PDF Text Extraction Shootout: `pdftotext` vs. The Rest

by pdfkungfoo 9 years ago

macOS ◆ xterm-256color ◆ bash 4449 views

This ASCiinema cast features a competition in PDF processing. See how different PDF tools score when it comes to extract a text snippet containing source code from a specific page!

(The cast may at certain spots be progressing too fast for you to follow closely. Please make use of the Pause button at the lower left corner if you need more time to read+understand the details of the screen contents. You can also scroll back if needed.)

The combatants are:

Apple Mac OS X Preview.app
Adobe Reader XI
Acrobat Professional XI
Evince (Poppler-based)
Chrome Web Browser with native, built-in PDF renderer PDFium
Chrome Web Browser with external PDF renderer PDF.js
Poppler-based Command Line Tool pdftotext

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You can download this recording in asciicast v1 format, as a .json file.

Download

Replay in terminal

You can replay the downloaded recording in your terminal using the asciinema play command:

asciinema play 22633.json

If you don't have asciinema CLI installed then see installation instructions.

Use with stand-alone player on your website

Download asciinema player from the releases page (you only need .js and .css file), then use it like this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="asciinema-player.css" />
</head>
<body>
  <div id="player"></div>
  <script src="asciinema-player.min.js"></script>
  <script>
    AsciinemaPlayer.create(
      '/assets/22633.json',
      document.getElementById('player'),
      { cols: 108, rows: 44 }
    );
  </script>
</body>
</html>

See asciinema player quick-start guide for full usage instructions.

While this site doesn't provide GIF conversion at the moment, you can still do it yourself with the help of asciinema GIF generator utility - agg.

Once you have it installed, generate a GIF with the following command:

agg https://asciinema.org/a/22633 demo.gif

Or, if you already downloaded the recording file:

agg demo.cast demo.gif

Check agg --help for all available options. You can change font family and size, select color theme, adjust speed and more.

See agg manual for full usage instructions.