
X2 : NumberString ~~ " " ~~ y2 : NumberString ~~ " l\n" StartOfLine ~~ x1 : NumberString ~~ " " ~~ y1 : NumberString ~~ " m\n" ~~
#ENGAUGE DIGITIZER MAC PDF#
In this case each segment of the line is encoded like this: 268.79999 408.92975 mĮxtracting all such segments from the PDF code: lines = StringCases[pdfCode, Now I assume the simplest case: the graph contains a line which consists of many two-point segments. Now you need to import the outfile.pdf file as text into some program where you can manipulate the data. In most cases it is sufficient to know these four operators for recovering the data. The most important operators are (the first column contains coordinate specification for an operator, the second contains the operator and the third is operator name): x y m moveto Do not panic at this moment! You need to know only few operators described in the "TABLE 4.9 Path construction operators" on pages 226 - 227. The generated outfile.pdf can be opened by a text editor. : qpdf infile.pdf -stream-data=uncompress - outfile.pdf There are several ways to uncompress data streams in order to convert PDF file to a textual document with readable PDF code. These compressed data streams usually contain the information we need. The problem is that it can (and almost always) contain compressed data streams which require to be uncompressed in order to read them by a text editor. Since the papers are published online as PDF files, I assume that you have a PDF file which contains vector plot with data you wish to recover from it (get in numerical form) and estimate introduced recovery error.įirst of all, PDF is a vector format which is basically textual (can be read by a text editor).
#ENGAUGE DIGITIZER MAC CODE#
In this case you can achieve much higher exactness of the recovered data and even estimate the recovery error if you work with the code of the vector graph directly, without converting it to raster image. But nowadays the good practice is to publish graphs in vector form. Other answerers assume that you deal with raster image of a graph. OpenSource (BSD) plugin that runs in a proprietary platform, Matlab (open source - GNU GPL) Has zoom window, no auto-recognition. Browser based, extracts data from images. (free, open source), because it simplifies the processs of getting data from the graph into an analysis by keeping all of the steps in R. (open source, most extensible after R digitize) (shareware) auto point / line recognition (shareware) has zoom window, auto point / line recognition Available in Ubuntu repository (engauge-digitizer) (free software, GPL) auto point / line recognition. If have not tested the accuracy of any of these programs, but it would be interesting to compare among users, among programs, and against the results of reproduced statistical analyses. error from digitization << size of error bars or uncertainty in the estimate). Except in contexts where measurement error is very small, error from graph scraping is insignificant (e.g. I have listed them below.Īll of the ones I have used work fine. There are many programs, and they vary in extra features, usability, licensing, and cost. Often it helps selecting points if the image is zoomed, either by uploading a zoomed version of the image or using the zooming feature available in some of the programs. The program returns each point as an x-y matrix. This feature could be worth the trouble for digitizing lines, but I have never had to do this. I have not found one that recognizes different symbols. I am usually after points, and I find them too inconsistent to be helpful even with 100s of points.


