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pdfcomments: extract comments from PDF

pdfcomments extracts comments from a PDF and puts them in a text file. It is most useful for turning text comments and sticky notes into a list of comments with page numbers.
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Category: Python / Miscellaneous
Watchers: 6
Star: 126
Fork: 9
Last update: Aug 4, 2022
Resource links
https://github.com/hoffmangroup/pdfcomments

pdfcomments: extract comments from PDF

pdfcomments extracts comments from a PDF and puts them in a text file. It is most useful for turning text comments and sticky notes into a list of comments with page numbers.

By default, all comments are minor. You can specify a major comment by adding an asterisk at its beginning.

Example output

Say you have test.pdf and you add the following comments with Acrobat Reader, PDFExpert, or your annotation tool of choice:

  • page 1: a text comment, Text is unclear.
  • page 2: a sticky note, Sticky note.
  • page 2: a text comment, * Important comment.

Run pdfcomments test.pdf and it will produce the following output file test.txt:

Major comments:

p2: Important comment.

Minor comments:

p1: Text is unclear.
p2: Sticky note.

Prerequisites

  • Python >=3.6
  • PyPDF2 (installed automatically by pip)

Installation

python -m pip install pdfcomments

Replace python with whatever command runs a version that is of Python 3.6 or greater.

Usage

usage: pdfcomments [-h] [--version] infile [outfile]

extract comments from PDF

positional arguments:
  infile      input PDF file
  outfile     output text file (default: infile with extension changed to 'txt')

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit
  --version   show program's version number and exit

License

GNU General Public License v3.

Support

You are welcome to post issues but no guarantee of support is provided. Pull requests are welcome.

7 Open More issues
Closed

Add test files, add license file, add centralized version string, command-line interface changes, style changes

Changes in this MR:

  • Test cases/files
  • Black formatting
  • reorganised argparse/main to make cli tests easier
  • Made cli errors smaller and more readable
  • Added the license file
  • centralised the version string for easier updating
opened Jun 17, 2020 by alexomics 2
Closed

Refactor argument parsing to allow for clearer errors

Currently the parse_args function returns a Namespace of parsed args. I am proposing that parse_args instead returns the ArgumentParser as this has methods specifically for exiting the program, see exit methods.

parse_args would become get_parser:

def get_parser() -> argparse.ArgumentParser:
    description = __doc__.splitlines()[0].partition(": ")[2]
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=description)
    parser.add_argument("infile", help="input PDF file")
    parser.add_argument("outfile", nargs="?",
                        help="output text file"
                        " (default: infile with extension changed to 'txt')")

    version = f"%(prog)s {__version__}"
    parser.add_argument("--version", action="version", version=version)

    return parser

This would then allow termination to be handled using ArgumentParser.exit or ArgumentParser.error e.g.:

def main(argv=None):
    parser = get_parser()
    args = parser.parse_args()
    try:
        pdf = PdfFileReader(args.infile)
    except PdfReadError as err:
        parser.error(f"{err}")
        # or: parser.exit(status=2, message=f"{err}\n")

Either exit or error output only the message when called instead of a traceback. exit allows setting the status code, error always uses status code 2.

opened Jun 20, 2020 by alexomics 1
Closed

Workaround for Windows EX_OK import

Closes #2

The import error workaround here https://github.com/hoffmangroup/pdfcomments/issues/2#issuecomment-644316665 is the only change needed for me to run this in Windows 10. I tested it locally.

opened Jun 15, 2020 by agitter 1
Closed

Windows compatibility

Amazing tool! Version 0.1 doesn't run on Windows 😢 EX_OK cannot be imported from os on Windows.

Rather than make it Windows compatible, you could add Linux as a prerequisite in the readme.

bug good first issue help wanted 
opened Jun 15, 2020 by agitter 1
Closed

Delete __init__.py

This file is empty. And has an ugly name (;-). Is it really necessary? Submitted without testing... :grimacing:

invalid 
opened Jun 14, 2020 by InonS 1
Open

Enhancement: Add option for bringing highlighted text to comment in resulting text file

Thanks for this, this is wonderful and has really improved the reviewer workflow. One thing that would be really handy for me is that I often highlight text and comment on that, so it would be really useful if the highlighted text would be brought over to the text file e.g. p4: "X is bigger than y (p=0.01)" Please provide the statistical text used.

opened Jun 30, 2020 by danielsbrewer 1
Open

Switch test runner to tox?

Would switching to tox enable running all three Python versions in one runner? This would reduce the number of GitHub action checks and also make it easier to run the tests locally.

enhancement 
opened Jun 20, 2020 by michaelmhoffman 0
Open

Add `--page-numbering` option for supplying page label ranges

Currently, pdfcomments prints out page labels before each comment that are always the page index plus 1. It would be better if page labels defined within the document would be respected (#8). But even then, many documents will not have satisfactory page labels defined and users will want to manipulate them (#5). A flexible option should eventually allow supplying different ranges for changing what gets used as a label.

--page-numbering (-p for short) is something that makes some amount of sense whether a full range is provided, a series of ranges, or just a simple offset. Ranges can be:

  • start
  • start-
  • start-end

Both start and end are inclusive—it is a fully closed interval. A series can be a series of ranges separated by ,.

