[tex-live] apparent bug in detex

[cfrees at imapmail.org]

On Wed 3rd Nov, 2010 at 02:09, Reinhard Kotucha seems to have written:

> On 3 November 2010 cfrees at imapmail.org wrote:
>
> > On Tue 2nd Nov, 2010 at 20:24, Victor Ivrii seems to have written:
> >
> > > On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 8:04 PM,  <cfrees at imapmail.org> wrote:
> > >> On Mon 1st Nov, 2010 at 22:16, Karl Berry seems to have written:
> > >>
> > >>>   pdftotext is already part of TeX Live.
> > >>>
> > >>> For Windows only.   (As with many other generic tools.)
> > >>
> > >> I do have pdftotext (though not from TeX Live, obviously) but whenever
> > >> I've tried to use it it has taken simply forever to produce any output
> > >> even for quite small documents. I would not like to try this method on
> > >> a paper of even 3,000 words - never mind 8,000 or more.
> > >>
> > >> - cfr
> > >>
> > >>>   BTW, pdftotext -layout yields amazingly good results.
> > >>>
> > >>> Yes :).
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >
> > >
> > > On my intel macs (including 4 y.o. underpowered MacBookPro) works
> > > almost momentarily
> >
> > This would likely still be faster than a G4 (should be, anyway) but
> > when I say "slow" I mean really, really slow -
> > go off for coffee, get distracted and watch a movie, make dinner and
> > finally remember you left the computer doing something and pdftotext
> > likely still hasn't finished. Usually, I just lost patience and aborted
> > it. I think it did sometimes finish and seemed to extract the text OK
> > but it would usually be quicker to open the file and type out the words
> > into an editor, to be honest. And I never tried running it on an even
> > small-medium sized pdf. Maybe a few paragraphs at most.
>
> Are the programs pdffonts and pdfinfo also slow?

Yes. It is simply easier to find the information in some other way.
Unless one does not mind waiting hours, perhaps. All three programmes
are essentially unusable for all practical purposes.

- Clea

> Regards,
>  Reinhard
>
>