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.

       -tsv   Generate  a TSV file containing the 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)