Roadmap / wish list: consolidated feature requests and current positions

[jbarlow83]

This issue gathers long-standing feature requests that aren't currently on an active development path, so they live in one place and can drive a discussion about the roadmap.

Please read this first: where I've quoted a position below (often "won't do because…"), that's my current position and reasoning — not a permanent no. Several of these are clustered requests where many people have asked for the same thing, which is exactly the kind of signal that can change priorities. Comments, use cases, and especially pull requests are welcome. If you came here from your own closed/redirected issue, this is the place to make the case.

A recurring principle that shapes a lot of these decisions: OCRmyPDF is biased toward large, unattended, archival batch jobs. A feature that's "right 98–99% of the time" is often unacceptable at that volume, because a 1–2% per-page error rate silently corrupts documents nobody reviews. That bar is why several otherwise-reasonable features below are held back.

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1. Page-count-changing features (blank-page removal, splitting, cropping)

A strong, multi-requester cluster — and one I'm currently not pursuing, because anything that adds/removes/reorders pages is high-risk for unattended batches (a misfire deletes real content).

• Option to remove blank pages #12 — Remove blank pages (many +1s; several proposed heuristics: inkcov, leptonica pixel ratio, --remove-empty-pages)
• Remove blank page without recognizable characters of the ocr  #1032 — Remove pages with no recognizable OCR characters (text-heuristic variant of Option to remove blank pages #12)
• Feature request: crop empty margins #96 — Crop empty margins / fit to page — "Every now and then I come back to this ticket… It's not so difficult to do on its own, but… I don't have a good idea how to integrate it with the rest of the functionality."
• Extract single pages from a double-page layout and more #330 — Split a double-page (2-up) layout into single pages — "ocrmypdf is biased towards [the archival] use case… I can't justify the effort." Workaround: mutool poster.
• Splitting documents based on “SEPARATOR-PAGES”  #510 — Split documents on separator/barcode pages — "this strikes me as a custom requirement specific to your workflow rather than a feature of general interest."

2. Text layer handling without full-page rasterization ⭐ biggest under-served cluster

Multiple independent requesters circle the same gap: cleanly remove/replace a pre-existing text layer without rasterizing the whole page (--force-ocr bloats file size; --redo-ocr can mix old and new text). This is probably the single most-requested capability that doesn't yet have a clean answer.

• [Feature]: Option to remove OCR #1435 — Option to remove an OCR text layer (reported --redo-ocr --tesseract-timeout 0 workaround does not work)
• [Feature]: Removal of bad text layer while preserving vector graphics as-is #1608 — Remove a bad text layer while preserving vector graphics as-is
• Improving performance for OCRing files with headers/footers #1600 — Performance for files with digital headers/footers (proposes strip-text → OCR → reattach original text)
• it is not possible to get a text-only pdf searchable? #537 — Text-only / reconstructed searchable PDF — currently declined as framed: Tesseract can't reconstruct fonts, and keeping the image lets a human catch OCR errors. (See --sidecar.)

3. Text-only / no-PDF output

• Only generate text files without generating PDF files #1086 — Generate text only, no PDF — partially solved by --output-type none, but it's undiscoverable and there's no clean way to get the text string from the Python API. Good docs + API win.
• Add command to skip all processing related to OCR #650 — Skip all OCR processing efficiently — --tesseract-timeout 0 is "a bit of a hack — we still do everything as if OCR were happening." A true no-OCR fast path needs real work.
• Rotating pages - provide a way to rotate pages without OCR, tesseract-timeout=0 #778 — Rotate pages without OCR (overlaps Add command to skip all processing related to OCR #650)

