For those interested I have written a parser for the equibase PDF charts. It can be found at:
http://lamedomain.net/horses/chartparser/chartparse.zip. The chart parsing can take up to a minute on a Athlon 1.3 Ghz. During early testing I have seen it get hung up on charts and never stop running. If it runs for more than a couple of minutes, there was an error parsing the chart and you will need to kill the program.
This program converts the PDF to text and then parsers the text for relivent information. The text file I get from the PDF is very difficult to parse due to the way PDF files are formated. This program has known bugs and will not parse all charts correctly.
Running it consists of unzipping the zip file and then double clicking parser.exe, click the "Convert PDF" button, choose a PDF file, then click Open. During this time it will parse the PDF and output a CSV file with the same filename and a "csv" extension.
I have only tested it on Windows XP and with the box I developed it on. Please let me know if you have any problems running it. NOTE: The user uses this program at their own risk and is responsible for verifing the data is correct before making any handicapping decisions using it.
Enjoy!
Ed