Thisvolumecontainspapersselectedforpresentationatthe6thIAPRWorkshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS 2004) held during September 8–10, 2004 at the University of Florence, Italy. Several papers represent the state of the art in a broad range of “traditional” topics such as layout analysis, applications to graphics recognition, and handwritten documents. Other contributions address the description of complete working systems, which is one of the strengths of this workshop. Some papers extend the application domains to other media, like the processing of Internet documents. The peculiarity of this 6th workshop was the large number of papers related to digital libraries and to the processing of historical documents, a taste which frequently requires the analysis of color documents. A total of 17 papers are associated with these topics, whereas two yearsago (in DAS 2002) only a couple of papers dealt with these problems. In our view there are three main reasons for this new wave in the DAS community. From the scienti?c point of view, several research ?elds reached a thorough knowledge of techniques and problems that can be e?ectively solved, and this expertise can now be applied to new domains. Another incentive has been provided by several research projects funded by the EC and the NSF on topics related to digital libraries.

Thisvolumecontainspapersselectedforpresentationatthe6thIAPRWorkshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS 2004) held during September 8–10, 2004 at the University of Florence, Italy. Several papers represent the state of the art in a broad range of “traditional” topics such as layout analysis, applications to graphics recognition, and handwritten documents. Other contributions address the description of complete working systems, which is one of the strengths of this workshop. Some papers extend the application domains to other media, like the processing of Internet documents. The peculiarity of this 6th workshop was the large number of papers related to digital libraries and to the processing of historical documents, a taste which frequently requires the analysis of color documents. A total of 17 papers are associated with these topics, whereas two yearsago (in DAS 2002) only a couple of papers dealt with these problems. In our view there are three main reasons for this new wave in the DAS community. From the scienti?c point of view, several research ?elds reached a thorough knowledge of techniques and problems that can be e?ectively solved, and this expertise can now be applied to new domains. Another incentive has been provided by several research projects funded by the EC and the NSF on topics related to digital libraries.

Recently, there has been an increased interest in the research and development of techniques for components of complete document analysis systems. In recognition of this trend, a series of workshops on Document Analysis Systems commenced in 1994, under the leadership of Henry Baird. The first workshop, held in Kaiserslautern, Germany, in October, 1994, was chaired by Andreas Dengel and Larry Spitz. The second workshop on Document Analysis Systems was held in Malvern, PA, USA, in October, 1996, chaired by Jonathan J. Hull and Suzanne Liebowitz Taylor. The DAS workshop has been one of the most prestigious technical meetings, bringing together a large number of scientists and engineers from all over the world to express their innovative ideas and report on their latest achievements in the area of document analysis systems. The papers in this special book edition were rigorously selected from the Third IAPR Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS’98), held in Nagano, Japan, on 4 - 6 November 1998. It is worth mentioning that the papers were chosen for their original and substantial contributions to the workshop theme and this special book edition. From among the 53 papers that were presented by authors from 11 countries at the DAS’98 after critical reviews by at least three experts, we carefully selected 29 papers for this special book edition. Most of the contributions in this edition have been expanded or extensively revised to include helpful discussions, suggestions, or comments made during the workshop.

Recently, there has been an increased interest in the research and development of techniques for components of complete document analysis systems. In recognition of this trend, a series of workshops on Document Analysis Systems commenced in 1994, under the leadership of Henry Baird. The first workshop, held in Kaiserslautern, Germany, in October, 1994, was chaired by Andreas Dengel and Larry Spitz. The second workshop on Document Analysis Systems was held in Malvern, PA, USA, in October, 1996, chaired by Jonathan J. Hull and Suzanne Liebowitz Taylor. The DAS workshop has been one of the most prestigious technical meetings, bringing together a large number of scientists and engineers from all over the world to express their innovative ideas and report on their latest achievements in the area of document analysis systems. The papers in this special book edition were rigorously selected from the Third IAPR Workshop on Document Analysis Systems (DAS’98), held in Nagano, Japan, on 4 - 6 November 1998. It is worth mentioning that the papers were chosen for their original and substantial contributions to the workshop theme and this special book edition. From among the 53 papers that were presented by authors from 11 countries at the DAS’98 after critical reviews by at least three experts, we carefully selected 29 papers for this special book edition. Most of the contributions in this edition have been expanded or extensively revised to include helpful discussions, suggestions, or comments made during the workshop.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems, DAS 2020, held in Wuhan, China, in July 2020. The 40 full papers presented in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 57 submissions. The papers are grouped in the following topical sections: character and text recognition; document image processing; segmentation and layout analysis; word embedding and spotting; text detection; and font design and classification. Due to the Corona pandemic the conference was held as a virtual event .

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems, DAS 2002, held in Princeton, NJ, USA in August 2002 with sponsorship from IAPR.The 44 revised full papers presented together with 14 short papers were carefuly reviwed and selected for inclusion in the book. All current issues in document analysis systems are adressed. The papers are organized in topical sections on OCR features and systems, handwriting recognition, layout analysis, classifiers and learning, tables and forms, text extraction, indexing and retrieval, document engineering, and new applications.