For years, I have been disappointed with the state of desktop OCR in Linux. All I wanted was to scan a document, OCR it, and save it as a searchable PDF. However, nothing I tried could come to the simplicity of Abbyy Finereader or Nuance's Paperport software.
For awhile, OCRFeeder sort of worked. Importing from the scanner only worked sometimes, exported PDF files were larger than those that Paperport created, and the OCR quality itself was poor. And then, completely by accident, I ran into the program
Paperwork.
Paperwork is a document management program like Paperport. And it works really well! Finally, I can scan, OCR, and actually have it work! The software will save scans as an image, with accompanying OCR file. However, if you need a PDF to email, it can export to a PDF. Search function appears to work, I was able to scan a few examples and then search for a phrase. It brought up the correct document and highlighted the search phrase.
Worth looking into if you need a open OCR and personal document management solution.
https://openpaper.work/en-us/
#
linux #
ocr #
foss