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Ask HN: Best way to convert PDFs to other file formats?
Some types of PDFs have always been a challenge to convert to other file formats like Word or plain text. I've had many go from perfectly formatted PDFs to useless text when converted.
Has anyone found a good converter? In the age of AI, you would think that there would be a foolproof way to do it.
- sarcasmatwork 3y agocalibre? (https://calibre-ebook.com https://calibre-ebook.com) You can convert various types of ebooks.
- bluehorseray 3y agopdftotext in python works pretty well: import pdftotext import sys with open("test.pdf", "rb") as f: pdf = pdftotext.PDF(f,physical=True) for page in pdf: print(page)
- simonblack 3y agoAs an extra bit of help, use the '-layout' option to give you a formatted text document that's laid out the same way as the original .pdf document: pdftotext -layout my_file.pdf will produce 'my_file.txt', Note also that the .pdf must contain TEXT as such. An IMAGE of text will not work as expected with 'pdftotext'.