| 1 | .\" Copyright 1997-2017 Glyph & Cog, LLC
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| 2 | .TH pdftotext 1 "10 Aug 2017"
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| 3 | .SH NAME
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| 4 | pdftotext \- Portable Document Format (PDF) to text converter
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| 5 | (version 4.00)
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| 6 | .SH SYNOPSIS
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| 7 | .B pdftotext
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| 8 | [options]
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| 9 | .RI [ PDF-file
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| 10 | .RI [ text-file ]]
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| 11 | .SH DESCRIPTION
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| 12 | .B Pdftotext
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| 13 | converts Portable Document Format (PDF) files to plain text.
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| 14 | .PP
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| 15 | Pdftotext reads the PDF file,
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| 16 | .IR PDF-file ,
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| 17 | and writes a text file,
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| 18 | .IR text-file .
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| 19 | If
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| 20 | .I text-file
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| 21 | is not specified, pdftotext converts
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| 22 | .I file.pdf
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| 23 | to
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| 24 | .IR file.txt .
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| 25 | If
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| 26 | .I text-file
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| 27 | is \'-', the text is sent to stdout.
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| 28 | .SH CONFIGURATION FILE
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| 29 | Pdftotext reads a configuration file at startup. It first tries to
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| 30 | find the user's private config file, ~/.xpdfrc. If that doesn't
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| 31 | exist, it looks for a system-wide config file, typically
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| 32 | /usr/local/etc/xpdfrc (but this location can be changed when pdftotext
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| 33 | is built). See the
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| 34 | .BR xpdfrc (5)
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| 35 | man page for details.
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| 36 | .SH OPTIONS
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| 37 | Many of the following options can be set with configuration file
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| 38 | commands. These are listed in square brackets with the description of
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| 39 | the corresponding command line option.
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| 40 | .TP
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| 41 | .BI \-f " number"
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| 42 | Specifies the first page to convert.
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| 43 | .TP
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| 44 | .BI \-l " number"
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| 45 | Specifies the last page to convert.
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| 46 | .TP
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| 47 | .B \-layout
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| 48 | Maintain (as best as possible) the original physical layout of the
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| 49 | text. The default is to \'undo' physical layout (columns,
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| 50 | hyphenation, etc.) and output the text in reading order. If the
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| 51 | .B \-fixed
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| 52 | option is given, character spacing within each line will be determined
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| 53 | by the specified character pitch.
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| 54 | .TP
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| 55 | .B \-simple
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| 56 | Similar to
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| 57 | .BR \-layout ,
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| 58 | but optimized for simple one-column pages. This mode will do a better
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| 59 | job of maintaining horizontal spacing, but it will only work properly
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| 60 | with a single column of text.
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| 61 | .TP
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| 62 | .B \-table
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| 63 | Table mode is similar to physical layout mode, but optimized for
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| 64 | tabular data, with the goal of keeping rows and columns aligned (at
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| 65 | the expense of inserting extra whitespace). If the
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| 66 | .B \-fixed
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| 67 | option is given, character spacing within each line will be determined
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| 68 | by the specified character pitch.
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| 69 | .TP
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| 70 | .B \-lineprinter
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| 71 | Line printer mode uses a strict fixed-character-pitch and -height
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| 72 | layout. That is, the page is broken into a grid, and characters are
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| 73 | placed into that grid. If the grid spacing is too small for the
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| 74 | actual characters, the result is extra whitespace. If the grid
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| 75 | spacing is too large, the result is missing whitespace. The grid
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| 76 | spacing can be specified using the
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| 77 | .B \-fixed
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| 78 | and
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| 79 | .B \-linespacing
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| 80 | options.
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| 81 | If one or both are not given on the command line, pdftotext will
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| 82 | attempt to compute appropriate value(s).
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| 83 | .TP
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| 84 | .B \-raw
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| 85 | Keep the text in content stream order. Depending on how the PDF file
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| 86 | was generated, this may or may not be useful.
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| 87 | .TP
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| 88 | .BI \-fixed " number"
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| 89 | Specify the character pitch (character width), in points, for physical
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| 90 | layout, table, or line printer mode. This is ignored in all other
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| 91 | modes.
