[HN Gopher] Paperless-Ngx v2.0.0
___________________________________________________________________
Paperless-Ngx v2.0.0
Author : rhim
Score : 154 points
Date : 2023-11-29 12:06 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| ydant wrote:
| There was a pretty big discussion about paperless-ngx a couple of
| months ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37800951 (183 comments)
|
| I tested it out then and am considering migrating from my current
| system (Google Drive) to using a self-hosted approach. Paperless
| seems to have a good approach for minimizing the mental overhead
| of ingesting and categorizing new documents - which is what
| ultimately leads me to stacking documents up for months before
| processing them. My initial pilot run was promising, but I
| haven't gotten around to switching yet.
|
| From the changelog, it's not really clear to me what's notable
| about this release, especially as a new/potential user.
|
| This page is a better introduction to the product, although it
| doesn't mention the v2 release yet:
|
| https://docs.paperless-ngx.com/
| andrew_eu wrote:
| I've been using Paperless for several years now very happily
| and can recommend it over my previous system, also Google
| Drive. During the transition I found it helpful to set up a
| cron which (A) made an export of Paperless and (B) uploaded
| that export to a Google Drive folder.
|
| One feature which seems to be quite a nice improvement
| (speculating as I haven't upgraded yet) is consumption
| templates [0]. My workflow involves an ADF scanner with an
| Android application, sharing the scanned PDF with Paperless
| Share [1] and then it's uploaded to the server via API. It
| seems that consumption templates will enable adjusting
| tags/sharing settings/permissions of a document at ingestion
| time based on where it's ingested from.
|
| [0] https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/pull/4196
|
| [1] https://github.com/qcasey/paperless_share
| itchynosedev wrote:
| I use syncthing to sync from paperless data folder which runs
| on Kubernetes (k3s).
|
| It's a one-way sync. Paperless is the authoritative location.
| The only reason I back up to Google drive is so that my phone
| has easy access to the documents I may need on the go.
| tedcrilly wrote:
| There are two dedicated mobile apps for Paperless: -
| https://github.com/paulgessinger/swift-paperless (iOS only,
| nicer interface) - https://github.com/bauerj/paperless_app
| (iOS and Android, built in scanner)
|
| I use them in combination with Tailscale, both can be used
| to rename documents and edit tags.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| Could you specify how it improves over using Google Drive or
| similar? Is that "just" because you control the hosting, or
| is the experience better?
| andrew_eu wrote:
| Personally, I think it isn't really an improvement over
| Google Drive. Drive offers so many more features, an office
| suite, integration with many other Google services, etc.
|
| That said, I don't think Paperless is supposed to fill all
| those gaps. For me, its sole job is to make scanned
| documents searchable (from anywhere with Tailscale) and
| durable (with encrypted off-site backups). Having this
| isolated from a Google account with already too-far-
| reaching access is a benefit in my opinion.
| ydant wrote:
| One feature that isn't mentioned on this release that I was
| looking for before actually got added in the RC1 for 2.0.0:
|
| https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/releases/tag/...
| * Feature: Implement custom fields for documents @stumpylog
| (#4502)
| matrss wrote:
| I haven't been using it too much yet but I am really impressed by
| paperless-ngx so far. It just works(TM) and the auto-tagging
| functionality is surprisingly good, even with just a few
| documents in it.
|
| Does anyone have a good scanner recommendation though? I am
| eyeing the Brother ADS-1700W since it seems to be recommended
| often, but I would really like to use the "scan to webhook"
| feature (it's 2023 after all) instead of SMTP or whatever else
| are the options I would have with the Brother.
| draugadrotten wrote:
| Recommendation: https://www.quickscanapp.com/
|
| I am using iPhone as a scanner and it automatically scans,
| OCRs, uploads and ingests to the paperless-ngx instance, even
| remotely using tailscale.
|
| The iPhone camera is more than good enough for scanning
| documents.
| bovermyer wrote:
| Thank you for this! This reduces the friction for scanning
| documents a _ton_.
|
| I love that it integrates with Paperless so well!
| matrss wrote:
| I don't have an iPhone, but on Android there is the
| "Paperless Mobile" app
| (https://github.com/astubenbord/paperless-mobile), which can
| be used to scan as well. There are just some documents that I
| would prefer to have in proper and consistent "document
| scanner"-quality; I am always having a hard time with
| lighting using those phone scanners (although Paperless
| Mobile is one of the better ones I have used).
