https://www.auto-multiple-choice.net/
The way it works is you use it to prepare worksheets that have the multiple choice questions, you have it print the worksheets out. Each sheet has a unique serial number. If you know the names of everyone taking the test/worksheet you can input those into the program before generating tests and then when the program prints the worksheets it knows which serial number goes to which name (student) You put all the scanned pdfs into a directory and then you tell the program where they are and it can produce a comma delimited output of 1 line per text, it is then simple to use this with an awk script to convert into an input file that can be put into a mysql/mariadb database. The software takes a bit of time to understand how it works but the ocr/scanning works very well once you have tuned it with very high accuracy. The program lets a human review the final matching to insure the detection was accurate and make any changes. But it's not an OCR thing where it recognizes letters of the alphabet. Ted -----Original Message----- From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Patrick O'Connor Sent: Tuesday, November 4, 2025 8:54 AM To: Portland Linux/Unix Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PLUG] document scanner What software do you use Ted? That sounds appealing. I have been messing with this. I would love have an OCR to database setup. I have some uaecasea at work. https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/ Patrick ---- On Tue, 04 Nov 2025 06:02:16 -0800 Ted Mittelstaedt <[email protected]> wrote --- > Followup on the "handwritten forms" > > If you are able to convert these forms into a multiple-choice form that > people fill in boxes by hand, instead of writing actual words on them, I can > > Tell you how to convert these into actual data output. At my office we > have this customer satisfaction survey thing that we do periodically, and > For a zillion unrelated reasons it has to be handed out on paper. The > department doing it was wringing their hands over this as it would take > Hours and hours and hours for some poor soul to go through all of the forms > and input the results into a spreadsheet. > > I looked into commercial products that do this - and there's only 1 company > out there that sells software nowadays for this - Tungsten Automation. > These turkeys have been spending the last decade buying up every company in > the "hybrid paper workflows" market and they now have a complete monopoly on > it - and literally they sell complete systems, they no longer sell > standalone software that does forms conversions. Pricing is quote-only and > it's in the low 5 figures. > > I found an open source software program for this and built a system around > it - so now, they just feed the 300 or so paper surveys into the hopper in a > scanner like what I just linked to, and all the resulting PDF's get fed into > the system and the data is then loaded into a MariaDB database. I then took > their Excel spreadsheet and converted it into a front end using the ODBC > drivers for MariaDB. Works slick saves hours of drudgery. > > Anyway, this is only good for multiple choice click box forms that people > fill out by hand. For OCR of cursive or handwritten printing - good effing > luck. > > Ted > > -----Original Message----- > From: PLUG <[email protected]> On Behalf Of VY > Sent: > Tuesday, November 4, 2025 4:47 AM > To: General Linux/UNIX discussion and > help, civil and on-topic <[email protected]> > Subject: [PLUG] > document scanner > > Dear All > > I am looking for a good document > scanner that is Linux compatible. Better yet if it is Raspberry Pi > compatible. > > I have a bunch of forms that have hand writing on them. I will be getting > them on a regular basis and I like to scan them and convert them to > high-resolution PDFs. > > Any pointer for such a scanner is much appreciated. > > -Vincent > >
