Add README

README.org

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+#+TITLE:Readme
+
+This python package contains modules to help with finding and extracting tabular
+data from a PDF or image into a CSV format.
+
+Given an image that contains a table...
+
+#+ATTR_HTML: :width 25%
+[[file:resources/examples/example-page.png]]
+
+Extract the the text into a CSV format...
+
+#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
+PRIZE,ODDS 1 IN:,# OF WINNERS*
+$3,9.09,"282,447"
+$5,16.66,"154,097"
+$7,40.01,"64,169"
+$10,26.67,"96,283"
+$20,100.00,"25,677"
+$30,290.83,"8,829"
+$50,239.66,"10,714"
+$100,919.66,"2,792"
+$500,"6,652.07",386
+"$40,000","855,899.99",3
+1,i223,
+Toa,,
+,,
+,,"* Based upon 2,567,700"
+#+END_EXAMPLE
+
+The package is split into modules with narrow focuses.
+
+- ~pdf_to_images~ uses Poppler and ImageMagick to extract images from a PDF.
+- ~extract_tables~ finds and extracts table-looking things from an image.
+- ~extract_cells~ extracts and orders cells from a table.
+- ~ocr_image~ uses Tesseract to turn a OCR the text from an image of a cell.
+- ~ocr_to_csv~ converts into a CSV the directory structure that ~ocr_image~ outputs.
+
+The outputs of a previous model can be used by a subsequent model so that they
+can be chained together to create the entire workflow, as demonstrated by the
+following shell script.
+
+#+NAME: ocr_tables
+#+BEGIN_SRC shell :results none :tangle ocr_tables :tangle-mode (identity #o755)
+#!/bin/sh
+
+PDF=$1
+
+python -m table_ocr.pdf_to_images $PDF | grep .png > /tmp/pdf-images.txt
+cat /tmp/pdf-images.txt | xargs -I{} python -m table_ocr.extract_tables {}  | grep table > /tmp/extracted-tables.txt
+cat /tmp/extracted-tables.txt | xargs -I{} python -m table_ocr.extract_cells {} | grep cells > /tmp/extracted-cells.txt
+cat /tmp/extracted-cells.txt | xargs -I{} python -m table_ocr.ocr_image {} --psm 7 -l table-ocr
+
+for image in $(cat /tmp/extracted-tables.txt); do
+    dir=$(dirname $image)
+    python -m table_ocr.ocr_to_csv $(find $dir/cells -name "*.txt")
+done
+#+END_SRC
+
+The package was written in a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming][literate programming]] style. The source code at
+[[file:pdf_table_extraction_and_ocr.org]] is
+meant to act as the documentation and reference material.