rajsolai/textsnatcher

How to Copy Text from Images ? Answer is TextSnatcher !. Perform OCR operations in seconds on Linux Desktop.

Thanks for all the Support shown by Stars, Issues and PRs 💌 ! Currently I'm Saving money for my Linux PC, Soon (next month) the project will be back with updates and fixes

TextSnatcher

Copy Text from Images with ease, Perform OCR operations in seconds.

Download

Features

• Multiple Language Support.
• Copy Text from images with a Drag.
• Drag over any Image and Paste.
• Fast and Easy to Use.
• This application uses the Tesseract OCR 4.x for the character recognition.
• Read more about Tesseract and Star ⭐️ Tesseract-Project.

Screencasts

textsnatcher-eng.mp4

textsnatcher-tamil.mp4

Screenshots

Support Me

Social Media Posts

LinkedIn Post on Why I created TextSnatcher

Dependencies

Ensure you have these dependencies installed

Runtime Dependency

• scrot
• tesseract-ocr
• tesseract language data arch repos debian repos

Buildtime Dependency

• granite
• gtk+-3.0
• gobject-2.0
• gdk-pixbuf-2.0
• libhandy-1
• libportal-0.5

Install, build and run

# clone repository
git clone https://github.com/RajSolai/TextSnatcher.git TextSnatcher
# cd to dir
cd TextSnatcher
# run meson
meson build --prefix=/usr
# cd to build, build and test
cd build
sudo ninja install && com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher

Inspirations

• ReadMe: https://github.com/alainm23/planner
• Application Structure: https://github.com/alcadica/develop
• TextSniper (MacOS Application)

Made with ❤️ for Linux

textsnatcher's Issues

Clipboard empty when using "Take Screenshot" option

As the title says, the clipboard is not filled when using the "Take Screenshot" option.
The other options ("Choose File" and "Get from Clipboard") work fine.

For debugging purposes, I've compiled the app myself and added instructions to print the result when taking a screenshot.
The text was printed successfully.
That means the OCR works, but writing to the clipboard does not work.

I'm using Wayland with Gnome. I installed the app via flatpak.
I suspect a security feature of Wayland is preventing the app to write to the clipboard.
In Wayland, regular apps can only write/read to clipboard when they are focused.
Since directly after taking a screenshot, TextSnatcher is not focused, it is not able to write to the clipboard.

I've tested this hypothesis by making a large screenshot and clicking into the TextSnatcher window. This sets the focus back to TextSnatcher. While the app seems to be frozen (maybe worth another issue), it appears to get focus, since now it successfully writes to the clipboard.

But this is not a solution, since for small screenshots, the user will not be able to change the window quickly enough (and it would be user-friendly anyway).

My only idea to solve this issue is to add a button to copy to the clipboard manually.

But other features, such as printing the result into a text label UI element, could possibly also improve usability.
E.g. users could then quickly decide to retake the screenshot or copy the text, with the button.
The button could also be implemented first, to fix this issue, and the text label could be added later as a UI improvement.

I also wonder why nobody else has this issue. Am I missing something?

Remove '--filesystem=/home' persmission from manifest

This is an extremely broad permission that your app shouldn't need access to. If your app needs to save or open users' files, it should do so using the filechooser portal: https://valadoc.org/gtk+-3.0/Gtk.FileChooserNative.html

Flathub Verification

Can you please verify the flatpak so that people who find it through Flathub know it's official? Here's a link to the Flathub documentation on getting verified https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/verification/

Can't compile from sources...

Hi,

It look like the build process can't finish.

