ocr-my-mess 0.2.0

A PDF pipeline to convert, OCR, and merge documents.

ocr-my-mess

A complete and modular Python pipeline to convert, OCR, and merge all your documents into a single, searchable PDF.

Features

• Recursive Conversion: Traverses a directory to find all supported files (images, office documents, archives, existing PDFs).
• OCR Processing: Applies OCR to all documents using ocrmypdf to make them text-searchable.
• Hierarchical Merging: Merges all generated PDFs into a single file with a table of contents that mirrors the original folder structure.
• Dual Interfaces: Usable as both a powerful Command-Line Interface (ocr-my-mess-cli) and a simple Graphical User Interface (ocr-my-mess-gui).
• Cross-Platform: Packaged with PyInstaller to run on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Installation

Using Conda (Recommended)

This is the easiest way to get started, as it handles all dependencies, last version of tessaract and Python itself.

# 1. Create the conda environment
conda env create -f environment.yml

# 2. Activate the environment
conda activate ocr-my-mess

# 3. Install the project in editable mode
pip install -e .

Using Pip

# 1. Create and activate a virtual environment
python -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

# 2. Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

# 3. Install the project in editable mode
pip install -e .

Note: For office document conversion, you must have LibreOffice installed and available in your system's PATH.

Usage

The application can be run in two modes:

• Command-Line Interface (CLI): If you provide any arguments.
• Graphical User Interface (GUI): If you run it without any arguments.

Command-Line Interface (CLI)

The CLI provides several commands, including run, convert and merge.

# General help
ocr-my-mess --help

# Get version
ocr-my-mess -v

# Run the full pipeline on a directory
ocr-my-mess run --input /path/to/docs --output /path/to/final.pdf --lang en+fr

# Just convert and OCR all documents in a folder
ocr-my-mess convert --input-dir /path/to/docs --output-dir /path/to/output

# Just merge all PDFs in a folder into a single file
ocr-my-mess merge --input-dir /path/to/output --output-file /path/to/final.pdf

Graphical User Interface (GUI)

For a more visual approach, you can launch the GUI by running the command without any arguments.

ocr-my-mess

This will open a window allowing you to:

• Select input and output directories.
• Choose OCR languages.
• Run the full pipeline.
• See live logs and progress.

Development

Running Tests

To ensure everything is working correctly, run the automated tests:

pytest

Building Executables

This project uses PyInstaller to create a standalone executable. A build script is provided in the scripts/ directory.

# Build the executable
python scripts/build.py

The executable will be located in the dist/ directory.

Note: When running the GUI from the executable on Windows or macOS, a console window will appear alongside the main application window. This is expected behavior.