La trascrizione automatica di documenti a stampa antichi. Appunti per un modello di riconoscimento della tipografia in corsivo

The contribution aims to describe the workflow that led to the production of a Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) model for the automatic transcription of sixteenth century Venetian texts printed in italics. In the first part, the scope of the study is defined, with particular attention to the state of the art and recent developments in the field of HTR regarding complex scripts, namely historical printed texts and manuscripts that, due to their characteristics, hinder the application of traditional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) systems. The second part outlines the main phases of the training process for the creation of the Italics_VeniceXVIs model, which represents a first step towards the interpretation of chivalric texts in italics of interest to the Mambrino Project at the University of Verona. Finally, the main characteristics of the model are identified, and, with a view to accessibility and reusability, future steps of the project are highlighted, suggesting possible implications of the research carried out in relation to other fields of study.