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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: GSoC idea: improving scanning and OCR in KDE (skanlite/kooka)
From:       todd rme <toddrme2178 () gmail ! com>
Date:       2012-03-06 17:02:17
Message-ID: CADb7s=u=ALM5CXopvG6tGvevgBkL9fM+_JPcALDyaq36XDkO+Q () mail ! gmail ! com
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2012/3/6 José Manuel Santamaría Lema <panfaust@gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> 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
> --------------------------------
>
> A few years ago I had to study electronics stuff at my university following
> class notes only available in paper. I was annoyed because I couldn't use
> ctrl+F with a paper, so I investigated a bit about OCR stuff and I found the
> open djvu file format[1].
>
> So I tried to produce a djvu document with KDE and my free operating system;
> it was (very difficult|impossible); if recall correctly I did something like
> this: I tried to figure out a workflow scanning a couple of pages as 2 jpeg
> files, then I tried to join them in a djvu multipage document using shell
> commands, and suceeded. However I couldn't find out how to do the OCR part,
> iirc I tried a couple of free ocr programs (I didn't tried ocropus; I don't
> remember if either that program didn't exist at that moment or I just didn't
> know about it) but their output was just the text without the coordinates
> where the texts are located, which would be needed to produce a proper text
> layer in the djvu document.
>
> So I gave up and rebooted on Windows and I used a propietary software to
> produce the document; it worked quite well, I just fed the papers in my
> scanning device and produced a multipage document; when done I just clicked a
> menu item labelled as something "process the document using OCR" and that's
> it. I don't remember very well the name of the software I used, but I'd swear
> 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
> do ctrlf+F "zener" and read stuff about zener diodes.
>
> 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".
>
>
> 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 liksane
> library, it's in extragear and works fine. kooka provided more functionality in
> the KDE 3 old days than skanlite today (seems it was able to do some basic 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.
>
> 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.
> 2. Port kooka to the modern libksane.
> 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.
>
>
> [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DjVu
> [2]https://www.caminova.net/en/shop/item.aspx?itemid=3
>
>

I sent this suggestion to the kde-hardware mailing list, but it seems
relevant here:

Scanner kio slave.  An easy scanner interface using file managers
(like the current CD ripper kio slave).  There would be a folder for
each scanner.  When the folder is opened it will pull in a preview
from that scanner.  There would then be folders for supported
resolutions, with individual files for common paper sizes, the whole
scanner area, auto-detected pictures (i.e. if you can multiple
pictures at the same time) and, if available, text files for OCR.
Dragging one of these to the filesystem will trigger a full scan with
those settings.

-Todd

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