[Animats]

Table extraction has been a feature of better OCR programs for at least a decade. It's easier than the OCR part. Look up "OCR table" for examples, products, code, papers, etc.

[curiousgal]

You'd think that until you try them with tables that contain empty cells that you still need recognized or tables that span multiple pages. I wouldn't say this has been solved for a decade.

[pathsjs]

I wish it was, but it isn't. There are various kinds of tables, that may have delimited lines or not, or they may be unaligned cells, each showing a key and a value... If you actually have in mind some solution that works well (either a paper, a github project, a commercial product) I'd be eager to know

[m1sta_]

You're wrong.Robust and easy to use table extraction might be solvable, but from a business perspective it isn't solved.

[saradhi]

Did you try https://extracttable.com

The mentioned service is not perfect either. There are always limitations, minimizing is the key.

P.s: I work with the team at extracttable

[tastyminerals]

It does not work reliably and the quality is not something you can only sell as an addon feature. This is what Abbyy does for example.

[tensor]

Gridded tables is not too hard, but once you remove the grid lines, even a portion of them, it becomes a complete crap shoot.

[Ididntdothis]

Then go ahead, make a table extractor for PDF and get very rich. A lot of people have tried.