============================================================================ IAPR TC11 Newsletter September 2010 http://www.iapr-tc11.org ========== Contents ======================================================== * Message from the Editor * Dates 'n' Deadlines - ICDAR 2011, Beijing, March 1, 2011 * Event report - FAHR 2010 (in conjunction with ICPR 2010), August 22, Istanbul * Call for Hosting: - IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis (DAS), 2012 (repost) * News: - Final Program of Document Recognition and Retrieval XVIII announced * Call for Contributions ============================================================================ ========== Message from the Editor ========================================= Welcome to the September edition of our TC-11 newsletter. This edition brings to you a short report on FAHR 2010, the First International Workshop on Frontiers in Arabic Handwriting Recognition recently held in Istanbul in conjunction with this year's ICPR. As I would like to see more event reports like this one (and I don't want to write them all myself ;-) I would like to encourage everybody from the community to contribute material on interesting events from the field for future editions of our newsletter. Additionally, I would like to draw your attention the Call for Hosting DAS 2012, which is still open, and to DRR 2011, for which the final conference program was announced just recently. Best regards, Gernot A. Fink, IAPR-TC11 Newsletter Editor Gernot.Fink@udo.edu ============================================================================ ========== Dates 'n' Deadlines ============================================= Event/Location/Web: Event Date: Deadline (paper submission): ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- * ICDAR 2011, Beijing September 18-21 March 1, 2011 (http://www.icdar2011.org/) - Workshop proposals: November 20, 2010 - Tutorial proposals: January 20, 2011 - Competition proposals: January 20, 2011 ============================================================================ ========== Event Report: FAHR 2010, Istanbul =============================== Short report on FAHR 2010 the 1st International Workshop on Frontiers in Arabic Handwriting Recognition, in conjunction with ICPR 2010, Istanbul, August 22. 2010 The day prior to ICPR 2010 a small crowd of researchers interested in the recognition of Arabic handwriting gathered in Istanbul in order to exchange ideas during the 1st International Workshop on Frontiers in Arabic Handwriting Recognition (FAHR 2010 -- http://fahr2010.cs.tu-dortmund.de). The workshop consisted of roughly two parts: In the morning sessions 5 oral and 2 poster presentations of research papers on different topics related to the recognition of Arabic handwriting were given, where topics ranged from learning feature extraction methods from data to writer identification or handwriting recognition. The afternoon was devoted to discussion groups that were defined based on "hot topics" identified by the workshop participants. Two such break-out groups for the most important topics - namely "Data Sets and Evaluation" and "Methodological Aspects" were formed engaging in very lively and productive discussions. In the "Data Sets and Evaluation" group everybody agreed that data sets should be publicly available for research and researchers should aim at tackling challenging tasks on the level of recognizing Arabic text rather than isolated words or characters in the near future. A database currently under development at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dahran, Saudi-Arabia (by Professor Sabri Mahmoud and colleagues) is intended to facilitate such research and experimentation. In the "Methodological Aspects" group the discussion evolved around the question what kind of features should be considered for the recognizers. The consensus was that the combination of low-level statistical features with semantically rich structural features - possibly inspired by cognitive processes involved in human visual perception of handwriting - offers the best potential for improving recognition performance on highly structured scripts such as Arabic. In the final wrap-up session also the issue of community building was addressed as especially researchers from Arabic countries do not seem to be so well connected to the document analysis community organized in IAPR and its TC-11 "Reading Systems". However, setting up separate platforms for scientific exchange was not considered a viable solution. Instead, the workshop organizers encouraged the attendants to become involved in the existing structures provided by IAPR and TC-11. In summary, the workshop can be considered as a promising start for a more explicit representation of the small but viable part of the document analysis community interested in Arabic handwriting. As for Arabic the differences between recognizing machine printed and handwritten texts are far less severe than in other scripts, it might be a good idea to devote future versions of the workshop to the more general topic of recognizing Arabic script. (by Gernot A. Fink, FAHR 2010 Co-Chair) ============================================================================ ========== Call for Hosting: DAS 2012 ====================================== Call for Proposals Nearly 100 members of the international research community gathered in Boston for the 9th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems from June 9-11, 2010 (http://www.cubs.buffalo.edu/DAS2010/). The DAS workshop has become one of the signature events for TC-11, and DAS 2010 builds on the tradition established by past DAS workshops held in Kaiserslautern, Germany (1994), Malvern, PA (1996), Nagano, Japan (1998), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2000), Princeton, NJ (2002), Florence, Italy (2004), Nelson, New Zealand (2006), and Nara, Japan (2008). As usual after successfully concluding a DAS workshop, individuals and groups who are interested in Document Analysis Systems are now invited to submit proposals for organizing and hosting DAS 2012. The event should preferably take place in late summer or fall, but is not limited to this period. The call is now open! The submission deadline is December 31st, 2010. If you are interested in preparing a proposal, you may send an expression of interest to: Prof. Andreas Dengel (andreas.dengel@dfki.de) Please note that an expression of interest is not a commitment to make a formal proposal. If you need further information concerning DAS, please contact Prof. Andreas Dengel (andreas.dengel@dfki.de). The final selection among competing proposals will be made short after the deadline by the DAS Steering Committee, which is composed of all those who have themselves organized or contributed substantially to past DAS workshops. ============================================================================ ========== News ============================================================ Just recently, the final program of Document Recognition and Retrieval XVIII Part of the IS&T/SPIE 23rd Annual Symposium on Electronic Imaging, 23-27 January 2011, San Francisco, CA USA http://www.cs.iit.edu/~drr2011/ was announced on the conference website: http://spie.org/ei113 ============================================================================ ========== Call for Contributions ========================================== This newsletter needs your support in order to provide useful information to the TC11 community. Therefore, please contribute relevant news by sending a short notice to the newsletter editor Gernot A. Fink . Such news could be the obvious announcements of confereces and workshops, job opportunities, reports on past conferences, book reviews, or anything that might be of interest to a wider audience involved in the construction of reading systems. ============================================================================ ========== Subscription Information ======================================== This newsletter is sent to subscribers of the IAPR TC11 mailing list. To manage your subscription, please visit the mailing list homepage at: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=IAPR-TC11 The homepage for IAPR TC11 is http://www.iapr-tc11.org ============================================================================