Help - PDF parsing where to look?

FROM : Ole Voss
DATE : Wed Jul 05 18:57:32 2006

Hello everybody,

I've been extracting data from PDF files for two years now using
PDF->TXT conversion tools and then looking in the text version for what
I need. The process is very involved and has gotten extremely
complicated. The reason is that the data I want is placed in table
cells, but the conversion-utilities generally don't do a particularly
good job of getting the spacing between the cells right.

I would like to parse the PDF files directly now and have been looking
into what Cocoa has to offer on the subject. To be honest - I don't know
where to look anymore. I can extract data as far as streams from PDF
files (using Quartz), but how do I decrypt them? And the PDF Kit doesn't
seem to offer parsing capabilities at all?
Could somebody help me here? Am I missing something fundamental? Just a
hint or link in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!


Regards,

Ole.