Extract OCR (plugin upgraded for Omeka S)

Module for Omeka S to extract OCR text in XML and TSV from PDF files, allowing instant fulltext searching within any IIIF viewer like Universal Viewer or Mirador with IIIF-Search module).

The xml format is the simple pdf2xml or the most common standard alto. The tsv format is a simple two columns with the words and the list of positions by page.

The tsv format is recommended as it is a lot quicker, in particular for items with many pages.

Installation

• This module needs pdftohtml command-line tool on your server, from the poppler utilities:

# Debian and derivatives
sudo apt install poppler-utils
# Red Hat and derivatives
sudo dnf install poppler-utils

• Before Omeka S version 3.1, the module requires to set the base uri in the config file of Omeka config/local.config.php in order to upload the file in background:

    'file_store' => [
        'local' => [
            'base_path' => null, // Or the full path on the server if needed.
            'base_uri' => 'https://example.org/files', // To be removed in Omeka S v3.1.
        ],
    ],

• Upload and unzip the Extract OCR module folder into your modules folder on the server, or you can install the module via github:

cd omeka-s/modules
git clone git@github.com:bubdxm/Omeka-S-module-ExtractOcr.git "ExtractOcr"

• Take care to rename the folder "ExtractOcr".
• Install it from the admin → Modules → Extract Ocr -> install
• Extract OCR automaticaly allows the upload of XML files.

Using the Extract OCR module

• Create an item
• Save this Item
• After save, add PDF file(s) to this item
• To locate extracted OCR xml or tsv file, select the item to which the PDF is attached. Normally, you should see an XML or a tsv file attached to the record with the same filename than the pdf file.

Optional modules

• IIIF-Server: Module for Omeka S that adds the IIIF specifications to serve any images and medias.
• IIIF-Search: Module for Omeka S that adds IIIF Search Api for fulltext searching on universal viewer.
• Universal Viewer: Module for Omeka S that includes UniversalViewer, a unified online player for any file. It can display books, images, maps, audio, movies, pdf, 3D views, and anything else as long as the appropriate extensions are installed.
• Mirador
• Or any other IIIF viewers, like Diva.

TODO

• Extract strings with pdftotext with arg -tsv and store them in a file or in database for simpler and quicker search.
• Extract strings by word, but with one position by row, allowing to search with "AND", not only "OR".

Troubleshooting

See online Extract OCR issues.

License

This module is published under GNU/GPL.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

Copyright

• Copyright Syvain Machefert, Université Bordeaux 3 (see symac)
• Copyright Daniel Berthereau, 2020-2024 (see Daniel-KM on GitLab)