Examples for a 6-page PDF:

  • pdfcomments --page-numbering=2, pdfcomments --page-numbering=2-, or pdfcomments --page-numbering=2-7 would number the pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
  • pdfcomments --page-numbering=2-5,99, pdfcomments --page-numbering=2-5,99- pdfcomments --page-numbering=2-5,99-100 would number the pages 2, 3, 4, 5, 99, 100.

If END is used and there are pages beyond that, the default numbering is used for those pages: page index+1 for now, but page label once #8 is implemented.

enhancement 
opened Jun 19, 2020 by michaelmhoffman 0
Open

Use page labels instead of page index+1

Currently, pdfcomments prints out page labels before each comment that are always the page index plus 1. It would be better if page labels defined within the document would be respected.

See the PDF 1.7 standard (32000-1:2008), section 12.4.2, "Page Labels", for the distinction between the fixed integer page index and the more flexible page label.

enhancement help wanted 
opened Jun 19, 2020 by michaelmhoffman 0
Open

test: Add tests

This MR adds test PDF files under tests/resources and tests under tests.

The selected runner is pytest as it can run unittest as well.

There are some skipped tests as they anticipate future functionality (encrypted pdfs, and CLI errors)

opened Jun 19, 2020 by alexomics 1
Open

Add support for editing markup in PDFs

PDFs also support editing markup such as highlighting, strikethroughs, and text insertion. These could also be captured and would be useful, for example, when providing lists of corrections for large documents such as PhD theses.

(the code below assumes that the offset suggested in #5 is also implemented)

SEVERITY_NAMES = {0: "Minor comments", 1: "Major comments", 2: "Edits"}

# Edits to be reported
EDITS = ("Cross-Out", "Inserted Text")

def iter_edit_contents(page: PageObject) -> Iterator[str]:
    try:
        edit_indirects = page["/Annots"]
    except KeyError:
        return

    for edit_indirect in edit_indirects:
        edit = edit_indirect.getObject()

        try:
            if edit["/Subj"] in EDITS:
                if edit["/Subj"] == "Cross-Out":
                    yield edit["/Subj"], "-"
                else:
                    yield edit["/Subj"], edit["/Contents"]
        except KeyError:
            continue


def load_comments(filename: str, offset: int) -> SeverityDict:
    res: SeverityDict = defaultdict(list)

    reader = PdfFileReader(filename, STRICT)
    for page_num, page in enumerate(reader.pages, 1):
        for contents in iter_annot_contents(page):
            m_stars = re_stars.match(contents)
            assert m_stars is not None  # should always match

            stars = m_stars["stars"]
            comment = m_stars["comment"]

            # number of stars
            severity = len(stars)

            res[severity].append(f"p{page_num - offset}: {comment}")
        for edit_type, edit in iter_edit_contents(page):
            res[2].append(f"p{page_num - offset}: {edit_type} ({edit})")

    return res
enhancement 
opened Jun 18, 2020 by widdowquinn 1

0.1(Jun 14, 2020)

Initial release.

Contents

    FranckFreiburger vue-pdf - A pdf viewer based on mozilla's PDF.js
    JonathanLink Converts a pdf file into a text file while keeping the layout of the original pdf. Useful to extract the content from a table in a pdf file for instance. This is a subclass of PDFTextStripper class (from the Apache PDFBox library).
    mileszs PDF generator (from HTML) plugin for Ruby on Rails
    ovvn Generates a printable paginated pdf from DOM node using HTML5 canvas and svg
    sindresorhus Strip comments from JSON. Lets you use comments in your JSON files!
    balacode A minimalist Go PDF writer in 1982 lines. Draws text, images and shapes. Helps understand the PDF format. Used in production for reports.
    arkokoley A PDF viewer for Vue using Mozilla's PDF.js
    arkokoley pdfvuer Demopdfvuer - A PDF viewer for Vue using Mozilla's PDF.js with text support. Demo
    danfickle An HTML to PDF library for the JVM. Based on Flying Saucer and Apache PDF-BOX 2. With SVG image support. Now also with accessible PDF support (WCAG, Section 508, PDF/UA)!
    smalot PdfParser, a standalone PHP library, provides various tools to extract data from a PDF file.
    livioribeiro cargo-readme - A cargo subcommand to generate README.md content from doc comments
    sindresorhus Extract the actual stack of an error
    juliangruber Extract a value from a buffer of json without parsing the whole thing
    devplayer0 Bootable PDF CV
    muhammadmuzzammil1998 JSON with comments for Go!
    sindresorhus Strip comments from CSS
    mozilla PDF Reader in JavaScript
    boazsegev A Pure ruby library to merge PDF files, number pages and maybe more...
    asciidoctor :page_with_curl: Asciidoctor PDF: A native PDF converter for AsciiDoc based on Asciidoctor and Prawn, written entirely in Ruby.
    unidoc Golang PDF library for creating and processing PDF files (pure go)
    lacioffi Renders possibly unsafe PDF files and outputs harmless PDF files
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