Here is the error :

bigbob@bigbob-UX331UN:~/tmp/Building/TextSnatcher/TextSnatcher$ dpkg-checkbuilddeps && rm debian/*~ ; LANG=C dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
rm: impossible de supprimer 'debian/*~': Aucun fichier ou dossier de ce type
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source package com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source version 1.0.1-13-gdd62c6d
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source distribution UNRELEASED
dpkg-buildpackage: info: source changed by COLIN Stephane <[email protected]>
dpkg-buildpackage: info: host architecture amd64
 dpkg-source --before-build .
 fakeroot debian/rules clean
dh clean
   dh_auto_clean
   dh_clean
 dpkg-source -b .
dpkg-source: info: using source format '3.0 (quilt)'
dpkg-source: info: building com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher using existing ./com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher_1.0.1-13.orig.tar.xz
dpkg-source: info: building com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher in com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher_1.0.1-13-gdd62c6d.debian.tar.xz
dpkg-source: info: building com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher in com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher_1.0.1-13-gdd62c6d.dsc
 debian/rules build
dh build
   dh_update_autotools_config
   dh_autoreconf
   dh_auto_configure
	cd obj-x86_64-linux-gnu && LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 meson .. --wrap-mode=nodownload --buildtype=plain --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --libdir=lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
The Meson build system
Version: 0.56.2
Source dir: /home/bigbob/tmp/Building/TextSnatcher/TextSnatcher
Build dir: /home/bigbob/tmp/Building/TextSnatcher/TextSnatcher/obj-x86_64-linux-gnu
Build type: native build
Project name: com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher
Project version: 1.0.1
Using 'CFLAGS' from environment with value: '-g -O2 -ffile-prefix-map=/home/bigbob/tmp/Building/TextSnatcher/TextSnatcher=. -flto=auto -ffat-lto-objects -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security'
Using 'LDFLAGS' from environment with value: '-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -flto=auto -Wl,-z,relro'
Using 'CPPFLAGS' from environment with value: '-Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2'
C compiler for the host machine: ccache cc (gcc 10.3.0 "cc (Ubuntu 10.3.0-1ubuntu1) 10.3.0")
C linker for the host machine: cc ld.bfd 2.36.1
Vala compiler for the host machine: valac (valac 0.48.17)
Using 'CFLAGS' from environment with value: '-g -O2 -ffile-prefix-map=/home/bigbob/tmp/Building/TextSnatcher/TextSnatcher=. -flto=auto -ffat-lto-objects -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security'
Using 'LDFLAGS' from environment with value: '-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -flto=auto -Wl,-z,relro'
Using 'CPPFLAGS' from environment with value: '-Wdate-time -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2'
Host machine cpu family: x86_64
Host machine cpu: x86_64
Found pkg-config: /usr/bin/pkg-config (0.29.2)
Run-time dependency granite found: YES 5.5.0
Run-time dependency gobject-2.0 found: YES 2.68.1
Run-time dependency libhandy-1 found: YES 1.2.0
Run-time dependency libportal found: YES 0.4
Run-time dependency gdk-pixbuf-2.0 found: YES 2.42.2
Run-time dependency glib-2.0 found: YES 2.68.1
Run-time dependency gtk+-3.0 found: YES 3.24.25
Found pkg-config: /usr/bin/pkg-config (0.29.2)
Program glib-compile-resources found: YES (/usr/bin/glib-compile-resources)
Program meson/post_install.py found: YES (/usr/bin/python3 /home/bigbob/tmp/Building/TextSnatcher/TextSnatcher/meson/post_install.py)
Build targets in project: 11

