I’d say looking for an API interface for this would be more trouble than it’s worth. 
The simplest thing I can think of is to get the content you want into your OS's clipboard buffer. I think Squeak can access that directly. I think Levente added that capability. 
Another way is one I’m trying to do. Copy the contents from a PDF. Save to another file. Import that content with FileStream readOnlyFileNamed:. I’m exploring String regex:matchesDo: to sort the content. I have to say that since my regex-fu is weak, that’s about as far as I’ve gotten. 
I imagine the VW solution has a nice set of tools to extract information. I imagine that’s precisely what we don’t have in Squeak. #regex:matchesDo: is about as sophisticated as I can suggest on that score. Like yourself, I’d be happy to hear other people’s ideas on this. 

FWIW, 
Chris 

> On Jul 24, 2019, at 5:24 PM, tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> wrote:
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> 
> 
>> On 2019-07-24, at 1:58 PM, Jakob Reschke <forums.jakob at resfarm.de> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi Tim,
>> 
>> What specifically are you looking for?
> 
> Ultimately nothing more than a way to extract text etc from Word docs or PDFs, that sort of thing; tables from spreadsheets too I guess.
> VW has a whole COM/OLE system that certainly can be used to do the job, but simpler paths to the same end would be just fine by me.
> 
>> The reference of a particular technology? An existing Squeak binding to any of them? Some guides that help to choose a tool to achieve a goal you have in mind?
> 
> All of the above really; I haven't paid any attention to what microsoft does with stuff for a very long time so I don't even really know good search terms right now. Is COM still the thing or have they come up with some other acronym? Is there a completely different mechanism out there? Is there anything that might even be cross platform? Something chocolate favoured?
> 
> tim
> --
> tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
> Meets quality standards: It compiles without errors.
> 
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>