Here is my problem pdf*** file https://limewire.com/?referrer=pq7i8xx7p2
***Actually, the 3rd party PDF is a concatenation of about 230 pages like this but each of these follows the same pattern. I don't think this is relevant, but I am just mentioning it. Thanks for your consideration. Bob ________________________________ From: Tilman Hausherr <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, April 18, 2026 11:53 AM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: help w/ text extraction Hi, users mailing list is fine. Please share your file by uploading it to a sharehoster. Yes you can use the ExtractTextByArea class, or alternatively set "beads" (kindof invisible rectangles) on top of the pages and then extract normally, however both approaches require you to know where the columns are. Tilman Am 17.04.2026 um 22:53 schrieb Robert Rodini: > I have used CLI PDFBox utility successfully for years on a third party PDF > which is issued twice a year. The PDF is always produced with a 3 column > format and the extracted text always comes out column by column from top to > bottom from each column. That is until now. > > Not the 3rd party changed the internals of the PDF such that PDFBox extracts > the text in a somewhat unpredictable order. It seems to work left to right > horizontally multiple times. The extracted text in no longer in the expected > order. > > Can you steer me to the PDFBox APIs that might help me understand the new > internal structure? My initial goal is to write a Java program that can > distinguish the old PDF files from the new PDF files. Later, to write my own > extraction program. > > Thank you > > P.S. Should this question be submitted [email protected]? >
