[Hidden-tech] Converting PDFs to Word?

[Shawn Fumo]

As an FYI, from my understanding the problem with pdf conversion is
that it isn't a normal document format. Unlike HTML, it isn't bunches
of text with some formatting applied. Instead, each character is
treated like a separate entity. So it'll store a letter "a" at a
particular pixel location, an "x" at some location, etc. They may not
even be stored in the same order they're displayed in the resulting
document. So any program that extracts text from a PDF basically has
to act like an OCR program to try to reconstruct the document.

There's a variety of programs out there for extracting text/converting
from pdfs, both open source and commercial. One of the commercial ones
is from a local company Snowtide Informatics.

I'd agree with many of the responders that if there's some way of
getting at the text and images before it's actually made into a pdf,
that'd probably be the easiest way to go.

Shawn



> Hi H-Ters,
> I'm editor at 2 quarterly business magazines. We publish in print and online.
> (Yes, I'm a H-T member, since the beginning, and live here in the Happy Valley.)
> We're looking for the simplest, most automated (if possible) way to convert the final PDF files we send our printer into MS-Word so our webmaster can post the upcoming issue online ASAP. Our Art director is doing it manually now, not the best use of her time. Here's what our webmaster wrote:
> "I need articles in MS Word, plus I need a PDF copy of the magazine so that we can use it as a guide when posting the articles, as well as extract the images from the PDFs for use in the online articles. We will not pull content from the PDF copy as Acrobat does nasty things to text when you pull it out of a PDF. It's a nightmare to work with PDF-extracted text."
> Questions:
> 1) Any help with converting PDFs to Word?
> 2) Is there a better way to do this?
> Thanks for any ideas,
> Eddy
> Eddy Goldberg, Managing Editor
> Franchise Update Media Group
> 413-256-6616
> eddyg at franchiseupdatemedia.com
> www.franchiseupdatemedia.com