My question doesn't explicitly refer to LaTeX itself, but the resulting PDF. To make long story short: I want to be able to copy text from PDF to TXT file as a continuous text. I believe this is common problem for many people.
I'm working on LaTeX document that is compiled to the PDF file. My text contains many word breaks at the end of a line. Sometimes I need to copy resulting text from PDF to the plain text file (*.txt). Unfortunately:
PDFs are designed to mimic a printed page, and they are designed only as an output format, not an input format. a PDF is basically a map containing the exact location of characters (individual letters or punctuation, etc.) or images. In most cases, a PDF does not even store information about where one word ends and another begins, much less things like soft breaks vs. hard breaks for paragraph endings.
Therefore I shouldn't be surprised that when I compile the following text to PDF:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}
\title{Introduction to \LaTeX{}}
\author{Author's Name}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
The abstract text goes here.
\end{abstract}
\section{Introduction}
This is \LaTeX text that will be copied and pasted. Verylongword. Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu is a hill near Porangahau, south of Waipukurau in southern Hawke's Bay, New Zealand.
\subsection{Subsection Heading Here}
This text comes from Wikipedia.: The name "Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu" translates roughly as "The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one".
\end{document}
which results in:
and I copy whole text to TXT file, I get:
Introduction to L A TEX
Author’s Name
April 29, 2017
Abstract
The abstract text goes here.
1
Introduction
This is L A TEXtext that will be copied and pasted. Verylongword. Taumatawhakatangi-
hangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu is
a hill near Porangahau, south of Waipukurau in southern Hawke’s Bay, New
Zealand.
1.1
Subsection Heading Here
This text comes from Wikipedia.: The name ”Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauo-
tamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu” translates roughly
as ”The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber
of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to
his loved one”.
The most irritating are the word breaks and line endings that become new lines, so that copied text is not continuous. Is there any trick that can help me with copying text from PDF to TXT file as a continuous text?
Copying text directly from the TEX source is not an option, since the above example is very simplified – typical TEX source contains macros, formatting commands and so on.
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}or by using lualatex (and you should use correct quotes and not "). But the results depends a lot from the pdfviewer, adobe e.g. is better than sumatra.detexseems to be the best solution proposed so far (though it is applied on TEX source, not PDF file as I suggested). Thanks @Marijn! You can post your answer, so that I can accept it. ;-)LaTeX\or you lose the space after.