Found ninja-1.10.1 at /usr/bin/ninja
   dh_auto_build
	cd obj-x86_64-linux-gnu && LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 ninja -j8 -v
[1/17] /usr/bin/glib-compile-resources ../data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.gresource.xml --sourcedir ../data --sourcedir ../ --c-name as --internal --generate --target as-resources.h
[2/17] valac -C --pkg gtk+-3.0 --pkg glib-2.0 --pkg gdk-pixbuf-2.0 --pkg libportal --pkg libhandy-1 --pkg gobject-2.0 --pkg granite --color=always --directory com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p --basedir ../ --gresources=../data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.gresource.xml ../src/Application.vala ../src/MainWindow.vala ../src/components/VerticalBox.vala ../src/components/HeaderBar.vala ../src/components/LanguageButton.vala ../src/components/AboutButton.vala ../src/components/AboutDialog.vala ../src/screens/MainScreen.vala ../src/services/LanguageService.vala ../src/services/TesseractTrigger.vala
FAILED: com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/Application.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/MainWindow.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/VerticalBox.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/HeaderBar.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/LanguageButton.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/AboutButton.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/AboutDialog.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/screens/MainScreen.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/services/LanguageService.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/services/TesseractTrigger.c 
valac -C --pkg gtk+-3.0 --pkg glib-2.0 --pkg gdk-pixbuf-2.0 --pkg libportal --pkg libhandy-1 --pkg gobject-2.0 --pkg granite --color=always --directory com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p --basedir ../ --gresources=../data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.gresource.xml ../src/Application.vala ../src/MainWindow.vala ../src/components/VerticalBox.vala ../src/components/HeaderBar.vala ../src/components/LanguageButton.vala ../src/components/AboutButton.vala ../src/components/AboutDialog.vala ../src/screens/MainScreen.vala ../src/services/LanguageService.vala ../src/services/TesseractTrigger.vala
error: Package `libportal' not found in specified Vala API directories or GObject-Introspection GIR directories
Compilation failed: 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)
[3/17] /usr/bin/glib-compile-resources ../data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.gresource.xml --sourcedir ../data --sourcedir ../ --c-name as --internal --generate --target as-resources.c --dependency-file as-resources.c.d
[4/17] /usr/bin/meson --internal msgfmthelper ../data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.desktop.in data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.desktop desktop /home/bigbob/tmp/Building/TextSnatcher/TextSnatcher/po/extra
[5/17] /usr/bin/meson --internal msgfmthelper ../data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.appdata.xml.in data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.appdata.xml xml /home/bigbob/tmp/Building/TextSnatcher/TextSnatcher/po/extra
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.
dh_auto_build: error: cd obj-x86_64-linux-gnu && LC_ALL=C.UTF-8 ninja -j8 -v returned exit code 1
make: *** [debian/rules:18: build] Error 1
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules build subprocess returned exit status 2
bigbob@bigbob-UX331UN:~/tmp/Building/TextSnatcher/TextSnatcher$ dpkg -l | grep libportal
ii  libportal-dev:amd64                               0.4-2~21.04.sav0                                                                amd64        Flatpak portal library (development files)
ii  libportal0:amd64                                  0.4-2~21.04.sav0                                                                amd64        Flatpak portal library
bigbob@bigbob-UX331UN:~/tmp/Building/TextSnatcher/TextSnatcher$

Do you have any advice on what missing ?

Option to select image from filesystem

I think it's unnecessary to take a screenshot of an image, instead you should just be able to pick a photo from the filesystem.

Maybe also extend that idea to taking a webcam picture.

Update to remove GNOME 41 runtime dependency which is no longer supported

Here is what Flatpak says:

Info: org.gnome.Platform//41 is end-of-life, with reason:
   The GNOME 41 runtime is no longer supported as of September 17, 2022. Please ask your application developer to migrate to a supported platform.
Applications using this runtime:
   com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher

Use the screenshot portal

Instead of having a sandbox hole to access the screenshot interface directly, your app should use the screenshot portal to request screenshots. You can use LibPortal to accomplish this: https://valadoc.org/libportal/Xdp.Portal.take_screenshot.html

meson and ninja

Why there are not a part of requirements if they are needed to build the project?

I've installed meson, then I got error about missing Vala compiler. Why it's not on the list of requirement as well?

error: Package `libportal' not found in specified Vala API directories or GObject-Introspection GIR directories

Linux bullseye 11 with kde. i have installed the related dev packages, but ...

[1/16] Compiling Vala source ../src/Application.vala ../src/MainWindow.va..../src/services/LanguageService.vala ../src/services/TesseractTrigger.vala
FAILED: com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/Application.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/MainWindow.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/VerticalBox.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/HeaderBar.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/LanguageButton.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/AboutButton.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/AboutDialog.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/SelectPictureDialog.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/screens/MainScreen.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/screens/HomeScreen.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/screens/SelectPictureScreen.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/services/LanguageService.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/services/TesseractTrigger.c 
valac -C --debug --debug --pkg gtk+-3.0 --pkg glib-2.0 --pkg gdk-pixbuf-2.0 --pkg libportal --pkg libhandy-1 --pkg gobject-2.0 --pkg granite --color=always --directory com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p --basedir ../ --gresources=../data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.gresource.xml ../src/Application.vala ../src/MainWindow.vala ../src/components/VerticalBox.vala ../src/components/HeaderBar.vala ../src/components/LanguageButton.vala ../src/components/AboutButton.vala ../src/components/AboutDialog.vala ../src/components/SelectPictureDialog.vala ../src/screens/MainScreen.vala ../src/screens/HomeScreen.vala ../src/screens/SelectPictureScreen.vala ../src/services/LanguageService.vala ../src/services/TesseractTrigger.vala
error: Package `libportal' not found in specified Vala API directories or GObject-Introspection GIR directories
Compilation failed: 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.

