XCDF: A Canonical and Structured Document Format

Abstract. Accessing the structured content of PDF document is a difficult task, requiring pre-processing and reverse engineering techniques. In this paper, we first present different methods to accomplish this task, which are based either on document image analysis, or on electronic content extraction. Then, XCDF, a canonical format with well-defined properties is proposed as a suitable solution for representing structured electronic documents and as an entry point for further researches and works. The system and methods used for reverse engineering PDF document into this canonical format are also presented. We finally present current applications of this work into various domains, spacing from data mining to multimedia navigation, and consistently benefiting from our canonical format in order to access PDF document content and structures. 1