Frequently Asked Questions
A knowledge base for common issues and additional information.
General
How can I add additional languages to NormCap?
The prebuild packages are shipped with the following languages English,
Arabic, Chinese, German, Spanish and Russian. If you miss a language, click
the settings icon and "open data folder..." (in the "Languages" section), then
follow the instructions in the file
add_more_languages.txt.
If you installed NormCap as Python package, refer to the online
documentation on how to install additional language for Tesseract on your
system.
How can I improve the detection accuracy?
The most import thing is to specify the correct language(s) (via settings menu
or the --language
command line argument). Keep in mind:
selecting multiple languages at once slows down the recognition a bit.
Sometimes Tesseract struggles with recognizing text with just very
view characters, like a single word. In this case try selecting a
larger portion of text.
If the results are still bad, please submit a screenshot of the text
your are trying to recognize
as an issue.
Is my image/text analyzed in "the cloud"?
No. The text recognition is performed offline using the OCR framework
Tesseract.
Is any other data send to the internet?
No telemetry data is collected and by default also no other data is send anywhere.
However, some (optional) features require accessing resources on the web
and therefore expose minimal information (like IP address) to the
accessed server:
-
If you enable the check for updates on start, the application checks
NormCap's releases page on github.com.
-
If you download additional languages, they are fetched beeing from github.com, too.
Can I start NormCap via a keyboard shortcut?
Yes, but you'll have to configure it on your own using your operating system's
tools:
Ask your preferred search engine for support or different ways to do this.
[Windows] How can I start NormCap with a command line argument?
To run NormCap with an argument once, run it in the "Terminal":
C:\Users\<USER-NAME>\AppData\Local\Programs\NormCap\python\python.exe -m normcap --help
[MacOS] How can I start NormCap with a command line argument?
To run NormCap with an argument once, run it in the "Terminal":
$ /Applications/NormCap.app/Contents/MacOS/NormCap --help
To create a launcher with command line arguments, launch the "Script Editor" and make a new script
with the desired command line
arguments, e.g.:
do shell script "exec /Applications/NormCap.app/Contents/MacOS/NormCap --tray"s
Save the script as type "Application" in the folder "/Applications"
(When this new Application is started, an additional Icon will show up in the
Dock. If you know a way to avoid this, please open an
issue)
Troubleshooting
NormCap is not starting
Please try to start again with the -V
or
--very-verbose
option. This should reveal more information useful
for problem solving.
[Linux] Could not load the Qt platform plugin xcb
In case you get the following output...
$ normcap --very-verbose
12:06:34 - INFO - normcap.app - L:32 - Starting Normcap v0.2.0
12:06:34 - DEBUG - normcap.utils - L:199 - [QT] L:0, func: None, file: None
12:06:34 - DEBUG - normcap.utils - L:200 - [QT] QtInfoMsg - Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
12:06:34 - DEBUG - normcap.utils - L:199 - [QT] L:0, func: None, file: None
12:06:34 - DEBUG - normcap.utils - L:200 - [QT] QtFatalMsg - This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, wayland-egl, wayland, wayland-xcomposite-egl, wayland-xcomposite-glx, webgl, xcb.
... the chances are, some system requirements are outdated. You can check this
with apt list "libxcb-util*"
:
$ apt list "libxcb-util*"
Listing... Done
libxcb-util-dev/hirsute 0.4.0-1 amd64
libxcb-util-dev/hirsute 0.4.0-1 i386
libxcb-util0-dev/hirsute 0.4.0-1 amd64
libxcb-util0-dev/hirsute 0.4.0-1 i386
libxcb-util1/hirsute,now 0.4.0-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libxcb-util1/hirsute 0.4.0-1 i386
Is only libxcb-util0
shown but libxcb-util1
is
missing? Then you can try to create a symlink for the missing version:
sudo ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-util.so.0 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-util.so.1
[Linux] Normcap does not show up in system tray
Is your display environment Gnome Shell? Then you probably need to install a
Gnome Shell extension to support
showing applications in the top bar, e.g.:
[Linux] Normcap doesn't show a notification after capture
NormCap's notifcations depend on the system tray functionality. Try running
normcap with the --tray
flag, and if nothing is shown in the
system tray, proceed like in the question above.
Development
"No such file or directory" error when running briefcase build
To verify, if this is the issue you are facing, run te build docker
interactively and try to run the linuxdeploy-*.AppImage
file
there:
$ docker run -it \
--volume /home/<USER>/<PROJECT PATH>/normcap/linux:/app:z \
--volume /home/<USER>/.briefcase:/home/brutus/.briefcase:z \
--env VERSION=0.2.0 briefcase/eu.dynobo.normcap:py3.9 \
/bin/bash
$ /home/brutus/.briefcase/tools/linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage
If that results in a `No such file or directory` error, according to
this issue
and this one
a workaround is to correct the "magic" bytes of the AppImage. This worked for me:
sed '0,/AI\x02/{s|AI\x02|\x00\x00\x00|}' -i linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage