[Techtalk] PDF to txt

[Alvin Goats]

> I been trying to convert PDF file to plaintext.
> 
> $pdf2ps filename.pdf output.ps
> $ps2ascii filename.ps output.txt
> Output: txt file.
> 
> But the problem is there's nothing inside the file. It's all garbage like 
> lots of @@@@. 
> 


Some of the pdf's are graphics: scans of text and saved as pdf. Lot's of
the early US Mil-Specs in Acrobat format are that way. The kind of
output you are getting sounds like a graphic image.


There is NO way to convert these directly to text. As for outputing to a
graphic and using an OCR, I've never been successful doing so. Most use
strange graphic formats with incompatable pixel resolution. 

=================

Where you can, you might also consider trying the command:

ps2ascii filename.pdf output.txt

Later versions of ghostscript will take either ps or pdf and convert to
ascii, saving you a step.

Alvin