
Ask HN: Scanning of Old Handwritten Diaries - beatthatflight
OCR tends to work reasonably well on text, even block hand writing.<p>However, a relative has just scanned in an ancestor&#x27;s diary from the Boer War era in South Africa.  It&#x27;d be <i>fascinating</i> to read.<p>However, it&#x27;s in beautiful but (to me) barely legible cursive.<p>An example page: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;SJpyj94<p>Are there any tools out there that might actually have a chance with handwriting like this?<p>I tried a sample app I&#x27;ve worked on with OpenCV.  It recognised there was &quot;text&quot; but that was about it.<p>Google translate camera app gave me nothing.<p>Word Lens (Same base code) as well.<p>Is there one out there or a technique or suggestion anyone might have?
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brudgers
Just transcribe it. A few pages a day and it will done before too long. That's
what the Smithsonian does, so maybe it's even best practice.

[https://transcription.si.edu/](https://transcription.si.edu/)

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cerberusss
How many pages is the diary? I wonder if it isn't much simpler to brute-force
it via Amazon Mechanical Turk and similar platforms.

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rubidium
If you find anything post it here. Would also help with a bunch of deed
records from 100 years ago.

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pratikshadake
Going forward, you may wanna user reMarkable.

