As far as I can tell, many government agencies are totally clueless when it
comes to file formats and supplying info to the public. I suspect PDF
conversions are very easy for them, and that's why we see so many, and so
many very bad ones.
It's not very hard to make a jpg using screen capture or the like, then OCR
the resulting image, but it can be time comsuming if you have a lot of info
to get.


On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Bob Lendrim <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Hmmm.. I hadn't thought of that possibility. Since my last message, I
> downloaded and installed a newer V3.0 of Foxit. I still can't copy text from
> the US Army Corps of Engineers files. BUT I found a PDF map of Antarctica in
> my chart folder, and I was able to copy and paste usable text from that. So
> you were right, Foxit does have the capability. I have now read, as you say,
> that some PDF files are protected:
>
> "preventing the file from editing (changing), printing, selecting text and
> graphics (and copying them into the Clipboard)"
>
> It's not asking for any passwords. I looked at the properties - Security
> tab of the PDF files I'm trying to use, and it appears that I should have
> all permissions. But I've never been there before and not sure what I'm
> doing. The info the USACE is publishing is meant for public use, but almost
> prohibitively time consuming to use. Thanks for your help, Bob
>
>
>
> >From: Hugh Vandervoort <[log in to unmask]>
> >Subject: Re: [PCSOFT] Extract text from PDF
> >I know some documents are protected. Have you got a link to one you can't
> >copy?
>

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