List for scanned pages and file names when saving
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#121 List for scanned pages and file names when saving
I have a feature request for the following use case:
Working in a school with 120+ students and correcting their essays/tests at home. After correcting them, I scan them all as proof of what they did (believe it or not, some do try to change stuff and complain I didn't give them enough points). I scan them all in one batch, since scanning each student's and saving it with his name would take days. Even scanning them all and saving them individually takes very long.
That's unless it would be made quick and easy by adding the possibility to open a pop-up window with a table with two columns: in the left column I would type the scanned pages numbers in a "printer" way (like 1-5,7,12) and in the right one the name of the file ("joe_blow"). The extension and some of the metadata could be added automatically (author (I enter my name once and it uses it until I change it again), title (same as the file name), date-time (like it does it now)).
I believe something like this could save me an hour time for each batch. But then again I'm probably the only one who needs it.
Regards and thanks for the great job, by the way.
My normal workflow is to scan everything in one batch, and then to save each document separately.
Are the pages of each paper consecutive (before you save) in the result?
I assume each paper has to be a separate file because you return them digitally?
Would adding bookmarks to the file help? Perhaps with some postprocessing method to split the PDF up according to the bookmarks?
That's what I currently do to, but it takes a lot of time.
The pages are consecutive in the result, but they are not always the same number of pages (one student could need two extra sheets and another one 3). Therefore I can't quickly split the file, say, every so many pages.
I now return them digitally, but this is actually becoming less of an issue with the schools opening up again. Who knows how long they will keep open, though!?
Adding bookmarks to the file would help with the splitting, but I would have to come up with some method of naming the single files automatically in a way that I can relate them to the student. I could sort them alphabetically before scanning the whole thing and then automatically number them.
My idea of the table is also not so fast and automated, but it's the easiest I could come up with. Anyway, it was just an idea.
The bookmark idea I like because both PDF and DjVu can use bookmarks and so it could be implemented equally well in both formats. I'm sure that we could come up with a "Save multiple PDFs/DjVus" options that used metadata (maybe %Db) from the previous bookmark to define each filename. Thus in your case with bookmarks that had the students' names, the filenames could then be "%Db %Ds %DY-%Dm-%Dd.%De", which could expand to "Smith, John English 2021-01-01.pdf"
The question in my mind is how to implement the bookmarks. I'm leaning towards something like evince, where a drop-down menu above the thumbnails of the pages on the left hand side allow you to switch between thumbnails, bookmarks, annotations, etc.
Would this work for you?
This would work great. I would still have to understand better what you mean by "...switch between thumbnails, bookmarks, ...", because in Evince and the like I have always only used thumbnails, so I'm not familiar with bookmarks, but I think it shouldn't be difficult to figure that out once it's there.