pdf-extraction-guide
Installation
SKILL.md
PDF Extraction Guide
Extract text, tables, figures, and metadata from academic PDFs using Python libraries, with strategies for handling multi-column layouts, mathematical content, and scanned documents.
PDF Extraction Tools Comparison
| Tool | Text | Tables | Figures | Layout | OCR | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PyMuPDF (fitz) | Excellent | Manual | Yes | Blocks | No (add with OCR engine) | Fast |
| pdfplumber | Good | Excellent | No | Tables focus | No | Medium |
| PyPDF2 / pypdf | Basic | No | No | No | No | Fast |
| Tabula-py | No | Excellent | No | No | No | Medium |
| GROBID | Structured | Yes | References | Academic layout | No | Slow (ML-based) |
| Nougat (Meta) | Excellent | Yes | Yes | Academic layout | Built-in | Slow (GPU) |
| Marker | Excellent | Yes | Yes | Multi-column | Built-in | Medium |
| pdf2image + Tesseract | Via OCR | Via OCR | Via OCR | No | Yes | Slow |