pdftotext - Unix, Linux Command
NAME
pdftotext - Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter
(version 3.00)
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
commands. These are listed in square brackets with the description of
the corresponding command line option.
| Tag | Description |
|---|
|
-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 often
"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:
| Tag | Description |
|---|
|
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 1996-2004 Glyph
& Cog, LLC.
SEE ALSO
http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
|
