pdftotext(1)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdftotext

AUTHOR
The  pdftotext software and documentation are copyright 1996-2007 Glyph & Cog, LLC.

27 Febuary 2007

NAME
pdftotext  -  Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter (version 3.02)

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, typically /usr/local/etc/xpdfrc (but this location can be changed when pdftotext is  built).   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.

-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.

-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.

-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:

0      No error.

1      Error opening a PDF file.

2      Error opening an output file.

3      Error related to PDF permissions.

99     Other error.

SEE ALSO
xpdf(1),  pdftops(1),  pdfinfo(1),  pdffonts(1),  pdftoppm(1),   pdfim-ages(1), xpdfrc(5) http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/
