pdftotext(1) General Commands Manual pdftotext(1)

NAME
       pdftotext  -  Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter (version
       3.03)

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.

OPTIONS
       -f number
              Specifies the first page to convert.

       -l number
              Specifies the last page to convert.

       -r number
              Specifies the resolution, in DPI.  The default is 72 DPI.

       -x number
              Specifies the x-coordinate of the crop area top left corner

       -y number
              Specifies the y-coordinate of the crop area top left corner

       -W number
              Specifies the width of crop area in pixels (default is 0)

       -H number
              Specifies the height of crop area in pixels (default is 0)

       -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 charac‐
              ter 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 
 and 
 and prepends  the
              meta headers.

       -bbox  Generate  an  XHTML file containing bounding box information for
              each word in the file.

       -enc encoding-name
              Sets the encoding to use  for  text  output.  This  defaults  to
              "UTF-8".

       -listenc
              Lits the available encodings

       -eol unix | dos | mac
              Sets the end-of-line convention to use for text output.

       -nopgbrk
              Don't insert page breaks (form feed characters) between pages.

       -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.

       -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 1996-2011  Glyph
       & Cog, LLC.

SEE ALSO
       pdfdetach(1),  pdffonts(1),  pdfimages(1),  pdfinfo(1),  pdftocairo(1),
       pdftohtml(1), pdftoppm(1), pdftops(1)



                                15 August 2011                    pdftotext(1)