unpaper mit Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper installieren

Projektlinks

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream-Dokumentation
• Paketmanager-Seite

Befehle und Aliase

• unpaper

Projektgeschichte

The upstream README says unpaper was originally written by Jens Gulden, and the AUTHORS file lists Gulden as original author and maintainer from 2005-2009. The NEWS file records the first release, 1.0, on 2005-03-01.

Early releases focused on the core scanned-book workflow: joining or splitting pages, handling double-page layouts, deskewing, stretching, zooming, border alignment, black filtering, and multi-file batch processing. The 2005-2007 NEWS entries also show portability work for Mac OS X and SPARC Solaris, color support through PPM, documentation diagrams, binary/source distribution archives, and conventional tarball packaging.

Maintenance later moved from a personal scanned-page tool into a modern hosted open source project. NEWS records an Autotools build system in 2011, source reorganization and parser cleanup in 2012, mathematically accurate interpolation in 2013, libav-based file input/output in 2014, ffmpeg compatibility updates, and a 2022 Meson migration in release 7.0.0.

Adoptionsgeschichte

The supplied package metadata shows unpaper available across a broad set of Unix-like package managers: Alpine/apk, Homebrew, Debian, Fedora/dnf, MacPorts, Nix, Arch/pacman, Ubuntu, and openSUSE/zypper. That matches its niche as a small C utility used inside scanning, OCR, and PDF-preparation pipelines.

The project's dependency history also tracks adoption pressure. The README now says ffmpeg is the only hard dependency for file input and output; NEWS shows earlier transitions through Netpbm-style PNM workflows, libav, ffmpeg compatibility, and build-system modernization.

Wie es verwendet wird

unpaper is usually run in batch mode over numbered image sequences. The basic concepts documentation explains sheets, pages, single-page and double-page layouts, wildcard filename sequences such as `input%03d.pbm`, and options for joining single-page scans into double-page sheets or splitting double-page scans back into individual page images.

The README describes the processing features that define its everyday use: removing dark borders from scans and photocopies, detecting misaligned centering and rotation, deskewing pages, and allowing each processing step to be disabled or tuned when automatic processing fails.

Warum Paket-Nerds sich dafür interessieren

unpaper is significant in package-manager culture because it is one of those small, sharp Unix tools that exists to make a larger workflow possible. It sits between scanner output, image conversion tools, OCR engines, and PDF builders, so distributions care about stable command-line behavior, supported image formats, and dependency choices more than about a GUI.

It is also a good example of a long-lived niche media utility being kept buildable as the C ecosystem changes: custom code gave way to libav/ffmpeg for formats, Autotools gave way to Meson, tests were adapted for floating-point differences, and maintainers kept portability and package builds alive.

Zeitleiste

• 2005: 1.0 initial release.
• 2005: 1.1 adds page joining/splitting, multi-file sequences, deskew speedups, Mac OS X notes, and SPARC Solaris testing.
• 2006: 0.2 adds documentation diagrams and color PPM support.
• 2007: 0.3 moves history to a changelog and adopts conventional tarball layout.
• 2011: 0.4 introduces an Autotools build system and a documented man page.
• 2014: 6 switches file input/output to libav and broadens supported image formats.
• 2022: 7.0.0 migrates the build to Meson and expands ffmpeg 5 compatibility.

Related projects

• unpaper is commonly adjacent to SANE scanner tools, ffmpeg/libav for image decoding and encoding, Netpbm/PNM tooling, ImageMagick conversion, OCR engines, and PDF generation tools.

Quellen

• https://github.com/unpaper/unpaper/blob/main/AUTHORS
• https://github.com/unpaper/unpaper/blob/main/NEWS
• https://github.com/unpaper/unpaper/blob/main/README.md
• https://github.com/unpaper/unpaper/blob/main/doc/basic-concepts.md
• source_facts.package-manager