The zone is a rectangular area or the union of specifically located rectangular areas in the page. The upper limit of its dimensions is full page size. Each zone contains a feature that is interesting to the user. The union of rectangles must have a pizza box shape. It means the top of each rectangle in the union must touch the bottom of the rectangle above it. A pizza box-shaped zone is a compound and an irregular zone.

The image data covered by each zone is handled and processed separately, according to zone-specific parameters.

This module can handle two types of zones in separate zone lists of each page: user zones and OCR zones. Zones can be added to the proper zone list of any given HPAGE in the following ways:

• User zones: You can add zones using various methods:

  • Manually (by specifying the zone coordinates and attributes)

  • From a zone file (created by the user through API functions)

  • From a template library (created by Form Template Editor)

• OCR zones: During processing, CSDK adds zones automatically (auto-zoning) and also converts all user zones to OCR zones.

You can start auto-zoning directly, or wait for it to run automatically at the beginning of the recognition process provided that there are no OCR zones already defined.

You can also modify the method and performance of auto-zoning through different settings. When you use user-zones, you can specify whether to have auto-zoning also run or not. Individual user zones are transformed into one or more OCR zones prior to recognition. Recognition is always carried out on OCR zones, and the post-processing can also change the zones.

You can also instruct CSDK to automatically identify barcode, machine print, and handwritten content and process the zones appropriately.

Based on their content, zones can be classified as follows:

• Flowing text (horizontal or vertical with three rotations)

• Table (handled by the Table Recognition Module)

• Graphics (no recognition performed)

• Form (handled by the Form Recognition Module)

For more details about zoning, refer to the Zone handling module topic in the RECAPI help.