Thanks for this great hint!

However, unfortunately I can't make it work on my computer:

I did how you suggested and the Shell script works (when executed in the terminal), so it is able to convert a pdf to a text file.

However, if I try the opendiff command or try to open 2 pdf files in FileMerge, nothing happens.

Console output:
30.01.11 16:09:01 login[84242] DEAD_PROCESS: 84242 ttys000
30.01.11 16:09:47 [0x0-0x2cc2cc].com.apple.FileMerge[84367] ~/bin/convert_pdf_to_macroman_text.sh: line 2: pdftotext: command not found
30.01.11 16:09:47 [0x0-0x2cc2cc].com.apple.FileMerge[84367] ~/bin/convert_pdf_to_macroman_text.sh: line 2: pdftotext: command not found
30.01.11 16:09:47 FileMerge[84367] *** Assertion failure in -[DiffItem initWithDiffDescriptor:], /SourceCache/FileMerge/FileMerge-1633/DiffItem.m:65
30.01.11 16:09:47 FileMerge[84367] unexpected file diff result at line 0

xpdf and poppler are up to date (acc. to macports, at least)
I'm using Mac OS 10.6.5.

Can anybody help?

Kind regards

Martin

The "pdftotext" binary has been renamed to "xpdf-pdftotext" in the macports xpdf install.

So try using "xpdf-pdftotext" instead of "pdftotext" in that shell script, that should work.