this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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Technology

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Why extracting data from PDFs is still a nightmare for data experts (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 day ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Countless digital documents hold valuable info, and the AI industry is attempting to set it free.

For years, businesses, governments, and researchers have struggled with a persistent problem: How to extract usable data from Portable Document Format (PDF) files. These digital documents serve as containers for everything from scientific research to government records, but their rigid formats often trap the data inside, making it difficult for machines to read and analyze.

"Part of the problem is that PDFs are a creature of a time when print layout was a big influence on publishing software, and PDFs are more of a 'print' product than a digital one," Derek Willis, a lecturer in Data and Computational Journalism at the University of Maryland, wrote in an email to Ars Technica. "The main issue is that many PDFs are simply pictures of information, which means you need Optical Character Recognition software to turn those pictures into data, especially when the original is old or includes handwriting."

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[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 10 points 1 day ago

This is silly.

Whether it's "silly" or not is irrelevant, the problem described in the article is real. I have seen innumerable PDFs over the years that were atrocious when it came to the use of those accessibility features, the format's design factors in to how people use it and people use it terribly. If plain old OCR were enough then this wouldn't be such a problem.