[lit-ideas] Re: Lost&Found in Translation
- From: Chris Bruce <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2004 00:07:38 +0200
Re:
> Any idea how to translate a .pdf to .txt without paying a fortune?
>
Perhaps the info in this Q&A is from the Macworld Tips web-site will
help:
I'd like to extract text from a PDF file and edit it. Can I?
-- Neil Barker, Altadena, California
You have a number of options. The least-expensive (meaning free) way is
to open the PDF file in Adobe Acrobat Reader
(www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/ readstep.html), choose the Text tool,
select the text you want to change, and copy and paste it into a text
editor for editing. The disadvantages of this method are that you can
copy only text (no graphics) and that you'll lose most of the text's
formatting when you paste it into the text editor. Of course, you can't
use this method at all on files that have been secured to prevent
copying.
If you own the full version of Acrobat and the document hasn't been
security protected, you can export text by choosing the Save As command
from Acrobat's File menu and selecting Rich Text Format from the Format
pop-up menu. The resulting RTF file will retain more of its formatting
than a file created with the copy-and-paste method, and it will open in
applications such as Mac OS X's TextEdit and Microsoft Word.
Another way to save unsecured PDF files in RTF is Metaobject's $20
TextLightning (www.metaobject.com). As with Acrobat, you can save PDF
files as RTF files and retain much of the original document's
formatting but not its graphics.
Finally, optical character recognition (OCR) apps such as ScanSoft's
$500 OmniPage Pro X (mmmh; June 2002; 800/654-1187, www.scansoft.com)
can import PDF files (even if they've been security protected),
recognize the text and graphics they contain, and export those files as
editable RTF files. OCR requires that you do a fair bit of fiddling
before it correctly recognizes text in complex documents, but it has
the advantage of allowing you to save graphics and text.
Chris Bruce
Kiel, Germany
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