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       3.00)
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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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CONFIGURATION FILE

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

26       Many  of  the following options can be set with configuration file com‐
27       mands.  These are listed in square brackets with the description of the
28       corresponding command line option.
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30       -f number
31              Specifies the first page to convert.
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33       -l number
34              Specifies the last page to convert.
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36       -layout
37              Maintain  (as  best as possible) the original physical layout of
38              the text.  The default is to ´undo'  physical  layout  (columns,
39              hyphenation, etc.) and output the text in reading order.
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41       -raw   Keep  the  text  in  content stream order.  This is a hack which
42              often "undoes" column formatting, etc.  Use of raw  mode  is  no
43              longer recommended.
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45       -htmlmeta
46              Generate  a  simple  HTML  file, including the meta information.
47              This simply wraps the text in <pre> and </pre> and prepends  the
48              meta headers.
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50       -enc encoding-name
51              Sets  the  encoding  to  use for text output.  The encoding-name
52              must be defined with the  unicodeMap  command  (see  xpdfrc(5)).
53              The  encoding name is case-sensitive.  This defaults to "Latin1"
54              (which is a built-in encoding).  [config file: textEncoding]
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56       -eol unix | dos | mac
57              Sets the end-of-line convention to use for text output.  [config
58              file: textEOL]
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60       -nopgbrk
61              Don't  insert  page breaks (form feed characters) between pages.
62              [config file: textPageBreaks]
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64       -opw password
65              Specify the owner password for the  PDF  file.   Providing  this
66              will bypass all security restrictions.
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68       -upw password
69              Specify the user password for the PDF file.
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71       -q     Don't print any messages or errors.  [config file: errQuiet]
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73       -cfg config-file
74              Read config-file in place of ~/.xpdfrc or the system-wide config
75              file.
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77       -v     Print copyright and version information.
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79       -h     Print usage information.  (-help and --help are equivalent.)
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BUGS

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

87       The Xpdf tools use the following exit codes:
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89       0      No error.
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91       1      Error opening a PDF file.
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93       2      Error opening an output file.
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95       3      Error related to PDF permissions.
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97       99     Other error.
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AUTHOR

100       The pdftotext software and documentation are copyright 1996-2004  Glyph
101       & Cog, LLC.
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