ps to pdf and then to text editor

[Paul Smith]

On 9/15/06, Jack Byers <byersj at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > > > I print to a file, file.ps, a web-page with text. Then, I apply ps2pdf
> > > > > and I get file.pdf. However, I cannot copy (from file.pdf) the text
> >to
> > > > > a text editor. Can one get a pdf file with copyable text?
>
> > > Thanks, Jacques, but what I really want is to be able of producing a
> > > pdf file (from a web-page) with the possibility of copying text to a
> > > text editor. Hopefully, Fedora Core will soon make available for users
> > > the version 8.54 of Ghostscript, which does not display the reported
> > > problem.
>
> xpdf   has facility to  select and copy  an arbitray rectangular region from
> any page
> of any (i think) pdf file, however created.
> This feature is very handy for copying out selected text regions from
> multi-column  pdf pages
>
> yum install xpdf

Thanks, Jack. However, the problem is that when I paste what I copied
from the pdf file (created as I described before), I get a sequence of
rubbish, i.e., the ancient version of ghostscript offered by FC5
produces a not fine PS file. The reported problem does not occur with
the most recent version of ghostscript.

Paul