So my document storage solution at the moment turned out to be this. Mostly because putting documents and things into a flat bed scanner, waiting for the slow scan to complete, saving and then uploading the file is too time consuming, too cumbersome. It makes sense to just scan things with your phone. I’m not completely happy with the solution, of course I have to use a proprietary tool in this workflow at the moment, need to do more resource on any Free/Libre Open Source tools out there for document scanning, there must be some. So I will need to work on that part of the process. For now at least Adobe is a software company I remotely trust and recognize, where there are a lot of dodgy Android scanning apps out there. Let’s look here:
Welp, one alternative fits the criteria:
I was surprised I didn’t have f-droid installed on my regular phone but after allowing software to be installed from three new applications I now have Fdroid, OpenNoteScanner, and something called OpenCV installed. I have an old phone where I’m experimenting w/ using LineageOS and f-droid so there is another hand scanner I can use to work with these apps. For now though I’m stuck w/ using the Adobe app and on Android for reliability sake, but someday maybe I’ll be using an all Open stack for this activity.
Installing NextCloud turned out to be a snap. An Ubuntu Snap that is, which is some sort of containerized packaging thing they are doing now, and a good guide here:
So that was easy to get up and running on an Ubuntu VM, but we will see how maintaining it in the long term goes. NextCloud provides the android app where I can transfer the scans into my own personal storage. I’m kind of worried about where the documents go after Adobe scans them in, I haven’t actually found where they are stored on the phone, but there is a convenient shortcut to share a copy of the file with the NextCloud app. It might not be the best solution, this is not the end of this quest, but at least I have something to work with now.
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