Poor Man's KNFBReader

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John G. Heim

7 Sep 2021 7 Sep '21

2:27 p.m.

I discovered this morning that you can do a poor man's version of the KNFBReader app on a Linux machine. 1. Connect your iPhone, iPad, or Ipod to a Linux computer. 2. Mount the device with the ifuse command. mkdir -p /media/john/iphone/ ifuse /media/john/iphone/ 3. Open the camera app and take a picture of your document. 4. Run tesseract to recognize text in the picture. tesseract /media/john/iphone/DCIM/100APPLE/IMG_0001.jpg stdout -- ### John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

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Chris Turner

7 Sep 7 Sep

7:14 p.m.

Ha, neat. Thanks for this. Have saved in my notes. Chris On 07/09/21 15:27, John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins wrote:

...

I discovered this morning that you can do a poor man's version of the KNFBReader app on a Linux machine.

1. Connect your iPhone, iPad, or Ipod to a Linux computer.

2. Mount the device with the ifuse command. mkdir -p /media/john/iphone/ ifuse /media/john/iphone/

3. Open the camera app and take a picture of your document.

4. Run tesseract to recognize text in the picture. tesseract /media/john/iphone/DCIM/100APPLE/IMG_0001.jpg stdout

-- Soundtrack, electronic, synthwave. LostDroid, in all the usual places and; lostdroid.bandcamp.com

Andrew Hodgson

10:07 p.m.

I don't even bother with the iPhone these days and use the web camera on my desktop. Hold the paper up near the camera and take a picture and it usually works fine. Andrew. -----Original Message----- From: Chris Turner via Blind-sysadmins Sent: 07 September 2021 20:15 To: John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins Cc: Chris Turner Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Re: Poor Man's KNFBReader Ha, neat. Thanks for this. Have saved in my notes. Chris On 07/09/21 15:27, John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins wrote:

...

I discovered this morning that you can do a poor man's version of the KNFBReader app on a Linux machine.

1. Connect your iPhone, iPad, or Ipod to a Linux computer.

2. Mount the device with the ifuse command. mkdir -p /media/john/iphone/ ifuse /media/john/iphone/

3. Open the camera app and take a picture of your document.

4. Run tesseract to recognize text in the picture. tesseract /media/john/iphone/DCIM/100APPLE/IMG_0001.jpg stdout

-- Soundtrack, electronic, synthwave. LostDroid, in all the usual places and; lostdroid.bandcamp.com _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org

John G. Heim

8 Sep 8 Sep

1:16 p.m.

Yeah, KNFBReader is supposed to be for reading a menu in a restaurant and stuff like that. But does anybody ever really sit there in a restaurant and take a picture of a menu? I don't think I have ever used KNFBReader to recognize a document. I have a flatbed scanner for that. What I primarily use KNFBReader for is to read the text on a monitor when a computer won't boot. It does only a fair job of that. I'm not sure tesseract will do any better though. I think the value of my tip would depend on how well the OCR works. I just figured this out yesterday and as yet, I haven't compared tesseract to KNFBReader. It's funny, I've found that once in a while, gocr does a much, much better job than tesseract of recognizing text in a screen cap. I wish I could figure out why that happens because when gocr is good, it is very good. But most of the time, tesseract is better. Tip #2: I have to boot machines via PXE a lot in my job. A good way to diagnose problems in the PXE boot process is to boot a virtual machine via PXE, use the VM software to take a screen cap of the virtual machine, and run an OCR program on the screen cap. On 9/7/21 5:07 PM, andrew@hodgson.io wrote:

...

I don't even bother with the iPhone these days and use the web camera on my desktop. Hold the paper up near the camera and take a picture and it usually works fine.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: Chris Turner via Blind-sysadmins Sent: 07 September 2021 20:15 To: John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins Cc: Chris Turner Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Re: Poor Man's KNFBReader

Ha, neat.

Thanks for this. Have saved in my notes.

Chris

On 07/09/21 15:27, John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins wrote:

...
I discovered this morning that you can do a poor man's version of the KNFBReader app on a Linux machine.

1. Connect your iPhone, iPad, or Ipod to a Linux computer.

2. Mount the device with the ifuse command. mkdir -p /media/john/iphone/ ifuse /media/john/iphone/

3. Open the camera app and take a picture of your document.

4. Run tesseract to recognize text in the picture. tesseract /media/john/iphone/DCIM/100APPLE/IMG_0001.jpg stdout

-- Soundtrack, electronic, synthwave. LostDroid, in all the usual places and; lostdroid.bandcamp.com

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org

-- ### John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

Steve Nutt

1:23 p.m.