 LANGUAGE=EN; sudo apt install libportal*
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'libportal-dev' for glob 'libportal*'
Note, selecting 'libportal-doc' for glob 'libportal*'
Note, selecting 'libportal-tests' for glob 'libportal*'
Note, selecting 'libportal0' for glob 'libportal*'
libportal-dev is already the newest version (0.3+git20200327-1).
libportal-doc is already the newest version (0.3+git20200327-1).
libportal-tests is already the newest version (0.3+git20200327-1).
libportal0 is already the newest version (0.3+git20200327-1).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 18 not upgraded.

but... libportal dont exists here...

elias@eliasc:~/Downloads/_LINUX_PKGS/textsnatcher/TextSnatcher$ l /usr/share/vala/vapi/ 
Dbusmenu-0.4.vapi      fsoresource-2.0.vapi   gcalc-2.vapi         gsm0710mux-1.0.vapi     libnm.deps                   librsvg-2.0.vapi
fsobasics-2.0.deps     fsosystem-2.0.deps     gci-1.deps           gtksourceview-3.0.deps  libnm.vapi                   packagekit-glib2.deps
fsobasics-2.0.vapi     fsosystem-2.0.vapi     gci-1.vapi           gtksourceview-3.0.vapi  libpulse.deps                packagekit-glib2.vapi
fsoframework-2.0.deps  fsotest-2.0.deps       gee-0.8.vapi         ibus-1.0.deps           libpulse-mainloop-glib.deps  xapp.deps
fsoframework-2.0.vapi  fsotest-2.0.vapi       granite.deps         ibus-1.0.vapi           libpulse-mainloop-glib.vapi  xapp.vapi
fso-glib-1.0.deps      fsotransport-2.0.deps  granite.vapi         libcanberra.vapi        libpulse-simple.deps
fso-glib-1.0.vapi      fsotransport-2.0.vapi  gsm0710-1.0.vapi     libhandy-1.deps         libpulse-simple.vapi
fsoresource-2.0.deps   gcalc-2.deps           gsm0710mux-1.0.deps  libhandy-1.vapi         libpulse.vapi

but...

ldconfig -p | grep libportal
	libportal.so.0 (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libportal.so.0
	libportal.so (libc6,x86-64) => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libportal.so

Support arm64 (aarch64) architecture?

Hi,

Is it possible to build this for arm64, for popular devices such as Raspberry Pi etc?

Thanks!

1-line command to enter "Take Screenshot"?

Hi,

Now if I'd like to use "Take Screenshot", I have to launch the program, hit the "Snatch Now!" button, then the "Take Screenshot" button.

I'd like to set up a keyboard shortcut to get into "Take Screenshot" directly, so can I ask if there's a 1-line commandline (or an alternative way) to achieve this?

Thanks!

Turkish language

Can you add Turkish language support?

Move to Newer Screenshot backend

Screenshot portal seems to be unstable in most of the desktop environments so move to a better screenshot backend that functions in most of the distros without disappointments.

Current Candidates are

• scrot (better support for x based systems)

Support for the Dutch language

Hi! I have been amazed by this application however I does seem to struggle a bit when using the Dutch language. Would be great to see this added as well.

For now I can make it work by using English and just changing the things it got wrong.

Thanks in advance!

Wrong sizes of icons.

