Manual: pdftotext

pdftotext(1)					   General Commands Manual					pdftotext(1)

NAME
       pdftotext - Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter (version 3.03)

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.	 If PDF-file is ´-',  it  reads	 the
       PDF file from stdin.

OPTIONS
       -f number
	      Specifies the first page to convert.

       -l number
	      Specifies the last page to convert.

       -r number
	      Specifies the resolution, in DPI.	 The default is 72 DPI.

       -x number
	      Specifies the x-coordinate of the crop area top left corner

       -y number
	      Specifies the y-coordinate of the crop area top left corner

       -W number
	      Specifies the width of crop area in pixels (default is 0)

       -H number
	      Specifies the height of crop area in pixels (default is 0)

       -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.

       -fixed number
	      Assume fixed-pitch (or tabular) text, with the specified character width (in points).   This  forces  physical
	      layout mode.

       -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.

       -nodiag
	      Discard diagonal text (i.e., text that is not close to one of the 0, 90, 180, or 270  degree  axes).  This  is
	      useful for skipping watermarks drawn on body text.

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

       -bbox  Generate an XHTML file containing bounding box information for each word in the file.

       -bbox-layout
	      Generate an XHTML file containing bounding box information for each block, line, and word in the file.

       -tsv   Generate a TSV file containing the bounding box information for each block, line, and word in the file.

       -cropbox
	      Use the crop box rather than the media box with -bbox and -bbox-layout.

       -colspacing number
	      Specifies how much spacing we allow after a word before considering adjacent text to be a new column, measured
	      as a fraction of the font size. Current default is 0.7, old releases had a 0.3 default.

       -enc encoding-name
	      Sets the encoding to use for text output. This defaults to "UTF-8".

       -listenc
	      Lists the available encodings

       -eol unix | dos | mac
	      Sets the end-of-line convention to use for text output.

       -nopgbrk
	      Don't insert page breaks (form feed characters) between pages.

       -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.

       -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 1996-2011 Glyph & Cog, LLC.

SEE ALSO
       pdfdetach(1), pdffonts(1), pdfimages(1), pdfinfo(1), pdftocairo(1), pdftohtml(1), pdftoppm(1),  pdftops(1),  pdfsepa‐
       rate(1), pdfsig(1), pdfunite(1)

						       15 August 2011						pdftotext(1)