Haskell: parsing PDF

Question

What I need is to read pdf, make some transformations (generate TOC bookmarks) and write it back.

I found this http://hackage.haskell.org/package/HPDF , but it only mentions generating pdf, not the parsing (although I could have missed it)

Haskell is chosen purely for (self)educational purposes.

Answer 1

Here's a haskell binding to parts of xpdf: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/pdf2line

Answer 2

There are a few tools for PDF manipulation, though they seem to bias towards generation, rather than parsing:

• http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/

Pandoc is a great cross-markup library, but doesn't support PDF parsing (it does support PDF generation from a variety of formats).

There's also:

• http://hackage.haskell.org/package/HsHaruPDF
• http://hackage.haskell.org/package/pdf2line -- tool for extracting text from pdf
• http://hackage.haskell.org/package/HPDF -- another pdf generation library

I'm not sure we have a good parsing tool yet.

Answer 3

Also as a learning exercise, I started a PDF parsing library in Haskell, but it's incomplete and has been languishing a bit from lack of attention. I'd be happy to share it with you, and would love feedback, improvements, etc. It's not currently hosted on hackage, but if you're interested in working with an incomplete implementation, let me know and I'll ask some colleagues for advice on getting it up there.