📝 Textractor

Textractor is a Python application that converts non-searchable PDFs into searchable PDFs using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) with support for both German and English text. It integrates spell-checking for extracted text using dictionaries and allows batch processing of PDF files through a user-friendly graphical interface (GUI).

🎯 Purpose

Have you ever needed to:

• Copy Text from a PDF File?
• Search for PDF files containing specific words?
• Organize you document by their content?

Textractor solves these problems by scanning you PDF files in s specific PATh, extract the texts and spell check them before storing new searchable versions of the PDF files. Don't worry, PDF files with selectable texts will be ignored!

💡 Features

• 📄 Converts non-searchable PDFs into searchable ones.

• 🔍 Integrates OCR to extract text from PDF images.

• 📝 Spell-checks the extracted text using German and English dictionaries.

• 🖼️ Supports batch processing of PDFs within folders.

• 🔧 Easy-to-use GUI for folder selection and processing.

• 📂 Allows selecting custom output directories for processed files.

• 🗃️ Respects your folder structure by mirroring the original folder structure from the source folder.

🛠️ Installation

1. Install Tesseract OCR

A- For Windows: - Download and install the least release of Tesseract OCR Windows installer from UB Mannheim here.

B- For MacOS: If you have Homebrew installed, you can install Poppler by running the following command

brew brew install tesseract

C- For Linux (Ubuntu/Debian): Install Tesseract via APT

sudo apt-get install tesseract-ocr

• For installation on other os refer to the original download page of Tesseract OCR

• During installation, note the installation path. You will need to update the path in the code.

Verify Installation by running tesseract -v

2. Update the Path in Code

In the Textractor code, update the following line with the correct path to the Tesseract-OCR executable (make sure the path is correct):

pytesseract.pytesseract.tesseract_cmd = r\'C:\Path\To\Tesseract-OCR\tesseract.exe\'

On other OS (Not Windows)

pytesseract.pytesseract.tesseract_cmd = 'Path/To/Tesseract-OCR/executable/'

3. Download and Install Poppler

A- For Windows:

Download Poppler binaries from Owen Schwartz here.

Add PATH variables for Poppler to accordingly to poppler\bin

B- For MacOS:

If you have Homebrew installed, you can install Poppler by running the following command

brew install poppler

C- For Linux (Ubuntu/Debian):

sudo apt-get install poppler-utils

Verify Installation by running pdftoppm -v

4. Install Required Python Packages

Run the following command to install all necessary dependencies:

pip install pdf2image pytesseract tkinter pyenchant

5. Hunspell Dictionaries Setup

To ensure the spell-check functionality works:

A. Install Hunspell Dictionaries: Download and install Hunspell dictionaries for German (de_DE) and English (en_US) languages. You can find the dictionaries here.

B. Update the Dictionary Path in the code: Update the path to the dictionaries in the following line:

enchant.set_param(\"enchant.myspell.dictionary.path\", r\'C:\Path\To\Hunspell\Dictionaries\')

On other OS (Not Windows)

enchant.set_param(\"enchant.myspell.dictionary.path\", 'Path/To/Hunspell/Dictionaries/')'

6. Update Environment PATH Variables

Ensure that Tesseract OCR, Hunspell, and Poppler paths are included in your system's PATH environment variables to allow the software to locate them during execution.

🚀 How to Use

1. Launch the Application

Simply run the Python script using the following command:

python Textractor.py

2. Select Input and Output Folders

• A GUI will appear where you can select the folder containing the PDFfiles to process.

• Use the "Browse" button to select both Input and Output folders:

• Input Folder: Contains the non-searchable PDF files.

• Output Folder: Where the processed searchable PDFs will be saved.

3. Start the PDF Conversion

• Once folders are selected, click the "Start Conversion" button.

• The app will process each PDF in the input folder, check if it's non-searchable, and convert it to a searchable PDF if needed.

4. Review the Conversion Log

• After the conversion process is complete, a conversion log will be generated in the output folder (conversion_log.txt), containing details of the processing results, such as errors or successfully processed files.

🛠️ Dependencies

• Tesseract OCR

• pdf2image

• pytesseract

• tkinter

• pyenchant

• Hunspell Dictionaries

📝 Additional Notes

• Ensure that Tesseract OCR and Hunspell dictionaries are correctly installed and their paths are configured in the code and system PATH.

  • The app currently supports OCR for both German and English languages. To add support for additional languages, update the OCR command in the code:

  raw_text = pytesseract.image_to_string(image, lang=\"deu+eng\")

• For optimal performance, ensure your PDF files have a high-resolution image for accurate OCR.

🤝 Contributing

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

📜 License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See the LICENSE file for details.

Enjoy using Textractor to make your PDF files searchable and error-free with integrated spell-checking

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Thanks to UB Mannheim for making Tesseract OCR Windows installer