@Override
            public void characters(char[] ch, int start, int length) {
                String lastChunk = chunks.get(chunks.size() - 1);
                String thisStr = new String(ch, start, length);

                if (lastChunk.length() + length > MAXIMUM_TEXT_CHUNK_SIZE) {
                    chunks.add(thisStr);
                } else {
                    chunks.set(chunks.size() - 1, lastChunk + thisStr);
                }
            }
Example of extracting the plain text in chunks, with each chunk
of no more than a certain maximum size
tika-example/src/main/java/org/apache/tika/example/ContentHandlerExample.java