A new release is available for Arkindex instances. You can test it on our demo instance: demo.arkindex.org.

You can learn more about Arkindex on its official documentation.

Text orientation

The main new feature of this release is the support of text orientation for transcriptions. Arkindex users can now set which horizontal orientation to use for their own transcriptions (this feature is also available to Machine Learning workers).

arabic_display
Sample arabic transcription display

You can now read and write in both left-to-right or right-to-left alphabets (like Arabic as shown here).

arabic_edit
Sample arabic transcription edition

Rotation

We have enhanced the element rotation feature introduced in version 1.1.2.

Rotated images are now supported in element thumbnails as well as the element and transcription edition modals.

transcription
Rotated children elements are correctly displayed and readable in the transcription modal.

It is now possible to filter elements by their rotation angle and mirrored state:

filters
New filters available when browsing a project

Finally, the ListTranscriptions endpoint now exports the element rotation and mirroring properties so they are directly available without making another query.

Worker configuration

A process operator can now save useful worker configurations and re-use them later on in another process.

config
You can name your own configurations

Future developments will allow Machine Learning developers to ask specific configuration steps to the operator, instead of managing JSON payloads.

Worker activities

  • A new API endpoint ListWorkerActivity allows developers to list all worker activities on a given project or process.
  • Worker activities that were stuck on the started state (for example due to a server crash) can now be retried after an hour.

File & Transkribus import

  • Transcriptions imported from PDF files can no longer exceed the image's bounds.
  • The original imageFilename attribute from Transkribus is used as the original_image_name metadata on Arkindex elements when available.
  • URLs imported from a IIIF manifest now use the new dedicated metadata URL type and become a clickable link.

Frontend changes

  • Entity types, displayed as large labels, can be hidden using the Entity types option in the Display menu: this helps reading long transcriptions with entities.
  • You can now validate new classifications by pressing Enter, instead of clicking on the button.
  • You can now move the image while annotating new elements by holding the Shift key and moving the mouse.

Build system update

This change is not visible by end users, but really important for the Arkindex developers: we have updated our Javascript build system to the latest version of Webpack.

As a side effect, we have also removed the babel polyfills thus removing support for the deprecated Internet Explorer browser.

Misc features

  • All children elements are now displayed by default, without having to click on the Display button.
  • A project administrator can now delete element types that are not used by an element.
  • A project administrator can now delete transcriptions created by Machine Learning workers.
  • Editing element types now properly requires a project administrator access.