pdftotext(1)                                                      pdftotext(1)



NAME
       pdftotext  -  Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter (version
       3.04)

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  com-
       mands.  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.  If the
              -fixed  option is given, character spacing within each line will
              be determined by the specified character pitch.

       -table Table mode is similar to physical layout mode, but optimized for
              tabular  data, with the goal of keeping rows and columns aligned
              (at the expense of inserting extra whitespace).  If  the  -fixed
              option  is  given,  character  spacing  within each line will be
              determined by the specified character pitch.

       -lineprinter
              Line  printer  mode  uses  a  strict  fixed-character-pitch  and
              -height  layout.   That  is, the page is broken into a grid, and
              characters are placed into that grid.  If the  grid  spacing  is
              too  small for the actual characters, the result is extra white-
              space.  If the grid spacing is too large, the result is  missing
              whitespace.   The grid spacing can be specified using the -fixed
              and -linespacing options.  If one or both are not given  on  the
              command  line,  pdftotext  will  attempt  to compute appropriate
              value(s).

       -raw   Keep the text in content stream order.  Depending on how the PDF
              file was generated, this may or may not be useful.

       -fixed number
              Specify  the  character  pitch (character width), in points, for
              physical layout, table, or line printer mode.  This  is  ignored
              in all other modes.

       -linespacing number
              Specify  the  line  spacing,  in  points, for line printer mode.
              This is ignored in all other modes.

       -clip  Text which is hidden because of clipping is removed before doing
              layout,  and then added back in.  This can be helpful for tables
              where clipped (invisible) text would overlap the next column.

       -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.

AUTHOR
       The  pdftotext software and documentation are copyright 1996-2014 Glyph
       & Cog, LLC.

SEE ALSO
       xpdf(1),  pdftops(1),  pdftohtml(1),  pdfinfo(1),  pdffonts(1),  pdfde-
       tach(1), pdftoppm(1), pdftopng(1), pdfimages(1), xpdfrc(5)
       http://www.foolabs.com/xpdf/



                                  28 May 2014                     pdftotext(1)
