Baslinux mailing list

[<keesan2 AT cyberspace.org>]

On Wed, 14 May 2003 jamtat AT mailsnare.net wrote:

> On Sat, 3 May 2003 keesan2 AT cyberspace.org wrote:
> >
> > SUCCESS with pdftotext used with or without lynx.
> >
> > The non-gzexed pdftotext file from Doug Kaufman (which he either compiled
> > or got out of the foolabs package and stripped) is about 900K and it
> > works perfectly.

I later revised my opinion of how well this works but it still produces
usable output if you don't mind reading words without spaces between them.
You can decide if the pdf file is worth viewing with something else such
as ghostscript after taking a quick look at it first.

I am still waiting for Doug's mailbox to be emptied so I can write him
asking if he will post a package which includes README and COPYRIGHT so
that we won't need to download them as part of the 5M foolabs file.
He also offered pdftoimage and pdftops.

I emailed to the list the outputs from pdftotext and pdftohtml and I think
it would be best to have both programs for cases when one does a really
bad job, but I have no idea how to use pdftohtml with lynx as a downloader
because it produces three files and the one with the actual text is not
named the same as the original file (filename.pdf > filenames.pdf). 
So I am using pdftotext as a downloader and I can save the file and look
at it again with pdftohtml if I want.  lynx file:///filenames.html

The DOS version of pdftotext botched things in its own way.  I don't
expect perfection, these are still useful programs, much faster than
ghostscript.

Pdfimage also has problems with some formats of pdf image.  When it fails,
I use ghostscript, which generally works.

> I recall you earlier saying that the output of pdftotext was less than
> desireable under Linux.  It seemed to me you were even thinking of
> pdftohtml as an alternative for this reason, thinking that perhaps it
> would display the output better.  Am I recalling correctly?  What is the
> final consensus on pdftotext: is its output acceptable, or does it leave
> some things to be desired?  Does "work(ing) perfectly" mean that the
> display issues you seemed to be having with it earlier are fixed?
> 
> Thanks, James
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