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DOC: Add comparison with pdfplumber #1837

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May 20, 2023
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DOC: Add comparison with pdfplumber #1837

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Update comparisons.md with pdfplumber
RitchieP May 9, 2023
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Update docs/meta/comparisons.md
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Expand Up @@ -50,13 +50,17 @@ than PyPDF2. See [history of pypdf](history.md).
[QPDF]: https://github.com/qpdf/qpdf


## pdfminer
## pdfminer.six and pdfplumber

[`pdfminer.six`](https://pypi.org/project/pdfminer.six/) is capable of
extracting the [font size](https://stackoverflow.com/a/69962459/562769)
/ font weight (bold-ness). It has no capabilities for writing PDF files.

## pdfrw / pdfminer / pdfplumber
[`pdfplumber`](https://pypi.org/project/pdfplumber/) is a library focused on extracting data from PDF documents. Since `pdfplumber` is built on top of `pdfminer.six`, there are **no capabilities of exporting or modifying a PDF file** (see [#440 (discussions)](https://github.com/jsvine/pdfplumber/discussions/440#discussioncomment-803880)). However, `pdfplumber` is capable of converting a PDF file into an image, [draw lines and rectangles on the image](https://github.com/jsvine/pdfplumber#drawing-methods), and save it as an image file.
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@mara004 mara004 May 21, 2023 •
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is capable of converting a PDF file into an image

From skimming the Readme, it looks like pdfplumber calls Wand for pdf rendering, which is a binding to ImageMagick, which in turn uses ghostscript, IIRC.
So this phrase is kinda misleading as pdfplumber is not an actual pdf rendering library (as opposed to mupdf/poppler/pdfium), but merely a rendering "wrapper-wrapper-wrapper".

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Yes, I agree! It is not a PDF rendering library, there's just one function to convert the PDF into an image with the tools you mentioned. I'm not experienced with Wand, ImageMagick, and ghostscript, so if you're an expert there, feel free to elaborate more on my changes.

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@RitchieP You could rephrase

However, pdfplumber is capable of converting a PDF file into an image

to

However, pdfplumber is capable of converting a PDF file into an image via ImageMagick

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Definitely! I'll make a PR in a bit.

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Thanks!


The `pdfplumber` community is active in answering questions and the library is maintained as of May 2023.

## pdfrw / pdfrw2

I don't have experience with any of those libraries. Please add a
comparison if you know pypdf and [`pdfrw`](https://pypi.org/project/pdfrw/)!
Expand All @@ -66,8 +70,6 @@ Please be aware that there is also
Then there is [`pdfrw2`](https://pypi.org/project/pdfrw2/) which doesn't have
a large community behind it.

And there is also [`pdfplumber`](https://pypi.org/project/pdfplumber/)

## Document Generation

There are (Python) [tools to generate PDF documents](https://github.com/py-pdf/awesome-pdf#generators).
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