[jira] [Comment Edited] (PDFBOX-1804) PDFTextStripper Issue related to word positions not correctly being parsed

["Tilman Hausherr (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PDFBOX-1804?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13847168#comment-13847168 ] 

Tilman Hausherr edited comment on PDFBOX-1804 at 12/13/13 5:05 AM:
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@Andy: you don't. Just attach your diff patches here, and a committer will decide whether to pick them up. Even if not, some developers might take them up for their local source copy of pdfbox.

See also here
https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles


was (Author: tilman):
@Andy: you don't. Just attached your a diff patches here, and a developer will decide whether to pick them up. Even if not, some users might take them up for themselves.

See also here
https://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#roles

> PDFTextStripper Issue related to word positions not correctly being parsed
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: PDFBOX-1804
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PDFBOX-1804
>             Project: PDFBox
>          Issue Type: Bug
>          Components: Text extraction
>    Affects Versions: 1.8.3
>            Reporter: Andy Phillips
>         Attachments: PDFBOX-1804.patch
>
>
> I found in a PDF I was pulling text from by using a custom PDFTextStripper subclass that overrides writeString(String text, List<TextPosition> textPositions) that i was getting the wrong textPositions that were not lined up with the text.   I found that the test position of all “words” in a line always come over as the “last” text positions of the last word in the line.   I found the issue in the PDFTextStripper class
> So here is the Code Issue:
>     /**
>      * Used within {@link #normalize(List, boolean, boolean)} to handle a {@link TextPosition}.
>      * @return The StringBuilder that must be used when calling this method.
>      */
>     private StringBuilder normalizeAdd(LinkedList<WordWithTextPositions> normalized,
>             StringBuilder lineBuilder, List<TextPosition> wordPositions, TextPosition text)
>     {
>         if (text instanceof WordSeparator) 
>         {
>             normalized.add(createWord(lineBuilder.toString(), wordPositions));
>             lineBuilder = new StringBuilder();
>             wordPositions.clear();
>         }
>         else 
>         {
>             lineBuilder.append(text.getCharacter());
>             wordPositions.add(text);
>         }
>         return lineBuilder;
>     }
> When the normalizeAdd method, you create a new word passing the wordPositions.   A reference to the wordPositions is stored in the new WordWithTextPositions in the normalized linked list, but in the next line, you clear().   Since the last wordPositions was passed as a reference, the wordPositions is cleared in the WordWithTextPositions you just created.
> Soo, i would suggest you do the following:
> /**
>      * Used within {@link #normalize(List, boolean, boolean)} to handle a {@link TextPosition}.
>      * @return The StringBuilder that must be used when calling this method.
>      */
>     private StringBuilder normalizeAdd(LinkedList<WordWithTextPositions> normalized,
>             StringBuilder lineBuilder, List<TextPosition> wordPositions, TextPosition text)
>     {
>         if (text instanceof WordSeparator) 
>         {
>             normalized.add(createWord(lineBuilder.toString(), new ArrayList<TextPosition>(wordPositions)));
>             lineBuilder = new StringBuilder();
>             wordPositions.clear();
>         }
>         else 
>         {
>             lineBuilder.append(text.getCharacter());
>             wordPositions.add(text);
>         }
>         return lineBuilder;
>     }



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