scan-pdf-to-notes

Scan PDF to Notes

Overview

A scanned book PDF (Producer is ABBYY FineReader or another OCR engine) is page images + an OCR text layer. The OCR layer's accuracy is the quality ceiling — no text extractor beats it for body text, and tables/figures/precise values (hashes, numbers, formulas) are the first things OCR mangles.

Core principle: one job yields two artifacts and keeps both:

• Raw extraction (추출 원문) — 1:1 with the book, OCR noise included. The verifiable source. Never delete it.
• Study notes (정리) — a re-narrated, condensed rewrite of the raw extraction. The thing you read and study.

Full flow = Part A extract → quality check → Part B notes. Doing only one half leaves the job half done.

When to Use / NOT

Use: extracting a page range (chapter) of a scanned/OCR PDF book into text, markdown, or notes. When tables/code collapse into a single mangled line. When pdftotext/get_text alone loses structure and tables.

NOT for: native (text-based) PDFs — pymupdf4llm/pdftotext alone suffice (but confirm this in step 1 first). If only raw OCR text is needed and no notes, stop after Part A.

Full Flow

digraph flow {
  rankdir=LR; node [shape=box];
  "1 detect PDF type" -> "2 verify page mapping" -> "3 split range" -> "4 Tier1 extract";
  "4 Tier1 extract" -> "5 tables?";
  "5 tables?" [shape=diamond];
  "5 tables?" -> "6 Tier2 marker" [label="yes"];
  "5 tables?" -> "7 quality check" [label="no"];
  "6 Tier2 marker" -> "7 quality check" -> "8 write notes" -> "9 OCR fix + verify";
}

Part A — Extraction

1. Detect PDF type

pdfinfo file.pdf | grep -iE 'producer|pages'. If Producer is ABBYY or a scanner name, it is scanned+OCR → OCR is the quality ceiling. Pull one page with pdftotext -f N -l N file.pdf - to confirm a text layer exists.

2. Verify page mapping

Printed page ≠ PDF index (front-matter offset, blank divider pages between chapters). Sample-extract the chapter boundary pages to confirm start/end and any blank pages. Skipping this extracts the wrong pages (e.g. an empty p200 is the 6↔7 chapter divider). Also: pymupdf indices are 0-based, while printed pages and convert-range.sh args are 1-based — don't confuse the conversion. If the mapping is unclear, find the chapter-title page first via a get_text() keyword search.

3. Split the range

convert-range.sh <SRC.pdf> <START> <END> — pymupdf insert_pdf (the script handles the 0-indexed conversion) cuts out only the target pages. Name it <book>_p<a>-<b>.

4. Tier 1 (always)

convert-range.sh produces these in one pass:

• pymupdf4llm.to_markdown(..., table_strategy="lines_strict") → markdown with headers and structure. Never use fitz.get_text("text") alone (it loses structure and tables).
• pdftotext -layout → spatially-aligned text (cross-check for tables, columns, log output).

5–6. Tier 2 — recover tables/code blocks (conditionally required)

If there are real grid tables, or code/logs where alignment matters, run marker-chunked.sh <SPLIT.pdf>. marker re-OCRs + analyzes layout to restore tables as real markdown tables (|). On Apple Silicon, the MPS bug forces 8-page chunking (the script splits and recombines automatically).

• INFO output, key:value dumps, and diagrams "look like tables" but are not grids → marker is unnecessary; pdftotext -layout is enough.
• Cost: model is several GB and runs for minutes. The value often concentrates in 1–2 tables, so judge by ROI.

7. Quality check

quality-check.sh <files...> compares broken-char (�), header, and table-row counts per tool to pick a per-region canonical source. Body prose is usually pymupdf4llm; table/precise-value regions are pdftotext-layout or marker. Never trust a single tool blindly.

Part B — Study Notes (정리)

The raw extraction is a "transcript" with OCR noise. The notes are the "study notebook" you write from it.