4. Deskew / rotation / orientation / edge cleanup

• Page orientation based on text content #283 — Detect page orientation from OCR text (vs Tesseract OSD) — receptive: "It seems like a decent idea… this effort should replace the existing --rotate-pages provided we can prove it's an improvement in most cases." A prototype with strong results existed; needs a PR over the finish line.
• [Feature]: OCR on pages with multiple text rotations #1110 — OCR pages with multiple text rotations (e.g. a rotated table inset) — "a limitation of Tesseract's PDF renderer rather than the engine, which makes it tractable."
• after deskew remove grey frame or cut like a A4? #520 — Remove grey/black frame after deskew — declined on reliability grounds; better done by scanner software that knows where the page is.
• --threshold-final #550 — --threshold-final (binarize output) — declined on reliability: "most threshold functions are not reliable enough to trust without manual inspection." (Otsu/Sauvola discussion.) Related demand: better faded/grey-text recognition.
• Add custom deskew and page rotation logic before OCR #1161 — Custom deskew/rotation logic via plugin — blocked by an architecture gap: "the plugin system doesn't actually support replacement of some steps in the pipeline that ought to be pluggable."

5. Image optimization & output control

Generally open to these, but gated on Debian/Fedora packaging availability and license compatibility.

• Losslessly optimize JPEGs and PNGs #603 — Losslessly optimize JPEG/PNG (mozjpeg, jpegoptim, optipng/oxipng) — "would accept a pull request, won't do myself"; waiting on mature distro packages.
• Reducing PDF size by splitting the image and compressing each area differently #912 — Multi-resolution / by-area (MRC) compression — complex; possible license-incompatibility with existing open-source implementations.
• [Feature]: Aggressive image optimization without color quantization #1447 — Aggressive optimization without color quantization (workaround: --png-quality 100, remove pngquant)
• [Feature]: Force image output options #1651 — Force image output options (force DPI/grayscale/JBIG2/JPEG2000, future JPEG-XL)
• Documentation include advice of approach to mass scan similar documents via OCRmyPDF #548 — Guidance/docs for mass-scanning workflows (mostly documentation)

6. OCR backends & Unicode / text extraction

• [Feature]: Integrations with other backends via hOcr (naive implementation of easyOcr backend inside) #1250 — Pluggable OCR backends via hOCR (open — architecture thread): direction is "hOCR will become the one common backend for any OCR engine" via a simple internal hOCR→PDF format. Known blocker: RTL languages with glyphless fonts.
• [Feature]: and support PaddlePaddle OCR in the backend #1584 — PaddleOCR backend (open — actively being worked on): planned mainline support, initially as an optional extra.
• [Feature]: Choose between NFKC and NFC normalization for Unicode characters so copy-pasting works #1282 — NFKC vs NFC Unicode normalization — leaning toward an ActualText-markup solution over a normalization flag, but most viewers ignore ActualText; unresolved. A contributor has offered a PR.
• [Feature]: Handle text that is separate from the main text better. #1518 — Better handling of separated/columnar text for copy-paste order (largely a Tesseract segmentation limitation)
• [Feature]: enable use of Ghostscript glyph-level Unicode map generation #1188 — Ghostscript glyph-level Unicode map generation
• Add "ROI detection" pre-processing option to improve OCR results? #892 — ROI / text-block detection preprocessing — steer to a plugin at the image-processing stage.

Note on cloud / ML OCR engines: requests to add Azure / Google / VLM / etc. engines to core (#595, #1186, #1434, #1617, #1628, …) are closed as won't-implement-in-core. The supported path is a plugin — see ocrmypdf-easyocr as a template, with #1250 for the architecture and #1584 for the in-progress PaddleOCR plugin.

7. Metadata, structure & PDF features

• Support page labels/PDFs that use custom page numbering #331 — Page labels / custom page numbering — should be "fairly easy" once qpdf's page-label support is wired in.
• OCR PDF Attachments? #259 — OCR / embed PDF attachments (PDF/A-3) — will not implement; use qpdf input.pdf --add-attachment=file_to_embed.txt -- output.pdf
• set pdf viewer actions #464 — Viewer preferences / open actions (/FitWindow, /DisplayDocTitle, …) — "not a difficult feature to add"; but no interest in user-hostile ones (hiding toolbars).
• [Feature]: Autogenerate and embed document outlines #1673 — Autogenerate & embed document outlines (needs reliable heading detection)
• Support for PDF-A/4 #1106 — PDF/A-4 support — blocked upstream: waiting on Ghostscript.
• Auto-assign ASN using a barcode label #959 — Auto-assign ASN via barcode — tends toward a Turing-complete spec; best as a plugin.

