# PDF to text covertor?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-to-text-covertor/145539>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [August 11, 2008, 11:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-to-text-covertor/145539 "2008-08-11T11:44:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![martin\_mercy2001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@martin\_mercy2001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/martin_mercy2001)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2008, 11:44am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-to-text-covertor/145539/1 "2008-08-11T11:44:11Z")

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Dear all,

Could anyone explain how to do convert PDF to text format.

Thanks in advance

Regards,  
Jose Martin

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![martin\_mercy2001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@martin\_mercy2001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/martin_mercy2001)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2008, 12:06pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-to-text-covertor/145539/2 "2008-08-11T12:06:53Z")

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-------- Original-Nachricht --------

> Datum: Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:41:51 +0900  
> Von: dare ruby [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
> An: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid  
> Betreff: PDF to text covertor?

> Dear all,
> 
> Could anyone explain how to do convert PDF to text format.
> 
> Thanks in advance
> 
> ## Regards, Jose Martin
> 
> Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/).

Dear Jose,

it depends on whether your PDF actually contains text or just images  
that a human can recognize as  
text.  
In the first case, you can try using tools like pdftotext  
([pdftotext - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdftotext)), on Linux and  
Mac, at least. On Windows, there are also some pdf viewers where you can  
say , “Save as text” .

In the second case, you’ll have to use an OCR (optical character  
recognition) software. There are some  
good commercial ones available. I’ve liked ABBYY’s Finereader (on  
Windows).

Best regards,

Axel

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![martin\_mercy2001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@martin\_mercy2001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/martin_mercy2001)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2008, 1:11pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-to-text-covertor/145539/3 "2008-08-11T13:11:20Z")

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Hi,

In [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
“PDF to text covertor?” on Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:41:51 +0900,  
dare ruby [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Could anyone explain how to do convert PDF to text format.

It seems that Ruby/Poppler(\*1), the Ruby bindings of  
Poppler(\*2), is what you’re looking for.  
[Ruby-GNOME 2 download | SourceForge.net](http://ruby-gnome2.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ruby-gnome2/ruby-gnome2/trunk/poppler/sample/pdf2text.rb?view=markup)

(\*1) [http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/hiki.cgi?Ruby%2FPoppler](http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/hiki.cgi?Ruby%2FPoppler)  
(\*2) [http://poppler.freedesktop.org/](http://poppler.freedesktop.org/)

pdftotext is a bundled application in Poppler.

Thanks,

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![martin\_mercy2001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@martin\_mercy2001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/martin_mercy2001)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 8:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-to-text-covertor/145539/4 "2008-08-19T08:14:19Z")

</div>

I have some of the study materials as PDF documents. I need to parse the  
PDF to any text format like microsoft word or text pad in windows OS. I  
need to do parsing using a ruby program. Could any one suggesst on this?

Thanks in advance

Regards,  
Jose Martin

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![martin\_mercy2001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@martin\_mercy2001](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/martin_mercy2001)\
**Post date:** [August 19, 2008, 7:43pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/pdf-to-text-covertor/145539/5 "2008-08-19T19:43:29Z")

</div>

On Mon, Aug 18, 2008 at 11:10 PM, dare ruby [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)  
wrote:

> I have some of the study materials as PDF documents. I need to parse the  
> PDF to any text format like microsoft word or text pad in windows OS. I  
> need to do parsing using a ruby program. Could any one suggesst on this?

Your best bet is a ruby script that calls out to xpdf to do the actual  
pdf-\>text conversion, then parses the text. There’s a windows port of  
the xpdf command line utilities.

> **[Xpdf](https://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/xpdf.htm)**
>
> Xpdf: utilities for PDF documents

[http://www.perlmonks.org/?node\_id=298041](http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=298041)  
[http://www.kapustabrothers.com/2008/01/20/indexing-pdf-documents-with-zend\_search\_lucene/](http://www.kapustabrothers.com/2008/01/20/indexing-pdf-documents-with-zend_search_lucene/)

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