US taxes: parsing postscript and/or pdf?

[Dr. David J. Ritchie, Sr.]

Harry George wrote:

> Alan Miller <ajm at enteract.com> writes:
>
> > Harry George (hgg9140 at seanet.com) wrote:
> > >If not, my next approach is to download IRS forms in PDF or
> > >Postscript, and then manipulate those templates.  That requires
> > >parsing the pdf or postscript, detecting named fields, putting in new
> > >data, and regenrating the printable format.
> >
>
> They appear to be dumb PDF's, intended only for printing.  I've
> discovered the postscripts are not actually valid postscripts
> (generated by MS tools -- who would have guessed) -- so a generic
> postscript parser wouldn't work after all.
>

You might look at:

http://cddocs.fnal.gov/cfdocs/productsDB/ProdDetail.CFM?ProdNum=PU0283

for some utilities which "fix" various Postscripts such as those generated by MS.

You'll have to look at http://fnkits.fnal.gov/ to get the source.  I don't have any idea
what platforms it runs on (I have used it on SunOS a while ago, I think).

--D.


--
Dr. David J. Ritchie, Sr.
djrassoc01 at mindspring.com
http://home.mindspring.com/~djrassoc01/