8. Writing the notes

• Re-narrate and condense — rewrite in your own words; do not copy book sentences verbatim (not a transcription).
• Reorganize into numbered thematic sections.
• If a series exists, match its style, density, and file naming — e.g. if <book>_6장_정리.md exists, write <book>_7장_정리.md at the same tone and section depth. (Series consistency is the core value of the notes.)
• Prose comparisons → markdown tables.
• Reconstruct OCR-broken code/RESP/logs to spec — don't paste broken tokens; fix them to the protocol format (*N/$N).
• "Easy-to-confuse points" recap section at the chapter's end. The recap is conceptual, never autobiographical — even if the series example is first-person ("I found this confusing"), keep the section but state the conceptual difficulty objectively (the no-fabrication rule wins).
• Header note at the top: state that it is a re-narrated summary + the source page range.

9. OCR fix + verification (while moving raw → notes)

• Korean body text: context-based correction is fine. Common patterns:

| Pattern | OCR → fix | |---------|-----------| | mangled English abbreviation/parens | AOFAppend 0nly → AOF(Append Only File), RDBRedisDataBase → RDB(Redis DataBase) | | digit↔letter confusion | keyl→key1, co니nter→counter, slave©→slave0 (l↔1, O↔0) | | broken abbreviation glyphs | QOM→OOM, [inf이→[info], 사wck→check | | broken Korean | 人수용→사용, 기준0.루→기준으로 | | superscript/footnote noise | <sup>…</sup>, 프로토콜*3P, footnote digits — remove |

• Precise values (hashes, offsets, ports, formulas, versions, identifiers): no context guessing. Render the page to an image and verify by eye: pymupdf.open(p)[idx].get_pixmap(matrix=pymupdf.Matrix(2.4,2.4)).save("v.png") → read → delete the temp PNG. Use scale 2.2–2.6; raise it for small fonts/logs/tables (2.2 can be blurry).
• Figures don't extract as text. Fold their content into prose via caption + body description, or render to image if truly needed.

No fabrication (strict)

• Do not invent personal study context — study week numbers, PR numbers, first-person reflections ("I was confused at first") are unknown to you, so leave them blank for the user. Even if the series example contains them, do not imitate and invent.
• Environment-dependent values (absolute maxmemory figures, etc.) → annotate as "reference values".
• Do not fill gaps with inference not present in the raw extraction.

Tool Selection

| Tool | Output | Strength | Limit | |---|---|---|---| | pymupdf4llm | .md | header/structure markdown, fast | inherits OCR errors, misses scanned tables | | pdftotext -layout | .txt | preserves spatial layout/logs, fast | no markdown structure, inherits OCR | | marker_single | .md | re-OCR, restores tables/code | slow, multi-GB model, 8p chunks on MPS | | get_pixmap() | .png | eye-verify precise values/figures | not text, manual check only | | ❌ fitz.get_text("text") | .txt | — | loses all structure/tables — do not use |

Common Mistakes

| Mistake | Fix | |---|---| | extracting plain text with get_text("text") | use pymupdf4llm to preserve structure | | dropping tables when they break | recover real tables with marker Tier 2 | | wasting marker on non-table INFO output | marker only for grid tables; pdftotext-layout for the rest | | trusting one tool's output | compare with quality-check.sh, pick per-region canonical | | context-guessing OCR precise values | eye-verify hashes/formulas/ports via image render | | deleting the raw extraction (intermediate) | it is the verification source → keep, separate from notes | | pasting broken code/RESP verbatim | reconstruct to protocol format | | free-styling style/naming in a series | match the existing notes' tone, density, filename | | fabricating personal study context | leave blank for the user | | starting without checking it's scanned | run pdfinfo Producer first |

Reference (scripts)

• convert-range.sh <SRC.pdf> <START> <END> [STEM] — split + Tier 1
• marker-chunked.sh <SPLIT.pdf> [CHUNK=8] — Tier 2, auto chunk + merge
• quality-check.sh <files...> — compare broken-char/structure metrics