Then installing TextSnatcher, I did some sanity checks, and there are issues:

--- usr/share/icons/hicolor/64x64/apps/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.svg: icon is 85x85, but is in a dir with 64x64 in the name. resize it, or rename the dir.
--- usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.svg: icon is 64x64, but is in a dir with 48x48 in the name. resize it, or rename the dir.
--- usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.svg: icon is 43x43, but is in a dir with 32x32 in the name. resize it, or rename the dir.
--- usr/share/icons/hicolor/24x24/apps/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.svg: icon is 32x32, but is in a dir with 24x24 in the name. resize it, or rename the dir.
--- usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.svg: icon is 21x21, but is in a dir with 16x16 in the name. resize it, or rename the dir.
--- usr/share/icons/hicolor/128x128/apps/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.svg: icon is 171x171, but is in a dir with 128x128 in the name. resize it, or rename the dir.

Screenshot not received error

linux mint cinnamon latest, installed flatpak. I run app, do screenshot, click share (as the usage video does on home page), and get the below error.

Failed to load module, why would flatpak not have this module fetched during install?

$ flatpak run com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher
Gtk-Message: 14:53:26.332: Failed to load module "xapp-gtk3-module"
Process Done
** (com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher:2): CRITICAL **: 14:53:42.651: TesseractTrigger.vala:75: Screenshot not received

Screenshot not working on KDE [FollowUp]

System information

• Operating System: Arch Linux
• KDE Plasma Version: 5.23.5
• KDE Frameworks Version: 5.90.0
• Qt Version: 5.15.2
• Kernel Version: 5.16.1-zen1-1-zen (64-bit)
• Graphics Platform: X11
• Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor
• Memory: 62.7 Gio of RAM
• Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT

---

Application

• Channel: Flatpak
• Version: 1.0.0

Problem

The "Xdp.Portal.take_screenshot" function is broken on KDE. Can't take a single screenshot somehow, this may not be your fault though.

Further information

https://imgur.com/a/ooXIFKh

Since I don't think it's actually your app failing, there are no relevant logs:

com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher Gtk-Message: 18:24:22.170: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module" Process Done

Except it saying it's done its duty and called the actual screenshot tool.

Invisible Unicode character at end of all text

There seems to be a U+000c invisible Unicode character at the end of all generated text. This causes problems in some applications when pasting resulting text. See below example, problem on line 2:

Support for German

Good day!

I've been using your app for a while and loving it, although it seems to struggle with picking out German words, especially the Umlaute (Ä, ä, Ö, ö, Ü, ü) and the German specific ß for ss. It would be very nice if your app could support these characters, otherwise it is doing a phenomenal job already just using the English language setting.

Thank you a lot for your great work and have nice day/night!

Add OCR to categories

Instead of adding OCR to keywords, this is a valid category as defined here. You may want to also include Graphics and Scanning

Not working (details below), GNOME 41, Fedora 35

Hello and good day

thank you for such an amazing idea and simple implementation!

It sadly does not work for me (F35, GNOME 41) with the following as an example:

When I want to capture a rectangle of the image here:

And I paste my clipboard afterwards I get either this:

(eI {033 Ll yet J
x ELI i]

ok 3

(FR IN wl LC
[Ia NT.YRTe]

 

 

 
 

or just

(can't paste this here, this is what gedit shows: )

Am I using it wrong?

All the best!

Info button works only once

Hi,
A very minor bug : clicking on the (i) information button works the first time, but subsequent clicks give an empty/frozen window (with no buttons to close it).
Version 1.0.1, installed via FlatHub on Pop!_OS 21.10 64

dont let open more than 1 snatch now pop up

video example https://fs-01.cyberdrop.to/simplescreenrecorder-2022-02-15_19.38.45-Htgi.mp4

Implement looking up the X11 clipboard for a picture [FollowUp][Enhancement]

Premise

Right now, the application relies on XDG standards to call a platform native screenshot tool to provide it with the image to work on.

Limits

That method has shown some limit, and it can be inferred that not all DE/WM would have implemented such standards or would have done so the correct. Although this is not the responsibility of this application, it would be nice to provide end-users with a different way of loading pictures into the application.

Proposal

I thus propose, that the application be able to look at the most recent / top item of the DE clipboard (X11 or Wayland agnostic if possible) and upon a quick check, determine the type of the object there and load it if it's an image in the proper format.

