microsoft / microsoft/markitdown

PDF not supported

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Description

Dear team,

Can you please clarify your readme file?

PDF isn't supported. Not really, because it fails most relevant tests: recognizing headings, footers, tables, and more is not possible. It therefore doesn't convert a PDF to markdown, but to a raw text file. That can be relevant, but is simply not the promise.
It would be helpful before investigating your package to be made aware of that. Your readme tells me in the first 2 lines that I can use it to convert a PDF to markdown, seemingly the most important feature. I was shocked to learn this is not the case, at all.

I am aware that PDF is a terrible format, and usefully converting it requires significant research. Therefore, I don't expect this is a feature that will be provided in this package. However, could you please update the description of your package in that case?

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the README's first two lines and compare their PDF-to-Markdown claim with the behavior described in the issue. Update the README and package description so they accurately state the PDF limitations, including that output may be raw text; done means users are not led to expect reliable headings, footers, or tables.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Domain
documentation
Issue type
Documentation
Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
45/100

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