3rd-party » free/open source software » simple-scan

SS provides the ability to rearrange the order of scanned pages so that they will be numbered properly when saved. It also uses a reasonably sensible naming system for the output files, for formats that only save a single scan per file (i.e. everything except PDF, i.e. JPEG and PNG), in that it counts the number of output files and uses only as many digits as needed (up to 9 scans will be numbered with a single digit, 10-99 will be numbered with two; I haven't tested anything more than about 30 pages but presumably it goes on to 3 digits for 100-999 images, and what an afternoon of scanning that would be). That number is then automatically appended to the main part of the filename for each image when the batch is saved, e.g. my-filename-1.png, my-filename-2.png, etc. So far so good.

In some circumstances, however, this manual rearranging becomes extremely tedious -- such as when scanning a long set of double-sided pages from the sheet-feeder.

Just as an example, let's say you have 10 double-sided sheets to scan. The first sheet is p1 and p2, the second is p3 and p4, and so on. The sheet-feeder only sees one side at a time, so if you scan in the pile with the feeder then turn it over to scan the other side, you get the pages in this order: 1,3,5,7,9,10,8,6,4,2. This can take several minutes to sort out, given that the display will only show about 2-3 pages at once and that there are no keyboard shortcuts for moving pages. You have to right-click on p2 and select "move left", then do it again, then scroll to the left so you can see it again, then repeat... (I usually end up moving on to the next out-of-order page I can see in order to minimize scrolling, but this can get confusing quickly.)

I can think of two possible solutions for this; the second one would probably be better for my needs, but I can see the first one being more useful in some circumstances.

1. Create a "light table" mode where

• the image-view can be resized
• the page scrolls across-and-downward instead of just across (i.e. show images left-to-right but go down when the right edge is reached, providing a vertical scroll-bar, rather than going off-window and providing a horizontal scroll-bar)
• the user can click-and-drag to sort images

2. Add an editable text-box to each image display which shows the current sorting-order/filename-suffic for that page. These should not be restricted to numerics.

• The default value of the text should be derived the same way as the number appended to the filename when saving: 1-9 pages should be given single digits, 10-99 should be given 2 digits, etc. (If they did it right, the number of digits is just (log10(page_count)+1), rounded up to an int.)
• There will need to be some way of dealing with identical indexes; see duplicate index handling

[added]

Sophia suggested a third solution -- adding a de-interleave option specifically to handle the double-sided-multipage scenario. Since this would be easier than either of the other options, we'll probably do this first.