/RectangularFile

The Rectangular File

Primary LanguagePythonGNU General Public License v3.0GPL-3.0

RectangularFile

image

RectangularFile is a powerful open-source document management system designed for handwritten notes from e-ink tablets (Onyx Boox, reMarkable, Supernote, etc.) or any kind of device that can output PDFs of handwritten content, such as iPads or Samsung tablets. It uses locally deployed AI with no cloud services required to transcribe handwriting, detect annotations, and make everything searchable.

✨ Features

  • 🤖 AI-Powered Handwriting Recognition - Uses Qwen2.5-VL-7B for accurate handwriting transcription
  • 📝 Annotation Detection - Automatically detects and indexes:
    • ✅ Green boxed text (for todos/important items)
    • 🟨 Yellow highlighted text
  • 📅 CalDAV To-Do Conversion of Highlights - Automatically takes highlighted text from any note and turns it into a tagged to-do on your favorite CalDAV server
  • 🔍 Full-Text Search - Search across all your handwritten notes with folder filtering
  • 📁 Multi-Device Support - Automatically organizes notes from multiple devices
  • ☁️ Word Clouds - Visualize common themes across your notes
  • ✏️ In-Place Editing - Fix transcription errors directly in the web interface
  • 🔒 Simple Authentication - Single-user login system

🚀 Quick Start

  1. Clone the repository
  2. Create a virtualenv in your repo directory: python3 -m venv venv
  3. Install dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt
  4. Set up authentication (see below)
  5. Set up your Gunicorn installation with a systemd unit file like the provided example rectangular-file.service, place in /etc/systemd/system/
  6. Point your e-ink devices to sync PDFs to /mnt/onyx (or configured folder)
  7. systemctl start && systemctl enable

📋 Requirements

  • Python 3.8+
  • NVIDIA GPU with 16GB+ VRAM (for Qwen2.5-VL-7B)
  • 50GB+ disk space for model cache
  • System packages:
    • poppler (macOS: brew install poppler)
    • python3-pip python3-venv (Linux)

🔐 Authentication Setup

Generate a secure secret key:

python -c 'import secrets; print(secrets.token_hex(32))'

Generate password hash:

python -c "import hashlib; print(hashlib.sha256('yourpassword'.encode()).hexdigest())"

Add to your systemd service or environment:

SECRET_KEY=<generated_key>
APP_PASSWORD_HASH=<generated_hash>

⚙️ Configuration

All paths and settings can be configured via environment variables. See rectangular-file.service for a complete example.

Key Configuration Options

Variable Default Description
UPLOAD_FOLDER /mnt/onyx Directory where PDFs are synced
DATABASE_PATH /mnt/rectangularfile/pdf_index.db SQLite database location
MODEL_NAME Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct HuggingFace model identifier
MODEL_CACHE_DIR /mnt/rectangularfile/qwencache Model cache directory
DEBUG_IMAGES_DIR /mnt/rectangularfile/debug_images Debug image output
POLLING_INTERVAL 30.0 File watcher polling interval (seconds)
FLASK_HOST 0.0.0.0 Flask server bind address
FLASK_PORT 5000 Flask server port

Starting from Scratch

To rebuild your database from existing PDFs:

  1. Stop the service:

    sudo systemctl stop rectangular-file

  2. Backup your database (optional):

    cp /mnt/rectangularfile/pdf_index.db /mnt/rectangularfile/pdf_index.db.backup

  3. Remove the database:

    rm /mnt/rectangularfile/pdf_index.db

  4. Important: Remove CalDAV settings to avoid creating duplicate todos:

    • Either don't configure CalDAV environment variables, or
    • Set CalDAV to disabled in settings after first start

  5. Start the service:

    sudo systemctl start rectangular-file

  6. The system will automatically discover and process all PDFs in UPLOAD_FOLDER

  7. After processing completes, configure CalDAV in the web UI if desired. Only new highlights after this point will create todos.

📖 Documentation