pdftotext

pdftotext(1)                General Commands Manual               pdftotext(1)

NAME
       pdftotext  -  Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter (version
       3.02)

SYNOPSIS
       pdftotext [options] [PDF-file [text-file]]

DESCRIPTION
       Pdftotext converts Portable Document Format (PDF) files to plain text.

       Pdftotext reads the PDF file, PDF-file, and writes a text  file,  text-
       file.   If  text-file  is not specified, pdftotext converts file.pdf to
       file.txt.  If text-file is '-', the text is sent to stdout.

CONFIGURATION FILE
       Pdftotext reads a configuration file at startup.   It  first  tries  to
       find the user's private config file, ~/.xpdfrc.  If that doesn't exist,
       it looks for a system-wide  config  file,  /etc/xpdf/xpdfrc.   See  the
       xpdfrc(5) man page for details.

OPTIONS
       Many  of  the following options can be set with configuration file com-
       mands.  These are listed in square brackets with the description of the
       corresponding command line option.

       -f number
              Specifies the first page to convert.

       -l number
              Specifies the last page to convert.

       -layout
              Maintain  (as  best as possible) the original physical layout of
              the text.  The default is to 'undo'  physical  layout  (columns,
              hyphenation, etc.) and output the text in reading order.

       -raw   Keep the text in content stream order.  This is a hack which of-
              ten "undoes" column formatting, etc.  Use  of  raw  mode  is  no
              longer recommended.

       -htmlmeta
              Generate  a  simple  HTML  file, including the meta information.
              This simply wraps the text in <pre> and </pre> and prepends  the
              meta headers.

       -enc encoding-name
              Sets  the  encoding  to  use for text output.  The encoding-name
              must be defined with the  unicodeMap  command  (see  xpdfrc(5)).
              The  encoding name is case-sensitive.  This defaults to "Latin1"
              (which is a built-in encoding).  [config file: textEncoding]

       -eol unix | dos | mac
              Sets the end-of-line convention to use for text output.  [config
              file: textEOL]

       -nopgbrk
              Don't  insert  page breaks (form feed characters) between pages.
              [config file: textPageBreaks]

       -opw password
              Specify the owner password for the  PDF  file.   Providing  this
              will bypass all security restrictions.

       -upw password
              Specify the user password for the PDF file.

       -q     Don't print any messages or errors.  [config file: errQuiet]

       -cfg config-file
              Read config-file in place of ~/.xpdfrc or the system-wide config
              file.

       -v     Print copyright and version information.

       -h     Print usage information.  (-help and --help are equivalent.)

BUGS
       Some PDF files contain fonts whose encodings have been  mangled  beyond
       recognition.  There is no way (short of OCR) to extract text from these
       files.

EXIT CODES
       The Xpdf tools use the following exit codes:

       0      No error.

       1      Error opening a PDF file.

       2      Error opening an output file.

       3      Error related to PDF permissions.

       99     Other error.

AUTHOR
       The pdftotext software and documentation are copyright 1996-2007  Glyph
       & Cog, LLC.

SEE ALSO
       xpdf(1),   pdftops(1),  pdfinfo(1),  pdffonts(1),  pdftoppm(1),  pdfim-
       ages(1), xpdfrc(5)
       http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/

                                27 Febuary 2007                   pdftotext(1)