Scan Folder:
This is the first selection in the Files menu of the main menu of
the application. It is used to launch a folder selection
navigation dialog with which you can select folders for the
application to scan for image files. The image files found
will be included in the list which is on the left side of the
content area of the main application window. 'Scan Folder'
has a submenu with two selections, 'Walk', and 'List'. If
you select 'Walk', all of the folders that you select in the
navigator will be scanned recursively down to the depth of the
folder hierarchy and any image files contained in them will be
included in the list. If you select 'List', then only the
image files in the folder itself, but none of its sub-folders,
will be included.
You may use the CTRL and SHIFT keys in combination with mouse
clicks to select ranges or sets of folders to scan. With the
CTRL key / mouse click combination, you can select multiple
individual folders, and with the SHIFT key / mouse click
combination you can select ranges. If you are unfamiliar
with these standard list and tree view features, experiment a bit
to learn how they work.
Click the [Cancel] button at the bottom of the file system
navigator to cancel selection and exit the dialog. Click the
[Select] button to perform the scan, exit the navigator, and list
the image files found in the main application window. The
full path of each file is shown. The [Up] button is useful
if you have descended into sub-folders by double clicking folders
and want to go back up in the folder hierarchy.
Select Text:
Use this selection to select or crop text from one or more of the
image files in the list. Each image file in the list has a
check box to its left. To select the file for text cropping,
click on the check box to select it. Only those files with
the check box clicked will be shown during the cropping
operation. Selecting this menu item causes a series of
dialogs to appear, each containing the image in each of the files
checked. With the image displayed in the cropping dialog,
drag the mouse from the top left corner of the text to crop to the
bottom right. Releasing the mouse button starts the cropping
operation, which might take a couple of seconds depending on how
much text you selected.
The cropped text will be written to the console, so if you
started the application using a console command then the text will
be available there. It is also written to the database in
the SQLite database file, TextExtraction.db, which, depending on
your particular installation method, will be in the same folder as
the pictureTextCrop.py source code file. Whichever directory
this file is in when the application is started is its working
directory, which will be where it initializes and stores its
database. When you crop text from an image, a record is
written to the CropLog table. The record will contain fields
recording the a time-stamp showing when the extraction was done in
a text sortable format, the full file path identifying the file on
your storage media, the text extracted, and the coordinates of the
rectangle you drew in the image defining the boundaries of the
text extraction. This can be searched and otherwise used
efficiently using SQL, and so serves as an export point for the
payload produced by the application.
The cropping dialog for each file will remain displayed until you
close it using the standard X button at its top right
corner. You can continue to crop any number of pieces of
text in it until it is closed. You can work in any order
through the files you checked in the list to crop using the
'Select Text' feature in the Files menu.
Select All:
This is a toggle with which you can select and un-select
all of the files in the list. Notice that it does not check
all of the boxes to the right of the file paths, but rather
highlights all of the files. This selection method only
works with certain features, one of which is accessed with the
button in the icon tool bar with the blue double-play arrows, '>>'. All files in the
list which are highlighted will be displayed one at a time in the
crop dialog when you select this feature. In addition to
selecting all of the files in the list at once, you can select
files in the list using the same CTRL- and SHIFT-plus-mouse-click
operations that you can use in the file system navigator for
selecting multiple folders. When you click on the '>>' button, the crop dialog
will display for each of the highlighted files in turn. You
can select one slice of text from each.
Exit:
This selection exits the application.