Add "How To Use Your Email Client For Physical Mail" post
Hugo Thunnissen
4 years ago
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posts/use-your-mail-client-for-physical-mail/index.html
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posts/simple-static-blog/index.html
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posts/introduction/index.html
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<!DOCTYPE HTML>
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<html>
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<head>
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<title>Use Your Email Client For Physical Mail</title>
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<meta charset="UTF-8">
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</head>
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<style type="text/css">
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html {
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font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
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color: #5b4636;
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background-color: #f4ecd8;
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}
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body {
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padding: 1em;
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margin: auto;
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}
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@media only all and (pointer: coarse), (pointer: none) {
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body {
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font-size: 5.5vmin;
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}
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}
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@media only all and (pointer: fine) {
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body {
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font-size: calc(16px + 0.6vmin);
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min-width: 500px;
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max-width: 50em;
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}
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}
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aside {
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width: 30%;
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min-width: 10em;
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background-color: rgba(0,0,0, 0.1);
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float: right;
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padding: 1em;
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margin: 1em;
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}
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</style>
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<body>
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<a href="../../blog.html">Home</a>
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<article>
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<h1>How To Use Your Email Client For Physical Mail</h1>
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<p>
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Whether it's to re-read a conversation, find a plane ticket I ordered or check
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when a meeting was planned, I often find myself looking up old emails. It's
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usually easy to do so because email clients are designed for the task: Many of
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them support full-text search and some even complement that with advanced
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tagging and categorization systems. To be honest I have become completely
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dependent on those features for my day to day operation. Having full-text
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search and some sort of categorization for mail can be a huge time
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saver. Wouldn't it be nice if we had all of that functionality to deal with
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physical mail as well? I thought it would, so I set out to find a way to
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achieve just that. Turns out it's pretty simple!
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</p>
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<p>
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The main objective here is to transform our physical mail into an email
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that can be received, indexed and read by our email client of choice. Now,
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one way to do that would be to type the contents of our mail into an email
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by hand, but <i>ain't nobody got time for that!</i>. The (more appealing)
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alternative is to use a document scanner. I have a single purpose scanner
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unit from Canon that I hook up to my laptop for just this purpose.
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</p>
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<p>
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It isn't as simple as just emailing a scanned document to ourselves
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though: email clients are smart, but they can't understand a word of text
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in our PDF or JPEG of a physical document. They need content to be in
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plain text form in order to provide us with some of their best features
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like full-text search. We'll have to somehow transform our scanned
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documents into plain text that we can include in our email. To do this, we
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can use tesseract. Tesseract is an optical character recognition (OCR)
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engine, meaning that it can recognize text in images and extract it for
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us. Installing it should be easy on Debian derivative distros like
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Ubuntu. My laptop is running Debian unstable so I just ran <code>apt
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install tesseract</code> and started using it. Using it is as easy as
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upening up a terminal and typing <code>tesseract FILE.jpg
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OUTPUT</code>. That command will save all the text that tesseract is able
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to recognize in the image FILE.jpg to a file called OUTPUT.txt.
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</p>
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<aside>
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<i>
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Side note: I am Dutch, so most of my physical mail is in Dutch. To
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make tesseract better understand my mail I installed the
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tesseract-ocr-nld package using <code>apt install
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tesseract-ocr-nld</code>. You can check what other language packs are
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available by using <code>apt search tesseract-ocr</code>.
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</i>
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</aside>
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<p>
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All we have to do from there is copy-paste the contents of that file into
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an email and send it to ourselves! Depending on the formatting of the
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input document, the output may not always be pleasant to read. We can
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account for this by including the original document as an attachment to
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the email. That way we get the best of both worlds: we can use the search
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functionality of our email client to find the document, and then read it
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in its original form by opening the attachment.
