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I presume this doesn't handle handwriting. Does anyone have a suggestion for locally converting PDFs of handwriting into text, say on a recent Mac? Use case wo

I presume this doesn't handle handwriting. Does anyone have a suggestion for locally converting PDFs of handwriting into text, say on a recent Mac? Use case would be converting handwritten journals and daily note-taking.

ntnsndr 1y ago
+1. I have tried a bunch of local models (albeit the smaller end, b/c hardware limits), and I can't get handwriting recognition yet. But online Gemini and Claude do great. Hoping the local models catch up soon, as this is a wonderful LLM use case. UPDATE: I just tried this with the default model on handwriting, and IT WORKED. Took about 5-10 minutes on my laptop, but it worked. I am so thrilled not to have to send my personal jottings into the cloud!
simonw 1y ago
This one should handle handwriting - it's using Qwen 2.5 VL which is a vision LLM that is very good at handwritten text.
nawazgafar 1y ago
Author here, I tested it with this PDF of a handwritten doc [1], and it converted both pages accurately. 1. https://github.com/pnshiralkar/text-to-handwriting/blob/master/Example/handwritten.pdf https://github.com/pnshiralkar/text-to-handwriting/blob/mast...
- treetalker 1y ago
  Amazing, can't wait to try it! FYI, your GitHub link tells me it's unable to render because the pdf is invalid.
password4321 1y ago
I don't know re: handwriting so only barely relevant but here is a new contender for a CLI "OCR Tool using Apple's Vision Framework API": https://github.com/riddleling/macocr https://github.com/riddleling/macocr which I found while searching for this recent discussion: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44310944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44310944
- phren0logy 1y ago
  If you use Docling, you can set your OCR engine to OCRMac then set it to use LiveText. It’s a good arrangement. You can send these as command-line arguments, but I generally configure it from the Python API.

ntnsndr 1y ago

+1. I have tried a bunch of local models (albeit the smaller end, b/c hardware limits), and I can't get handwriting recognition yet. But online Gemini and Claude do great. Hoping the local models catch up soon, as this is a wonderful LLM use case. UPDATE: I just tried this with the default model on handwriting, and IT WORKED. Took about 5-10 minutes on my laptop, but it worked. I am so thrilled not to have to send my personal jottings into the cloud!

simonw 1y ago

This one should handle handwriting - it's using Qwen 2.5 VL which is a vision LLM that is very good at handwritten text.

nawazgafar 1y ago

Author here, I tested it with this PDF of a handwritten doc [1], and it converted both pages accurately. 1. https://github.com/pnshiralkar/text-to-handwriting/blob/master/Example/handwritten.pdf https://github.com/pnshiralkar/text-to-handwriting/blob/mast...

treetalker 1y ago
Amazing, can't wait to try it! FYI, your GitHub link tells me it's unable to render because the pdf is invalid.

password4321 1y ago

I don't know re: handwriting so only barely relevant but here is a new contender for a CLI "OCR Tool using Apple's Vision Framework API": https://github.com/riddleling/macocr https://github.com/riddleling/macocr which I found while searching for this recent discussion: My iPhone 8 Refuses to Die: Now It's a Solar-Powered Vision OCR Server https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44310944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44310944

phren0logy 1y ago
If you use Docling, you can set your OCR engine to OCRMac then set it to use LiveText. It’s a good arrangement. You can send these as command-line arguments, but I generally configure it from the Python API.