Ideally, this implementation would be non-blocking and asynchronous so as not to block the UI, as some DE framework can make you wait a long time before returning any answer.

Brazilian Portuguese & Spanish support

Hello!
Thank you for the wonderful app, it works flawlessly!
I'd just like to leave a suggestion: could there be language support for Brazilian Portuguese and also for Spanish, for Latin Americans like me?
Thank you! :)

No such interface “org.freedesktop.portal.Screenshot” on object at path /org/freedesktop/portal/desktop

Hi,

Running on Arch the textsnatcher-git, I got this error:

$ textsnatcher
archtty
** (textsnatcher:203142): CRITICAL **: 12:40:38.143: TesseractTrigger.vala:124: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: No such interface “org.freedesktop.portal.Screenshot” on object at path /org/freedesktop/portal/desktop

How to reproduce:

1. Install textsnatcher-git on Arch
2. Run textsnatcher, "Snatch Now" --> "Take Screenshot"

Could you please kindly investigate? Thanks!

libportal dependency in meson.build is it actually needed for a native Linux package

Right now libportal is a dependency in meson.build, which causes compiling to fail when building a native package.

I'm not familiar with libportal, this is only needed for building flatpaks?

I also seem to have a possibly related build failure if libportal-dev is not installed and included as part of the build:

[6/17] valac -C --pkg gtk+-3.0 --pkg glib-2.0 --pkg gdk-pixbuf-2.0 --pkg libhandy-1 --pkg gobject-2.0 --pkg granite --color=always --directory com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p --basedir ../ --gresources=../data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.gresource.xml ../src/Application.vala ../src/MainWindow.vala ../src/components/VerticalBox.vala ../src/components/HeaderBar.vala ../src/components/LanguageButton.vala ../src/components/AboutButton.vala ../src/components/AboutDialog.vala ../src/screens/MainScreen.vala ../src/services/LanguageService.vala ../src/services/TesseractTrigger.vala
FAILED: com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/Application.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/MainWindow.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/VerticalBox.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/HeaderBar.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/LanguageButton.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/AboutButton.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/components/AboutDialog.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/screens/MainScreen.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/services/LanguageService.c com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p/src/services/TesseractTrigger.c 
valac -C --pkg gtk+-3.0 --pkg glib-2.0 --pkg gdk-pixbuf-2.0 --pkg libhandy-1 --pkg gobject-2.0 --pkg granite --color=always --directory com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.p --basedir ../ --gresources=../data/com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher.gresource.xml ../src/Application.vala ../src/MainWindow.vala ../src/components/VerticalBox.vala ../src/components/HeaderBar.vala ../src/components/LanguageButton.vala ../src/components/AboutButton.vala ../src/components/AboutDialog.vala ../src/screens/MainScreen.vala ../src/services/LanguageService.vala ../src/services/TesseractTrigger.vala
../src/services/TesseractTrigger.vala:9.5-9.7: error: The symbol `Xdp' could not be found
    Xdp.Portal portal ;
    ^^^
Compilation failed: 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.

If I build with libportal-dev, I can create a native package, and TextSnatcher runs, but seems to have some issues working.
I can debug it a bit more and make a separate issue from this.

If TextSnatcher isn't made to be built as a native package right now, that's fine. If anything I can help update your Debian packaging a bit in the meantime.

No Persian?

is there gonna be Persian language support soon please ??

Use tesseract library rather than calling the runtime

Have you considered it?
I have created a bridge between C++ and C and I can send you my VAPI file to call it from Vala, interested? ;)

Spanish (and other langages) not available

I have installed TextSnatcher on a Linux Mint 20.3. Everything is ok except that I cannot find the Spanish option for language:

I have installed Tesseract with the Spanish option.

Can you fix this, please?

Thank you!

Label "Check clipboard" not updates after taking screenshot

Hello!

Firstly, thank you very much for so cool app!

I noticed a bug, sometimes this text https://i.imgur.com/HuFnDeB.png don't change to "Reading image" after taking screenshot, so you can't know does it finished operation, or not.

Linux lestra-sys 5.19.0-50-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Mon Jul 10 18:24:29 UTC 2023 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Show detected text on the program.

