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This pdf looks like a scanned book but I can highlight and copy text from it? What exactly is going on here? Does Chrome pdf viewer have built-in OCR?
by dokem 8y ago
This pdf looks like a scanned book but I can highlight and copy text from it? What exactly is going on here? Does Chrome pdf viewer have built-in OCR?
- fulafel 8y agoPDF has long had this feature, most/all readers support it. There is a hidden textual representation included along with the scanned shown content.
- dokem 8y agoInteresting, why not just replace the text then? Where can I find more info about this? I was actually trying to find a good source of info about PDF's recently and couldn't really find much.
- romwell 8y ago>Interesting, why not just replace the text then? Why would one do that? It's destructive. A typeset book is much more than a text file. Not to mention OCR is not perfect, especially when math / special symbols are involved.
- fulafel 8y agoReplacing the typeset text with any reasonable fidelity seems like a much harder problem than reproducing the scan and providing the ocr'ed text content. It might still be a good idea to do, maybe some software does this. I don't have any references, sorry.