Re: [xml-dev] Structured from/within unstructured documents

• From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@...>
• To: Stephen Green <stephengreenubl@...>
• Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 14:31:31 -0500

Stephen Green wrote:
> What methods are there, these days, for extracting structured data from
> unstructured documents (such as PDF)?
>
> [!!! SNIP !!!]
>
> Is this all there is?
>   

Microsoft Word and Open Office both export to XML, and Antiword is a 
program that does a pretty good job of extracting Word files to DocBook.

For PDF, though, I don't know of any really good tools. The following 
page, from someone who has played with the problem, gives a summary of 
what's out there:

http://discerning.com/hacks/docutils/pdf2xml/readme.html

I'd love it if someone would tell me there's something actively 
maintained that does this job in the open source world. I don't know it yet.

Jonathan
Red Hat Enterprise MRG: http://www.redhat.com/mrg/