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Hi,

I'm considering to apply to GSoC this year, and if I do, I would like to=20
improve the status of scanning and optical character recognition in KDE; be=
ing=20
more specific:


What I want to achieve
=2D-------------------------------

A few years ago I had to study electronics stuff at my university following=
=20
class notes only available in paper. I was annoyed because I couldn't use=20
ctrl+F with a paper, so I investigated a bit about OCR stuff and I found th=
e=20
open djvu file format[1].

So I tried to produce a djvu document with KDE and my free operating system=
;=20
it was (very difficult|impossible); if recall correctly I did something lik=
e=20
this: I tried to figure out a workflow scanning a couple of pages as 2 jpeg=
=20
files, then I tried to join them in a djvu multipage document using shell=20
commands, and suceeded. However I couldn't find out how to do the OCR part,=
=20
iirc I tried a couple of free ocr programs (I didn't tried ocropus; I don't=
=20
remember if either that program didn't exist at that moment or I just didn'=
t=20
know about it) but their output was just the text without the coordinates=20
where the texts are located, which would be needed to produce a proper text=
=20
layer in the djvu document.

So I gave up and rebooted on Windows and I used a propietary software to=20
produce the document; it worked quite well, I just fed the papers in my=20
scanning device and produced a multipage document; when done I just clicked=
 a=20
menu item labelled as something "process the document using OCR" and that's=
=20
it. I don't remember very well the name of the software I used, but I'd swe=
ar=20
it was "Document Express"[2].
The result was excellent, and you can download the produced document here:
http://alioth.debian.org/~santa-guest/gsoc2012/apuntes_te.djvu
As you can see, the size of the document is reasonable (only 2.4M) and you =
can=20
do ctrlf+F "zener" and read stuff about zener diodes.

So... to sum up: it was/is easier to produce good djvu documents with=20
propietary software. I want a KDE'ish program to replace the expensive=20
"Document Express".


Some technical details
=2D-------------------------------

Currently we have a couple of KDE programs to scan documents: skanlite and=
=20
kooka. skanlite is quite simple (doesn't do OCR stuff), uses the modern lik=
sane=20
library, it's in extragear and works fine. kooka provided more functionalit=
y in=20
the KDE 3 old days than skanlite today (seems it was able to do some basic =
OCR=20
stuff), uses its obsolete libkscan library, it's in playground and I don't =
know=20
if it works or not because I don't have an scanning device right now, but a=
t=20
least it builds properly.

So... looks like the tasks to do to achive my goal would be:
1. If needed, extend libksane functionality in order to make it a good=20
replacement for the old libkscan.
2. Port kooka to the modern libksane.
3. Add ocropus support to kooka (I heard with ocropus you can get the=20
coordinates of the texts, but I don't know for sure yet)
4. Code something in kooka to produce djvu documents.


[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu
[2]https://www.caminova.net/en/shop/item.aspx?itemid=3D3

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