[PRE REVIEW]: Handprint: a program to explore and compare major cloud-based services for handwritten text recognition

[editorialbot]

Submitting author: @mhucka (Michael Hucka)
Repository: https://github.com/caltechlibrary/handprint
Branch with paper.md (empty if default branch): joss-paper
Version: 1.5.6
Editor: @danielskatz
Reviewers: @step21, @rlskoeser
Managing EiC: Kyle Niemeyer

Status

Status badge code:

HTML: <a href="https://joss.theoj.org/papers/3467be8d3425eb6955c77af7c47cf2e8"><img src="https://joss.theoj.org/papers/3467be8d3425eb6955c77af7c47cf2e8/status.svg"></a>
Markdown: [![status](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/3467be8d3425eb6955c77af7c47cf2e8/status.svg)](https://joss.theoj.org/papers/3467be8d3425eb6955c77af7c47cf2e8)

Author instructions

Thanks for submitting your paper to JOSS @mhucka. Currently, there isn't an JOSS editor assigned to your paper.

@mhucka if you have any suggestions for potential reviewers then please mention them here in this thread (without tagging them with an @). In addition, this list of people have already agreed to review for JOSS and may be suitable for this submission (please start at the bottom of the list).

Editor instructions

The JOSS submission bot @editorialbot is here to help you find and assign reviewers and start the main review. To find out what @editorialbot can do for you type:

@editorialbot commands

[editorialbot]

Hello human, I'm @editorialbot, a robot that can help you with some common editorial tasks.

For a list of things I can do to help you, just type:

@editorialbot commands

For example, to regenerate the paper pdf after making changes in the paper's md or bib files, type:

@editorialbot generate pdf

[editorialbot]

Software report:

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.88  T=0.03 s (425.9 files/s, 35840.2 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Markdown                         6            217              0            396
SVG                              2              1              1            182
make                             1             35             15            103
TeX                              1             10              0             75
YAML                             2             12             28             59
JSON                             1              0              0             28
HTML                             1              5              0             11
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            14            280             44            854
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


gitinspector failed to run statistical information for the repository

[editorialbot]

Wordcount for paper.md is 958

[editorialbot]

Reference check summary (note 'MISSING' DOIs are suggestions that need verification):

OK DOIs

- 10.1145/1457720.1457765 is OK
- 10.1108/JD-07-2018-0114 is OK

MISSING DOIs

- 10.1007/springerreference_18289 may be a valid DOI for title: Magnetic Ink Character Recognition

INVALID DOIs

- None

[kyleniemeyer]

@openjournals/dev any idea why editorialbot isn't able to see the Python files in the repo? I can see plenty of code here: https://github.com/caltechlibrary/handprint/tree/main/handprint

[editorialbot]

👉📄 Download article proof 📄 View article proof on GitHub 📄 👈

[kyleniemeyer]

👋 Hi @mhucka, unfortunately we don't have any available editors in this area right now, so I'm going to have to put this on our waitlist until someone can edit—hopefully it shouldn't be too long.

[mhucka]

👋🏻 Hi @kyleniemeyer – thanks!

[xuanxu]

any idea why editorialbot isn't able to see the Python files in the repo? I can see plenty of code here: https://github.com/caltechlibrary/handprint/tree/main/handprint

The analyzed branch was joss-paper, which doesn't include Python files. To run the code analysis on main the simplest way is set branch to main, then run check repository, and then set the branch back to joss-paper.

[danielskatz]

@xuanxu & @arfon - we need to fix this...

[xuanxu]

@editorialbot check repository from branch main

[editorialbot]

Software report:

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.88  T=0.41 s (165.4 files/s, 271740.0 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JSON                             6              0              0         106067
Python                          27            669           1220           1776
Markdown                        24            397              0            801
SVG                              4              1              1            193
make                             3             65             62            181
CSS                              1             36              0            139
YAML                             1             10             11             41
TeX                              1              7              0             38
HTML                             1              5              0             11
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            68           1190           1294         109247
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------


gitinspector failed to run statistical information for the repository

[editorialbot]

Wordcount for paper.md is 859

[mhucka]

By way of explanation, I followed the "submission requirements" section at https://joss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/submitting.html#submission-requirements where it states:

Your paper (paper.md and BibTeX files, plus any figures) must be hosted in a Git-based repository together with your software (although they may be in a short-lived branch which is never merged with the default).

