Python, Perl & PDF files

[davidb at mcs.st-and.ac.uk]

Robin Becker wrote:
> rbt wrote:
> ......
> >
> > I just want to read PDF files in a portable way (windows, linux,
mac)
> > from within Python.
> >
> ......
>
> I suppose you mean extract PDF pages and do something with them.
> http://www.reportlab.com does have a tool that handles that in
> Python.
> It's not free though.

I imagine that you pay for a reasonable level of support.

> There are indeed a number of perl modules which do that and other
> modules which allow you to overprint etc etc.
>
> You can always hand translate one of the extract perl modules. They
> don't seem that hard. Alternatively put a good case to
> andy at reportlab.com.

Before embarking on that route, it might be worth looking at this page:

  http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.text.pdf/PDF_converters.html

There's a link to a (surprisingly recent) snapshot of my own package,
that can be used to read some PDF files, and another highly
recommended module. In the interests of balance, if not completeness,
I should also mention PDF Playground which has better support for
reading and writing PDF files:

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfplayground/

Maybe this should also be listed on the above resources page. Cameron?
Are you reading this? ;-)

David