PDF Column Line Break Fixer
Heuristically heals accidental line wraps from copied PDF columns while preserving real paragraph breaks, headings, and bulleted lists.
đź“– Engineering & Technical Deep-Dive Click to expand
How it works: Heuristically repairs artificial line wraps copied from multi-column PDF documents and academic papers in strict linear O(N) execution time. Analyzes column line widths using 75th-percentile character distribution to join soft line wraps across sentences while preserving true semantic paragraph breaks, numbered steps, bullet points (•, -, *), and section headings. Features an intelligent compound hyphenation engine that distinguishes true compound words ('well-known', 'self-contained') from accidental column line wraps ('trans-formation', 'hard-ware', 'soft-ware').
Why it matters: PDF documents do not store semantic paragraphs—they store positioned text coordinates on a fixed canvas. When you copy text from a multi-column PDF, the clipboard receives a hard newline (\n) at every visual line wrap. Pasting this text into emails, word processors, or translation engines results in jagged, broken fragments that take hours of manual backspacing to clean. Even worse, naive regex fixers accidentally remove legitimate hyphens from compound words or merge separate section headers into single run-on sentences. PasteXray visualizes every join decision with distinct color-coded badges in the X-Ray workspace before you copy.
Security Architecture: Runs entirely in your local browser runtime.