I never found Tesseract to be that good to be honest. All the best Steve -- To subscribe to our News and Special Offers list, go to https://www.comproom.co.uk/subscribe Computer Room Services 77 Exeter Close Stevenage Hertfordshire SG1 4PW T: +44(0)1438-742286 M: +44(0)7956-334938 F: +44(0)1438-759589 E: steve@comproom.co.uk W: https://www.comproom.co.uk -----Original Message----- From: John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins Sent: 08 September 2021 14:16 To: Mailing list for blind system administrators ; andrew@hodgson.io Cc: John G. Heim Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Re: Poor Man's KNFBReader Yeah, KNFBReader is supposed to be for reading a menu in a restaurant and stuff like that. But does anybody ever really sit there in a restaurant and take a picture of a menu? I don't think I have ever used KNFBReader to recognize a document. I have a flatbed scanner for that. What I primarily use KNFBReader for is to read the text on a monitor when a computer won't boot. It does only a fair job of that. I'm not sure tesseract will do any better though. I think the value of my tip would depend on how well the OCR works. I just figured this out yesterday and as yet, I haven't compared tesseract to KNFBReader. It's funny, I've found that once in a while, gocr does a much, much better job than tesseract of recognizing text in a screen cap. I wish I could figure out why that happens because when gocr is good, it is very good. But most of the time, tesseract is better. Tip #2: I have to boot machines via PXE a lot in my job. A good way to diagnose problems in the PXE boot process is to boot a virtual machine via PXE, use the VM software to take a screen cap of the virtual machine, and run an OCR program on the screen cap. On 9/7/21 5:07 PM, andrew@hodgson.io wrote:

...

I don't even bother with the iPhone these days and use the web camera on my desktop. Hold the paper up near the camera and take a picture and it usually works fine.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: Chris Turner via Blind-sysadmins Sent: 07 September 2021 20:15 To: John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins Cc: Chris Turner Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Re: Poor Man's KNFBReader

Ha, neat.

Thanks for this. Have saved in my notes.

Chris

On 07/09/21 15:27, John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins wrote:

...
I discovered this morning that you can do a poor man's version of the KNFBReader app on a Linux machine.

1. Connect your iPhone, iPad, or Ipod to a Linux computer.

2. Mount the device with the ifuse command. mkdir -p /media/john/iphone/ ifuse /media/john/iphone/

3. Open the camera app and take a picture of your document.

4. Run tesseract to recognize text in the picture. tesseract /media/john/iphone/DCIM/100APPLE/IMG_0001.jpg stdout

-- Soundtrack, electronic, synthwave. LostDroid, in all the usual places and; lostdroid.bandcamp.com

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org

-- ### John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org

John G. Heim

1:31 p.m.

Compared to what? On 9/8/21 8:23 AM, steve@comproom.co.uk wrote:

...

I never found Tesseract to be that good to be honest.

All the best

Steve

-- To subscribe to our News and Special Offers list, go to https://www.comproom.co.uk/subscribe

Computer Room Services 77 Exeter Close Stevenage Hertfordshire SG1 4PW T: +44(0)1438-742286 M: +44(0)7956-334938 F: +44(0)1438-759589 E: steve@comproom.co.uk W: https://www.comproom.co.uk

-----Original Message----- From: John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins Sent: 08 September 2021 14:16 To: Mailing list for blind system administrators ; andrew@hodgson.io Cc: John G. Heim Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Re: Poor Man's KNFBReader

Yeah, KNFBReader is supposed to be for reading a menu in a restaurant and stuff like that. But does anybody ever really sit there in a restaurant and take a picture of a menu? I don't think I have ever used KNFBReader to recognize a document. I have a flatbed scanner for that. What I primarily use KNFBReader for is to read the text on a monitor when a computer won't boot. It does only a fair job of that. I'm not sure tesseract will do any better though. I think the value of my tip would depend on how well the OCR works. I just figured this out yesterday and as yet, I haven't compared tesseract to KNFBReader.

It's funny, I've found that once in a while, gocr does a much, much better job than tesseract of recognizing text in a screen cap. I wish I could figure out why that happens because when gocr is good, it is very good. But most of the time, tesseract is better.

Tip #2: I have to boot machines via PXE a lot in my job. A good way to diagnose problems in the PXE boot process is to boot a virtual machine via PXE, use the VM software to take a screen cap of the virtual machine, and run an OCR program on the screen cap.

On 9/7/21 5:07 PM, andrew@hodgson.io wrote:

...
I don't even bother with the iPhone these days and use the web camera on my desktop. Hold the paper up near the camera and take a picture and it usually works fine.

Andrew.

-----Original Message----- From: Chris Turner via Blind-sysadmins Sent: 07 September 2021 20:15 To: John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins Cc: Chris Turner Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Re: Poor Man's KNFBReader

Ha, neat.

Thanks for this. Have saved in my notes.

Chris

On 07/09/21 15:27, John G. Heim via Blind-sysadmins wrote:

...
I discovered this morning that you can do a poor man's version of the KNFBReader app on a Linux machine.

1. Connect your iPhone, iPad, or Ipod to a Linux computer.

2. Mount the device with the ifuse command. mkdir -p /media/john/iphone/ ifuse /media/john/iphone/

3. Open the camera app and take a picture of your document.

4. Run tesseract to recognize text in the picture. tesseract /media/john/iphone/DCIM/100APPLE/IMG_0001.jpg stdout

-- Soundtrack, electronic, synthwave. LostDroid, in all the usual places and; lostdroid.bandcamp.com

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org

-- ### John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list -- blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org To unsubscribe send an email to blind-sysadmins-leave@lists.hodgsonfamily.org

-- ### John G. Heim, 608-263-4189, jheim@math.wisc.edu

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Andrew Hodgson
Chris Turner
John G. Heim
Steve Nutt