PDF Files - Is there a way to read them in LiveCode?

[Jonathan Scott]

	Thanks for the response.  I should have seen that.

> Message: 28
> Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 14:11:47 +0800
> From: Kay C Lan <lan.kc.macmail at gmail.com>
> To: How to use LiveCode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>
> Subject: Re: PDF Files - Is there a way to read them in LiveCode?
> Message-ID:
> 	<CA+uh5kiBsZ8=AgzifTvyY4Ej1HLoPYBSudsUv_A_LUkq4MnmFQ at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> OCR is the last thing you want to use. Far too many errors.
> 
> If you are on Mac you can use Applescript to open, Select All and Copy
> and this will result in 100% of the text being available, no OCR
> errors. Unfortunately, depending on your document the output might not
> exactly match the input. This will be particularly true pages pages
> containing multi-column data or there are tables of data. It's easy
> enough to test, open the pdf in question, Select All, Copy and then
> Paste into TextEdit. You'll be left with 3 possibilities:
> 
> 1) You are extremely lucky and your pdfs are very basic and the text
> output is a 100% match. LC solution very easy.
> 2) 90% of the document is fine but a couple of tables don't match.
> Your pdfs are standardised and these tables (or multi columns) appear
> in the same place. Will be possible to parse the data and use LC to
> correct the formatting. Development time will be considerably longer.
> 3) Your pdfs are random and there are tables and multi columns all
> over the place resulting in output that is anywhere between 1% to 10%
> accurate. Forget it, it will be almost impossible to reconstruct the
> jumble of text back to the original layout.
> 
> HTH
> 
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 4:25 AM, Jonathan Scott <songe at agate.plala.or.jp> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>        I have some PDF files that I'd like to create a search stack for.  I looked on the net and found a way to display them in LiveCode, but is there actually a way to read the OCR text that's in each file?  If not, there should be.
>>        Thanks in advance.