Re-typograph phase I: a proof-of-concept for typeface parameter extraction from historical documents

This paper reports on the first phase of an attempt to create a full retro-engineering pipeline that aims to construct a complete set of coherent typographic parameters defining the typefaces used in a printed homogenous text. It should be stressed that this process cannot reasonably be expected to be fully automatic and that it is designed to include human interaction. Although font design is governed by a set of quite robust and formal geometric rulesets, it still heavily relies on subjective human interpretation. Furthermore, different parameters, applied to the generic rulesets may actually result in quite similar and visually difficult to distinguish typefaces, making the retro-engineering an inverse problem that is ill conditioned once shape distortions (related to the printing and/or scanning process) come into play. This work is the first phase of a long iterative process, in which we will progressively study and assess the techniques from the state-of-the-art that are most suited to our problem and investigate new directions when they prove to not quite adequate. As a first step, this is more of a feasibility proof-of-concept, that will allow us to clearly pinpoint the items that will require more in-depth research over the next iterations.