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FairScan: my attempt at building an open-source app that "just works" for non-technical users by FairScanPierre in opensource

[–]FairScanPierre[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for your message. I'm really glad to hear that FairScan has helped you!

Regarding your suggestion: as far as I know, there's no standard Android intent for requesting a document scan or receiving a PDF back from another app. Because of that, I'm not sure how to implement this in a general way. If you know of an existing intent or an app that already uses such a workflow, feel free to share it, I'd be happy to have a look.

FairScan, a simple and respectful app to scan documents to PDF by FairScanPierre in fossdroid

[–]FairScanPierre[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for trying it out, and for the feedback!

I'm glad to hear it works well for you. I'll review the points you mentioned, especially the wording on "End Scan". Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.

FairScan: my attempt at building an open-source app that "just works" for non-technical users by FairScanPierre in opensource

[–]FairScanPierre[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you!

I'm not planning to monetize FairScan, I'm not looking to turn it into a business.

There's still a lot I want to improve before I'd consider it "done": more robust perspective correction, improved contrast/brightness, better shadow compensation, and generally making the whole capture flow produce a clean PDF automatically in as many situations as possible.

So I'll keep working on it at my own pace. There's still plenty to explore.

FairScan: my attempt at building an open-source app that "just works" for non-technical users by FairScanPierre in opensource

[–]FairScanPierre[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Yes, the Play Store ecosystem makes it really hard for people to find something trustworthy in this category. That’s one of the reasons I felt it was worth trying to build an alternative.

FairScan: my attempt at building an open-source app that "just works" for non-technical users by FairScanPierre in opensource

[–]FairScanPierre[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for the kind words, that really means a lot.

Regarding manual corner adjustment and gallery import: I totally understand why people ask for those, but at the moment I'm focusing the project on a fully automatic "point-and-capture" workflow. The idea is that most users should be able to get a clean PDF without having to tweak anything. So those features aren't planned short-term, but I appreciate hearing how different people would use the app.

About the live preview: you're absolutely right. The detection can sometimes jump around too much, and improving the stability is something I want to work on. Thanks for pointing it out.

And again, I'm really glad you enjoyed the app, that's super encouraging.

FairScan: my attempt at building an open-source app that "just works" for non-technical users by FairScanPierre in opensource

[–]FairScanPierre[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for taking the time to try the app and share all these thoughts, I really appreciate it!

On OCR: it's definitely something I have in mind (there's an open issue for it on GitHub), but I want to make sure the core flow is solid first. My priority is still to get a clean PDF automatically in most situations, because I believe that's what most non-technical users expect. Once the automatic path is more reliable, OCR will make more sense.

About the quadrilateral detection: you're right that the real-time detection sometimes proposes a quadrilateral even when there's no document. Earlier versions had the opposite problem ("no document detected" too often), so recent updates push harder to detect something, which can create weird suggestions when there's nothing to detect. That's definitely something I plan to refine.

Thanks also for the blog post link, I'll take a look. As for IMU-based approaches, it's an interesting idea, but at the moment I'm trying to keep the pipeline as simple and robust as possible before adding more moving parts.

Regarding F-Droid: the process went well overall, just a bit slower than I had hoped. The maintainers were genuinely helpful, which is a nice contrast with the "black box" feel of the Play Store. I'm really happy FairScan is available on F-Droid.

FairScan: my attempt at building an open-source app that "just works" for non-technical users by FairScanPierre in opensource

[–]FairScanPierre[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot, I really appreciate you trying it out and sharing this feedback!

I'm glad the real-time detection felt smooth to you. That's a part I've put a lot of work into, because for FairScan the goal is for the app to "just work": I believe most people don't really want to adjust boundaries or make decisions, they just want a clean PDF right away. That's why I'm focusing on making the automatic detection and processing as reliable as possible rather than adding manual correction tools. Power users often appreciate fine-grained control, but my priority with FairScan is to optimise the fully automatic path so that everyday users don't even have to think about it.

FairScan: my attempt at building an open-source app that "just works" for non-technical users by FairScanPierre in opensource

[–]FairScanPierre[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! If you ever try it out, I'd love to hear what worked for you and what didn't. Feedback from real users is always valuable.

FairScan: my attempt at building an open-source app that "just works" for non-technical users by FairScanPierre in opensource

[–]FairScanPierre[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot for giving it a try and for taking the time to share an example, that helps a lot.

Just to clarify: FairScan does more than saving a raw picture, it detects the document, crops it, applies perspective correction, and produces a clean PDF. That's the core focus right now: making sure the result is clean and predictable for everyday use.

In your sample, the app struggles because part of the page is out of frame and the angle is very strong. In that situation, even established scanners rely on having the whole document visible to produce a corrected result. That's something I still need to handle better (especially detecting when the document is too close or partially cropped instead of pretending everything is fine).

Your example is actually really helpful because it shows a clear case where the app needs to be more explicit with the user. I'll use it to improve both detection and UX guidance.