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# SegmOnto: common vocabulary and practices for analysing the layout of manuscripts (and more)

Simon Gabay, Jean-Baptiste Camps, Ariane Pinche, Claire Jahan

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Simon Gabay, Jean-Baptiste Camps, Ariane Pinche, Claire Jahan. SegmOnto: common vocabulary and practices for analysing the layout of manuscripts (and more). 1st International Workshop on Computational Paleography (IWCP@ICDAR 2021), Sep 2021, Lausanne, Switzerland. hal-03336528

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Submitted on 7 Sep 2021

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Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
SegmOnto: common vocabulary and practices for
analysing the layout of manuscripts (and more)

Simon Gabay¹[0000-0001-9094-4475], Jean-Baptiste Camps²[0000-0003-0385-7037],
Ariane Pinche²[0000-0002-7843-5050], and Claire Jahan²[0000-0001-7268-9706]

¹ Université de Genève, Rue des Battoirs 7, 1205 Genève, Switzerland
{prenom.nom}@unige.ch

² École nationale des Chartes, 65 Rue de Richelieu, 75002 Paris, France
{prenom.nom}@chartes.psl.eu

Keywords: layout analysis · controlled vocabulary · manuscripts · old prints.

Document and layout description is a traditional task for philologists but
also a need for many computational applications in document analysis, ranging
from content categorisation to text recognition, and has, for this reason, been
the subject of much research in computer vision [1]. For tools relying on machine
learning, the existence and availability of data sets, and their interoperability are
important issues.

The definition of ontologies or controlled vocabularies for the description
of manuscript layout has attracted some attention. Codicological dictionaries
exist [6], part of which have already been integrated into SKOS [3]. On the
other hand, digitisation standards have developed their own taxonomy, such as
the PAGE XML Format [7]. In between these two approaches, initiatives like
the TEI [8] offer elements commonly used by editors. With the apparition of
efficient layout analysers [4] and user-friendly interfaces to use them [5], the
need for efficient models is rising, and so is the need for large amount of data,
based on the aggregation of heterogeneous documents. For this, researchers to
need to a agree on a common limited vocabulary, based on existing standards;
b share common practices to ease the interoperability of their ground truth.

The SegmOnto project [2] gathers scholars from different backgrounds who
have decided to tackle both issues. It mainly addresses the case of manuscripts
(fig. 1 and 2), but also old prints (fig. 3 and 4). Our work is characterised by two
key choices:

1. focus on common material features rather than semantic descriptions (*e.g.* marginal text, rather than gloss, commentary, note, etc.).

2. use of two levels of description: zones (main text, notes, figure, damage, seal...) and lines (default, musical, interlinear, rubric, drop capital).

It has to be noted that, as shown in the examples *infra*, that the detection
of zones and lines can rely on the position on the page, but also often on the
variation of hands as well as

**script** cursive vs block letters (fig. 5), square letters vs rashi script (fig. 7), roman
vs italic (fig. 8).

**module** (fig. 5, 6, 7, 8)

**ink** blue and red (fig. 5), just red (fig. 6) or a different type of black (fig. 5).
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 1.** *Decretum Gratiani*, Sion/Sitten, Archives du Chapitre/Kapitelsarchiv, Ms. 89, f° 3v</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 2.** *Isidorus Hispalensis, Etymologiarum*, Paris, BNF, lat. 7589, f°3r</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_5.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 3.** *Babylonian Talmud*, Seder Zera'im, Venice: Daniel Bomberg, [1543-44]</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_6.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 4.** Tristan L'Hermite, *La Mariane*, Augustin Courbé: Paris, 1639.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 5.** *Decretum Gratiani*, Sion/Sitten, Archives du Chapitre/Kapitelsarchiv, Ms. 89, f° 3v</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 6.** Isidorus Hispalensis, *Etymologiarum*, Paris, BNF, lat. 7589, f°3r</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 7.** *Babylonian Talmud*, Seder Zera'im, Venice: Daniel Bomberg, [1543-44]</figcaption></figure>

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>**Fig. 8.** Tristan L'Hermite, *La Mariane*, Augustin Courbé: Paris, 1639.</figcaption></figure>

References

1. Binmakhashen, G.M., Mahmoud, S.A.: Document Layout Analysis: A Comprehensive Survey. ACM Computing Surveys **52**(6), 109:1–109:36 (Oct 2019). https://doi.org/10.1145/3355610, https://doi.org/10.1145/3355610

2. Camps, J.B., Gabay, S., Chagué, A., Chiffoleau, F., Stoekl, D., Salvatti, B., Albouy, S.: SegmOnto (2021), https://github.com/SegmOnto

3. Geoffroy, M., Eddé, A.M., Baratli, Y., Muzerelle, D., Bobichon, P., Guesdon, M.G.: Vocabulaire Internationale de la Codicologie - SKOS Vocabulaire Internationale de la Codicologie - SKOS Vocabulaire Internationale de la Codicologie - SKOS - GAMS:
Vokabularien und Ontologien. GAMS Vokabularien und Ontologien, Zentrum für
Informationsmodellierung - Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Graz (2021), http://
gams.uni-graz.at/archive/objects/o:voccod/methods/sdef:SKOS/get