Fiaz Hussain

Using the Internet as a teaching resource

Increasingly the Internet is being used by students to gather a variety of data and gain an extensive range of experience as part of their learning activity. The paper discusses how the Internet may be used to support learning and teaching and some of the motivation underpinning its adoption. It refers to use of the Internet in a final year module on multimedia run by the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at De Montfort University, one of the main purposes being to promote collaborative student project work. The authors present an analysis of feedback that has been gained from students’ experiences of using network technology. The article concludes by outlining some of the issues raised by using the Internet as a learning and teaching resource.

A fast recognition system for isolated arabic characters

This paper presents a very fast multi-stage algorithm for the recognition of non-Latin script. Although the examples use Arabic script, the system could be adapted in minutes to deal with any character set, in particular non-Latin characters where no commercial OCR systems are available. The approach used normalises isolated characters for size and extracts an image signature based on the number of black pixels in the rows and columns of the character and compares these values to a set of signatures for typical characters of the set. This technique identifies not only the closet match but gives the closeness of match to all other characters in the set, which is expressed in a triangular confusion matrix.

Thinning Arabic characters for feature extraction

A successful approach to the recognition of Latin characters is to extract features from that character such as the number of strokes, stroke intersections and holes, and to use ad-hoc tests to differentiate between characters which have similar features. The first stage in this process is to produce thinned 1 pixel thick representations of the characters to simplify feature extraction. This approach works well with printed Latin characters which are of high quality. With poor quality characters, however, the thinning process itself is not straightforward and can introduce errors which are manifested in the later stages of the recognition process. The recognition of poor quality Arabic characters is a particular problem since the characters are calligraphic with printed characters having widely varying stroke thicknesses to simulate the drawing of the character with a calligraphy pen or brush. This paper describes the problems encountered when thinning large poor quality Arabic characters prior to the extraction of their features and submission to a syntactic recognition system.

Character recognition of Arabic and Latin scripts

The goal to produce effective optical character recognition (OCR) methods has led to the development of a number of algorithms. The purpose of these is to take the handwritten or printed text and to translate it into a corresponding digital form. The multitude requirements and developments are well represented in the literature (I.S.I. Abuhaiba et al., 1994: C.Y. Suen, 1986). The primary objective of the paper is to provide an insight into a robust system which has been successfully developed and employed to recognise Latin and Arabic characters and whose workings has been described previoulsy (J. Cowell and F. Hussain, 2000). The focus is to discuss the main components used in the multi-stage system, paying particular attention to the normalisation process used for orientation and size for a given bitmapped character. The effectiveness of the approach is demonstrated through its workings for the Arabic and Latin case, both for characters and numbers.

Amharic character recognition using a fast signature based algorithm

The Amharic language is the principal language of over 20 million people mainly in Ethiopia. An extensive literature survey reveals no journal or conference papers on Amharic character recognition. The Amharic script has 33 basic characters each with seven orders giving 231 distinct characters, not including numbers and punctuation symbols. The characters are cursive but not connected and unlike other cursive scripts do not use dots. We describe the Amharic script and discuss the difficulties of applying conventional structural and syntactic recognition processes. Two statistical algorithms for identifying Amharic characters are described. In both, the characters are normalised for both size and orientation. The first compares the character against a series of templates. The second derives a characteristic signature from the character and compares this against a set of signature templates. The signatures used are fifty times smaller than the original character and the recognition process is corresponding faster but with some loss of accuracy. The statistical techniques described have been fully implemented and the resulting performance outlined.

Towards a feature-based interactive system for intelligent font design

The desire to computerise and accurately represent contours of characters has seen an increased emphasis as more and more applications endeavour to seek benefits from the digital form. The latter lends itself to be exploited by fast processors and the resulting output to be displayed not just on electronic devices such as computer monitors and laser printers, but also on numerically controlled machines. These in practice are used to generate desired outlines on paper, metal, plastic or wood by means of cutting and engraving. The process of computerising font outlines, however, embodies the common problems of domain change approximations and truncations. In the case under consideration, the capturing phase is best undertaken by means of mathematical splines, where a series of spline segments are connected together to form a computer model of the original. The digitisation phase of representing the modelled image on a finite resolution output device tends to be the more dominant concern. This is not just because of the transformation process (going from semi-continuous to discrete form), but also because the resulting image needs to embrace the distinct features of a font, has to be aesthetically acceptable, and requires to be in a form which is legible. This paper attempts to address some of the concerns encountered by modern typographers. It reports on a development of an interactive system to facilitate a feature-based design approach. This uses geometric constraints to express spatial relationships within, and between, font features.

Intelligent digitisation of Arabic characters

There are a number of initiatives aimed at the introduction of the digital age to the Arab world. A leading company in this area is Sakhr Software, who have just launched their programme (SakhrMedia) to support the learning process in local educational institutions. The objective is to meet the greater requirement of computerising both the techniques and the knowledge which has thus far been developed alongside traditional platforms. In this regard efforts have been made to computerise Arabic typography and language (often referred to as Arabisation). This is vitally important not just to meet everyday needs, but also to harmonise for the Arab audience interaction with worldwide accepted application packages, as well as the Internet. The purpose of this paper is to revisit the digitising process (sometimes called rasterisation) of the most valued aspects of a language, its character set. Using a geometric modelling approach, a computer system has been developed to extract and store features of Arabic fonts. Such a process lends itself to fast reconstruction and rendering of characters, and for text recognition techniques. The discussion provides an insight into the workings of the system, with view to assisting the digitisation process for Arabic.

On visualisation of statistical data

In many applications a need often arises to represent numerical data to give greater visual impact. Whether the data consists of demographic information or forms a listing of financial business trends, their interpretation and meaning is simpler to comprehend through a pictorial representation. The requirement in practice is such that visualisation needs to take place on-the-fly. This implies that the process of transforming static data into a diagrammatic form needs to be dynamic. Whereas most authors have addressed the scenario by employing cubic interpolation to the given set of data points, we discuss the suitability of using a quadratic approach. We introduce the general quadrature spline, its attractions, and its limitations, together with some thoughts as to how the conic (quadratic) spline could be adapted to meet most needs.

Multimedia information systems in education

Multimedia applications within the academic environment can be varied and include such things as: marketing of courses with an interactive prospectus; providing general administrative information (student handbooks, timetables, assignment schedules, module content, etc.); facilitating co-operative working using such things as computer conferencing or collaborative whiteboards; and for the purposes of computer assisted learning (CAL). In addition, multimedia can be used as an end in itself through students employing the embedded techniques in development of a spectrum of products. The main purpose of the paper is to explore the lessons that might be learnt through the application of information systems research to the field of multimedia education. By adopting this approach, parallels might be drawn between the two application areas to highlight the convergence of underlying philosophies and methods in order to inform good practice. The paper aims to promote discussion of the various aspects involved in multimedia systems development within an educational environment.

On modelling the Bezier cubic in algebraic form

Splines based on four-point Bezier cubic arcs show some disadvantages compared to general conic arcs. Efficient rendering and data fitting algorithms require that the cubic be expressed in algebraic form, but there are problems in the conversion from the parametric form because of a singularity associated with a special case, the parabola. In conversion from the general conic to the Bezier cubic format, on the other hand, the authors note that the arcs of an ellipse can be well approximated, but not sharply turning hyperbolic arcs.