it exists or the higher-level image cropped to the bounding box and masked by the polygon otherwise) on each side before recognition."
        },
        "model": {
          "type": "string",
          "default": "osd",
          "description": "tessdata model to apply (an ISO 639-3 language specification or some other basename, e.g. deu-frak or osd); must be an old (pre-LSTM) model"
        }
      }
    },
    "ocrd-tesserocr-recognize": {
      "executable": "ocrd-tesserocr-recognize",
      "categories": ["Text recognition and optimization"],
      "description": "Segment and/or recognize text with Tesseract (using annotated derived images, or masking and cropping images from coordinate polygons) on any level of the PAGE hierarchy.",
      "input_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-PAGE",
        "OCR-D-SEG-REGION",
        "OCR-D-SEG-TABLE",
        "OCR-D-SEG-LINE",
        "OCR-D-SEG-WORD"
      ],
      "output_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-REGION",
        "OCR-D-SEG-TABLE",
        "OCR-D-SEG-LINE",
        "OCR-D-SEG-WORD",
        "OCR-D-SEG-GLYPH",
        "OCR-D-OCR-TESS"
      ],
      "steps": [
        "layout/segmentation/region",
        "layout/segmentation/line",
        "recognition/text-recognition"
      ],
      "parameters": {
        "dpi": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "float",
          "description": "pixel density in dots per inch (overrides any meta-data in the images); disabled when negative",
          "default": 0
        },
        "padding": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "integer",
          "default": 0,
          "description": "Extend detected region/cell/line/word rectangles by this many (true) pixels, or extend existing region/line/word images (i.e. the annotated AlternativeImage if it exists or the higher-level image cropped to the bounding box and masked by the polygon otherwise) by this many (background/white) pixels on each side before recognition."
        },
        "segmentation_level": {
          "type": "string",
          "enum": ["region", "cell", "line", "word", "glyph", "none"],
          "default": "word",
          "description": "Highest PAGE XML hierarchy level to remove existing annotation from and detect segments for (before iterating downwards); if ``none``, does not attempt any new segmentation; if ``cell``, starts at table regions, detecting text regions (cells). Ineffective when lower than ``textequiv_level``."
        },
        "textequiv_level": {
          "type": "string",
          "enum": ["region", "cell", "line", "word", "glyph", "none"],
          "default": "word",
          "description": "Lowest PAGE XML hierarchy level to re-use or detect segments for and add the TextEquiv results to (before projecting upwards); if ``none``, adds segmentation down to the glyph level, but does not attempt recognition at all; if ``cell``, stops short before text lines, adding text of text regions inside tables (cells) or on page level only."
        },
        "overwrite_segments": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": false,
          "description": "If ``segmentation_level`` is not none, but an element already contains segments, remove them and segment again. Otherwise use the existing segments of that element."
        },
        "overwrite_text": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": true,
          "description": "If ``textequiv_level`` is not none, but a segment already contains TextEquivs, remove them and replace with recognised text. Otherwise add new text as alternative. (Only the first entry is projected upwards.)"
        },
        "block_polygons": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": false,
          "description": "When detecting regions, annotate polygon coordinates instead of bounding box rectangles."
        },
        "find_tables": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": true,
          "description": "When detecting regions, recognise tables as table regions (Tesseract's ``textord_tabfind_find_tables=1``)."
        },
        "sparse_text": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": false,
          "description": "When detecting regions, use 'sparse text' page segmentation mode (finding as much text as possible in no particular order): only text regions, single lines without vertical or horizontal space."
        },
        "raw_lines": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": false,
          "description": "When detecting lines, do not attempt additional segmentation (baseline+xheight+ascenders/descenders prediction) on line images. Can increase accuracy for certain workflows. Disable when line segments/images may contain components of more than 1 line, or larger gaps/white-spaces."
        },
        "char_whitelist": {
          "type": "string",
          "default": "",
          "description": "When recognizing text, enumeration of character hypotheses (from the model) to allow exclusively; overruled by blacklist if set."
        },
        "char_blacklist": {
          "type": "string",
          "default": "",
          "description": "When recognizing text, enumeration of character hypotheses (from the model) to suppress; overruled by unblacklist if set."
        },
        "char_unblacklist": {
          "type": "string",
          "default": "",
          "description": "When recognizing text, enumeration of character hypotheses (from the model) to allow inclusively."
        },
        "model": {
          "type": "string",
          "description": "The tessdata text recognition model to apply (an ISO 639-3 language specification or some other basename, e.g. deu-frak or Fraktur)."
