Possibility of a pdf to text plugin?

[Derek Cornish]

I was very grateful for the new pdf plugin, which offers a quick way to peek into pdf files.

Would it also be possible to to design another type of pdf plugin that simply rendered the pdf file as text rather than an image - e.g., using pdftotxt as some other programs do (Wilbur; Search32; and Directory Opus)?

For some purposes this would have advantages, although I know there are drawbacks, too.

1. The process is very much quicker, especially on a slow machine like mine;

2. I'm often only interested in the content of a file, not on having the formatting rendered accurately.

3. It's often also important to be able to cut-and-paste easily from such files for research purposes.

Does any kind person know this might be achieved (other than by loading the Acrobat Reader or using Active-X, of course, as these are slow on older equipment, too)?

Derek

[norfie]

[Derek Cornish]

Thanks very much for your solution. I'll certainly try it.

The idea of using xpdf is really exciting. I hope it goes ahead. My hope is to be able to scroll down a whole list of different textfile formats in TC - say, doc, rtf, pdf, htm - and be able to see them all as simple text in quick view, cut-and-paste from all of them, and search them all, too. It's nearly there.

Yes, I am glad to see there has already been much discussion of this on the German-speaking forum.

Incidentally, I couldn't believe my luck in having found Total Commander. After leaving DOS, where I used Lotus Magellan, Laplink and Norton Commander, it has been hard to find a comparable Windows program, especially a file manager. But Total Commander is definitely it. I registered after about a day of playing with it.

All the best,

Derek