On Tue, 26 Nov 1996, John E. Nelson wrote:

> without images, and table and non-table versions.  The suggestion that PDF
> documents be provided as ASCII text as well is a good one, with the
> exception that then you have the problem of images, should they be bundled,
> unbundled, TIFFs, GIFs, etc. I think there is a need for freeware/shareware
> PDF file decoders. Hint, hint.

As has been mentioned more than once recently, Ghostscript (and ghostview,
I imagine) have at least some ability to deal with PDF files.
Aggressively freeware.  :-)

As for getting plain ASCII, I'm afraid that's just not an option for
documents that are prepared, as most are these days, using WYSIWYG "word
processors".  (...then we toss the words into the Bass-O-Matic and puree
for a few minutes...)  Postscript is about the only portable output format
you can get from these things.  :-(