exactText

exactText is a Java library designed for precise text extraction from various document formats, including PDF, DOCX, and HTML. Its primary goal is to overcome the limitations of traditional text extraction methods that often struggle with preserving the original layout, formatting, and spatial relationships of text elements. The library aims to provide an accurate representation of the text as it appears on the page, including line breaks, spacing, and positional information.

The core functionality of exactText lies in its ability to analyze the underlying structure of documents. For PDFs, it can interpret the position of text characters and words, enabling it to reconstruct paragraphs and reading order more reliably. Similarly, for DOCX files, it leverages the document's internal structure to extract text while considering formatting. When processing HTML, exactText can parse the DOM to extract visible text content, often ignoring script tags and other non-display elements.

Developers can integrate exactText into their applications to build features requiring accurate text retrieval. This includes applications for document analysis, search indexing, data extraction, and accessibility tools. By providing a more faithful rendition of the source text, exactText helps reduce the manual effort required to clean and prepare extracted data for further processing. The library is typically used as a dependency within Java projects, offering an API for loading documents and retrieving their textual content.