pdftotext(1)

1pdftotext(1)                General Commands Manual               pdftotext(1)
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NAME

6       pdftotext  -  Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter (version
7       3.03)
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SYNOPSIS

10       pdftotext [options] [PDF-file [text-file]]
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DESCRIPTION

13       Pdftotext converts Portable Document Format (PDF) files to plain text.
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15       Pdftotext reads the PDF file, PDF-file, and writes a text  file,  text-
16       file.   If  text-file  is not specified, pdftotext converts file.pdf to
17       file.txt.  If text-file is ´-', the text is sent to stdout.
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OPTIONS

20       -f number
21              Specifies the first page to convert.
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23       -l number
24              Specifies the last page to convert.
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26       -r number
27              Specifies the resolution, in DPI.  The default is 72 DPI.
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29       -x number
30              Specifies the x-coordinate of the crop area top left corner
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32       -y number
33              Specifies the y-coordinate of the crop area top left corner
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35       -W number
36              Specifies the width of crop area in pixels (default is 0)
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38       -H number
39              Specifies the height of crop area in pixels (default is 0)
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41       -layout
42              Maintain (as best as possible) the original physical  layout  of
43              the  text.   The  default is to ´undo' physical layout (columns,
44              hyphenation, etc.) and output the text in reading order.
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46       -fixed number
47              Assume fixed-pitch (or tabular) text, with the specified charac‐
48              ter width (in points).  This forces physical layout mode.
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50       -raw   Keep  the  text  in  content stream order.  This is a hack which
51              often "undoes" column formatting, etc.  Use of raw  mode  is  no
52              longer recommended.
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54       -htmlmeta
55              Generate  a  simple  HTML  file, including the meta information.
56              This simply wraps the text in <pre> and </pre> and prepends  the
57              meta headers.
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59       -bbox  Generate  an  XHTML file containing bounding box information for
60              each word in the file.
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62       -bbox-layout
63              Generate an XHTML file containing bounding box  information  for
64              each block, line, and word in the file.
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66       -enc encoding-name
67              Sets  the  encoding  to  use  for  text output. This defaults to
68              "UTF-8".
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70       -listenc
71              Lits the available encodings
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73       -eol unix | dos | mac
74              Sets the end-of-line convention to use for text output.
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76       -nopgbrk
77              Don't insert page breaks (form feed characters) between pages.
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79       -opw password
80              Specify the owner password for the  PDF  file.   Providing  this
81              will bypass all security restrictions.
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83       -upw password
84              Specify the user password for the PDF file.
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86       -q     Don't print any messages or errors.
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88       -v     Print copyright and version information.
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90       -h     Print usage information.  (-help and --help are equivalent.)
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BUGS

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

98       The Xpdf tools use the following exit codes:
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100       0      No error.
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102       1      Error opening a PDF file.
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104       2      Error opening an output file.
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106       3      Error related to PDF permissions.
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108       99     Other error.
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AUTHOR

111       The  pdftotext software and documentation are copyright 1996-2011 Glyph
112       & Cog, LLC.
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