Re: (pdf,ps,dvi) -->> (rtf, doc) What's the best route?

From: Karsten M. Self (kmself_at_ix.netcom.com)
Date: 12/15/03

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    Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 14:14:00 -0800
To: Debian Users List <debian-user@lists.debian.org>

    on Mon, Dec 15, 2003 at 05:31:50AM -0500, Antonio Rodr (arodriguez31@cfl.rr.com) wrote:
    > I am trying to convert some pure text pdf file of a spanish text to
    > doc for a friend, (he needs to annotate it) but I can't find the rut.
    > I've tried several ways, but I am stucked either way at the same spot:
    >
    > 1. pstptext, open with abiword, save as doc.
    > 2. open pdf with xpdf, highlight text and middle button to open
    > abiword.
    >
    > Well, in both cases the problem is the existence of accented letters
    > and other non english characters in the text. All ideas are welcome
    > (except screw doc, I wish I could, but have to do it)

    PDF isn't particularly amenable to editing/copying. It's a presentation
    format, not a modification format.

    Your most likely options if you're limited to PDF sources are probably:

      - pdftotext -- strip the text out of the file, and modify this as
        desired.

      - Clipboard copy & paste from your PDF reader to your editor. May (I
        don't know) preserve special charactes better.

    Otherwise, the _preferred_ option is to get the original source of the
    document (prior to PDF) and generated the desired output format.

    Alternatively, Adobe's own PDF tools are rumored to have relatively good
    edit / extract support for working with many (but not all) PDFs.

    Whichever route you choose, there's likely a lot of manual overhead
    involved.

    Peace. 

    -- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com>        http://kmself.home.netcom.com/
 What Part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
   Spread the real scoop on Xenu and The Church of Scientology, link
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