#!/bin/sh

device=”genesys:libusb:004:005″
tmpdir=”/tmp”
basename=”scanpdf”
counter=0
color=0
scanarea=”-l 0 -t 0 -x 216 -y 279″ # US letter
#scanarea=”-l 0 -t 0 -x 210 -y 297″ # A4

if [ ! -d "$tmpdir" ]
then
echo “Need existing tempdir at $tmpdir.”
exit
fi

until [ $counter -eq -1 ]
do
echo -n “Black & White/Color/Done [B/c/d]? ”
read answer
if [ -z "$answer" -o "$answer" = "b" -o "$answer" = "B" ]
then
color=0
elif [ "$answer" = "c" -o "$answer" = "C" ]
then
color=1
elif [ "$answer" = "d" -o "$answer" = "D" ]
then
break
else
continue
fi
counter=`expr $counter + 1`
echo “Scanning page $counter”
filename=”$basename`echo $counter | awk ‘{ printf “-%03d”, $1 }’`”
if [ $color -eq 1 ]
then
mode=”–mode Color”
resolution=”–resolution 150″
else
mode=”–mode Gray”
resolution=”–resolution 150″
fi
scanimage $mode $resolution $scanarea > “$tmpdir”/”$filename”.pnb
convert -quality 50 “$tmpdir”/”$filename”.pnb “$tmpdir”/”$filename”.jpg
rm “$tmpdir”/”$filename”.pnb
done

if [ $counter -eq 0 ]
then
echo “Nothing scanned.”
exit
fi

savein=”"
while [ -z "$savein" ]
do
echo -n “Please name the PDF file to save in: ”
read savein
done

convert “$tmpdir”/$basename*.jpg “$savein”.pdf
rm “$tmpdir”/$basename*.jpg
acroread “$savein”.pdf >& /dev/null &
echo Successfully scanned $counter pages and created “$savein”.pdf.

Problem, # scanimage –format tiff > scan.tiff // is yielding

scanimage: unrecognized option `–format’

Even though it’s documented in the man page.

Running RHEL v.4.

scanimage -format tiff > scan.tiff yields a file named scan.tiff with “ormat” in it.

Any ideas?

TY
G

Further, I have found that editing pdf files in anything more than the most primitive way is also difficult on Linux system. On top of that, there is the problem of getting programs to print directly to pdf files outside the kdeprinter system, which is trivial in Windows or OS X. It can be done but the messing around with cups-pdf required is obscure and unfriendly for any but experienced users (and the resulting installation gets messed up on every upgrade).

It is worth bearing in mind that pdf files are becoming the standard document format for lots of business use because they don’t contain the kind of compromising information that gets retained with Word and other files. Sadly, the very primitive support for scanning, creating and manipulating pdf files is a very large barrier to the adoption of Linux as a desktop system for serious business use – and I have tried and use 4-5 different distributions including SuSE which is the best for this purpose in my experience.

Running through convert (after scanning muilti pages into *.pnm files) and then running that output through ps2pdf yields some relatively small PDF files that are VERY usable. I dumped Redmonds bloatware about a month ago and am attempting to replace the functionality of PaperPort. I typically scan, OCR, and save PDF’s of all the paperwork that comes through the mail on a weekly basis – this can grow quite large (in paper) and doing this allows me to quickly search, retrieve, and also have a continuity plan should the house burn to the ground (make a second backup of the files). Worst case is I loose a month or so of documentation – the most recent is always easiest to replace.

So from what my testing shows is scan with SANE, use the project files to run through convert, then run that output through ps2pdf. This cuts the filesize by about 80% or better… very handy when your working with 50+ page documents.

