MangoCR

Turn obnoxious PDFs into a tasty mango slices!

MangoCR is a Python package that converts PDF files to text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR). It processes single or multiple PDF files and outputs the results in a clean Markdown format.

Features

• Process single or multiple PDF files in one go
• High-quality OCR using Tesseract
• Markdown-formatted output
• Progress tracking for each PDF and page
• Maintains document structure with clear page separation
• High-resolution image conversion (300 DPI) for optimal OCR results

Prerequisites

• Python 3.6 or higher
• Tesseract OCR engine

Installation

1. Clone the repository and install the required Python packages:

pip install mangoCR

2. Install Tesseract OCR engine:

Windows

1. Download the Tesseract installer from the official GitHub releases page
2. Run the installer. Make sure to note the installation path
3. Add Tesseract to your system PATH:
   • Open System Properties → Advanced → Environment Variables
   • Under System Variables, find and select "Path"
   • Click "Edit" and add the Tesseract installation directory (typically C:\Program Files\Tesseract-OCR)
   • Click "OK" to save

macOS

Using Homebrew:

brew install tesseract

Google Colab

!apt install tesseract-ocr

Linux (Ubuntu/Debian)

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr

Linux (Fedora)

sudo dnf install tesseract

Usage

The package provides a simple function pdf2image_ocr that can process either a single PDF or multiple PDFs.

Basic Usage

from mangoCR import pdf2image_ocr

# Process a single PDF
pdf2image_ocr("path/to/your/document.pdf")

# Process multiple PDFs
pdf_list = [
    "path/to/first.pdf",
    "path/to/second.pdf",
    "path/to/third.pdf"
]
pdf2image_ocr(pdf_list)

Specifying Custom Output File

# Change the output file name/location
pdf2image_ocr("document.pdf", output_file="custom_output.md")

Output Format

The OCR results are saved in a Markdown file with the following structure:

# OCR Results for document1.pdf

## Page 1

[Extracted text from page 1]

## Page 2

[Extracted text from page 2]

# OCR Results for document2.pdf

## Page 1

[Extracted text from page 1]

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

1. Tesseract Not Found Error

   EnvironmentError: Tesseract is not installed or not found in PATH
   

   Solution: Ensure Tesseract is properly installed and added to your system PATH.

2. Low Quality OCR Results

   • Ensure your PDF is of good quality
   • The default DPI is set to 300 for optimal results
   • Consider preprocessing your PDFs if they contain complicated layouts

PDF Requirements

• PDFs should be readable and not password-protected
• Scanned documents should be clear and properly aligned
• For best results, use PDFs with a resolution of at least 300 DPI

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Thanks to the Tesseract OCR team for providing the OCR engine
• PyMuPDF team for the excellent PDF processing library