DynaPDF Manual - Page 611

Previous Page 610   Index   Next Page 612

Function Reference
Page 611 of 839
fntTranslateRawString2() in C/C++). For this kind of algorithm the TShowTextArrayW
callback function should be used because it provides anything required to develop fast text
extraction algorithms. The example projects text_extraction and text_coordinates
demonstrate how text extraction algorithms can be developed.
Text search algorithms could use the TShowTextArrayW callback function too but the usage
is much more complicated if strings of CID fonts must be processed. CID fonts support
encodings with arbitrary code lengths from one through four bytes per character. Because
the string width cannot be computed from the translated Unicode string the function must
be able to find the position in the source string. This is not easy especially if the search text
was stored in multiple text records.
To simplify the development of text search algorithms the content parser provides the
TShowTextArrayA callback function which returns the raw source strings. The conversion to
Unicode can be done with TranslateRawCode() (the name is fntTranslateRawCode() in
C/C++). The function converts a sequence of source bytes to Unicode and calculates the
width of that character. The advantage is that the exact position of every character in a string
can be easily calculated independent of the current font type. The overhead due to the call on
a per character basis is not large because the function is strongly optimized to improve
processing speed. The example text_search demonstrates how a text search algorithm can be
developed.
Using the Content Parser
The content parser can be used to extract text, vector graphics, and images from a PDF file. The
following sections describe which callback functions must set, what must be stored in the graphics
state, as well as other important aspects.
Note that DynaPDF is delivered with several example projects which demonstrate how the content
parser can be used. Before developing your own code take a look into the examples text_extraction,
text_search, or image_extraction.
Text Extraction or Text Search Algorithms
The following callback functions should be set to process PDF text:
TBeginTemplate
TEndTemplate
// Optional
TMulMatrix
TSetCharSpacing
TSetFont
TSetLeading
// Optional
TRestoreGraphicState
TSaveGraphicState
TSetFillColor
// Optional
TSetStrokeColor
// Optional
TSetTextDrawMode
 

Previous topic: Text Scaling, Sub string coordinates

Next topic: Unicode conversion