MRtoEARS 1.20 - Extract Voted data from Pickwick PDF documents
   ==============================================================
         (C)J.G.Harston, 2004 - jgh@arcade.demon.co.uk
         Free for use by Liberal Democrat Party Members

Contents:
  MRtoEARS.txt - this file
  MRtoEARS.exe - the program
  MRtoEARS.ini - specifies file locations
  PDFtoTXT.exe - Derek Noonberg's free PDF to Text converter

This program will extract the Voted data from a PDF file supplied
by Elections Offices using the Pickwick Election Data System.

Note that the only PDFs that data can be extracted from are those
actually created by the Election Office's Election Database system.
That is, a PDF that contains text data. This would normally only be
the case for the marked postal register. MRtoEARS CANNOT extract data
from a PDF document that contains scans of paper documents, such as
the manual marked register from a polling station.

If you try to extract data from a PDF with no textual data in it,
you will either get an empty output file, or get the message
Cannot open 'temp.tmp' file.


To use:
* Place all your marked register PDF files in a directory
* Create a file called 'FileList.txt' in that directory with a
  list of filenames in it to convert, eg:
XA.PDF
XB.PDF
XC.PDF
...etc
* Edit MRtoEARS.ini to specify the directory you have put the
  PDF files in. MRtoEARS.ini must be in the same directory as
  MRtoEARS.exe.
* Run MRtoEARS. You will end up with a file 'VOTED.TXT' with PD:NUM
  entries of electors who have voted. Import this into EARS in the
  normal way.

* Alternatively, run MRtoEARs specifying the directory as a parameter,
  eg: MRtoEARS S:\EARS\MarkedRegs\2006\

* Check the output to ensure it looks correct. No responsibility will be
  taken for incorrect conversion, damage, etc, etc,. Your elections office
  may suppliy marked register PDFs differently to mine.