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Re: How to ask a question?



On 7/28/25 12:03 PM, Ralph Aichinger wrote:
On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 01:18:22PM -0000, Greg wrote:
His question isn't complex, though. He has *this* PDF from which he
wants to extract *that* data so that it is readily exploitable, legible,
presentable, etc. If that isn't it, then the fault lies with him, not us.

Oh boy, you have just described a problem space that keeps lots of
experts occupied in their jobs for years. Just getting "data" from an
basically unstructured PDF and turning them into something a statistics
program or database can make sense of is a whole job of its own.

The problem has become *MOOT*.
As I reported elsewhere I've found the spreadsheets the PDF was based on.
That has its own set of problems -- but at least I've dealt with them before.


To be frank, given the question, he'd be significantly better off just
asking one of the robots, where you can upload PDFs, than here, where
people go off in any direction and seem to have permanent chips on
their shoulders.

Your understanding of this problem space and mine differ. I think this
is complex. I think there are no easy shortcuts to this. Asking a LLM
might actually a good idea, but probably not a 100% solution.

/ralph




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