pdf to text tool¶

On linux env¶

There are several tools you can use on a Linux system to convert PDF files to text (txt) or HTML. One of the most commonly used tools for this purpose is pdftotext, which is part of the Poppler utility suite.

To install and use it, follow these steps:

Install Poppler¶

Open your terminal and run the following command to install Poppler utilities, which includes “pdftotext”:

sudo apt-get install poppler-utils

Convert PDF to Text (txt)¶

Once Poppler is installed, you can use the “pdftotext” command to convert a PDF file to text. Navigate to the directory containing your PDF file and run the following command:

pdftotext input.pdf output.txt

Replace input.pdf with the actual name of your PDF file and output.txt with the desired name for the output text file.

Convert PDF to HTML¶

If you want to convert a PDF file to HTML format, you can use the “pdftohtml” command from the same Poppler utilities package. Run the following command:

pdftohtml input.pdf output.html

Replace input.pdf with the actual name of your PDF file and output.html with the desired name for the output HTML file.

Remember that the quality of the conversion can vary depending on the complexity of the PDF content. Some PDFs might have complex formatting, images, or other elements that might not convert perfectly to text or HTML.

Also, keep in mind that there might be other tools available for PDF conversion on Linux. For example, you might find “pdf2txt” or “pdf2htmlEX” as alternatives.

Always check your distribution’s package repository for the most up-to-date information about available tools and their installation process.