Concepts in Computing - Tips and Tricks - Using Horizontal and Veritcal Spacing

By default, the EconoCR™ library sets the horizontal spacing value to one (1) and the vertical spacing value to zero (0). When working with any character or object that consists of more than one piece, it may be necessary to adjust one or both of these values.

Horizontal Spacing defines how far apart dots or pieces of a character can be located. This value is in pixels and is in the horizontal direction only. If the value is too small, not all parts of a character or object will be included. If the value is too large, adjacent characters or objects may be included. The spacing value must not be greater than the smallest distance between characters. (This restriction may be ignored when using the Max Width tool.)

The above figures demonstrate a horizontal value that is too large and, therefore includes all of the dots within the ROI. When setting up for individual characters, there must be one bounding box for each character as shown in the second figure. Once the correct values are set to achieve this, characters may be trained or read.

Vertical Spacing is the same as horizontal spacing except in the vertical direction. Unlike horizontal spacing, the default and minimum value is zero (0). Rather than mean no adjacent objects in the vertical direction, zero (0) means ALL objects in the vertical direction. With proper location of the Region of Interest (ROI) and selection of thresholding type, zero (0) will usually provide the best results. Non-zero values must be used with caution with dot matrix characters. The underlying algorithm uses this parameter to discard extraneous data above and below characters, which in turn, may cause the software to ignore valid dot matrix objects. It is generally recommended to use Max Character Height rather than using a vertical spacing value other than zero (0).