24 lines
1.4 KiB
Text
24 lines
1.4 KiB
Text
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pstotext reads one or more PostScript or PDF files, and writes to standard
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output a representation of the plain text that would be displayed if the
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PostScript file were printed. As is described in the DETAILS section below,
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this representation is only an approximation. Nevertheless, it is often
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useful for information retrieval (e.g., running grep(1) or building a
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full-text index) or to recover the text from a PostScript file whose source
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you have lost.
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pstotext calls Ghostscript, and requires Aladdin Ghostscript version 3.51 or
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newer. Ghostscript must be invokable on the current search path as gs.
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Alternatively, you can use the -gs option to specify the command (pathname
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and options) to run Ghostscript. For example, on Windows you might use -gs
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"c:\gs\gswin32c.exe -Ic:\gs;c:\gs\fonts".
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pstotext reads and processes its command line from left to right, ignoring
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the case of options. When it encounters a pathname, it opens the file and
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expects to find a PostScript job or PDF document to process. The option -
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means to read and process a PostScript job from standard input. If no - or
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pathname arguments are encountered, pstotext reads a PostScript job from
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standard input. (PDF documents require random access, hence cannot be read
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from standard input.) You can use the -output option to specify an output file
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(remember to invoke it before the input file); otherwise pstotext writes to
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standard output.
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