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PDF Textorizer is a GUI application to interactively extract text from multi-column PDFs, licensed under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (or later), written in Python.
PDF Textorizer loads PDF files and displays them, page by page. It automatically detects columns of text in a PDF with a multi-column layout and marks these regions on the currently displayed page.
The user can click on a region to select it. It can then be modified: the user can move it across the page, change its size, move it up and down in the order of regions and even delete it. Additionally, the user can add new regions by drawing them over the current page. And to save the current progress, the whole set of regions in PDF file can be saved into a JSON file and loaded back in later.
Once the user is happy with the current setup, the text found in the regions can be grabbed and exported, in order. As a quick preview, only the current page can be either saved into a file or printed to standard out, and for the final pass, the whole PDF can be converted.
PDFs with complex layouts, especially multiple columns, are notoriously difficult to copy text from. Often, copying grabs text from neighbouring columns and similar issues.
All that and worse can be found in tabletop roleplaying PDFs, with their uber-complex layouts that include text flowing around images and styled statblocks. If you want to, for example, copy flavour text for ease of translation or having it readily available during a session, those issue make that pretty annoying.
PyMuPDF has example code to detect columns, and while the results are promising, they're not perfect. You really want to fix the remaining issues before grabbing the text. And that's best done interactively in a GUI. Hence, PDF Textorizer.
PDF Textorizer offers global keyboard shortcuts for all the operations in the main menu.
| Shortcut | Command | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Ctrl+O | Open PDF | Open a new PDF file |
| Ctrl+W | Close PDF | Close the currently opened PDF file |
| Ctrl+Shift+O | Load Regions | Load a previously saved regions file |
| Ctrl+Shift+S | Save Regions As... | Save the current regions into a new file |
| Ctrl+S | Save Regions | Save the current regions to the current regions file |
| Ctrl+P | Convert Page to Text | Convert all regions of the current page to text and print it to stdout |
| Ctrl+T | Save Page to Text | Convert all regions of the current page to text and write it into a file |
| Ctrl+Shift-T | Save All Pages to Text | Convert all regions of all pages to text and write it into a file |
| Ctrl+Q | Quit | Quit PDF Textorizer |
| Shift+F1 | About PDF Textorizer | Show an about box |
In addition to the global keyboard shortcuts advertised in the main menu, PDF Textorizer supports a set of keyboard shortcuts for modifying regions.
NOTE: These shortcuts only work when the page view has the focus, by, for example, clicking on it first!
| Key Combination | Command |
|---|---|
| K | Move to the first page in the PDF |
| L | Move to the previous page in the PDF |
| J | Move to the next page in the PDF |
| H | Move to the last in the PDF |
| Shift+K | Select the first region on the page |
| Shift+L | Select the previous region on the page |
| Shift+J | Select the next region on the page |
| Shift+H | Select the last on the region |
| Left | Move the selected region left |
| Right | Move the selected region right |
| Up | Move the selected region up |
| Down | Move the selected region down |
| Shift+Left | Grow the selected region horizontally |
| Shift+Right | Shrink the selected region horizontally |
| Shift+Up | Grow the selected region vertically |
| Shift+Down | Shrink the selected region vertically |
| Page Up | Move the selected region "up" in the stack |
| Page Down | Move the selected region "down" in the stack |
| Insert | Add a new region |
| Delete | Remove the selected region |
| R | Redraw the selected region |
To install PDF Textorizer system-wide, use
pip install .
To install PDF Textorizer for the current user only, use
pip install --user .
To install PDF Textorizer in a virtualenv, use
pip -m venv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install .
Optionally, the included Makefile can be leveraged to install and run PDF Textorizer from a virtualenv. Please read the Makefile itself to understand what it can do.
A typical example would be:
make run
This would install PDF Textorizer into a virtualenv and run it.
A more elaborate example:
PYTHON=python3 make run arg="-h"
This would install PDF Textorizer into a virtualenv and run using "python3" as the Python environment, with the command line parameter "-h" (thus showing the help text).
usage: pdftextorizer [-h] [-v] [-p PAGE] [pdf_file] [regions_file]
pdftextorizer -- Interactively extract text from multi-column PDFs
positional arguments:
pdf_file PDF file to open
regions_file Regions file to load
options:
-h, --help Show this help message and exit
-v, --version Print the version and exit
PDF arguments:
-p PAGE, --page PAGE Open the PDF file directly on this page