[reportlab-users] How well does the PDF toolkit work for *reading* PDFs?

[L. Peter Deutsch]

I'm thinking of starting a project that requires reading and doing some
pretty detailed processing of PDFs with a lot of mixed text (including
embedded Type 1, Type 3, and TrueType fonts) and vector graphics.  I looked
quickly through the ReportLab pdfbase/pdfgen code, and it seems to be
oriented towards generating PDF, not reading it, although it looks
tantalizingly close to being usable for reading as well -- all the right
classes seem to be there (albeit somewhat under-documented, e.g., no
comments listing instance variables of the classes).

Does anyone have experience they can share about using the ReportLab code
for reading and processing PDFs?  Or suggestions for other Open Source
packages for this purpose (preferably in Python, although I might possibly
consider Java)?

				Thanks -

L. Peter Deutsch     |    Aladdin Enterprises   |  203 Santa Margarita Ave.
ghost@aladdin.com    |  http://www.aladdin.com  |  Menlo Park, CA 94025

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