In the last release of SeriesFinale some nice new features were introduced like live search of TV shows but there was a problem: I messed it up. Basically, you could live search but once you pressed on a show, a different would be selected… good job, I know…

Anyway, the live search is fixed in this new version.

It also has some new cool changes by Juan:
* Covers are now kept back when the application is upgraded
* The database is now saved automatically every 5 minutes
* To prevent database corruption, the database is saved in a temporary file and if everything when well it is then moved to the right file name
* It now checks if other instances of SF are running and hangs newer instances until the old ones are finished
* Buttons whose actions depend on the connection are now only visible when the device is online

Since last version, it is possible to navigate to the next and previous episodes when viewing an episode details but one thing that was a real pain was to have to go back to the full list of episodes in order to mark them as watched so I’ve added a menu that lets users check the episode as watched.

The episodes’ titles are now also stroked when they are watched:

If you use the extras-testing repository, be sure to give it a try and vote to promote it.

I have added OCRFeeder to the list of GNOME ideas for this year’s Google Summer of Code.

I wrote some of the ideas that came to my mind at that moment but suggestions are welcome:
* Support for undo/redo
* Support for a defined language for documents that also configures the used OCR engine
* Implement reading order support
* Improve the generation of ODT files (currently the text is put as text boxes in the generated docs, maybe an option to set it as actual paragraphs would be better)
* Create a plugins system to process the results
* Improve the contents detection algorithm
* Create an assistant-like user mode (like 3 steps to scan and generate a document)

I don’t know if the apps for GNOME’s GSoC should be official modules, something that OCRFeeder is not yet but I think it is an interesting project for GSoC nonetheless.
As for mentoring it, I’m taking some weeks off in June and August but maybe I could still do it.

Let’s see how it turns out…

After more than two months since the last OCRFeeder release (I’ve been busy with other projects in Igalia), I have just released the version 0.7.4.

The highlights for this new version are:

Add plain text exportation

Sometimes users just want to get the plain text from a scanned document and this is especially useful for visually impaired users that will be able to read the text files with Orca afterwards.
This feature was developed by Andrew McGrath, a student from New Hampshire, who is contributing to OCRFeeder as part of his involvement in the Software for Humanity project. It would be great to have more colleges involved in this kind of initiatives.

Recognize the current page or the whole document

Now it is possible to automatically recognize the current page (as it did before) or the complete document. I’ve also added a confirmation dialog before the recognition is performed when there are changes in the project.

Thanks also to Joanmarie for all the great suggestions like this one and to Juanje Ojeda for the patches he sent me.

These were just the two main features I’ve picked from the list of changes, to view them all check the NEWS file.

Stay tuned for more improvements in the future.

Source tarball
Git
Bugzilla

Since last night, SeriesFinale version 0.6.6 should be available for those who have the extras-devel catalog.

This version’s highlights are:

* Live search of shows. Finally it includes a way to quickly filter shows, this is especially useful for those who have a large number of shows in the list.

* Quick access to the next/previous episodes. This was another request from a user, when viewing an episode, add a way to quickly go to the previous or next episode. I have added this by panning/dragging horizontally in the episode view, dragging left or right will bring the next or the previous episode, respectively.

* Switched episodes’ “watched” check-boxes to the right. After adding the portrait mode, it was clear that having the episodes’ check-boxes on the right made more sense for right-handed people. This is now the default position, nevertheless, a new option was included in the settings dialog so users can choose to either have on the right or left.

* Last but not least, Juan has made SF more reliable and fast by saving the database and settings only if they have been changed.

We will keep the list of bugs and feature requests in mind for the SF development (for both Maemo and GNOME) so, you are welcome to submit more.

If you use the extras-testing catalog, be sure to try this new version of SF and vote for it when it appears here.

Dmitry Nikitin, a Russian OCRFeeder user have sent me RPM packages (for Mandriva 2010) for OCRFeeder together with the spec file and everything.

I haven’t tried those yet but since I have also received email asking for RPM packages, I have uploaded those to Igalia‘s server so you can download them here.
I will soon create a branch with the RPM package generation so it’s easy for anyone to build them.

Big thanks to Dmitry Nikitin.

Update: I had the idea Dmitry was Russian judging from his offering to translate OCRFeeder to Russian (apart from Ukrainian) and his email being from a .ru domain. Dmitry has clarified he is, in fact, Ukrainian and so I’m sorry for the confusion and would like to rectify it with this update.