PaddleOCR 3.5: Running OCR and Document Parsing Tasks with a Transformers Backend

PaddleOCR 3.5 integrates Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and document parsing tasks with the Hugging Face ecosystem by allowing PaddleOCR models to use Hugging Face Transformers as an inference backend. This new version offers a flexible inference-engine interface, enabling developers to select their preferred backend and configure specific options through the engine_config. It facilitates the integration of PaddleOCR's capabilities with Transformers-centered environments, making it advantageous for developers building applications like RAG, Document AI, and analytics, which rely on PyTorch and Transformers infrastructure. This release supports a smooth transition from document ingestion to downstream workflows, helping convert complex documents into structured data more efficiently. PaddleOCR 3.5 does not replace existing backends but provides additional flexibility, allowing developers to choose the best fit for their stack while maintaining PaddleOCR's management of the OCR and document parsing pipeline.