From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Nov 4 01:55:20 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8F3A016A421 for ; Sun, 4 Nov 2007 01:55:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kline@tao.thought.org) Received: from tao.thought.org (dsl231-043-140.sea1.dsl.speakeasy.net [216.231.43.140]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2710E13C4A6 for ; Sun, 4 Nov 2007 01:55:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kline@tao.thought.org) Received: from tao.thought.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by tao.thought.org (8.13.8/8.13.1) with ESMTP id lA41sscA068834; Sat, 3 Nov 2007 17:54:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kline@tao.thought.org) Received: (from kline@localhost) by tao.thought.org (8.13.8/8.13.1/Submit) id lA41ssRU068833; Sat, 3 Nov 2007 17:54:54 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from kline) Date: Sat, 3 Nov 2007 17:54:53 -0800 From: Gary Kline To: cpghost Message-ID: <20071104015453.GA64050@thought.org> References: <20071104003851.GA98655@thought.org> <20071104023914.3fabd2e7@epia-2.farid-hajji.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20071104023914.3fabd2e7@epia-2.farid-hajji.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i X-Organization: Thought Unlimited. Public service Unix since 1986. X-Of_Interest: With 21 of service to the Unix community. Cc: Gary Kline , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: pdf edit again. X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 04 Nov 2007 01:55:20 -0000 On Sun, Nov 04, 2007 at 02:39:14AM +0100, cpghost wrote: > On Sat, 3 Nov 2007 16:38:55 -0800 > Gary Kline wrote: > > > A couple weeks ago I skimmed thru the postings on editing PDF > > files. Wasn't entirely clear what the answer it because I > > never thought I would need to edit a GUI file. I just found a book > > from 1883 in pdf format. I would like a text/ASCII/ISO_8859-1 > > version. Tried pfdtotext, but it doesn't work. Nutshell: is > > there something I can use to edit/look-at this book and get > > rid of whateveriit is that's causing pdftotext to fail. (sorry for > > the grammar.... ) > > Old books in PDF are normally scanned bitmaps. There are no characters > or whatever therein; just pixels (EPS files). If you want to convert > that to ASCII, you'd need to extract the EPS files (use something like > pdfimages from the xpdf port), turn them into some bitmap format, and > run some kind of OCR software on that. It's a slow, unreliable, > error-prone and painful process though. > > Good luck! "Arrrgh" (Charlie Brown). If it's that tortured, I'll forget it; thanks for the clue. Pretty sure this *was* just phot'd and scanned in. (Much be how amazon.com has thir zillions of boooks online. OCR'ing is serious work; I know that first hand.) gary > > -cpghost. > > -- > Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org