Rainer Simon

@aboutgeo.bsky.social

474 Followers 189 Following

A collector of things worth knowing and things not worth knowing. Independent IT consultant and software developer. Digital Humanities/UX/IIIF/Image Annotation/Open Source. https://rainersimon.io

Decorative images with a screenshot of tiny.iiif in the background, and image server choices (as text labels) in the foreground: IIPImage, Cantaloupe.
The liiive annotation interface: image control bar on the top left (sharing, zoom, image rotation); drawing tool bar on the top right (move, rectangle, triangle, circle, trash, undo/redo), navigation bar at the bottom. Colored cursors and annotation shapes above a medieval manuscript page.
The Waldseemüller map in liiive (a IIIF annotation tool).
Screenshot of the (work in progress) tiny.iiif manifest editor.
The tiny.iiif admin GUI: the user drags 6 images into the GUI from outside. Then, they create a new folder, drag the images in, and preview the auto-generated IIIF object in the Theseus viewer,
A screenshot of the tiny-iiif admin GUI.
liiive splash page image
tiny.iiif table view
Uploading images to Cantaloupe and getting them served as IIIF instantly.
The Simivulpem, also known as the "half-fox" or "fox-monkey," is a fascinating creature described in the Symbola et Emblemata. This unique animal, found in regions of India, is a hybrid-like being with distinct features: the front part resembling a fox and the back part resembling a monkey. It has a tail similar to that of a cercopithecus, bat-like ears, and a pouch under its belly, akin to a marsupial's crumena, where it carries its young. This emblem symbolizes the protective instincts of parents and the care they provide to their offspring. The Simivulpem's ability to carry its young in a pouch highlights the theme of parental love and protection, ensuring the safety of its young as it moves about. This is further emphasized by other similar creatures mentioned, such as the animal in the Moluccas islands, which also carries its young in pouches, and the marine dog, which can retract its young into its body during danger. The Simivulpem serves as a metaphor for the nurturing and safeguarding role of parents, urging us to appreciate and cherish the care we receive from those who love us. It also reflects the idea of carrying our burdens and responsibilities with us, much like the creature carries its young, reminding us to be mindful of our duties and the support we have from others.
Screenshot of the IMMARKUS annotation interface with three historical images—an Oxford bookplate, a medieval-style world map, and an early printed nautical map—displayed side by side, with metadata fields visible on the right.
An emblem depicting frogs on a pond.
The Machina Emblematic user interface explaining an image depicting a dragon. Image on the left, text on the right.
A screenshot of the Machina Emblematica, giving an explanation of the depicted emblem (a beaver), the accompanying text, and the possible meaning and author's intention.
Rendered image of the "Machina Emblematica" a fictional arcane mechanism with cogs wheels and pistons.
Example text with multiple orange overlapping highlights, illustrating the new design ideas.
An image illustrating the problem: a text snippet which has two overlapping annotations across the text "that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide". Without using underlines, it's impossible to differentiate the following two cases: 1. The first annotations goes across the whole text, the second annotates only "ingenious here". 2. The first annotation annotates "that ingenious hero", the second annotates "ingenious here who travelled far and wide". In both cases, the region of overlap is the same, which means both cases look the same when using color density.
A heavily annotated text snippet (the opening paragraph of Homer's Odyssey) with many overlapping orange highlights and underlines, and numeric markers that indicate places that have multiple annotations on the same text range.
Example text being annotated using the Recogito Text Annotator JavaScript library.
A video demo of the new linking tool in action: Two circular annotations that are being connected with a bent arrow, and two arrows that are dragged from outside the annotations into one of them each.
The IMMARKUS IIIF import process in action: the user pastes the link to a IIIF manifest. IMMARKUS checks the manifest and displays verification info: the manifest title ("Berliner Tageblatt 1925-02-16") and the number of annotations that were detected (8 in this case).
An example annotated PDF, before the improvements to our annotator renderer. Annotation highlights are messed up with gaps, uneven lines and overlapping box artefacts.
An example of an annotated image, in a customized annotation frontend.
Annotorious access statistics for August 2025: 3.185.874 file loads (205.6% growth from July)
The new "X-Ray Mode" in liiive.now, which darkens the image, for more contrast between image and annotations.
On the left: a medieval manuscript, with overlaid annotations. On the right: the new IMMARKUS multi-select dialog user interface.
The video shows a single letter "P" in a medieval manuscript, being annotated with the new liiive Smart Scissors tool.
Screenshot of the new configuration dialog for using HuggingFace Spaces as transcription services in IMMARKUS.
A screenshot of the IMMARKUS transcription interface. The left side shows the document preview. The right side shows the configuration dialog for the (work-in-progress) "HuggingFace Spaces" integration.
User interface concept for an "essay" feature in #liiive. Images shows the user interface with a new overlay panel containing text about the IIIF object (the 1507 Waldseemüller map). The text includes an embedded annotation snippet image and an annotation link. The viewer (right side) shows the same annotated region as the snippet.
Preview of the chatbot interface of the "Machina Emblematica" project. A scanned page from the "Symbola Emblematica" is shown on the left, the conversational interface (text, image thumbnails and text input field) is shown on the right.
The Access Settings dialog from the liiive dashboard.
The liiive dashboard, with the Room Settings Dialog open.
A king with a crown, depicted in a medieval manuscript. The crown is annotated with the new Path annotation tool in liiive, an online annotation environment for IIIF images.
A screen video showing the new bezier curve drawing tool for Annotorious in action.
The screencast video shows a curved line being edited with the new curved polyline plugin for Annotorious.
The mobile phone version of the "Machina Emblematica" project landing page.
A screen video showing a historic map in #IMMARKUS. The user annotates a ship illustration with the "Auto Select" feature, and then copies it into a GoogleDoc.
A screenshot of the IMMARKUS transcription wizard, showing the dropdown menu of service options.
A digitized index page of an old atlas, being processed in the IMMARKUS OCR interface.
The IMMARKUS OCR tool, showing a digitized Chinese gazetteer page in the OCR preview and settings dialog.
A historical map being automatically transcribed in IMMARKUS using the Google Cloud Vision API.
The Lucide icons for "hop on" and "hop off" are a hop plant!
Screen recording of MapReader labels being manually corrected in IMMARKUS.
A 17th century map of China from the Library of Congress, shown with overlays and a transcribed label, generated automatically by MapReader.
The "smart scissors" selection tool in action: easily traces edges in the image by hovering over them with your mouse.
A preview of our three new computervision-/AI-powered drawing tools in action.
The new Smart Scissors selection tool in IMMARKUS.
A demo of the new "intelligent scissors" polygon selection tool.
An example of using the #Annotorious Boolean Operations plugin.