PDF Processing Guide

Overview

This guide covers essential PDF reading operations using Python libraries and command-line tools. For advanced features (pypdfium2 rendering, pdfplumber table settings, OCR fallback, encrypted/corrupted PDF handling), see REFERENCE.md.

Reading & Inspecting PDFs

Before doing anything with a PDF, understand what you're working with.

Content inventory

Run a quick diagnostic first. For simple tasks ("summarize this document"), pdfinfo + a text sample may suffice. For anything involving figures, attachments, or extraction issues, run the full set:

# Always: page count, file size, PDF version, metadata
pdfinfo document.pdf