Decapod Roadmap

This roadmap is constantly evolving and adapting.

Table of Contents

Definitions

"Good Quality Source Material"

  • segmented: distinguish lines and characters
  • high enough contrast to detect characters
  • skew should be corrected automatically or in the Decapod UI

Application Architecture

Hardware and image capture

  • Two cameras
  • Book flattening and camera alignment hardware
  • Capture UX

or

  • Flatbed scanner
  • Folder full of images

or

  • Single camera
  • SD card
  • Folder full of images
  • or import UI for importing images from an SD card

Book Editing and Management Application

  • Import images
  • Reorder pages
  • Delete pages
  • Crop
  • Rotation correction/skew
  • Basic book metadata
  • (Contrast controls)
  • (Image annotation)

PDF Generation Pipeline

  • Dewarping
  • Binarization
  • OCR
  • PDF generation

Decapod Minimum Viable Application 1.0

  • Import images
  • Export:
    • Good quality image-based PDF
    • Searchable text in PDF
    • Text is selectable, screen readable, and extractable
    • Font matching

Supplementary Features

  • Reorder pages
  • Delete pages
  • Basic book metadata (i.e. Dublin core fields)

Incremental Design/Development Roadmap

Decapod 0.5a

  • For good quality source material, produce a PDF with:
    • Good image quality
    • Searchable text
    • Selectable, extractable text

Decapod 0.5

  • New UI for importing a folder full of images (e.g. from a flat bed scanner)
  • Polish export UI
  • See Decapod 0.5 Planning

Decapod 0.6 (Full-featured Export to PDF)

Import / Export UI

  • More export options: dimensions, DPI, colour depth, OCR text file output
  • Report export status on the Exporter: make use of JSON status file
  • TIFF output

Server

  • Add support for new genpdf features
  • Make use of genpdf JSON status file
  • Report errors better (there are some generic errors)

Client and Server

  • Make UI respond meaningfully to server error messages.
    • Requires some design.

Infrastructure

  • Possible update to Ocropus 0.5
  • Possible update to Ubuntu 12.04

ETA: 6 weeks (July 20th 2012)

Decapod 0.7

  • DSLR controlled within Decapod's user interface using gphoto
    • Detect attached camera.
    • Take a photo and transfer over USB to disk.
  • Implementation of Stereo Capture
    • Physical rig for mounting two cameras sufficiently for stereo dewarping
    • Calibration UI
  • Stereo Capture UI
    • Cameras are checked: matching pair of supported cameras.
    • Cameras are calibrated using the Calibration UI.
    • User captures pairs of images and they are saved to disk.
    • Once done capturing, a ZIP file is created with all the stereo images and the calibration data.
  • Stereo Dewarp UI
    • Upload a ZIP file containing stereo pair of images and calibration data, and generate a de-warped image to disk.
    • User is prompted to download the ZIP file.
  • Structured light UI
    • Physical rig for mounting a camera on top of a projector
    • Calibration and capture UI
  • Better Error handling across all components

Things to Consider in the Future

  • Metadata
    • basic book metadata
    • fancy dublin core, etc.
  • Annotation
    • Text alternatives to images
    • translations
    • Scholarly annotations
    • Tagging
  • New page management user interfaces
    • Deleting
    • Reordering
    • Cropping
    • Rotation
    • Undo Delete
    • Undo Crop, Rotation, Reordering
    • Redo Delete
    • Redo Crop, Rotation, Reordering
    • Ability to mark page boundaries within a single image of a two-page spread
  • Book management
    • The ability to manage and work concurrently on more than one book at a time
    • Create, organize, delete
    • Edit information about the book (name, basic metadata, etc.)
    • Schedule books for export