download standalone script: homer.sh

The script loads a directory of images which is expected to contain 2n images, and applies to them a series of manipulations. If no arguments are entered, the script returns the “Usage” info:

Usage: homer /path/to/input/directory [-r, -R, -L, -l \"lang\"] [-o \"output\"]"

Options:
-r, --rename"
    rename the first half of the files with incremental odd numbers, the second"
    half with incremental even numbers (JPEG only);"
-R, --right"
    rename (as above) and rotate the right-hand pages 90 degrees clockwise, and"
    the left-hand pages 90 degrees counterclockwise, starting from the RIGHT "
    pages (JPEG only);"
-L, --left"
    rename and rotate (as above) starting from the LEFT pages (JPEG only);"
-l, --lang"
    run Tesseract OCR and convert the images into a searchable PDF (TIFF only),"
    type \"homer -l\" (or \"--lang\") to view the list of supported languages;"
-o, --output"
    for [-r, -R, -L], the output is the path to the directory where the renamed"
        images should be saved (default is \$1/renamed);"
    for [-l], the output is the path to the final PDF, or its filename (default"
        is \$PWD/out.pdf)."

If only the first argument (i.e., the input directory) is entered, the script prompts the user to select whether to rename & rotate, simply rename, or run OCR engine and converting to PDF.

The options -R, -L, and -r allow to reorder a batch of JPEG images such that the first half and the second half are interspersed: that is, the first half is renamed with incremental odd numbers, while the second half is renamed with incremental even numbers.

The options -R and -L allow to fix the orientation of the JPEG images, by rotating the pages on the right-hand side of book 90 degrees clockwise, and those on the left-hand side of the book 90 degrees counterclockwise.

Finally, the option -l runs “Tesseract OCR” to extract the text from a batch of TIFF images, and then uses “PDFbeads” to bind the images and the text into a single, searchable PDF. The -l option must be followed by the three-character label for the desired Tesseract language. To print the list of supported languages with their correspondni glabels, you can type homer -l or homer --lang.

The -o option allows to specify the output location of the renamed/rotated files (a new folder will be created if it doesn’t exist), the location where to save the final PDF document (saved as “out.pdf” if the no filename is specified); or the name of the PDF file (the *.pdf extension appended to the filename is not necessary but will be added automatically if not entered by the user). The option accepts both absolute and relative paths.

The renaming/rotating bit of the script is inspired by Matti Kariluoma and his “RenameAll.exe” script, which he wrote for the already mentioned Cardboard Bookscanner project appeared on Instructables.com.

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