Re: PDF generated by LaTeX
- From: "black ares" <matematicianu2003@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 6 Nov 2010 16:09:31 +0200
use a good ocr program, like abbyy fine reader.
----- Original Message -----
From: "QuentinC" <webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2010 4:10 PM
Subject: PDF generated by LaTeX
Hello everybody,
I know this is not really programming, but since this list is followed by
blinds, programmers and possibly students (perhaps all in the same time),
I think that somebody may ahve the ultimate solution or at least some
tricks.
Many of my professors at my school, many documents on the web, and now
even more and more electronic books, use LaTeX to generate beautiful PDF
documents. Infortunately, I didn't found any good solution how to read
them comfortably.
First of all, I hate Adobe Reader program because it's very very slow,
buggy and not fine with jaws
I have the habit to always convert PDF opened in it into text by the adoc
Adobe Reader file menu command, so that the second time I want to read my
document, I just have a text file which is much smaller, faster, find
command is properly working, my computer doesn't take minutes to respond,
etc. ADobe reader is really not a good program if you are not reading a
fully accessible PDF (and I don't saw often really accessibles PDFs, in
fact only one from a web accessibility certification company from france)
All not so complicated PDFs even if not accessible in WCAG sens are
normally not so badly converted to text. However, it does not work for PDF
generated by LaTeX.
Both in Adobe reader and in the converted text file, reading is horrible.
There is only one or two words by line, many words are often broken in the
middle, there are page numbers, code snippets and math formulas in the
middle of plain text or not where they should be, some sentances are mixed
up, etc. The worst is with beamer slides, where letters are grouped in two
or three but are completely mixed up and down without forming any really
readable word.
I also tried the pdf2txt program available on one of the mailing-list
grabag sites. IT's is a little better, but there is still broken words,
headings aren't recognizeables and are even not in a line on their own,
and there are many things not at their place.
Does anyone has tricks to read PDF generated by LaTeX better ? To convert
them into comfortably readable text ? Or even better, convert them into a
comfortable readable format which keep text semantics, i.e. possibility to
navigate through headings, links, etc.
Bonus question which can turn into debat if you wish to : why a
strong-semantic oriented format like LaTeX is unable to make accessible
PDFs containing the same semantic ? I think it really should, because
basicly LaTeX is like HTML or XML minus syntax differences, but semantic
basics are identical. Does adobe ahve to be blamed for
blocking/protecting/preventing something in that area ?
Thank you for your answers and have a nice week-end.
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