XPDF Documentation

[Bob Sneidar]

I think the only approach now is to run the document through an OCR application, so that the resulting text will simply be a part of the text layer. It makes me wonder if there is a way to make an OCR external...

Bob S


> On Mar 21, 2025, at 8:05 AM, Bob Sneidar <bobsneidar at iotecdigital.com> wrote:
> 
> Thanks Paul, that is very helpful. You are correct of course, I cannot select the form data. Very unfortunate. I already have a request in to see if XPDF can be made to do so. I seem to remember however that XPDF was done by another developer and cannot be modified. I could be mistaken though. How unfortunate, and short sighted though. The one thing someone would want from a form is not the form but the data it contained. 
> 
> Bob S
> 
> 
>> On Mar 21, 2025, at 6:56 AM, Paul Dupuis via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>> 
>> To put XPDF in selection more, use
>> 
>> XPDFViewer_ChooseMouseMode "Document1",pMode -- "browse", "selection", "image"
>> 
>> To select a range of text on (or across) page(s), use
>> 
>> XPDFViewer_Select "Document1",item 1 of tPDFPageRef,item 2 of tPDFPageRef,item 3 of tPDFPageRef,item 4 of tPDFPageRef
>> 
>> See the documentation for what the 4 items are above, but it's basically startPageNum, startCharPositionNum, endPageNum, endCharPositionNum
>> 
>> However, XPDF was not designed to get the values of form fields. Unless something was added by Monte in the intervening years since Researchware turned the XPDF external over to Livecode, I don't think there is a way to get form data.
>> 
>> In any case, Monte at livecode is the definitive expert who could answer this questions for the XPDF external and the PDF Widget (if they added forms capability to that newer effort).
>> 
>>