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| 92 | .TP
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| 93 | .BI \-linespacing " number"
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| 94 | Specify the line spacing, in points, for line printer mode. This is
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| 95 | ignored in all other modes.
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| 96 | .TP
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| 97 | .B \-clip
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| 98 | Text which is hidden because of clipping is removed before doing
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| 99 | layout, and then added back in. This can be helpful for tables where
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| 100 | clipped (invisible) text would overlap the next column.
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| 101 | .TP
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| 102 | .B \-nodiag
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| 103 | Diagonal text, i.e., text that is not close to one of the 0, 90, 180,
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| 104 | or 270 degree axes, is discarded. This is useful to skip watermarks
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| 105 | drawn on top of body text, etc.
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| 106 | .TP
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| 107 | .BI \-enc " encoding-name"
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| 108 | Sets the encoding to use for text output. The
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| 109 | .I encoding\-name
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| 110 | must be defined with the unicodeMap command (see
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| 111 | .BR xpdfrc (5)).
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| 112 | The encoding name is case-sensitive. This defaults to "Latin1" (which
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| 113 | is a built-in encoding).
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| 114 | .RB "[config file: " textEncoding ]
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| 115 | .TP
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| 116 | .BI \-eol " unix | dos | mac"
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| 117 | Sets the end-of-line convention to use for text output.
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| 118 | .RB "[config file: " textEOL ]
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| 119 | .TP
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| 120 | .B \-nopgbrk
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| 121 | Don't insert page breaks (form feed characters) between pages.
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| 122 | .RB "[config file: " textPageBreaks ]
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| 123 | .TP
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| 124 | .B \-bom
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| 125 | Insert a Unicode byte order marker (BOM) at the start of the text
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| 126 | output.
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| 127 | .TP
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| 128 | .BI \-opw " password"
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| 129 | Specify the owner password for the PDF file. Providing this will
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| 130 | bypass all security restrictions.
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| 131 | .TP
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| 132 | .BI \-upw " password"
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| 133 | Specify the user password for the PDF file.
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| 134 | .TP
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| 135 | .B \-q
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| 136 | Don't print any messages or errors.
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| 137 | .RB "[config file: " errQuiet ]
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| 138 | .TP
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| 139 | .BI \-cfg " config-file"
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| 140 | Read
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| 141 | .I config-file
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| 142 | in place of ~/.xpdfrc or the system-wide config file.
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| 143 | .TP
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| 144 | .B \-v
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| 145 | Print copyright and version information.
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| 146 | .TP
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| 147 | .B \-h
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| 148 | Print usage information.
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| 149 | .RB ( \-help
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| 150 | and
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| 151 | .B \-\-help
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| 152 | are equivalent.)
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| 153 | .SH BUGS
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| 154 | Some PDF files contain fonts whose encodings have been mangled beyond
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| 155 | recognition. There is no way (short of OCR) to extract text from
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| 156 | these files.
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| 157 | .SH EXIT CODES
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| 158 | The Xpdf tools use the following exit codes:
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| 159 | .TP
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| 160 | 0
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| 161 | No error.
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| 162 | .TP
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| 163 | 1
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| 164 | Error opening a PDF file.
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| 165 | .TP
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| 166 | 2
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| 167 | Error opening an output file.
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| 168 | .TP
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| 169 | 3
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| 170 | Error related to PDF permissions.
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| 171 | .TP
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| 172 | 99
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| 173 | Other error.
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| 174 | .SH AUTHOR
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| 175 | The pdftotext software and documentation are copyright 1996-2017 Glyph
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| 176 | & Cog, LLC.
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| 177 | .SH "SEE ALSO"
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| 178 | .BR xpdf (1),
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| 179 | .BR pdftops (1),
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| 180 | .BR pdftohtml (1),
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| 181 | .BR pdfinfo (1),
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| 182 | .BR pdffonts (1),
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| 183 | .BR pdfdetach (1),
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| 184 | .BR pdftoppm (1),
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| 185 | .BR pdftopng (1),
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| 186 | .BR pdfimages (1),
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| 187 | .BR xpdfrc (5)
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| 188 | .br
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| 189 | .B http://www.xpdfreader.com/
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