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My go-to for this is to screenshot and use the built-in text extraction in the screenshot tool (I'm on a mac), then pass on that text data to whatever processin
by anitil 4mo ago
My go-to for this is to screenshot and use the built-in text extraction in the screenshot tool (I'm on a mac), then pass on that text data to whatever processing. It's a pretty good tool so long as the PDF is in OK shape (I've had errors in scanned images).
- nradov 4mo agoIt's so horrible that in 2026 people are still publishing important data and specifications in a format like PDF that's difficult for LLMs to consume. We need to drag them kicking and screaming to HTML or Markdown. Heck, even Microsoft Word DOCX is superior for reliable parsing and content extraction.
- dannyw 4mo agoGood luck, getting rid of PDFs is going to be as hard as migrating from JPEG everywhere.
- sureglymop 3mo agoI disagree. There's a reason why PDFs are used and it's related to long term archival. They will probably still be able to be opened years later and look the same. By all means the format has many flaws and isn't very machine readable but it's good at that one thing.