1. An image processing system that determines an orientation for a text-containing region of an image, the image processing system comprising: one or more processors; one or more electronic memories; one or more mass-storage devices; an orientation-marker pattern set stored in one or more of the one or more electronic data storage devices, wherein the orientation-marker pattern set comprises two or more patterns corresponding to two or more considered orientations of one or more orientation-marker characters; and computer instructions stored in the one or more electronic data storage devices that control the image processing system to receive an image with a text-containing region, store a representation of the text-containing region in one or more of the one or more electronic memories, identify one or more text-character images within the text-containing region that match an orientation-marker pattern from the orientation-marker pattern set, and determine an orientation for the text-containing region from the orientations of the one or more text-character images that match the orientation-marker pattern.
1. An image processing system that determines an orientation for a text-containing region of an image, the image processing system comprising: one or more processors; one or more electronic memories; one or more mass-storage devices; an orientation-marker pattern set stored in one or more of the one or more electronic data storage devices, wherein the orientation-marker pattern set comprises two or more patterns corresponding to two or more considered orientations of one or more orientation-marker characters; and computer instructions stored in the one or more electronic data storage devices that control the image processing system to receive an image with a text-containing region, store a representation of the text-containing region in one or more of the one or more electronic memories, identify one or more text-character images within the text-containing region that match an orientation-marker pattern from the orientation-marker pattern set, and determine an orientation for the text-containing region from the orientations of the one or more text-character images that match the orientation-marker pattern. 4. The image processing system of claim 1 wherein the number of orientation-marker patterns in the orientation-marker-pattern set is less than 0.1% of the total number of patterns used to represent text symbols.