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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: GSoC idea: improving scanning and OCR in KDE (skanlite/kooka)
From:       José_Manuel_Santamaría_Lema <panfaust () gmail ! com>
Date:       2012-03-14 9:00:48
Message-ID: 201203141006.59622.panfaust () gmail ! com
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Thank you Kåre and Klaas for your replies, I had some time to dig a bit more 
about this:

Kåre Särs <kare.sars@iki.fi>
> [snip]
> 
> 1) Create a non-GUI Qt/KDE library that can take an (Q)image and generate
> output suitable for djvu/PDF/ODF. Maybe even generate djvu/PDF/ODF files.
> 
> 2) Make a simple GUI around the library to test the functionality.
> 
> 3) Add the ORC part to the KScan plugin ksaneplugin. (kdegraphics)
> 
> 4) Create a Kipi-plugin for use in Gwenview,Digikam,....
> 
> 5) Standalone document scanning application that is specialized for
> multipage scanning to PDF/djvu/ODT.
> 
> 
> I'm not familiar with the ocropus API, so I'm not sure how much work it
> would be. I'm not sure one GSOC would be enough for all 5 points ;)
> 
> Regards,
>   Kåre

In first place, I have just realized that gocr is able to provide an output 
saying where the characters/words are located (see the gocr man page, I 
checked how "-f XML" works with a sample image, and looks like it's what I 
need); thus it wouldn't be mandatory to add ocropus support right now; it 
would be fine, but optional.

In second place, and just FYI, I've got a ~12 years old scanner, I've tested 
both skanlite and kooka, skanlite worked fine, however kooka doesn't work _for_ 
_me_. Fortunately I think I still can provide a djvu generator supporting OCR 
with kooka, even if I don't port it to libksane; see below.

About Kåre's tasks set: I think I would split the first item thus:
1a) Create a non-GUI Qt/KDE library able to open and generate djvu documents 
without text layer. (libkdjvu)
1b) Create a non-GUI Qt/KDE library that can take an (Q)image and generate 
output suitable for djvu/PDF/ODF (libkocr)
1c) Add suport to the libkdjvu library to include the data retrieved with 
libkocr as text layer.

Note that a djvu file may or may not have a text layer. Also note that getting 
a text with OCR and creating djvu files joining various images/texts are very 
different jobs. That are the reasons to split the first item like that. That 
being said, let me do some other remarks and questions:

About my 1a): Perhaps I could reuse some code from okular; I'd need to 
investigate more about this.

About my 1b): There is already some code in kooka to do something like that; 
see these classes: OcrGocrEngine, OcrEngine and KookaImage. So, performing 
these task would be mainly: hacking on OcrGocrEngine in order to make it give 
an output suitable for my new libkdjvu library (that would be done processing 
the output of "gocr -f XML") and taking all the kooka classes related to ocr 
and putting them together in a shared library (libkocr).
Looks like most of kooka files are licensed with GPLv2 only with a couple of 
special exceptions; Klaas, could we please change that license to GPLv2 or 
later with the same couple of special exceptions? See:
http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/KDE_Relicensing

About 2) and 5): I'm open to other ideas, but right now I tend to think that 
both the "simple GUI" mentioned in 2) and the "Standalone document scanning 
application" mentioned in 5) will be a new tab in kooka which would behave as 
a djvu editor. I did quick mockup, this GUI would be able to open 
existing djvu documents as well as creating new ones:
http://alioth.debian.org/~santa-guest/gsoc2012/mockup.png

About 3) and 4): if I create that libkocr library this should be easy to do; 
however, I want to understand better how these plugins would work from a user 
point of view; for instance, let's say I open a png file in my gwenview, I have 
a menu item called "Process image with OCR" inside the "Plugins" menu. What 
would happen if I click that item? Would it open a text editor with the OCR 
result or what?

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