Poppler utilities: lesson test 2026-10-11 (passed)

Record test:wgxi8q. Question: Make a one-page PDF, read its metadata with pdfinfo and extract its text with pdftotext.

Answer

On 2026-10-11, the headlesson operator ran all 7 steps of this lesson with Poppler utilities 26.04.0 (macOS26.5.2 arm64; Homebrew poppler 26.04.0 already installed (not reinstalled; upstream current is 26.10.0); test PDF made with macOS cupsfilter from self-made text), and all passed. The final Next step is advice and was not run. No independent check has been reviewed. This is the operator's own run, not a vendor claim.

Tested on

• Test date: 2026-10-11
• Record confirmed: 2026-10-11
• Version: 26.04.0
• Environment: macOS26.5.2 arm64; Homebrew poppler 26.04.0 already installed (not reinstalled; upstream current is 26.10.0); test PDF made with macOS cupsfilter from self-made text
• Result: passed, 7/7 steps

Lesson steps and what happened

• 1. [passed] command -v pdftotext || brew install poppler
• 2. [passed] pdftotext -v
• 3. [passed] printf 'Invoice 2026-001\nTotal: 42 apples\n' > note.txt
• 4. [passed] cupsfilter -m application/pdf note.txt > note.pdf
• 5. [passed] pdfinfo note.pdf
• 6. [passed] pdftotext -layout note.pdf out.txt
• 7. [passed] grep -c 'Total: 42 apples' out.txt

Next (advice, not tested)

Next: Agree with the user on the real PDF and the output path; run pdfinfo first to check page count and encryption, extract with pdftotext (add -f/-l for a page range), and if the text is empty or only form feeds, treat the PDF as scanned and switch to OCR.

Cautions recorded with the lesson

These notes come from the lesson. Some describe failures seen in tests; others are general cautions. Each one is not a separately tested result.

• A PDF made only of page images gives no text; in the test pdftotext exited 0 and the output was a single form feed character. Check for empty output instead of relying on the exit code.
• pdftotext ends each page with a form feed (\f) page break; pass -nopgbrk to omit page breaks.
• Without a text-file argument pdftotext writes file.txt next to file.pdf; pass - to write to standard output.
• Exit codes per the installed man page: 0 no error, 1 error opening the PDF, 2 error opening the output file, 3 PDF permission error, 99 other error; a missing input exited 1 in the test.
• Default output follows reading order and undoes the physical layout; -layout keeps columns, and -tsv prints words with bounding boxes as tab-separated values.
• Step 3 uses the macOS cupsfilter command only to make a test PDF; on other systems use any small PDF that contains real text.
• Confirm: Check which PDF is read and where the text file is written (an existing output file is replaced), and confirm the extracted text is not empty before passing it to a downstream step.

What this record does not show

• Not measured in this run: Encrypted or password-protected PDFs.
• Not measured in this run: non-Latin text.
• Not measured in this run: multi-column layouts.
• Not measured in this run: very large files.
• Not measured in this run: Poppler 26.10.0 (the release current at test time).
• Not measured in this run: the other Poppler utilities (pdftoppm was used only to build the image-only test PDF).
• Whether an agent new to this tool can use it from this record alone (the operator wrote and ran the lesson).
• Comparisons between models or clients.
• Production use, accounts, or real customer data.
• Behaviour of the latest version (the test is tied to the version and date below).
• The final "Next" step is advice and was not part of the test.

Primary record

Operator record: a past lesson trial (legacy). It is not claimed to meet level L1 of run-task-contract/0.1.0.

Independent check

Independent check: not yet reviewed. (Whether an independent check exists has not been looked up for this record.)

Evidence

A non-public test report exists and is not published, so third parties cannot check it directly.

Retrieve over MCP

headlesson_get id="app:poppler" sections ["lesson","gotchas"] on https://mcp.headlesson.com/mcp

Source version

This page is built from the catalog record app:poppler at revision 0a66d9cd024b. It is not rewritten when the current lesson changes; a new test gets a new record ID.

Sources (lesson text at the fixed revision)

Each line names fields of this page (as JSON pointers into the .json version) and where they come from. Labels without a link are non-public sources. Fields not listed (such as test results) are the headlesson operator's own observations.

• /question, /next_advice, /cautions/items/5, /cautions/items/6: headlesson editorial judgement (checked 2026-10-11, inferred, editorial)
• /steps/0/step: https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/poppler (checked 2026-10-11, primary, third-party)
• /steps/1/step, /steps/2/step, /steps/3/step, /steps/4/step, /steps/5/step, /steps/6/step, /cautions/items/0, /cautions/items/1, /cautions/items/2, /cautions/items/3, /cautions/items/4: headlesson editorial judgement (checked 2026-10-11, primary, editorial)

Corrections

None.

Cite

headlesson test:wgxi8q (app:poppler): On 2026-10-11, the headlesson operator ran all 7 steps of this lesson with Poppler utilities 26.04.0 (macOS26.5.2 arm64; Homebrew poppler 26.04.0 already installed (not reinstalled; upstream current is 26.10.0); test PDF made with macOS cupsfilter from self-made text), and all passed. The final Next step is advice and was not run. No independent check has been reviewed. This is the operator's own run, not a vendor claim. https://headlesson.com/tests/wgxi8q

Page updated: 2026-10-13 (the date its content last changed).

要約（日本語）: Poppler utilities の lesson を 2026-10-11 に headlesson の運営が 26.04.0 で試し、7/7 段が通った（passed、運営の実測で製品側の主張ではない）。この記録が示さないこと・独立確認の状況は本文のとおり。