Unicode text extraction?

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   Welcome,
I need a pdf component for Delphi 2009 to extract text from pdf files. I installed and tested QuickPDF. I tried both Delphi 2009 and ActiveX versions and both extracted only ASCII text without any international characters (Polish in my case).
I am a little disappointed, especially because there is a note "Full Unicode support" in the feature list (http://www.quickpdflibrary.com/products/quickpdf/features.php).
Is there any way I can extract full text with all characters?
Best regards,
Bartek

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phildick Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 14 Oct 09 Location: Poland Status: Offline Points: 2	Post Options Post Reply Quote phildick Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Unicode text extraction? Posted: 14 Oct 09 at 2:36PM
	Welcome, I need a pdf component for Delphi 2009 to extract text from pdf files. I installed and tested QuickPDF. I tried both Delphi 2009 and ActiveX versions and both extracted only ASCII text without any international characters (Polish in my case). I am a little disappointed, especially because there is a note "Full Unicode support" in the feature list (http://www.quickpdflibrary.com/products/quickpdf/features.php). Is there any way I can extract full text with all characters? Best regards, Bartek

shimax Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 03 Oct 09 Location: Japan Status: Offline Points: 6	Post Options Post Reply Quote shimax Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 15 Oct 09 at 12:41AM
	Hello, Bartek As discussed in http://www.quickpdf.org/forum/problem-with-span-classhighlightrussia-spann-text_topic1183_post5464.html, it seems that unicode text extraction does not work well as expected. In my case as well Japanese characters are not extracted at all. I contacted with the support, but I have not yet got an answer for a week except they recieved my email. So I think to implement unicode support is a very diffcult task for some reasons or they are so busy for other problems or for developing new features. Not only in text extraction but also in other features there seems to be many unicode-related problems in QuickPDF. Regretabbly, full unicode support is not true at least as far as the version is 7.16.

Wheeley Members Profile Find Members Posts Senior Member Joined: 30 Oct 05 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 146	Post Options Post Reply Quote Wheeley Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 15 Oct 09 at 1:35AM
	The next release should have more support for unicode. I was told they are removing the function ToPDFUnicode. If they do that, then unicode support must be enhanced somehow. Wheeley

Michel_K17 Members Profile Find Members Posts Newbie www.exp-systems.com Joined: 25 Jan 03 Status: Offline Points: 297	Post Options Post Reply Quote Michel_K17 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 15 Oct 09 at 3:55AM
	I have received the same assurances as well. They (Debenu) have been very good at addressing specific issues as we bring them up. On the unicode front, at least we can now save/merge PDF files with unicode characters in the path. Support for unicode characters as part of the metadata is coming with the next beta (which is what I was waiting for). For text extraction, I don't know. Michel
	Michel

Ingo Members Profile Find Members Posts Moderator Group Joined: 29 Oct 05 Status: Offline Points: 3524	Post Options Post Reply Quote Ingo Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 15 Oct 09 at 9:03AM
	Hi All! QuickPDF is a very complete and extensive library and the unicode-support should touch nearly all modules. So please be a bit patient. I'm pretty sure that it's only a matter of time ;-) Cheers, Ingo

phildick Members Profile Find Members Posts Beginner Joined: 14 Oct 09 Location: Poland Status: Offline Points: 2	Post Options Post Reply Quote phildick Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 15 Oct 09 at 9:41AM
	Hi Ingo, Maybe it is, but I installed the demo modules in my Delphi 2009 (which is fully Unicode now), and all the string parameters are declared as AnsiString, not String. Even if it's backward compatibility, which I completely understand, there could be a "wide string" version of every string routine, as it was done in Windows API years ago. BTW the last non-Unicode Windows OS was released in 2000 (Windows ME), so it's been almost ten years since. Furthermore, I imported the ActiveX version in which all parameters are passed as WideString (so it should be fully Unicode), and it produced the same result as earlier - only ANSI characters in the extracted text. Best regards, Bartek