Summary

As a result of an extensive investigation into the existing solutions to this problem, it has been decided to modify the aims of this project to remove the emphasis on preserving the original page layout. The current solutions to the problem have been found to convert PDF files to HTML with fairly high levels of success, accurately preserving the page layout in most cases. There is little sense in simply repeating this work. Furthermore, many of the features and benefits of HTML are lost with these methods of conversion. It has therefore been decided to aim this project at extracting the content from a wide variety of PDF files, and presenting it in a “clean ” HTML format, utilizing HTML’s features for styles, formatting, bullet points, and any other features that are deemed appropriate. Such files benefit from being re-flowable according to the size of the browser window, easier to edit and look more professional when published to the Web. The original aim of preserving page layout has not been completely disregarded, and will be investigated if there is time remaining at the end of the project. Investigation of existing solutions The four following programs were found on the Internet to offer a solution to the problem: • PDF to HTML Recastor by Archisoft (www.archisoftint.com/logiciels/recr_us.htm) • pdftohtml sponsored by Lincoln & Co (pdftohtml.sourceforge.net) • pdf2html by Twibright Labs (atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~clock/twibright/pdf2html) • Google’s View as HTML feature for cached PDF files (www.google.com) The first solution, PDF to HTML Recastor, was the only commercial solution on the Internet that had a free trial version available for download. This version was researched in detail with the following PDF files