getRawTextContent() returns the lines of every page in reverse order (bottom to top) since 4.0.3

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Assessment

Difficulty
1/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
90/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
javascript, node.js
Domain
backend, data

Research direction

Read lib/pdftextsorter.js and inspect the line sort described in the issue. Check how the bidiTexts y coordinates relate to visual page order, then run the supplied three-line reproduction and verify getRawTextContent() emits First, Second, Third line in that order, followed by the page break.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Since 4.0.3, getRawTextContent() (and the CLI's -c content output) emits each page's lines from the bottom of the page to the top. A plain three-line page comes out last line first.

Reproduction (npm i [email protected], run with node repro.mjs):

import fs from "node:fs";
import PDFParser from "pdf2json";

// one page, three lines drawn top to bottom (y = 700, 680, 660)
const content = "BT /F1 12 Tf 72 700 Td (First line) Tj 0 -20 Td (Second line) Tj 0 -20 Td (Third line) Tj ET";
const objs = [
  "<< /Type /Catalog /Pages 2 0 R >>",
  "<< /Type /Pages /Kids [3 0 R] /Count 1 >>",
  "<< /Type /Page /Parent 2 0 R /MediaBox [0 0 612 792] /Resources << /Font << /F1 4 0 R >> >> /Contents 5 0 R >>",
  "<< /Type /Font /Subtype /Type1 /BaseFont /Helvetica >>",
  `<< /Length ${content.length} >>\nstream\n${content}\nendstream`,
];
let pdf = "%PDF-1.4\n";
const offsets = objs.map((o, i) => { const off = pdf.length; pdf += `${i + 1} 0 obj\n${o}\nendobj\n`; return off; });
const xref = pdf.length;
pdf += `xref\n0 ${objs.length + 1}\n0000000000 65535 f \n` + offsets.map(o => `${String(o).padStart(10, "0")} 00000 n \n`).join("");
pdf += `trailer\n<< /Size ${objs.length + 1} /Root 1 0 R >>\nstartxref\n${xref}\n%%EOF\n`;

const parser = new PDFParser(null, true);
parser.on("pdfParser_dataError", (e) => console.error(e.parserError));
parser.on("pdfParser_dataReady", () => console.log(JSON.stringify(parser.getRawTextContent())));
fs.writeFileSync("lines.pdf", pdf, "latin1");
parser.loadPDF("lines.pdf");

Actual (pdf2json 4.0.3, 4.1.0, 4.1.1 / master 5edaa03 on Node v26.13.0):

"Third line\r\nSecond line\r\nFirst line\r\n----------------Page (0) Break----------------\r\n"

Expected (what 4.0.2 and pdftotext lines.pdf - produce):

"First line\r\nSecond line\r\nThird line\r\n----------------Page (0) Break----------------\r\n"

The same happens with ordinary PDFs, such as the Google Docs sample.pdf attached to #421 (comment of 2026-04-28).

The spatial sort added in #422 (lib/pdftextsorter.js, lines.sort((a, b) => a[0].y - b[0].y)) sorts lines by ascending y, but bidiTexts y coordinates are in PDF user space where y grows upward, so ascending y orders lines from bottom to top instead of top to bottom (lines.sort((a, b) => b[0].y - a[0].y)).

Credit: https://ucsbplse.github.io/

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