Run Automator Workflow in background - applescript

Question

Trying to make Automator workflow that uses "Convert to TXT Document" for pdf to txt convertion. But while running, Abbyy FineReader window becomes active. Is it possible to run in in silent mode or with minimized window?

Answer 1

This AppleScript works for me using the latest version of Sierra. Tested on my system, it did not bring Abbyy FineReader to the foreground.
set thePDF to (choose file)
tell application "FineReader"
set resultFile to export to txt thePDF ¬
from file thePDF
end tell
Your new text file should appear in the same directory as your original PDF
I'm not using Automator so I do not know which method you are going to use to pass the PDF file to this AppleScript. For testing purposes, I used to the “choose file” command. If you are using Automator to pass the PDF file that you specified in a previous Automator action, you can just remove the “choose file” command from the code. Anyway, all you need to do is add a “run AppleScript” command in your Automator workflow.
If you are going to remove the “choose file” command, you'll need to re-define the value for the variable thePDF
NOTE FineReader actually has an extensive AppleScript dictionary. My answer included a minimal version of many other options for the exporting as text. Here is a full version example of options
tell application "FineReader"
set resultFile to export to txt directParamFile ¬
from file fromFileFile ¬
ocr languages enum ocrLanguagesEnumLanguageListType ¬
saving type savingTypeSaveSettingsEnum ¬
retain layout retainLayoutTxtLayout ¬
keep page numbers headers and footers keepPageNumbersHeadersAndFootersBoolean ¬
keep line breaks and hyphenation keepLineBreaksAndHyphenationBoolean ¬
insert page break character as page separator insertPageBreakCharacterAsPageSeparatorBoolean ¬
use blank lines useBlankLinesBoolean ¬
encoding encodingEncodingEnum
end tell

Answer 2

I decided not to use FineReader applet. Instead I migrate to stack: tesseract + ImageMagick + gs.
If anybody is interested, I attach my sollution below.
Automator shell script
export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
/usr/local/bin/convert -density 300 "$#" -depth 8 -strip -background white -alpha off image.tiff
/usr/local/bin/tesseract -l rus image.tiff ~/Desktop/OCR
rm image.tiff
And the
Automator workflow

Answer 3

You could try this applescript in the script editor, replacing the file paths to your files. I don't have the program installed, so I haven't tested it. If it doesn't work, maybe it's something you can build on to get the result you're after.
tell application "FineReader" activate
tell application "System Events" set visible of process "FineReader" to false
tell application "FineReader"
export to txt "/Path/to/filename/File_to_OCR.pdf" from file "/Path/to/filename/File_to_OCR.pdf"
end tell