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</p>
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<p>
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This is all easy enough, but I'm lazy. I didn't feel like opening up my
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email client and doing manual copy-pasting, so I decided to automate the
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process a little further. I have postfix setup on my system to relay to my
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mail server, so I can simply use the <code>mail</code> command to send emails without a
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GUI mail client. I combined that with tesseract in a little bash
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script. The script iterates through all of its arguments and interprets
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them as filenames of scanned documents. It calls tesseract to extract text
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from them, concatenates the results, attaches the files to an email and
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sends it to my personal email address. Now all I have to do is run the
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script with filenames of some documents and my job is done. If anyone is
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interested in an actual program that does the same thing and doesn't
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require you to setup postfix, let me know! I might consider authoring one
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if it's useful to more people than just myself. The script I'm currently
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using can be found <a href="scan-to-mailpile.bash.html">here (pretty)</a>
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and <a href="scan-to-mailpile.bash">here (raw)</a>, but I don't recommend
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using it if you don't fully understand its contents, it's not a polished
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user experience 🤓.
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</p>
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</article>
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</body>
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</html>
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@ -0,0 +1 @@
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Mon 17 Feb 2020 11:55:42 AM CET
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@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
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#!/bin/bash
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if ! [[ $# -ge 1 ]]; then
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echo 'Usage: scan-to-mailpile ...FILES' >&2
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exit
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fi
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if ! type_output="$(type readlink mktemp pdftotext tesseract mail mimetype basename cat 2>&1)"; then
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printf 'scan-to-mailpile: Some required commands are missing, lookup results:\n%s\n' \
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"$type_output" >&2
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exit 1
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fi
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tmpdir=$(mktemp -d) || exit $?
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printf -v trap 'rm -vr %q' "$tmpdir"
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trap "$trap" EXIT
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printf 'Changing directory: '
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pushd "$tmpdir" || exit $?
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declare -a file_args=()
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{
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for file in "$@"; do
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file="$(readlink -f "$file")" || exit $?
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# Note: pdftotext will not work for scanned documents, so those should just be
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# saved as image files before feeding them to this script.
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##
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# It will however work fine for other types of PDFs.
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if [[ "$file" == *.pdf ]]; then
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pdftotext "$file" /dev/fd/1 || exit $?
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else
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tesseract "$file" stdout || exit $?
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fi
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mime="$(mimetype -b "$file")" || exit $?
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attachment_args+=(--content-type="$mime" --attach="$file")
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done
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} > ./outfile.txt
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cat ./outfile.txt
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file1="$(basename "$1")"
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read -i "${file1%.*}" -rep 'What should the subject of the email be? ' subject
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mail --subject="$subject" \
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"${attachment_args[@]}" \
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--content-type="text/plain" \
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--content-filename="content.txt" \
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user@example.com < ./outfile.txt
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popd
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@ -0,0 +1,129 @@
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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN">
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<!-- Created by htmlize-1.56 in css mode. -->
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<html>
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<head>
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<title>scan-to-mailpile.bash</title>
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<style type="text/css">
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<!--
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body {
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color: #f6f3e8;
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background-color: #242424;
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}
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.builtin {
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/* font-lock-builtin-face */
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color: #e5786d;
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}
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.comment {
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/* font-lock-comment-face */
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color: #99968b;
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}
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.comment-delimiter {
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/* font-lock-comment-delimiter-face */
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color: #99968b;
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}
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.flyspell-duplicate {
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/* flyspell-duplicate */
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text-decoration: underline;
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}
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.flyspell-incorrect {
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/* flyspell-incorrect */
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text-decoration: underline;
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}
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.keyword {
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/* font-lock-keyword-face */
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color: #8ac6f2;
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font-weight: bold;
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}
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.negation-char {
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}
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.sh-escaped-newline {
