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

21       -f number
22              Specifies the first page to convert.
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24       -l number
25              Specifies the last page to convert.
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27       -r number
28              Specifies the resolution, in DPI.  The default is 72 DPI.
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30       -x number
31              Specifies the x-coordinate of the crop area top left corner
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33       -y number
34              Specifies the y-coordinate of the crop area top left corner
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36       -W number
37              Specifies the width of crop area in pixels (default is 0)
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39       -H number
40              Specifies the height of crop area in pixels (default is 0)
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42       -layout
43              Maintain  (as  best as possible) the original physical layout of
44              the text.  The default is to ´undo'  physical  layout  (columns,
45              hyphenation, etc.) and output the text in reading order.
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47       -fixed number
48              Assume fixed-pitch (or tabular) text, with the specified charac‐
49              ter width (in points).  This forces physical layout mode.
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51       -raw   Keep the text in content stream order.  This is a hack which of‐
52              ten  "undoes"  column  formatting,  etc.   Use of raw mode is no
53              longer recommended.
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55       -nodiag
56              Discard diagonal text (i.e., text that is not close  to  one  of
57              the 0, 90, 180, or 270 degree axes). This is useful for skipping
58              watermarks drawn on body text.
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60       -htmlmeta
61              Generate a simple HTML file,  including  the  meta  information.
62              This  simply wraps the text in <pre> and </pre> and prepends the
63              meta headers.
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65       -bbox  Generate an XHTML file containing bounding box  information  for
66              each word in the file.
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68       -bbox-layout
69              Generate  an  XHTML file containing bounding box information for
70              each block, line, and word in the file.
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72       -tsv   Generate a TSV file containing the bounding box information  for
73              each block, line, and word in the file.
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75       -cropbox
76              Use the crop box rather than the media box with -bbox and -bbox-
77              layout.
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79       -colspacing number
80              Specifies how much spacing we allow after a word before  consid‐
81              ering  adjacent  text to be a new column, measured as a fraction
82              of the font size. Current default is 0.7, old releases had a 0.3
83              default.
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85       -enc encoding-name
86              Sets  the  encoding  to  use  for  text output. This defaults to
87              "UTF-8".
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89       -listenc
90              Lists the available encodings
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92       -eol unix | dos | mac
93              Sets the end-of-line convention to use for text output.
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95       -nopgbrk
96              Don't insert page breaks (form feed characters) between pages.
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98       -opw password
99              Specify the owner password for the  PDF  file.   Providing  this
100              will bypass all security restrictions.
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102       -upw password
103              Specify the user password for the PDF file.
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105       -q     Don't print any messages or errors.
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107       -v     Print copyright and version information.
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109       -h     Print usage information.  (-help and --help are equivalent.)
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BUGS

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

117       The Xpdf tools use the following exit codes:
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119       0      No error.
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121       1      Error opening a PDF file.
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123       2      Error opening an output file.
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125       3      Error related to PDF permissions.
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127       99     Other error.
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AUTHOR

130       The  pdftotext software and documentation are copyright 1996-2011 Glyph
131       & Cog, LLC.
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SEE ALSO

134       pdfdetach(1),  pdffonts(1),  pdfimages(1),  pdfinfo(1),  pdftocairo(1),
135       pdftohtml(1), pdftoppm(1), pdftops(1), pdfseparate(1), pdfsig(1), pdfu‐
136       nite(1)
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140                                15 August 2011                    pdftotext(1)
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