flameshot-ocr

flameshot-ocr is an open source tool to quickly OCR and look up text. It will look up text in your yomichan search app, so it respects all dictionaries/frequency lists etc. that you already have installed. Fast, lightweight, and uses manga-ocr for OCR.

Installation

Linux

1. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/christofferaakre/flameshot-ocr.git
2. Install dependencies either using the provided install.sh script (if you are on a Debian based distro) or manually
3. Add the flameshot-ocr script to your path, for example by executing the following commands:
   1. cd flameshot-ocr
   2. sudo ln -s ~/bin/flameshot-ocr flameshot-ocr
   3. sudo ln -s ~/bin/yomichan-search yomichan-search
4. Make sure that you have Yomichan Search set up as Chrome/chromium app (not just extension)
5. Make sure that you have Clipboard monitor turned on in Yomichan Search.
6. Modify the line in the yomichan-search script that reads
   /opt/google/chrome/google-chrome --profile-directory=Default --app-id=dmlhnpobnomcmidkoijomppdlpfkedmi:
   1. Replace the path to google-chrome with the path to your chromium browser if you don't use Google Chrome
   2. Replace the app-id with the app-id for your yomichan search app.
7. Replace the hardcoded line /home/negosaki/bin/yomichan-search with the absolute path to the yomichan-search, which should be /home/yourUsername/yomichan-search if you followed the instructions above. This path needs to be absolute, not relative as otherwise it breaks for ubuntu keyboard shortcuts.
8. Replace the hardcoded save_path directory with the absolute path to the directory that you will monitor with manga_ocr

Install dependencies using install script:

1. cd flameshot-ocr
2. chmod +x install.sh
3. sudo ./install.sh

   Install dependencies manually:

   Install the following dependencies in any way you see fit:

   • manga_ocr and the required language-specific tesseract packages (tesseract need to be in your system path)
   • flameshot (needs to be in system path)
   • xdotool (needs to be in system path)

     MacOS

     No support currently

     Windows

     No support for running natively on windows currently, but you can install WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) and install/run the script from there. So, install WSL and then refer to the Linux installation instructions.

     Why no Windows/MacOS support?

     Currently this project is only supported on Linux. The dependencies used are:

   • flameshot (Windows/MacOS/Linux support)
   • manga_ocr (Windows/MacOS/Linux support)
   • xdotool (Only Linux support as far as I am aware)

xdotool is only used to focus the yomichan search window so could be easily be swapped out for Windows/MacOS compatible alternatives. Also, unix specific paths like /usr/bin and /tmp are used, and these do not exist on Windows (although they do on MacOS). However, this is not too hard to fix, the main problem is not all the dependencies are supported on Windows/MacOS.

I am not familiar with Windows/MacOS, but if someone else wants to open a pull request and merge in Windows/MacOS compatible versions, I'll happily accept the pull request.

Usage

Before attempting to run the script, make sure you have manga_ocr running in the background, monitoring the directory that you indicated with the save_path variable in the flameshot-ocr script.

Run the script like this: yomichan-search from the terminal. Bind this command to a keyboard shortcut for easy access. For example, I have the script bound to Alt + x. So, when I am for example, reading a manga and want to ocr and look up something, I simply do the following:

1. Press Alt + x
2. Crop my region of choice
3. Done! Yomichan search will automatically pop up with the text already searched.