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/* sh-escaped-newline */
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color: #95e454;
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}
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.sh-quoted-exec {
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/* sh-quoted-exec */
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color: #fa8072;
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}
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.string {
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/* font-lock-string-face */
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color: #95e454;
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}
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.variable-name {
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/* font-lock-variable-name-face */
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color: #cae682;
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}
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a {
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color: inherit;
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background-color: inherit;
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font: inherit;
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text-decoration: inherit;
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}
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a:hover {
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text-decoration: underline;
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}
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-->
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</style>
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</head>
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<body>
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<pre>
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<span class="comment-delimiter"> #</span><span class="comment">!/bin/</span><span class="keyword">bash</span><span class="comment">
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</span>
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<span class="keyword"> if</span> <span class="negation-char">!</span> [[ $<span class="variable-name">#</span> -ge 1 ]]; <span class="keyword">then</span>
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<span class="builtin">echo</span> <span class="string">'Usage: scan-to-mailpile ...FILES'</span> >&2
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<span class="keyword">exit</span>
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<span class="keyword"> fi</span>
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<span class="keyword"> if</span> <span class="negation-char">!</span> <span class="variable-name">type_output</span>=<span class="string">"$(</span><span class="sh-quoted-exec">type</span><span class="string"> readlink mktemp pdftotext tesseract mail mimetype basename cat 2>&1)"</span>; <span class="keyword">then</span>
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<span class="builtin">printf</span> <span class="string">'scan-to-mailpile: Some required commands are missing, lookup results:\n%s\n'</span> <span class="sh-escaped-newline">\</span>
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<span class="string">"$type_output"</span> >&2
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<span class="keyword">exit</span> 1
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<span class="keyword"> fi</span>
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<span class="variable-name"> tmpdir</span>=$(<span class="sh-quoted-exec">mktemp</span> -d) || <span class="keyword">exit</span> $<span class="variable-name">?</span>
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<span class="builtin"> printf</span> -v trap <span class="string">'rm -vr %q'</span> <span class="string">"$tmpdir"</span>
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<span class="keyword"> trap</span> <span class="string">"$trap"</span> EXIT
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<span class="builtin"> printf</span> <span class="string">'Changing directory: '</span>
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<span class="builtin"> pushd</span> <span class="string">"$tmpdir"</span> || <span class="keyword">exit</span> $<span class="variable-name">?</span>
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<span class="builtin"> declare</span> -a <span class="variable-name">file_args</span>=()
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{
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<span class="keyword">for</span> file<span class="keyword"> in</span> <span class="string">"$@"</span>; <span class="keyword">do</span>
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<span class="variable-name">file</span>=<span class="string">"$(</span><span class="sh-quoted-exec">readlink</span><span class="string"> -f "$file")"</span> || <span class="keyword">exit</span> $<span class="variable-name">?</span>
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<span class="comment-delimiter"># </span><span class="comment">Note: </span><span class="comment"><span class="flyspell-duplicate">pdftotext</span></span><span class="comment"> will not work for scanned documents, so those should just be
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</span> <span class="comment-delimiter"># </span><span class="comment">saved as image files before feeding them to this script.
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</span> <span class="comment-delimiter">##</span><span class="comment">
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</span> <span class="comment-delimiter"># </span><span class="comment">It will however work fine for other types of </span><span class="comment"><span class="flyspell-incorrect">PDFs</span></span><span class="comment">.
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</span> <span class="keyword">if</span> [[ <span class="string">"$file"</span> == *.pdf ]]; <span class="keyword">then</span>
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pdftotext <span class="string">"$file"</span> /dev/fd/1 || <span class="keyword">exit</span> $<span class="variable-name">?</span>
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<span class="keyword">else</span>
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tesseract <span class="string">"$file"</span> stdout || <span class="keyword">exit</span> $<span class="variable-name">?</span>
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<span class="keyword">fi</span>
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<span class="variable-name">mime</span>=<span class="string">"$(</span><span class="sh-quoted-exec">mimetype</span><span class="string"> -b "$file")"</span> || <span class="keyword">exit</span> $<span class="variable-name">?</span>
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<span class="variable-name">attachment_args</span>+=(--content-type=<span class="string">"$mime"</span> --attach=<span class="string">"$file"</span>)
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<span class="keyword">done</span>
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} > ./outfile.txt
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cat ./outfile.txt
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<span class="variable-name"> file1</span>=<span class="string">"$(</span><span class="sh-quoted-exec">basename</span><span class="string"> "$1")"</span>
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<span class="builtin"> read</span> -i <span class="string">"${file1%.*}"</span> -rep <span class="string">'What should the subject of the email be? '</span> subject
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mail --subject=<span class="string">"$subject"</span> <span class="sh-escaped-newline">\</span>
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<span class="string">"${attachment_args[@]}"</span> <span class="sh-escaped-newline">\</span>
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--content-type=<span class="string">"text/plain"</span> <span class="sh-escaped-newline">\</span>
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--content-filename=<span class="string">"content.</span><span class="string"><span class="flyspell-duplicate">txt</span></span><span class="string">"</span> <span class="sh-escaped-newline">\</span>
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user@example.com < ./outfile.txt
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<span class="builtin">popd</span>
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</pre>
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</body>
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</html>
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