Text & Document Processing

Basic text extraction from structured documents and plain text formats.

Text & Document Extractors

Overview

Text and document extractors handle files with explicit text content or structured document formats. These extractors are ideal for:

  • PDF documents with text layers

  • Office documents (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX)

  • Markdown and HTML files

  • Plain text files

  • Web content

Available Extractors

pass-through-text

Returns existing extracted text without re-extraction. Useful for:

  • Skipping extraction when text already exists

  • Testing and debugging pipelines

  • Preserving manually curated text

Installation: Included by default

metadata-text

Extracts text from item metadata (title, tags, keywords). Useful for:

  • Creating searchable metadata

  • Generating synthetic corpus entries

  • Testing without file content

Installation: Included by default

pdf-text

Extracts text from PDF documents using pypdf. Ideal for:

  • PDFs with selectable text layers

  • Fast extraction without OCR overhead

  • Simple document processing

Installation: Included by default

markitdown

Microsoft MarkItDown for Office documents and web content. Supports:

  • DOCX, XLSX, PPTX

  • HTML, MHTML

  • Images (via OCR)

  • Audio (via transcription)

  • ZIP archives

Installation: pip install biblicus[markitdown] (Python 3.10+ only)

unstructured

Unstructured.io for complex document parsing. Supports:

  • DOCX, XLSX, PPTX

  • Email formats (EML, MSG)

  • Markdown, HTML, XML

  • Advanced chunking and partitioning

Installation: pip install biblicus[unstructured]

Choosing an Extractor

Format

Recommended Extractor

Alternative

PDF (text layer)

pdf-text

markitdown

PDF (scanned)

See OCR or VLM

DOCX, XLSX, PPTX

markitdown

unstructured

Markdown, HTML

markitdown

unstructured

Plain text

pass-through-text

metadata-text

Common Patterns

Fallback Chain

Use select-text to try multiple extractors:

extractor_id: select-text
config:
  extractors:
    - pdf-text
    - markitdown
    - unstructured

Metadata + Content

Use pipeline to combine metadata and content:

extractor_id: pipeline
config:
  extractors:
    - metadata-text
    - pdf-text

See Also