@Curt:

The few PDFs I tried it on had a text box around every few letters (even words were usually comprised of multiple text boxes).  I don't have a burning need to edit pdfs, so I just dropped it. 

What I wonder now is if other (possible more expensive) PDF editors such as INfix handle things such that this issue isn't noticeable by the user? 

Curt, do you mean that Infix allows you to ignore the boxes, and looks to the user like you're editing free text?

Infix does not understand that the text may continue on the next page.

Thanks...  I suppose it was too much to hope it would really work like a word processor... 

Hmm... now that I see the jpg "full-size" here, maybe it's not the best test candidate... The font looks big in the jpg. rjbull - do you have an image file that you could post for me to try to convert or is this what you were looking for?

I sent Darwin the front page of a patent PDF file, and Nuance made a very good job of OCR'ing it into usable text.  Able2Extract couldn't touch it.  Maybe I should ask them to raise their game 

Darwin, many thanks for the test.  Expect some DC credits! 

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Aaauuuggghhh!      I spoke too soon!  I just tried Able2Extract again - and this time it worked!    Leaving aside explanations such as Rupert Sheldrake's morphic resonance, I think I must have pressed Ctrl-A in Able2Extract meaning the whole page, but it included the whole file, all 99 pages of it, and choked on converting something that size.  Just marking a section or a single page and converting that now works OK.  And it darned well should, too.  Here's part of the About screen:

Copyright    2000 - 2008 Investintech.com Inc.
Nuance      OCR    1994-2008 Nuance, Inc.

That is, it uses Nuance OCR technology!    On a quick look I still think Nuance's own conversion was a little better at least on the graphics, but Able2Extract has done a perfectly adequate job on the text.

Oh, well.  I suppose that means I don't have to buy yet another software licence.  I'm catching Darwin up all too rapidly as it is 
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