Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout • Hacker News Board

Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout

#1

Post by jlink » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 12:42 AM UTC

Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout
github.com

Re: Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout

#2

Post by jlink » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 12:53 AM UTC

who would be interested by an online website doing the job?

Re: Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout

#3

Post by marak830 » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 1:42 AM UTC

Ahh this will be useful for my kitchen receipts. Thanks. Now I just need to roll that with an auto translator too.(I guess I have my day off project now :-) )

Re: Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout

#4

Post by akouri » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 2:05 AM UTC

jlink wrote: post #2

who would be interested by an online website doing the job?

I bet most would, but privacy would be a big concern for me at least. script is optimal format for me

Re: Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout

#5

Post by rodw » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 2:15 AM UTC

jlink wrote: post #2

who would be interested by an online website doing the job?

For what it's worth, here's a service that does that https://documentalchemy.com/demo/pdf2txt (and more: https://documentalchemy.com/demo)

Re: Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout

#6

Post by marak830 » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 2:18 AM UTC

akouri wrote: post #4

jlink wrote: post #2

who would be interested by an online website doing the job?

I bet most would, but privacy would be a big concern for me at least. script is optimal format for me

Privacy is the reason I'd prefer to do this in house.

Re: Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout

#7

Post by tyingq » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 2:31 AM UTC

Curious if this works better than the pdftotext utility that comes in the Debian poppler-utils package.

That has a --layout option that works really well sometimes and really terrible other times. Doesn't seem to be related to document complexity either.

Re: Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout

#8

Post by a3n » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 2:50 AM UTC

marak830 wrote: post #6

akouri wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet most would, but privacy would be a big concern for me at least. script is optimal format for me

Privacy is the reason I'd prefer to do this in house.

Not to mention corporate privacy/IP.

Re: Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout

#9

Post by spcrngr » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 2:57 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #7

Curious if this works better than the pdftotext utility that comes in the Debian poppler-utils package. That has a --layout option that works really well sometimes and really terrible other times. Doesn't seem to be related to document complexity either.

It probably works reasonably well with the documents it has been tested with. It's a very hard problem to crack if you ask me. (edit: word choice)

Re: Show HN: PDFLayoutTextStripper – Converts PDF to text while keeping the layout

#10

Post by rsync » Sat, Feb 25, 2017, 3:02 AM UTC

This is important for (al)pine users ... when reading email in a terminal it is very useful to be able to open a PDF attachment as text and view it in the (terminal) mailtool ...

Yes, (al)pine is my mailtool in 2017.