Text Search and Extraction Applications and Developer Tools

Organizations that are archiving documents are setting more requirements for how they are able to retrieve information from their archived documents. These requirements often include text extraction for fully-searchable documents, extracted data to use with content aggregation tools, and ensuring document quality does not degrade over time.

Software applications that extract text overcome one of the major problems organizations face when building document archives—documents locked as static images that leaves data inaccessible.

Snowbound Software’s RasterMaster Imaging SDKs and VirtualViewer Web viewer and collaboration application are designed to empower developers and organizations with tools that address these text search and extraction challenges. Some of the important aspects of text search and extraction that our software handles include:

Retain Text and Formatting Data During Conversion

One vital function that quality text extraction software should perform is the ability to retain content and formatting when converting documents away from proprietary, or application-specific, formats like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, PDF, AFP, and PCL. Maintaining text and formatting data also allows organizations to build fully-searchable archives while at the same time ensuring that the conversion does not degrade the appearance or legibility of the document.

RasterMaster Imaging SDKs empower developers to build text extraction capabilities directly into an application. This ensures that text and formatting data are maintained when converting document formats. Supported formats for text extraction in our products include MS Word, MS Excel, PDF, PCL, and AFP.

Extract Data for Content Aggregation Efforts

Our software enables you to extract text from MS Word, MS Excel, PDF, AFP, and PCL files to create a data stream that can be processed by content aggregation tools to directly import the information into a database or repository. This data is then available to be re-purposed for publishing, archiving or searching. Using this method will speed up data population efforts while reducing the risk of errors that commonly occur when relying on a manual data entry process to populate a database. 

Preserve Text Quality

When rasterizing an image that includes text elements it is important to ensure image integrity and quality. If text is rendered to a lossy format, such as JPEG, letters can become misshapen impacting the legibility of the document. This problem is exaggerated as the document is continually opened, annotated and saved, potentially impacting the document’s quality over time. By using software that supports text search and extraction, such as RasterMaster and VirtualViewer, you can ensure that you maintain legible text throughout the documents lifespan.