8. unpaper / preprocessing interface

• --unpaper-args and --clean-final #392 — --unpaper-args / --clean-final — "a really messy corner of the interface… open to suggestions." Tension between exposing power via plugins vs. keeping simple CLI args.
• mzucker's Noteshrink integration #436 — Noteshrink integration — achievable today via the filter_page_image plugin hook.

9. Diacritics-warning UX

• [Feature]: hide warning for "lots of diacritics" when scanning languages like 'spa' or 'fra' #1556 — Hide the "lots of diacritics" warning
• [Feature]: more detailed information for: lots of diacritics - possibly poor OCR #1566 — Show the raw Tesseract message instead of the generic warning (a small UX pass would address both)

10. Progress / demo / misc

• Show progress during postprocessing #1313 — Progress during postprocessing (the Ghostscript PDF/A + copy-out stages lack progress feedback)
• [Feature]: Change demo format to VHS #1299 — Convert the demo to VHS format

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Quick index by disposition

• Tractable / promising / low-effort: Support page labels/PDFs that use custom page numbering #331, set pdf viewer actions #464, Only generate text files without generating PDF files #1086, Page orientation based on text content #283, [Feature]: Change demo format to VHS #1299
• "Would accept a PR, won't do myself": Losslessly optimize JPEGs and PNGs #603, Page orientation based on text content #283, [Feature]: more detailed information for: lots of diacritics - possibly poor OCR #1566
• Declined as framed (reliability / scope): OCR PDF Attachments? #259, Splitting documents based on “SEPARATOR-PAGES”  #510, after deskew remove grey frame or cut like a A4? #520, --threshold-final #550, it is not possible to get a text-only pdf searchable? #537, toolbar-hiding in set pdf viewer actions #464
• Steer to plugins (but plugin system needs work — Add custom deskew and page rotation logic before OCR #1161): mzucker's Noteshrink integration #436, Add "ROI detection" pre-processing option to improve OCR results? #892, Auto-assign ASN using a barcode label #959, --unpaper-args and --clean-final #392, [Feature]: Integrations with other backends via hOcr (naive implementation of easyOcr backend inside) #1250, [Feature]: OCR on pages with multiple text rotations #1110
• Blocked upstream: Support for PDF-A/4 #1106 (Ghostscript), parts of Reducing PDF size by splitting the image and compressing each area differently #912 (license)
• Strongest demand patterns: text-layer-without-rasterizing ([Feature]: Option to remove OCR #1435/[Feature]: Removal of bad text layer while preserving vector graphics as-is #1608/Improving performance for OCRing files with headers/footers #1600/it is not possible to get a text-only pdf searchable? #537), blank-page removal (Option to remove blank pages #12/Remove blank page without recognizable characters of the ocr  #1032), text-only output (Only generate text files without generating PDF files #1086/Add command to skip all processing related to OCR #650), double-page splitting (Extract single pages from a double-page layout and more #330/Splitting documents based on “SEPARATOR-PAGES”  #510), diacritics-warning UX ([Feature]: hide warning for "lots of diacritics" when scanning languages like 'spa' or 'fra' #1556/[Feature]: more detailed information for: lots of diacritics - possibly poor OCR #1566)

If your request is here and the reasoning no longer holds — or you'd like to contribute one — please comment.

[sukritgoyal]

Hey @jbarlow83 ! Can you different issues for the features separately? Specially those which are on priority and can be implemented. I hope it wont take much of your time!