| westurner wrote:
| Would a document capture camera with a [ring] light also
| work?
| matrss wrote:
| Those still have the speed disadvantage of a phone camera
| and need more space than a compact document scanner, I'd
| imagine. I guess a ring light for my phone would be an
| improvement; using the builtin flash usually leads to
| very uneven lighting in the scan.
| pintxo wrote:
| I am scanning from my Brother multi-function device to an SMB
| share, which paperless monitors for changes. Works like a
| charm. You can even bulk move files there using your local file
| manager.
| rubenbe wrote:
| Which type of brother printer do you use? And do you use it
| under Linux?
| senectus1 wrote:
| I'm using a Brother MFC-L3770CDW (Colour laser, with a
| duplexing scanner). Very reasonable price and super capable
| device, works fine with linux.
| lakomen wrote:
| I wish I could selectively subscribe to comments on HN, but
| I have to comment to do that. So this is my subscription
| comment. #metoo
| moontear wrote:
| There is a long list of supported scanners directly from
| Paperless: https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-
| ngx/wiki/Scanner-...
|
| Personally I go with Brother ADS-1700W. I don't use it
| under any operating system since it is Scanner > SMB share.
| alexdoesstuff wrote:
| Brother DCP-L2550DW here. One of the cheapest b/w
| multifunction devices with automatic document feeder and
| reasonable print and scan performance. Works like a charm
| on Linux, Windows, Android, and IOS.
|
| I am using it with [NAPS2](https://www.naps2.com/), which
| is brilliantly simple, multi-platform, free, and open-
| source.
| pintxo wrote:
| Just one of their Color-Laser scanner/printer combos. Works
| like a charm for iOS, Linux, MacOS, Windows.
| senectus1 wrote:
| exactly the same setup here, but i also have paperless
| pointing to a mailbox that i use exclusively for sending
| documents to.
|
| all works perfectly.
| pintxo wrote:
| I am using a paperless@<domain> address for this as well.
| Handy to archive stuff coming in via email.
| andrew_eu wrote:
| I've had great luck with an Epson Workforce scanner. Originally
| I got it to scan ~10k family photos -- took about 1 hour and
| entirely smooth.
|
| In that case I scanned to a USB drive attached to the scanner
| (since each photo was a separate file). For Paperless I use the
| Epson Smart app, scan the document with whatever settings,
| remove/rotate pages as needed, and then share it to Paperless
| with Paperless Share [0].
|
| Many network attached scanners can scan to SMB, no device
| needed, but I kind of like the human-in-the-loop aspect. Since
| my Paperless server runs on an HDD next to the scanner I can
| actually hear once the file lands which is quite satisfying.
|
| [0] https://github.com/qcasey/paperless_share
| edward wrote:
| I love paperless-ngx but I wish it had a rotate button. Some of
| my document scans are upside down.
| diarrhea wrote:
| I don't think I'd be comfortable with it having elaborate
| editing functionality. PDF editing in a browser is finicky, and
| an enormous bug fest.
|
| I do PDF editing offline, on the desktop, then re-upload to
| paperless. Not the most integrated flow, but much more
| bulletproof. I want the PDFs themselves to be immutable once on
| paperless. Only metadata should be editable.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| It keeps an "original" PDF and presents a working copy for
| modifications like OCR and metadata. Rotation is important
| for OCR, so rotate-and-redo is a worthwhile feature.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| It does have rotate clockwise/anticlockwise
| maweki wrote:
| Where? I'm pretty sure my instance doesn't.
| panzerboy wrote:
| In Settings I have "Use PDF viewer provided by the browser"
| checked and then see the screenshot:
|
| https://imgur.com/TIOv1kK
| maweki wrote:
| The renderer does maybe. But it isn't saved and not used
| for OCR.
|
| So paperless doesn't have rotating functionality.
| el_sinchi wrote:
| you can use an opensource tool for scanning, like NAPS2, which
| will let you rotate before you mail it to paperless-ngx
| prometheanfire wrote:
| There is an issue about this, basically it's not going to
| happen because it is editing functionality. They suggest using
| another solution before import (build a pipeline).
| CommanderData wrote:
| I wish paperless-ngx included native advertising to printers for
| the "Sent to PC" feature.
|
| Last I checked it doesn't and had to run a separate service to
| advertise to the printer the paperless endpoint.
| throwaway69123 wrote:
| What service do you run for this?
