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International Conference on Pattern Recognition

ICPR 2021: Pattern Recognition. ICPR International Workshops and Challenges pp 156–170Cite as

Visual Programming-Based Interactive Analysis of Ancient Documents: The Case of Magical Signs in Jewish Manuscripts

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 12667))

Abstract

This paper presents an interactive system for experimental ancient document analysis applied to the specific use case of the computational analysis of magical signs, called Brillenbuchstaben or charaktêres, in digitized Jewish manuscripts. It draws upon known theories as well as methods from open source toolboxes and embeds them into a visual programming-based user interface. Its general design is particularly aimed at the needs of Humanities scholars and thus enables them to computationally analyze these signs without requiring any prior programming experience. In the light of this, the web-based system has been designed to be e.g. interoperable, modular, flexible, transparent and readily accessible by tech-unsavvy users regardless of their background. The paper further discusses a paradigmatic user study conducted with domain experts to evaluate this system and presents first results from those evaluations.

Parts of the research for this paper were undertaken at SFB 950 ‘Manuscript Cultures in Asia, Africa and Europe’, funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG) and within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC), Universität Hamburg. We are also indebted to Christopher Hahn for his pioneering work as referenced and Dieter Jessen for his support in setting up the iXMan_Lab hardware.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.github.com/virtualvinodh/AMAP; under GPLv3 License.

  2. 2.

    https://diuf.unifr.ch/main/hisdoc/divaservices.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. iXMan_Lab, Research Group Image Processing, Department of Informatics, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Parth Sarthi Pandey, Vinodh Rajan & H. Siegfried Stiehl

  2. Center for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

    Michael Kohs

Authors
  1. Parth Sarthi Pandey
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  2. Vinodh Rajan
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  3. H. Siegfried Stiehl
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  4. Michael Kohs
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Parth Sarthi Pandey .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, University of Firenze, Firenze, Italy

    Alberto Del Bimbo

  2. Dipartimento di Ingegneria “Enzo Ferrari”, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy

    Rita Cucchiara

  3. Department of Computer Science, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Stan Sclaroff

  4. Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, University of Catania, Catania, Italy

    Giovanni Maria Farinella

  5. Cloud & AI, JD.COM, Beijing, China

    Tao Mei

  6. Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, University of Firenze, Firenze, Italy

    Marco Bertini

  7. Computational Sciences Department, National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics (INAOE), Tonantzintla, Puebla, Mexico

    Hugo Jair Escalante

  8. Dipartimento di Ingegneria “Enzo Ferrari”, Università di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Modena, Italy

    Roberto Vezzani

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Pandey, P.S., Rajan, V., Stiehl, H.S., Kohs, M. (2021). Visual Programming-Based Interactive Analysis of Ancient Documents: The Case of Magical Signs in Jewish Manuscripts. In: Del Bimbo, A., et al. Pattern Recognition. ICPR International Workshops and Challenges. ICPR 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12667. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68787-8_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68787-8_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-68786-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-68787-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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