Separator

Separator is an element of a FlexiLayout that describes a vertical or horizontal separator. Separator elements are marked with in the FlexiLayout tree. The program uses Separator elements to look for separators. It considers as candidates those separator objects detected during pre-recognition that either fit entirely within the search area of a Separator element or overlap the search area.

​

Separator element properties

To open the Properties dialog box, right-click the element in the FlexiLayout tree and select Properties… on the shortcut menu. Click the Separator tab to describe the corresponding object. The Separator tab has the following properties. To estimate the length of a separator, click the corresponding object on the image and view its properties in the Properties window. For example, suppose that Min length = 300 (1 in or 2.54 cm) and Min relative length = 30%. If the width of the search area is 21.0 cm (the width of an A4 sheet), the program looks for separators longer than 6.3 cm.

​

Penalty limit for length

Penalty limit for length is the minimum coefficient by which the hypothesis quality can be multiplied as a penalty for its length. When the program estimates the quality of a hypothesis, it can penalize the hypothesis for the length of the separator: the longer the separator object, the higher the quality of the hypothesis. The highest quality of 1 is assigned to a separator whose length is the same as the search area. When the relative length of the separator decreases from 1 to 0, the quality of the hypothesis decreases in direct proportion from 1 to the Penalty limit for length value.

​

Fits entirely within search area

Fits entirely within search area specifies that the separator must fit entirely within its search area. Clear this option to find separators that overlap the search area, as shown in the following figure.

​

Space group for disjointed separators

Sometimes separators on document images become distorted, disjointed, or skewed due to low-quality printing or scanning. During pre-recognition, this can cause the program to detect multiple separators instead of one. The Space group contains options that you can use to tell the program when to include multiple separators in one hypothesis.

​

Tips for Separator elements

Separators do not usually have fixed positions on unstructured documents. Since they are optional design elements, a designer might choose not to use them at all. For this reason, separators are rarely used as reference elements in FlexiLayouts. The most common function of separators in documents is to separate the text from adjoining fields, so the search areas of Separator elements tend to be small. If you use separators as reference elements, check whether they were detected during pre-recognition. Once pre-recognition completes, confirm that the program can detect a separator on all test images. This check is especially important if the separators are thin, because in this case their detection depends on image quality and the scanning settings.

​

Related topics

• Create, copy, and delete elements
• An overview of element properties
• Search area
• Additional search constraints