RE: Convert PDF to text -- MIDRANGE-L

Hi Vern,

Thank you for your responses.

PDFBox was suggested, a java solution.

I have downloaded the jar files, modified my classpath and woohoo I have a
text output from the PDF.

Interestingly, I needed to add the -sort=true command line option to get
usable text out of the PDF but this took less than an hour to install and
test.

Obviously, I have only tested with one pdf but the results are promising.

And for an experiment I passed the text to an AI API to return the
required information from the PDF text file in JSON and that worked very
nicely so now I have a PDF extracted to text and the text converted to
JSON providing only the requested fields.

Cheers
Don

Don Brown

Senior Consultant

[1]OneTeam IT Pty Ltd
P: 1300 088 400

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L <midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Vern
Hamberg via MIDRANGE-L
Sent: Tuesday, 17 June 2025 8:59 AM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Vern Hamberg <vhamberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Convert PDF to text

Hi Don

Probably I was the one who said Poppler will not install with yum - I
looked at the list of installed and available packages in Open Source
Package Management (OSPM) when connected with a 7.6 machine - Poppler does
not seem to be there, unless it uses a different name.

Someone else mentioned Ghostscript, as did I - it can do some of what you
need, I believe. We used it to generate PCL from PDF files, it did fine,
we didn't have any weird PDF-ish stuff. That person mentioned another
tool, I can't say if it's in the OSPM.

Jack Woehr mentioned pypdf - some Python component, I assume - I did not
see it listed separately in OSPM, maybe it's part of another python
package.

*Regards*

*Vern Hamberg*

IBM Champion 2025 <cid:part1.cW8DDgxI.raSwjvav@centurylink.net> CAAC
(COMMON Americas Advisory Council) IBM Influencer 2023

On 6/16/2025 4:26 PM, Don Brown via MIDRANGE-L wrote:
> Thanks Patrik,
>
> I thought I read somewhere that the Poppler tools would not install with
> yum on IBMi ?
>
> Thanks for the link, I will give it a go.
>
> Have you, or anyone installed and used these tools ?
>
> Thanks
> Don
>
> Â
>
> Don Brown
>
> Senior Consultant
> Â
> [1]OneTeam IT Pty Ltd
> P: 1300 088 400
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: MIDRANGE-L<midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
> Patrik Schindler
> Sent: Monday, 16 June 2025 6:38 PM
> To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion<midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Convert PDF to text
>
> Hello Don,
>
> Am 16.06.2025 um 09:12 schrieb Don Brown via MIDRANGE-L
> <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> > 1. Does anyone have a recommended solution to achieve converting a pdf
> to text. I am after a php or native rpg ish solution. Not python please.
>
> I'd use the pdftotext command from the poppler-utils package in PASE. I
> assume the poppler-utils package is available for installation via yum.
>
> [2][2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppler_(software)
>
> :wq! PoC
>
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