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Honestly, I'd love a pdf tool that can clean up pdf's scanned by Internet Archive. They seem to use a compromise scanner setting that renders halftones ok but
by k310 8mo ago
Honestly, I'd love a pdf tool that can clean up pdf's scanned by Internet Archive.
They seem to use a compromise scanner setting that renders halftones ok but produces text (the vast majority of the pdf) as black letters on a dirty dishwater background.
Every day I hear about incredible advances in coding, yet this conceptually simple task of recognizing text areas and thresholding them (only) seems undone. (for the majority of us who don't spend a paycheck on software)
I feel that it's especially urgent before the bonfire of the vanities (or climate) destroys all old books and music scores and manuscripts.
Why? Emmanuel Goldstein in "1984".
"The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism"
> The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.
Not.
- GSiesto 8mo agoThat's very interesting, I've worked with image recognition in the past, and building a generic solution for this kind of use cases was very difficult. It often fails on edge cases. However, with the rapid advancements in AI image recognition, I think we are getting closer to solving this with confidence every day. It's definitely an interesting direction for future features and something I could explore implementing locally, though it is quite resource intensive for now. It needs a few spins. And I agree about the urgency of preserving old documents. Loss of clarity is effectively a loss of history. Making these tools accessible and cheap (or free) is definitely part of the solution. Thanks for the insights!