title: How to extract text from a PDF?
body: <p>Can anyone recommend a library/API for extracting the text and images from a PDF?
  We need to be able to get at text that is contained in pre-known regions of the document, so the API will need to give us positional information of each element on the page.  </p>
  
  <p>We would like that data to be output in <code>xml</code> or <code>json</code> format.  We're currently looking at <em>PdfTextStream</em> which seems pretty good, but would like to hear other peoples experiences and suggestions.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Are there alternatives (commercial ones or free) for extracting text from a pdf programatically?</strong></p>