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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: GSoC idea: improving scanning and OCR in KDE (skanlite/kooka)
From:       Klaas Freitag <freitag () kde ! org>
Date:       2012-03-06 13:16:34
Message-ID: 4F560E32.10608 () kde ! org
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On 06.03.2012 14:00, Jos=E9 Manuel Santamar=EDa Lema wrote:
Hey Jos=E9,

> I'm considering to apply to GSoC this year, and if I do, I would like to
> improve the status of scanning and optical character recognition in KDE; =
being
> more specific:
>
>
> What I want to achieve
> --------------------------------
> ...
> So... to sum up: it was/is easier to produce good djvu documents with
> propietary software. I want a KDE'ish program to replace the expensive
> "Document Express".
Thats a very ambitious target.
>
>
> Some technical details
> --------------------------------
>
> Currently we have a couple of KDE programs to scan documents: skanlite and
> kooka. skanlite is quite simple (doesn't do OCR stuff), uses the modern l=
iksane
> library, it's in extragear and works fine. kooka provided more functional=
ity in
> the KDE 3 old days than skanlite today (seems it was able to do some basi=
c OCR
> stuff), uses its obsolete libkscan library, it's in playground and I don'=
t know
> if it works or not because I don't have an scanning device right now, but=
 at
> least it builds properly.
There has been a KDE4 port of Kooka, as it was KDE3 originally. That =

worked quite ok.

> 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
> replacement for the old libkscan.
I think thats already finished :-)

> 2. Port kooka to the modern libksane.
Cool, but I think Kooka as an app needs much more than just a new =

underlying lib. Graphics apps nowadays are much more cool than Kooka =

ever was. So if you pick that I think you should be willing to bring =

Kooka to an up to date state. However I am not so sure if there is still =

a demand for that kind of app...

> 3. Add ocropus support to kooka (I heard with ocropus you can get the
> coordinates of the texts, but I don't know for sure yet)
> 4. Code something in kooka to produce djvu documents.
The idea back in the days was to provide a component for OCR which can =

be reused in all apps which deal with images, similar to what the =

ScanService is (you can find it for example in Gwenview under the Moduls =

menu. I think that would be really cool and could be a great GSOC =

project imo.

regards,

Klaas

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