Combining pdf libraries into a single

[OlegGegemon]

I suggest combining the libraries pypdf, camelot-py, reportlib, and convert into one. These 3 libraries are very interconnected, and it would be very convenient if one library could do everything that these 3 libraries do. You can also add python-docx, which will create a single library for docx and pdf that can also convert to pdf.

[stefan6419846]

This is very unlikely to happen. While some aspects might currently be duplicated in the different libraries, they implement a very specific feature set. The approach rather follows the UNIX philosophy of each library doing one specific aspect/feature set well, while providing interfaces to possibly connect them in a suitable manner.

As far as I am aware, the following functionality is currently covered by the mentioned libraries:

• pypdf implements reading and writing of PDF objects.
• camelot-py implements extracting structured text (especially tables) from PDF files.
• reportlab implements creating PDF files with a focus on the actual content streams.
• python-docx implements reading and writing DOCX files.

These are rather distinct use cases and have rather different maintainers. For my own use cases, table extraction, DOCX handling and most parts of PDF content stream generation are irrelevant, thus I would have tons of unused functionality which just bloat distributions and/or create maintenance overhead.

As far as I am aware, most of these functionality is already provided by PyMuPDF as one package (if its license is no issue from your side).

If you think that there is a way to provide a nice interface connecting the different libraries, nobody prevents you from creating such a package bundling the existing functionality together with a common interface and make it available to interested users under the terms of a (FOSS) license of your choice.