[libreoffice-users] Re: How to import printed form into writer in Linux?

Le 01/06/12 09:32, Thomas Taylor a écrit :

Hi Thomas,

> Are there any add-ons that would allow it to work with PDF files?  Is there
> documentation related to this functionality?

The pdfimport extension (if at all installed by default with openSuse)
will only open the PDFs fed from your scanner as a bitmapped image in Draw.

Your forms as scanned with your Brother MFC will usually be supplied in
one of the following formats :

- PDF
- TIFF Group 4
- JPG (2000 ?)
- PNG (if you're lucky)
- BMP


All of those are bitmap formats. The only way your form can be
transformed into something useful is through the use of an
OCR/vectorisation programme.

I don't know of any worthwhile, free, Linux-based solutions to your
problem. Yes, there are opensource OCR programs for Linux, but on the
whole, I have found them to be woefully lacking, and most certainly
cannot handle form objects, tick boxes, and the like. It is just about
all they can do to read text in English.

There may be "pay" solutions out there, I don't know, and haven't looked
in a while.

As far as I know, you won't find anything that will work directly with
LibreOffice, as in, transform your scanned form into something editable
and changeable within LO, unless the PDF output you provide from your
scanner/ocr application can supply PDF-conform embedded objects that can
be read by the pdfimport extension, in which case they will open in Draw
(which is OK, but not brilliant when you've got lots of text to edit
since virtually each line appears in a separate text bounding box).

Maybe others here can suggest something more appropriate/functional.
Good luck with your search.

Alex


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