Frequently Asked Questions
A knowledge base for common issues and additional information.
General
How can I add additional languages to NormCap?
The prebuild packages are shipped with support for English
only. To install additional languages, click the settings icon and in the
"Languages" section of the menu "add/remove...".
If you installed NormCap as Python package, refer to the
online documentation on how to install additional language for Tesseract on
your system.
How can I improve the detection accuracy?
The most import thing is to specify the correct language(s) (via settings
menu or the --language
command line argument). Keep in mind:
selecting multiple languages at once slows down the recognition a bit.
Sometimes Tesseract struggles with recognizing text with just very few
characters, like a single word. In this case try selecting a larger portion
of text.
The prebuild NormCap packages are shipped with the
tessdata-fast
models, which offer a very good accuracy to speed compromise. But you can
also try to add the models from
tessdata
or
tessdata-best
instead as described above.
If the results are still bad, please submit a screenshot of the text you are
trying to recognize
as an issue.
Is my image/text analyzed in The Cloud™?
No. The text recognition is performed offline using the OCR framework
Tesseract.
Is any other data send to the internet?
No telemetry data is collected and by default also no other data is sent
anywhere.
However, some (optional) features require accessing resources on the web and
therefore expose minimal information (like IP address) to the accessed
server:
-
If you enable the check for updates on start, the application checks
NormCap's releases page on GitHub.
-
If you download additional languages, they are being fetched from GitHub,
too.
Can I start NormCap via a keyboard shortcut?
Yes, but you'll have to configure it on your own using your operating
system's tools:
Ask your preferred search engine for support or different ways to do this.
Why is the Windows-Installer's file size so large?
NormCap's MSI installer is much larger than the ones for Linux and macOS
because the included
Tesseract binaries are
larger.
NormCap used to include a set of smaller binaries, which resulted in more
consistent installer file sizes for all operating systems. Unfortunately,
they seemed to lack some dependencies and lead to issues on some Windows
systems. Hopefully, the larger binaries will fix this issue. This decision
is not set in stone, so please
feel free to leave some feedback
regarding this topic!
Are there alternatives to NormCap?
Some applications offer similar features like NormCap and might be a good or
even better alternative for you: It completely depends on your use case and
requirements. Some similar open-source Projects are:
Troubleshooting
How to get debug information?
You can start NormCap from the command line with the verbosity option to get
an idea about what it is doing. The command to run depends on the OS and
install method.
-
With Python package:
Run: normcap -v debug
-
On Windows (MSI):
Run:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\dynobo\NormCap\NormCap.exe -- -v debug
-
On macOS (DMG):
Run:
/Applications/NormCap.app/Contents/MacOS/NormCap -v debug
-
On Linux (AppImage):
Run: ./NormCap-{version}-x86_64.AppImage -v debug
-
On Linux (FlatPak):
Run:
flatpak run --command=normcap com.github.dynobo.normcap -v
debug
-
On Linux (AUR):
Run: normcap -v debug
NormCap is not starting
Please try to take a look at the
debug information. It might provide enough
information for you to solve the issue for yourself. If it doesn't help you,
don't hesitate to
report your problem
description together with debug information.
[Linux] Normcap does not show up in system tray
Is your display environment Gnome Shell? Then you probably need to install a
Gnome Shell extension
to support showing applications in the top bar, e.g.:
[Linux] NormCap doesn't show a notification after capture
NormCap's notifications depend on the system tray functionality. If you
start NormCap, but its Icon doesn't appear in the system tray, proceed like
in the question above.
[Linux] Could not load the Qt platform plugin xcb
In case you get the following output...
$ normcap -v debug
12:06:34 - INFO - normcap.app - L:32 - Starting Normcap v0.2.0
12:06:34 - DEBUG - normcap.utils - L:199 - [QT] L:0, func: None, file: None
12:06:34 - DEBUG - normcap.utils - L:200 - [QT] QtInfoMsg - Could not load the Qt platform plugin "xcb" in "" even though it was found.
12:06:34 - DEBUG - normcap.utils - L:199 - [QT] L:0, func: None, file: None
12:06:34 - DEBUG - normcap.utils - L:200 - [QT] QtFatalMsg - This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.
Available platform plugins are: eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, vnc, wayland-egl, wayland, wayland-xcomposite-egl, wayland-xcomposite-glx, webgl, xcb.
... the chances are, some system requirements are outdated. You can check
this with apt list "libxcb-util*"
:
$ apt list "libxcb-util*"
Listing... Done
libxcb-util-dev/hirsute 0.4.0-1 amd64
libxcb-util-dev/hirsute 0.4.0-1 i386
libxcb-util0-dev/hirsute 0.4.0-1 amd64
libxcb-util0-dev/hirsute 0.4.0-1 i386
libxcb-util1/hirsute,now 0.4.0-1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libxcb-util1/hirsute 0.4.0-1 i386
Is only libxcb-util0
shown but libxcb-util1
is
missing? Then you can try to create a symlink for the missing version:
sudo ln -s /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-util.so.0 /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb-util.so.1
[Linux] AppImages require FUSE to run
This is not a NormCap issue but a requirement for AppImages. You need to
make sure, that the FUSE
library is installed on your system.
E.g. on Ubuntu 22.04 you need to run sudo apt install libfuse2
.
See
this blog post for details.
[macOS] When NormCap is started, an empty desktop shows up
This issue usually occurs on the after installing NormCap, either for the
first time or after an update.
This is a known issue related to macOS's permissions settings: If NormCap
doesn't have the system's permission to take a screenshot, an empty desktop
will be shown.
(To be precise: NormCap doesn't know that it lacks permissions,
tries to take a screenshot nevertheless, which results in a screenshot of
the empty desktop.)
Steps to solve this:
- Close NormCap, if it is running.
-
Navigate to "System Preferences" → "Security & Privacy" → "Privacy" →
"Screen Recording" → "Click unlock".
-
Do you already see "NormCap" on the right side? If yes, "remove" [ – ] it.
Un-ticking the checkbox is not enough!
- Click "add" [+] → "Applications" → "NormCap".
-
Confirm that you see NormCap on the right side with a checkmark in front
of it.
- Start NormCap, it should work now.
-
You might need to repeat those steps after installing a new version of
NormCap.
Hopefully, this cumbersome user experience can be improved in a future
release.
Development
"No such file or directory" error when running briefcase build
To verify, if this is the issue you are facing, run the docker image
interactively and try to run the linuxdeploy-*.AppImage
file
there:
$ docker run -it \
--volume /home/<USER>/<PROJECT PATH>/normcap/linux:/app:z \
--volume /home/<USER>/.briefcase:/home/brutus/.briefcase:z \
--env VERSION=0.2.0 briefcase/eu.dynobo.normcap:py3.9 \
/bin/bash
$ /home/brutus/.briefcase/tools/linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage
If that results in a `No such file or directory` error, according to
this issue
and
this one
a workaround is to correct the "magic" bytes of the AppImage. This worked
for me:
sed '0,/AI\x02/{s|AI\x02|\x00\x00\x00|}' -i linuxdeploy-x86_64.AppImage