# ADR-001: OCR Python Microservice

## Status

Accepted

## Context

The Familienarchiv needs OCR capability to pre-populate transcription blocks from scanned documents. Two OCR engines are required:

- **Surya** — transformer-based, handles typewritten and modern Latin handwriting
- **Kraken** — historical HTR model support, required for pre-1941 German Kurrent/Suetterlin scripts

Both engines exist exclusively in the Python ecosystem. There are no production-quality Java bindings for either engine. Tess4J (Tesseract for Java) was considered but rejected: Tesseract has poor accuracy on degraded historical handwriting and no HTR-United model support.

The server has no GPU. CPU-only inference is the target (16-32 GB system RAM).

## Decision

Introduce a separate Python container (`ocr-service`) that exposes a simple HTTP API. Spring Boot calls this service via `RestClient`. The Python service is stateless — all job tracking and business logic remain in Spring Boot.

**Interface contract:**

Request:
```json
{
  "pdfUrl": "http://minio:9000/archive-documents/abc.pdf?presigned...",
  "scriptType": "HANDWRITING_KURRENT",
  "language": "de"
}
```

Response:
```json
[
  {
    "pageNumber": 0,
    "x": 0.12, "y": 0.08, "width": 0.76, "height": 0.04,
    "polygon": [[0.12,0.08],[0.88,0.09],[0.87,0.12],[0.13,0.11]],
    "text": "Sehr geehrter Herr ..."
  }
]
```

Coordinates are normalized (0-1) relative to page dimensions.

**Java-side integration:**

- `OcrClient` interface with `extractBlocks()` method — mockable for unit tests
- `OcrHealthClient` interface with `isHealthy()` — separate concern from block extraction
- `RestClientOcrClient` implements both interfaces
- `OcrService` orchestrates: presigned URL generation, OCR call, block mapping, TranscriptionService delegation

**Docker networking:**

- `ocr-service` is on the internal Docker network only — no host port mapping
- Spring Boot reaches it via `http://ocr-service:8000`
- Health check with `start_period: 60s` to account for model loading (~30-60s on CPU)

## Alternatives Considered

| Alternative | Why rejected |
|---|---|
| Tess4J (Tesseract in Java) | No HTR-United model support; poor Kurrent accuracy |
| Calling Python via ProcessBuilder | Fragile, no health checks, model reloading on every call |
| Embedding Python via GraalVM | Experimental, complex dependency management for ML libraries |
| External SaaS OCR (Google Vision, AWS Textract) | Data sovereignty concern for private family documents; no Kurrent support |

## Consequences

**Easier:**
- Each engine is used via its native Python API — no bridging complexity
- OCR service can be updated independently of the main application
- Models can be swapped via volume mount without code changes

**Harder:**
- One additional container to operate (memory, health checks, restarts)
- Integration tests require WireMock stub — real OCR service is too slow for CI
- Presigned URL TTL must be managed (15-30 min recommended)

## Future Direction

- LISTEN/NOTIFY from PostgreSQL to push progress events when scaling to multiple instances
- GPU acceleration if the server is upgraded — only the Docker image needs to change
