self-host OCR (e.g. Tesseract-OCR)

[wrenix]

It would be nice, to have it independent from other cloud-service too (e.g. MyScript).

Possible Solution

Webservice with OCR

Here is an small webservice Software to selfhost, maybe use:

• https://github.com/otiai10/ocrserver (Example running OCR-Server here: https://ocr-example.herokuapp.com/)
• https://github.com/luizcarlosfaria/TesseractOCRWebApi
• https://github.com/guitarmind/tesseract-web-service
• https://github.com/hertzg/tesseract-server

(Some 3rd-party are listed here: tesseract-ocr.github.io/tessdoc/)

Include into rmfakecloud

Usage of a Golang OCR Tesseract library:

• https://github.com/otiai10/gosseract

Related

Paperless-ngx has an tesseract-ocr (wrapped by OCRmyPDF - see #189

[nemunaire]

Tesseract is indeed known for its effectiveness with printed fonts, but it can sometimes struggle with handwritten documents due to their variability.

Have you had a chance to test Tesseract with handwritten documents in your project? It would be interesting to see how it performs in that context.

(MyScript's approach of interpreting document vectors and understanding the writer's strokes can offer more accuracy for handwritten text recognition.)

[wrenix]

You are maybe correct, i found that text which explain a description: https://github.com/bdstar/Handwritten-Text-Recognition-Tesseract-OCR
The Projects there are extremely different (and need to write a nice webservice to wrap the python code):

• https://github.com/microsoft/unilm/tree/master/trocr
• https://github.com/YutingLi0606/HTR-VT
• https://github.com/githubharald/SimpleHTR online-demo: https://githubharald.github.io/text_reader.html
• https://github.com/0x0raman/ScriptScribe
• https://github.com/awslabs/handwritten-text-recognition-for-apache-mxnet
• https://github.com/him4318/Transformer-ocr
• https://github.com/Breta01/handwriting-ocr/tree/master

Hmm, that tool looks like to have some API:
https://github.com/oleehyo/texteller?tab=readme-ov-file#-api-usage

So i believe tesseract would not perform really well, so it is more like a really small improvement for person which would not use MyScript for privacy.

(PS: I see that MyScript works with vectors which make it even easiert)

[2Belette]

I like the idea too, would be nice to have a local alternative (using another service which could be self-hosted)

[rmitchellscott]

I've been testing some local methods, with the goal of building a MyScript-compatible API that rmfakecloud could point to. (#434)

Handwriting search requires sending the stroke data so that the search UI can highlight the search word.