I use Linux at home and Linux and FreeBSD UNIX at work.
The ps2ascii utility under Linux will sometimes let one read a
PDF document depending upon how it was originally encoded.  Of
course, the lazy-man way of just scanning in to a PDF image
creates a totally useless blob of binary image data unless one
has and or wants to go to the trouble of running it through an OCR
program.

	Other PDF's cause an outpouring of error messages about
stacks and internal objects in the ps2ascii program but no useful
output.

	Basically, sometimes it works and works well while other
times nothing useful happens.

	The dream of just knowing it's going to work is still a
dream.

	Generally, the quest for universal information access
reminds me of the technician's lament which goes, "If the job
requires N tools, there will be N minus 1 tools in the tool box."

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
Systems Engineer
OSU Information Technology Department Network Operations Group