[needs-packaging] Cuneiform

[Jussi Pakkanen]

I am the maintainer of Cuneiform OCR system's Linux port. The project home page is here: https://launchpad.net/cuneiform-linux

The project is under the BSD license and is tested to work on x86 and amd64. A Gentoo ebuild can be found here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=234824

I would like to have Cuneiform packaged for Ubuntu, but unfortunately I lack the time and skills for that. To get started, here is a skeleton control file:

Source: cuneiform
Section:
Priority: optional
Maintainer: No-one <email address hidden>
Standards-Version: 3.6.1
Build-Depends: cmake libmagick++-dev

Package: cuneiform
Architecture: i386 amd64
Depends: ${shlibs:depends}
Description: A high performance OCR system.
 Cuneiform is an OCR system. In addition to text recognition
 it also does layout analysis and text format recognition.
 Cuneiform supports several languages.

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

Attached are debian packaging files that can be used to build a deb package of Cuneiform. It works for me, but I have no prior experience in packaging.

I can't maintain the packaging, but should someone want to take over, it should be easy and straightforward.

[yaleks (yaleks)]

RHEL packages - http://people.redhat-club.org/inf/cuneiform/

[James Westby (james-w)]

Hi,

This is in Debian's NEW queue, and so it should be part of Ubuntu 9.04.

Thanks,

James

[oss_test_launchpad (oss-test-launchpad)]

Is this going to be part of Ubuntu 9.04?

Currently Ubuntu seems to feature not a single GUI OCR program (Kooka has been dropped).

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

Cuneiform does not have a GUI. There is a source drop for a win32 gui, but that is useless for Linux.

[DeeKey (privateinf)]

There is a GUI based on QT.
The page itself is only in russian. Suppose that the program also needs localization.
But still, why not to give it a try?

http://www.altlinux.org/Cuneiform-Qt

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

Cuneiform has been accepted to Debian unstable (the debbug is closed even though the remote bug watch on this page says otherwise). Will it make it into Karmic?

Note that CF is in the non-free section, even though it is fully BSD licensed. This is caused by the data files it uses. Since there is no "source" for them, they are not free enough for Debian. I don't know what requirements Ubuntu sets on freeness, this is something the packagers need to look into.

[DeeKey (privateinf)]

Now there is an English translation available:
http://en.altlinux.org/Cuneiform-Qt

[Svetoslav Stefanov (svetlisashkov)]

And there is maybe more functional GUI - http://symmetrica.net/cuneiform-linux/yagf-en.html

[RalfG (ralf-skolelinux)]

> And there is maybe more functional GUI - http://symmetrica.net/cuneiform-linux/yagf-en.html

I agree! This great GUI is based on Qt4 and could be combined with a possible successor for quiteinsane. It could also get a part of KDE4.

Also cf. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=571321
(RFP yagf-gui)

[Ltv (lutevald-gmail)]

Im using ubuntu Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron. and ned install Cuneiform but i have a problem of dependencies what i try but i cant resolve.
my synaptic say:

"cuneiform: Depende: libmagick++2 but it is not installable"

I ned ask if there is a repository for add or other solution , because a really need install a ocr solution.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

10:05:52 - flash:[/tmp] rmadison cuneiform
 cuneiform | 0.7.0+dfsg-5 | lucid/multiverse | source, amd64, i386
 cuneiform | 0.7.0+dfsg-5ubuntu0.1 | lucid-updates/multiverse | source, amd64, i386
 cuneiform | 0.7.0+dfsg.1-1 | maverick/multiverse | source, amd64, i386
 cuneiform | 0.7.0+dfsg.1-1 | natty/multiverse | source, amd64, i386
 cuneiform | 1.1.0+dfsg-1 | oneiric/multiverse | source, amd64, i386
 cuneiform | 1.1.0+dfsg-2 | precise/multiverse | source, amd64, i386