Does anyone know if it is possible to make Ghostscript/GSView EXTRACT data
from PDF or PS files and make reasonable approximations in text or HTML?

Now, before everybody stops and says "you just can't do it in HTML with out
a human" I happen to know that with CSS I can precisely position each line,
word, or character of text and exactly specify the font and point size. Its
not efficient but these days, who cares? I can also draw lines, boxes, etc..
at exact locations. I've been thinking that it would be entirely possible to
write a CCS HTML printer driver. As a simple example:
http://transform.usaplaza.com/sample/sample.html

Now, I'm not necessarily recommending that program, but the sample form
shows what I mean. It's just HTML. So why can't we make PDFs into HTMLs?

James Newton, PICList Admin #3
mailto:jamesnewton@piclist.com
1-619-652-0593 phone
http://www.piclist.com

----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Blick <bblick@SABER.NET>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2000 10:00
Subject: Re: [OT] Make free PDFs / Search web PDFs


> If you want to make PDF files why not bypass Adobe altogether. I have been
> using Ghostscript+GSview for quite a while now and it has gotten to be
> quite a nice product and of course it's free(beer and speech).
>
> Besides useful for making PDF files it also is a good way to make bitmaps
> of CAD documents for putting on webpages.
>
> Takes a little getting used to, but well worth it. You print to disk as if
> to a Postscript(Apple, NEC Silentwriter 90, QMS, etc) printer and run the
> resulting file through the program.
>
> Remember you need both programs, Ghostscript and GSview:
> http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/get601.html
>
> Cheers,
>
> Bob
>