Cheers
Mac
New Zealand

#!/bin/sh

#scan a batch
#mode Color or Gray on end of next line if needed
#echo “Starting !”

colour=`zenity –list –radiolist –column “-” –column “Scan” TRUE Gray FALS E Color`

LIMIT=10
a=0
cont=1

until [ $cont -eq "0" ]
do
echo -n “$a ”
let “a+=1″
if zenity –question –text “OK to scan a page, Cancel to finish, Page=$a”
then
cont=1
scanimage –format pnm –resolution 150 –mode $colour > “$a.pnm”
else
cont=0
fi

done # No surprises, so far.

echo “.”
#convert the raw file to postscript
convert -density 150 *.pnm out.ps | zenity –progress –auto-close

#convert the postscript to pdf
ps2pdf out.ps out.pdf | zenity –progress –auto-close

#remove raw scan files
rm *.pnm

#remove old ps files
rm out.ps

#add the metadata
echo -e “\a”
#echo “Please enter a name for the PDF file (** no .pdf on end)”
nm=`zenity –entry –text “Enter file name, (no .pdf on the end)”`
#echo “Please enter Metadata for searching”
meta=`zenity –entry –text “Meta data for searching” –entry-text=$nm`

echo “InfoKey: Producer” > tmp
echo “InfoValue: $meta” >> tmp
echo “InfoKey: Keywords” >> tmp
echo “InfoValue: $meta” >> tmp
echo “InfoKey: Title” >> tmp
echo “InfoValue: $nm” >> tmp

#update the metadata
pdftk out.pdf update_info tmp output “$nm.pdf”

#rm metadata file and pdf
rm tmp
rm out.pdf

zenity –info –text=”All done, $nm.pdf is ready!”

I got, however, the best results (much work but small files) by scanning the pages (in my case: from a magazine) to Gimp in a high resolution (e.g. 360 dpi), then scaling them down so that the text was still readable, then converting them to an indexed format (instead of RGB) and saving them as PNG (best format for images with a small number of different colors). Of course, you have to experiment with convert -density after scaling the images…

#!/bin/sh

#scan a batch
scanimage –format pnm –batch –batch-prompt –resolution 150 –mode Gray

#convert the raw file to postscript
convert -density 150 *.pnm out.ps

#convert the postscript to pdf
ps2pdf out.ps out.pdf

#remove raw scan files
rm *.pnm

#remove old ps files
rm out.ps

scanimage –format tiff –batch –batch-double –resolution 200 –source ADF –mode Grayscale –batch-start=3
convert -density 200 *.tif output.ps
ps2pdf output.ps output.pdf

One could potentially write a script that would automate the whole thing

and because i scanned line arts (b/w text only pages), it also scanned blazingly fast.

actually, i worked around one minor problem:
after scanning 6 pages, i pressed view image in the project dialog for one of the images,
and xsane stopped abruptpy. however, i just restarted xsane, selected multipage agan, wrote the
exact same project name in the project name input dialog, and the image file list showed up again.
i could not create the pdf file immediately, but then i scanned one page,
then deleted it, and now i could save all pages as a pdf file.
nice to know if xsane freaks out after you have scanned several pages.

you made my day, people!

– nils halvard smallsoft com

A new dialog called “xsane multipage project” will appear. You may chose any name for your project; xsane will create a folder with that name to store temporary files in and eventually output a pdf file with that name.

Chose “PDF” under the “Multipage document filetype” drop-down menu. Then click on the “Create project button”. Now you can use the main XSane dialog to scan pages into the project one at a time by clicking scan (optionally, chose the paper size in the preview window). The multipage project dialog has buttons to edit and remove images from the project and to change what order they go in.

When you are satisfied with your project, click the “Save multipage file” button. This will produce a multipage PDF with the project’s name. You can then click “Delete project” to get rid of the project within XSane and remove the temporary directory created by XSane. This will NOT delete the multipage PDF file. You can click the “Create project” button again to start over.

This essentially does the same thing as the process David outlined, only it does it entirely within the XSane GUI and probably doesn’t need as many external applications.

One gotcha with convert though is its memory allocation – the defaults for memory expect that it has a whole Gig of pure memory to chew up. If it fails to allocate memory it will just die on you with no error message. To get around this, use the -limit flags:
convert -page A4 -limit memory 256 -limit map 512