My interpretation of this was: code & paper must be in the same repo, but it's okay to put the paper in a separate branch. Now, it seems to me the instructions are ambiguous about whether the code should or shouldn't be in that same branch. My reasoning for my current arrangement (i.e., paper in joss-paper branch without code) is that there wouldn't be much point in creating a branch for the paper if that branch also contained code.

My apologies if that was a mistake!

[danielskatz]

@mhucka - your interpretation is correct, but we've switched our tooling recently which made this harder for us - we want to work the paper from whatever repository it is in, but work on the code from main, and our tooling didn't quite do this.

[danielskatz]

I'll go ahead and edit this submission

[danielskatz]

@editorialbot assign me as editor

[editorialbot]

Assigned! @danielskatz is now the editor

[danielskatz]

@mhucka - our next step is to find reviewers. If you have any suggestions for potential reviewers, please mention them here in this thread (without tagging them with an @). In addition, this list of people have already agreed to review for JOSS and may be suitable for this submission (please start at the bottom of the list).

[danielskatz]

👋 @mhucka - note that the next action is yours...

[mhucka]

Whoops, sorry for the delay. Despite the 2500+ people in that list, no one seems to have handwritten text recognition specifically listed. The best I could come up with is some guessing based on who has both Python as preferred language and some kind of text analysis/processing. Here they are. I think this is roughly in the order of starting at the bottom going up:

• baileythegreen
• step21
• cmaimone
• rlskoeser
• adammichaelwood
• mbod

If none of them are available, I can do another round by expanding my search or thinking about people outside of that list.

[danielskatz]

Please do think about people outside the list...

[danielskatz]

👋 @baileythegreen, @step21 - would either or both of you be willing to review this submission?

[baileythegreen]

@danielskatz, I'd be happy to take a look and see if this is something I could review (I'm unsure how related it will prove to be to anything I've done); however, I am on holidays until 27 May, so can not look at it before then.

[step21]

@danielskatz I would be happy to review it. I haven't worked on image recognition myself yet, but on NLP and am getting more and more into image recognition (one subset of which is handwriting recognition).

[danielskatz]

@baileythegreen - thanks for offering, but I hope we can get this started before then.

[danielskatz]

@step21 - thanks, I'll add you to the system, but we won't actually start the review until we get another reviewer as well.

[danielskatz]

@editorialbot add @step21 as reviewer

[editorialbot]

@step21 added to the reviewers list!

[danielskatz]

👋 @rlskoeser, @adammichaelwood - would either of you be willing to review this submission?

[rlskoeser]

I'm interested in this and do have some experience with HTR (have used google vision api, working with output from eScriptorium). What's the timeline for review? And will I need to setup MS Azure and AWS accounts to review and test the tool properly?

[danielskatz]

@mhucka - can you answer

will I need to setup MS Azure and AWS accounts to review and test the tool properly?

[danielskatz]

@rlskoeser - The timeline is ideally ~3-4 weeks, but the process can be iterative, with you providing some feedback and the author working on it while you continue your review

[step21]

Yeah, would be good to know if anything special is required for testing.

[mhucka]

@rlskoeser @step21 Thank you for being willing to review this!

With respect to accounts: since the software's entire purpose is to make it possible to use cloud-based HTR services, I haven't come up with a way to avoid needing accounts. I wrote up hopefully clear instructions about how to get free accounts on all 3 services, at https://github.com/caltechlibrary/handprint/wiki – free accounts are reasonably generous at all the services and should certainly be enough to try things out.

For the review, maybe getting just one set up would be enough, to save you time?

If worse comes to worse, I could create accounts for reviewers and send you the credentials somehow.

[danielskatz]

@rlskoeser - Does this make it ok for you to review?

[rlskoeser]

Timeline works for me, and I'm ok with setting up accounts to test the services properly — just wanted to know for planning purposes.

[danielskatz]

Great, thanks - I'll add you and start the review

[danielskatz]

@editorialbot add @rlskoeser as reviewer

[editorialbot]

@rlskoeser added to the reviewers list!

[danielskatz]

@editorialbot start review

[editorialbot]

OK, I've started the review over in #4328.