Challenge: achieving high accuracy HTR results for Greek manuscripts is still a major challenge . Optical character recognition software is notoriously difficult to use for handwritten text .
Approach: They propose to use Greek manuscripts as a source for a new model to assess HTR accuracy.
Outcome: The proposed model can be used to improve the recognition rate of Greek manuscripts.

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Challenge: Using a line-level transcription approach, we explore encoder-decoder architectures and data-centric techniques to improve recognition accuracy for Old Nepali manuscripts.
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Challenge: Handwritten text recognition (HTR) produces textual output that contains errors, which are much higher than recognised printed text.
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Restoring ancient text using deep learning: a case study on Greek epigraphy (D19-1)

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Challenge: illegible parts of ancient texts must be restored by specialists, known as epigraphists, using deep neural networks to recover missing characters from text input.
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A Workflow for HTR-Postprocessing, Labeling and Classifying Diachronic and Regional Variation in Pre-Modern Slavic Texts (2024.lrec-main)

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Challenge: a workflow for classifying diachronic and regional language variation in medieval texts is currently being developed . the workflow is generic or language-agnostic, but can be applied to other historical languages as well.
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Dating Greek Papyri with Text Regression (2023.acl-long)

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Challenge: a large number of Greek papyri documents can only be dated tentatively or in approximation due to the lack of decisive evidence.
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How Much Data Do You Need? About the Creation of a Ground Truth for Black Letter and the Effectiveness of Neural OCR (2020.lrec-1)

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Challenge: Recent advances in Optical Character Recognition and Handwritten Text Recognition have led to more accurate text recognition of historical documents.
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Automatic Transcription of Handwritten Old Occitan Language (2023.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Existing approaches to handwritten text recognition have shown promising results, but low-resource languages often lack resources.
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Text Extraction and Script Completion in Images of Arabic Script-Based Calligraphy: A Thesis Proposal (2025.naacl-srw)

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Challenge: despite its artistic elements, Arabic calligraphy is difficult to read, even for those fluent in Arabic.
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CalligraphicOCR for Chinese Calligraphy Recognition (2025.emnlp-main)

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Challenge: Increasing efforts to digitize calligraphy have rely on isolated character recognition, requiring expensive manual splitting into single characters.
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InkSight: Towards AI-Aided Historical Manuscript Analysis (2026.eacl-demo)

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Challenge: Large-scale scientific research on medieval Arabic manuscripts remains challenging due to the need for advanced paleographic and linguistic training and the lack of assisting software.
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