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.  If PDF-file is ´-', it reads the PDF file from stdin.

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 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.

       -nodiag
              Discard  diagonal  text  (i.e., text that is not close to one of the 0, 90, 180, or
              270 degree axes). This is useful for skipping watermarks drawn on body text.

       -htmlmeta
              Generate a simple HTML file, including the meta information.  This simply wraps the
              text in <pre> and </pre> and prepends the meta headers.

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

       -bbox-layout
              Generate an XHTML file containing bounding box information for  each  block,  line,
              and word in the file.

       -cropbox
              Use the crop box rather than the media box with -bbox and -bbox-layout.

       -colspacing number
              Specifies  how  much spacing we allow after a word before considering adjacent text
              to be a new column, measured as a fraction of the font  size.  Current  default  is
              0.7, old releases had a 0.3 default.

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

       -listenc
              Lists 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), pdfseparate(1), pdfsig(1), pdfunite(1)

                                          15 August 2011                             pdftotext(1)