| rmu09 wrote:
| I recently migrated from another (more "enterprisey") open-source
| EDMS system that shall remain unnamed to paperless-ngx. Can't
| praise this high enough. Where the other system needed multiple
| clicks for the easiest things and had a bunch of UI antifeatures,
| paperless has a very intuitive and well thought-out UI and
| handles ~30k documents without issues.
| lhl wrote:
| I set up paperless-ngx w/ a scanner attached to my nas and a bit
| of scripting to get the scan button working a while back, but
| then forgot about it.
|
| For me, as someone who wants my docs on my own server, but well,
| doesn't care enough to want to constantly keep up with
| forks/changes/migration/updates, I've been looking for just
| something stable I can use for years (or maybe decades?, eg part
| of the appeal of something like Obisidian is that it just falls
| back to .md text files).
|
| Curious if there are any long-term active users of this (or other
| systems) for handling all their paper and what they think about
| maintainability/longevity?
| nitsua2 wrote:
| I had the same concern as you when I started, and after roughly
| two years of use I've been impressed with how minimal the
| maintenance overhead has been.
|
| So far I've probably updated the software ~5 times across
| various releases, each time I've updated it been because there
| was a new feature I wanted rather than needing to pull in fixes
| (the software has been bug free for me). The update process is
| well documented and very straight forward if you are using
| their docker compose setup to run the application
| Wool2662 wrote:
| I have been using paperless for years now. There was the 1
| issue a while back when the original maintainer stopped and
| they had to fork it. But otherwise it's super stable. They keep
| to semver religiously and all your documents are neatly
| organised in original format on disk if you ever need them.
| jdoss wrote:
| If anyone is looking to kick the tires of Paperless NGX quickly,
| check out my little pet project [1] for running it with Podman. I
| use it every week to scan papers from my Brother ADS2800w which
| will SFTP the PDFs into a directory for Paperless NGX to consume.
|
| I just updated my install to v2.0.0 with a simple podman pull and
| a systemctl restart of my paperless pod and everything looks
| great. Hats off to the contributors of the project. Every update,
| even major ones like this have been really smooth.
|
| 1: https://github.com/jdoss/ppngx
| cwiggs wrote:
| How do you like this setup?
|
| I've been thinking of moving from docker-compose to podman,
| specifically using the [podman-play-
| kube](https://docs.podman.io/en/v4.2/markdown/podman-play-
| kube.1.h...) but haven't gotten around to it.
|
| I like Podman has a lot to offer for self-hosters but it isn't
| popular (yet?)
| jdoss wrote:
| I like it a lot. I moved totally away from docker-compose and
| Docker a couple years ago to using only Podman and I haven't
| looked back. Using Podman Pods let's me isolate my workloads
| in their own namespaces and I can prototype a multi-service
| workload very quickly.
|
| If you check out the bash script on my ppngx project you can
| get an idea of how you could write your own script for your
| workloads. I can run ./start.sh over and over again and it
| will replace the running containers with my changes which is
| a very fast DX.
|
| The README on ppngx talks about using the podman generate
| systemd command to create units from the pod so you can run
| them via systemd, but this command is being deprecated in
| favor of using Quadlet [1] (systemd generator) to crate the
| units on the fly. I haven't gotten around to using it since I
| like to have more control over my systemd units. I could see
| Quadlet being very good for users that don't know the inner
| workings of systemd and podman.
|
| 1: https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-
| systemd.uni...
| daveguy wrote:
| Paperless-ngx + ScanSnap iX1600. Works with a samba share that is
| very easy to set up in Linux these days. Fast, easy, and you can
| have different scan profiles to set the destination folder. Push
| a button for the type and a button to scan. Paperless-ngx
| automatically files and tags reliably. It is saving me hours per
| week in filing. Can't recommend it enough. This is a personal
| system -- not sure how it would scale to 100k - 1M+.
| WXLCKNO wrote:
| Almost 600 Canadian for that scanner. Is it mainly that's it's
| incredibly fast and can go through a stack of pages?
| daveguy wrote:
| Fast, stack of pages, but also compatibility with different
| destination types, ease of setup, and no cloud account
| required (looking at you Raven) and your PC doesn't have to
| be on for network scans (direct, not passthrough).
|
| But yes, the scanner is pricey. It was definitely an
| investment.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I've had an iX500 for a few years. You're right, and it's
| also a complete tank. I deployed several of them to a
| doctor's office that had to scan lots of paperwork every day,
| and they all worked perfectly all the time, every time.