        }
      }
    },
     "ocrd-tesserocr-segment": {
      "executable": "ocrd-tesserocr-segment",
      "categories": ["Layout analysis"],
      "description": "Segment page into regions and lines with Tesseract",
      "input_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-IMG",
        "OCR-D-SEG-PAGE",
        "OCR-D-GT-SEG-PAGE"
      ],
      "output_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-LINE"
      ],
      "steps": ["layout/segmentation/region", "layout/segmentation/line"],
      "parameters": {
        "dpi": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "float",
          "description": "pixel density in dots per inch (overrides any meta-data in the images); disabled when negative",
          "default": 0
        },
        "padding": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "integer",
          "description": "extend detected region rectangles by this many (true) pixels",
          "default": 4
        },
        "block_polygons": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": false,
          "description": "annotate polygon coordinates instead of bounding box rectangles"
        },
        "find_tables": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": true,
          "description": "recognise tables as table regions (textord_tabfind_find_tables)"
        },
        "sparse_text": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": false,
          "description": "use 'sparse text' page segmentation mode (find as much text as possible in no particular order): only text regions, single lines without vertical or horizontal space"
        }
      }
   },
   "ocrd-tesserocr-segment-region": {
      "executable": "ocrd-tesserocr-segment-region",
      "categories": ["Layout analysis"],
      "description": "Segment page into regions with Tesseract",
      "input_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-IMG",
        "OCR-D-SEG-PAGE",
        "OCR-D-GT-SEG-PAGE"
      ],
      "output_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-BLOCK"
      ],
      "steps": ["layout/segmentation/region"],
      "parameters": {
        "dpi": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "float",
          "description": "pixel density in dots per inch (overrides any meta-data in the images); disabled when negative",
          "default": 0
        },
        "overwrite_regions": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": true,
          "description": "Remove existing layout and text annotation below the Page level (otherwise skip page; no incremental annotation yet)."
        },
        "padding": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "integer",
          "description": "extend detected region rectangles by this many (true) pixels",
          "default": 0
        },
        "crop_polygons": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": false,
          "description": "annotate polygon coordinates instead of bounding box rectangles"
        },
        "find_tables": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": true,
          "description": "recognise tables as table regions (textord_tabfind_find_tables)"
        },
        "sparse_text": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": false,
          "description": "use 'sparse text' page segmentation mode (find as much text as possible in no particular order): only text regions, single lines without vertical or horizontal space"
        }
      }
    },
     "ocrd-tesserocr-segment-table": {
      "executable": "ocrd-tesserocr-segment-table",
      "categories": ["Layout analysis"],
      "description": "Segment table regions into cell text regions with Tesseract",
      "input_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-BLOCK",
        "OCR-D-GT-SEG-BLOCK"
      ],
      "output_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-BLOCK"
      ],
      "steps": ["layout/segmentation/region"],
      "parameters": {
        "dpi": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "float",
          "description": "pixel density in dots per inch (overrides any meta-data in the images); disabled when negative",
          "default": 0
        },
        "overwrite_cells": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": true,
          "description": "Remove existing layout and text annotation below the TableRegion level (otherwise skip table; no incremental annotation yet)."
        }
      }
     },
     "ocrd-tesserocr-segment-line": {
      "executable": "ocrd-tesserocr-segment-line",
      "categories": ["Layout analysis"],
      "description": "Segment regions into lines with Tesseract",
      "input_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-BLOCK",
        "OCR-D-GT-SEG-BLOCK"
      ],
      "output_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-LINE"
      ],
      "steps": ["layout/segmentation/line"],
      "parameters": {
        "dpi": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "float",
          "description": "pixel density in dots per inch (overrides any meta-data in the images); disabled when negative",
          "default": 0
        },
        "overwrite_lines": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": true,
          "description": "Remove existing layout and text annotation below the TextRegion level (otherwise skip region; no incremental annotation yet)."
        }
      }
    },
    "ocrd-tesserocr-segment-word": {
      "executable": "ocrd-tesserocr-segment-word",
      "categories": ["Layout analysis"],
      "description": "Segment lines into words with Tesseract",
      "input_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-LINE",
        "OCR-D-GT-SEG-LINE"
      ],
      "output_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-SEG-WORD"
      ],
      "steps": ["layout/segmentation/word"],
      "parameters": {
        "dpi": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "float",
          "description": "pixel density in dots per inch (overrides any meta-data in the images); disabled when negative",
          "default": 0
        },
        "overwrite_words": {
          "type": "boolean",
          "default": true,
          "description": "Remove existing layout and text annotation below the TextLine level (otherwise skip line; no incremental annotation yet)."
        }
      }
    },
    "ocrd-tesserocr-crop": {
      "executable": "ocrd-tesserocr-crop",
      "categories": ["Image preprocessing"],
      "description": "Poor man's cropping via region segmentation",
      "input_file_grp": [
	"OCR-D-IMG"
      ],
      "output_file_grp": [
	"OCR-D-SEG-PAGE"
      ],
      "steps": ["preprocessing/optimization/cropping"],
      "parameters" : {
        "dpi": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "float",
          "description": "pixel density in dots per inch (overrides any meta-data in the images); disabled when negative",
          "default": 0
        },
        "padding": {
          "type": "number",
          "format": "integer",
          "description": "extend detected border by this many (true) pixels on every side",
          "default": 4
        }
      }
    },
    "ocrd-tesserocr-binarize": {
      "executable": "ocrd-tesserocr-binarize",
      "categories": ["Image preprocessing"],
      "description": "Binarize regions or lines with Tesseract's global Otsu",
      "input_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-IMG",
        "OCR-D-SEG-BLOCK",
        "OCR-D-SEG-LINE"
      ],
      "output_file_grp": [
        "OCR-D-BIN-BLOCK",
        "OCR-D-BIN-LINE"
      ],
      "steps": ["preprocessing/optimization/binarization"],
      "parameters": {
        "operation_level": {
          "type": "string",
          "enum": ["region", "line"],
          "default": "region",
          "description": "PAGE XML hierarchy level to operate on"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}