haighton / create_searchable_pdf

Create a searchable PDF with ALTO-XML and JP2 files.

This script automates the process of creating a searchable PDF file that conforms to de BKT2/BKT3 specifications for digitized historical material of the National Library of the Netherlands | KB. This can be used when a delivered PDF for a digitized object is corrupt or missing.

The script is based around hocr-pdf from hocr-tools, which can create a searchable PDF from a directory of JPEG and hOCR files.

To be able to use hocr-pdf the ALTO-XML files have to be converted into hOCR files. This is done by an XSL transformation using alto2hocr.xsl in Saxon-HE 9.7.0.21J. The JP2 scans, which is the format the KB uses for digitized historical material, have to be converted to JPEG. It also needs a Metadatadump XML file which contains information about the object which have to be put in the Document Information of the final PDF.