Hey there, I don't know the answers to most of your question, honestly.

2. I think it would be enough. People do great work with much less.

3. I think Surya would handle it. I have done mostly flat text. I would also try some LLM OCR models like Google Gemini 2.0 Flash with different pipelines. With different system prompts. I am yet to do this. It would be easy to check. About fonts - never really worried about it myself. If it's something fancy, and you are crazy enough, you will create a font. Or you can also use some handwriting mimicry tool using another AI model. I don't have a name on top of my head. Look through OCR models. Indian college and HS kids still have to submit handwritten projects and assignments. Some crafty kids use such tools to type (or chatgpt copy-paste) and then print in pen ink color in their own handwriting, and fool the teacher given there are a large number of assignments to check.

4. I am not sure if I understand the question fully. Do you mean that books' pages will have numbers, and they will be read as book text in your OCRed data? If you mean that, then I just used GOF regex to root page numbers out. When you have the full text without page numbers, there are multiple tools to create EPUBs and PDF's. You can also reformat documents, assuming you already have an EPUB or PDF- based on the target device, using just Calibre.

1. I don't understand the question. You mean any other kind of scan than regular scanning? I don't know at all. I just work with regularly scanned documents.