xml-dev - Re: Ps --> xml (or html)

["Rick Jelliffe" <ricko@allette.com.au>]

 >> Anyone know of a PS to xml (or html) converter?

The shareware utility "Magellen" converts PDF to HTML.

It makes every word into a span element. Then it makes a big
stylesheet to position every word on the canvas individually by X and Y
coodinate. If a word has multiple fonts, it will be split into separate
words.

If you text is simple lines, you can easily write a program to figure
out how words will fit into lines, and then you can use the other style
information to add style attributes and guess the best element names.
Xerox has some product which does something like this at the inXight
site.

However, it all becomes very tricky if there is tables or graphs or
equations or multiple columns or runarounds or initial large caps on
paragraphs or sidebars etc etc.  For that kind of text, you may find it
easier to use OCR on a printout or to rekey the data; if you are not
using the page for republishing, but merely want to index it or add
metadata, then you could use Acrobat and keep it in PDF for better or
worse.

But don't believe marketing claims that you can magically go from
unmarked-up legacy publications to usefully marked-up XML; the best you
can expect is to go to some nice HTML. If some product claims more, be
forgiving in your expectations!

Rick Jelliffe


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