[anon-3988]

Last weekend I was trying to convert some PDF of Upanishads which contains some Sanskrit and English word.

By god its so annoying, I don't think I would be able to without the help of Claude Code with it just reiterating different libraries and methods over and over again.

Can we just write things in markdown from now on? I really, really, really, don't care that the images you put is nicely aligned to the right side and every is boxed together nicely.

Just give me the text and let me render it however I want on my end.

[jeroenhd]

The point of PDFs is that you design them once and they look the same everywhere. I do care very much that the heading in my CV doesn't split the paragraph below it. Automatically parsing and extracting text contents from PDFs is not a main feature of the file format, it's an optional addition.

PDFs don't compete with Markdown. They're more like PNGs with optional support for screen readers and digital signatures. Maybe SVGs if you go for some of the fancier features. You can turn a PDF into a PNG quite easily with readily available tools, so an alternative file format wouldn't have saved you much work.

[sgt]

Whole point of PDF is that it's digital paper. It's up to the author how he wants to design it, just like a written note or something printed out and handed to you in person.