Sorry, I had been a bit short-thought on that remark why the
PDF-to-text thing should need a coprocessor.
Where I was aiming at was: the utility - or even need, as things are -
for something like that would be precisely for people who would not have
the (machine or whatever) ressources to get a PDF-pixel-show onscreen.
These would be PCs used in text-mode only, or predominantly, and often
"old" such; and without copro.
So this hasn't a *causal* relationship with DOS. But to quite some
degree a coincidental such.
And the consideration I had with this remark (and shich I maintain)
regards the need fo a "simple", SurPC-appropriate utility to access
those dang PDF "documents". Somewhere along the line of a Lynx or, if
you want, the "VIEW" (for M$.docs) utility. There I was just a bit
disappointed when XPDF refused to work without copro.
Now take this newest revelation - I still have to test if it's true -,
about the "grab-and-paste" facility of the latest PDF-Reader version.
First: *If* it works, then at what price ?
It's *not* "free": neither to download those Megabytes (you pay, one way
or the other), nor to use the thing - go and buy the latest machine, with
proprietary software to run *that* one, in order to be able to do so.
And what for ? In order to get access to a "public" (British, German,
you name it) govt. document.
(You're supposed "to know the law". There are already a number of
examples where the only access to public law texts is conditional to the
use of the proprietary utility of Adobe.)
There's this pertinent example from Brecht's "Refugee Talks", where the
Swiss mountains, the Swiss lakes all are free, only you have to pay the
dang hotel stay to partake of the splendour.
Second: Dale's example (which showed a 3 per cent "payload" of content
from a PDF "document") is not that extreme; I have sampled quite a
number of *sheer* text-content PDFs where the payload is less than ten
per cent. One may be allowed to ask about the "significance" (of
non-textual elements) in the 90+ per cent of volume thus to be
transported (at above mentioned prices), and the often-conjured
"efficiency" of IT, to deliver such "significant information".
Third, and BTW: I wonder if it works to simply grab/copy out - PDF, in
its own/Adobe's pretention, is supposed to be unchangeable (and thus
copy-, or manipulation-proof). So if they themselves(*) install a
means to get the real stuff out of their bloated armour then they really
take evryone for a cynical ride, *and* succeed marvellously in shooting
in their own feet at the same time.
(*) Whoever tried Adobe's own and "free" PDF-to-text conversion
"service" via their "free" server knows about the resulting mess and the
hepless work needed to make it legible.
// Heimo Claasen // <hammer at revobild dot net> // Brussels 2001-01-31
The WebPlace of ReRead - and much to read ==> http://www.revobild.net
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