Date:         Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:37:12 -0400
Reply-To:     Paul St Louis <pstloui@DOT.STATE.TX.US>
Sender:       "SAS(r) Discussion" <SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From:         Paul St Louis <pstloui@DOT.STATE.TX.US>
Subject:      Re: GhostScript conversion of PDF

You can try one of the precompiled binaries from XPDF. For windows, I
downloaded and installed PDFtoTEXt utility from xpdf-3.02pl1-win32.zip.

http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/download.html

PDFtoText. Use -layout switch to 'perserve original layout'. You can view a
small help file in a CMD window by typing PDFtoTEXT -help in the directory
where you installed the application. Using this method produces a space
deliminated file. Quality of output is not 100% correct. Requires verifying
your data. 6'x and 8'x, 1's and I's can get mixed up, as an example.

I forget which programmers first gave me the tip on to this free software,
but it was here on the 'L'. Good luck.

On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:13:03 -0400, Kevin Viel <citam.sasl@GMAIL.COM> wrote:

>I have a number of PDF files of moderate size from a report.  I create a
>text file using the "Save as Text" in Adobe Reader.  It did not preserve
>columns.  The unfortunate layout of one file is tabular, with three fields
>per column.  If a value is missing, after the conversion, I am stuck with a
>shift, so that I do not know to what variable a value goes.
>
>Would the use of PDF2ASCII in GhostScript preserve the columnar nature of
>these data?
>
>Thanks,
>
>Kevin
>
>PS Adobe is lauded, but locking up data from computers seems to be very,
>very short-sighted....