Yes, I have tried different approaches and sometimes simplest ones are just better. a little variation of what you have said
convert infile.png -geometry 240 +dither -colors 2 -colorspace gray -contrast-stretch 0 -normalize outfile.pbm
is a good candidate if anything better is found, another more complex but with very promising results is using GIMP theshold, but we must find a way to automatic caculate the good values per image... seems not too easy
Yes, I have tried different
Yes, I have tried different approaches and sometimes simplest ones are just better. a little variation of what you have said
convert infile.png -geometry 240 +dither -colors 2 -colorspace gray -contrast-stretch 0 -normalize outfile.pbm
is a good candidate if anything better is found, another more complex but with very promising results is using GIMP theshold, but we must find a way to automatic caculate the good values per image... seems not too easy