|
| They're the Brother laser printer of scanners.
| xattt wrote:
| I've got an ix500 and I'm suffering for no SMB support.
|
| The only thing that comes to mind is either do a convoluted
| SnapScan Online -> Google Drive -> rclone -> Paperless or bite
| the bullet and figure out how to directly scan into the local
| box via USB.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Just curiosity... What does "ngx" mean in this context?
|
| To me it means Angular (the web framework). So, I was surprised
| to learn this wasn't an Angular plugin. Angular is often referred
| to as ng for short and as such their plugins tend to have ngx as
| a prefix. For example, the angular wrapper for ChartJS is ngx-
| chartjs.
| jdoss wrote:
| Paperless was a project and then it died, so it got forked to
| Paperless NG (Next Generation). Paperless NG died off and it
| got forked again to Paperless NGX.
|
| At least that is my understanding following the Paperless
| project over the years.
| steve1977 wrote:
| So what will be next? Paperless NGX++?
| chatmasta wrote:
| Paperleast
| ydant wrote:
| I don't know if it has a specific meaning. There have been
| multiple forks:
|
| paperless (https://github.com/the-paperless-project/paperless)
| -> paperless-ng (https://github.com/jonaswinkler/paperless-ng/)
| -> paperless-ngx (https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-
| ngx/)
| georgehotelling wrote:
| Paperless started as "paperless" but the dev stopped work so
| another dev forked it to "paperless-ng" (for "next generation"
| I think). That dev, too, stopped work, so "paperless-ngx" was
| created.
|
| The paperless-ngx's core team focused on gathering a group of
| people to support it to avoid any burnout problems and keep the
| project sustainable.
| luoc wrote:
| The x was rather the transition away from a single maintainer
| to the org. Iirc that guy still sticks around
| __jonas wrote:
| As others said I'm not sure if the name relates to Angular but
| it's worth saying that the frontend is in fact Angular
|
| https://github.com/jonaswinkler/paperless-ng/tree/master/src...
| somehnguy wrote:
| Paperless is one of my favorite pieces of software. A few years
| ago I got fed up with my filing cabinet full of folders & tons of
| documents that didn't quite fit into any of the categories.
|
| I installed Paperless on my home server & spent a night
| digitizing everything. After being comfortable with it for a few
| months I went back & shredded all my paper copies. Today my
| process is similar - when I get a document I would normally toss
| in that filing cabinet I just scan, upload to Paperless, and
| shred it. It's also really nice for storing large purchase
| receipts - I've previously had the writing on thermal paper
| receipts go invisible after a period of time, no longer an issue.
|
| Searching for something specific is so easy now! Huge QOL
| improvement. Just make sure you have a solid backup strategy,
| losing my Paperless database & filestore would be devastating.
| cgeier wrote:
| I'd love for this to be able to use something like s3 as a
| backend and (tax) audit prove archiving.
| trallnag wrote:
| There are various FUSE-based file systems that use S3 under the
| hood.
| ornornor wrote:
| I finally switched from my ancient Mayan EDMS running an outdated
| version on an Ubuntu 16.04 VM that I couldn't upgrade because the
| Mayan docs for that version are not available anymore. I'm not a
| huge user but I shred everything I can and have around 1000
| documents.
|
| I have zero regrets so far. Paperless ngx is so much more user
| friendly, the automatic date extraction from OCR, the auto
| tagging and document type classification, and the ease to backup
| and restore sold me. I highly recommend it.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > running an outdated version on an Ubuntu 16.04 VM that I
| couldn't upgrade because the Mayan docs for that version are
| not available anymore
|
| For years I was eyeing Mayan as one the variants I could use.
| Not anymore.
| ornornor wrote:
| Mayan is also doing a good job but I think geared more
| towards businesses/enterprises and at least for the older
| versions long term support is an issue. It's also just one
| guy, or at least it was when I last checked.
|
| For home I'd go with paperless-ngx no contest, especially if
| you can run it in a docker container.
| tobi1449 wrote:
| Has any paperless user found a good way to "deskew" scanned
| pages? Sometimes, when scanning from my Brother printer through
| the ADF, the pages are skewed/rotated and it can be pretty
| jarring.
| tyingq wrote:
| There's this:
|
| https://github.com/the-paperless-project/paperless/issues/20
|
| I don't know if it made it's way into this fork.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Deskew is on by default unless you disabled it?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-29 23:02 UTC)