Abiword gets experimental OCR scanning support

A new experimental plugin for the Abiword word processing program integrates …

An experimental Abiword plugin built on Ocropus and GEGL brings integrated OCR scanning support to the popular open source word processing program. The Abiword plugin is being developed by GNOME-scan creator Etienne Bersac.

This is the second year in a row that Bersac has worked on improving GNOME-scan through Google's Summer of Code program and his efforts are starting to pay off. GNOME-scan will eventually replace XSane for GNOME users and provide comprehensive support for scanning integration in the GNOME environment. Last month, Bersac wrote about potential solutions for incorporating OCR support into GNOME-scan and discussed some of the benefits and limitations of OCRopus. OCRopus doesn't presently provide an API, but Bersac has created a wrapper for the OCRopus command line utilities as a temporary measure until more work can be done to make OCRopus functionality more easily reusable in other programs.

Bersac's Abiword plugin still has bugs, but it delivers real point-and-click OCR scanning and reflects the potential for broader GNOME-scan integration in the future. Bersac's efforts also illuminate the need for more contributors to work on projects like Ocropus. Scanning support is an important software feature for businesses and professionals, and it is an area where there is still much room for improvement on the Linux platform.