Ditto on what Glenn9999 posted. I've considered writing a Java or other script to automate this, but can't find the time. In the meantime, there are ways to minimize the work after downloading the pdf from the LA Times site. I've had some success with pointing Internet Explorer at the pdf, selecting all, and copying to Microsoft Word. Then use the replace function there to strip off the blanks in the grid and make the clues into single lines with no line numbers as required for Across Lite. Update the grid with dots and lower case as appropriate, cut/paste to get the required boilerplate, and save the result as plain text. Done this way the transcribing process takes about 5 minutes for a daily puzzle and a little longer for the weekend. Macros in MS Word reduce this further but yes, this process screams for automation!