Copying the detected text directly to clipboard is very nice.

But I need to see the detected text without searching for a empty text box and paste to there.

Support for Greek

Hello, can you add support for the Greek language?

Combine two languages

Is there a way to combine two languages? Due to the fact that the russian language is poor, we often write words in English. And during OCR, the program cannot correctly recognize English, because the language for the main text is russian

Query about TextSnatcher and Tesseract Models

Dear Raj Solai,

Hope you're well. First, I've got to say, TextSnatcher is impressive!

I've got a question: I often work with multiple languages, and I'm wondering if there's a way to integrate additional Tesseract language models into TextSnatcher? It would really streamline things for me.

Thanks for your time and for creating such a standout OCR tool.

Mac OS installation problem

How it install on mac OS? The last line sudo ninja install && com.github.rajsolai.textsnatcher is not working

Czech Language Support

Dear RajSolai,

I have been looking for an application such as yours since I started using a Linux system.
It is amazing how well it works! I appreciate it very much!

For my work requirements, I would also need the support for the Czech Language.

I have confirmed that TESSARACT does support this language. Do you think, it would be possible to add it with the next update?

Looking forward for your reply,

Kind regards,
Pedro Silva

Alternate forms of release?

Can you consider something like offering a PPA for Ubuntu?
TIA

indexing image contents

Great tool!

An interesting development could be to index images, possibly to integrate with recoll

Think of batch processing files, adding the extracted text to images metadata so that they can be directly retrieved with recoll
Or eventually generate text files with the same name of the image, including in it the pathname/filename of the original file

that would be really really useful!

[Feature request] option for "-" and "line breaks"

TextSnatcher is a cool piece of software. Thank you for having created it.

This is a section from a PDF without text layer:

This is the result from TextSnatcher:

Maße die Mitarbeiter. (Anm. d. U: Wortspiel do-ocracy beschreibt eine Re-
gierungsform die denjenigen die Macht haben gibt, die etwas erschaffen)
Jeder mit genügent Fähigkeiten, Zeit und Motivation kann effektiven Ein-
fluß auf die Führung eines Projekts nehmen. Dies bezeugt eine Gesamtheit
von etwa 1000 offiziellen Mitgliedern des Debian Projekts und mehreren
tausend Unterstützern in der ganzen Welt. Da wundert es nicht, dass Debi-
an oft zugeschrieben wird das größte gemeinschaftsbasierte freie Software-
projekt zu sein.

This is nice. But now the feature request comes:
I would like to have an option to get also this:

Maße die Mitarbeiter. (Anm. d. U: Wortspiel do-ocracy beschreibt eine Regierungsform die denjenigen die Macht haben gibt, die etwas erschaffen) Jeder mit genügent Fähigkeiten, Zeit und Motivation kann effektiven Einfluß auf die Führung eines Projekts nehmen. Dies bezeugt eine Gesamtheit von etwa 1000 offiziellen Mitgliedern des Debian Projekts und mehreren tausend Unterstützern in der ganzen Welt. Da wundert es nicht, dass Debian oft zugeschrieben wird das größte gemeinschaftsbasierte freie Softwareprojekt zu sein.

Wht's the difference?

1. The line breaks are not taken over.
   (Whether the original line breaks are desired depends on what we need the text for afterwards).

2. Separated words are written together. For example, "Debi- an" becomes Debian.

Would be nice to have an option to choose between these two types of output.

What do you think? Would appreciate some feedback.

[Feature Request] Shortcut to grab screen area to clipboard

Excellent app, but I would like to suggest making a shortcut to grab text from screen area, just like windows Powertoys' Text Grabber.
So when I press the shortcut keys the pointer changes to crosshair and then I can select screen area and on finishing the drag the text should get copied to the clipboard.
Its very handy and practical that way

can not use the app

Hello,
Thanks for developing the app.
I have installed using flathub.
But the app does not work.
I am using lubuntu, the screenshot (and other options) do not do any actions.
Thanks

meson deprecation warning

When compiling got this warning:

WARNING: Running the setup command as meson [options] instead of meson setup [options] is ambiguous and deprecated.