Hi Sourcetrunk
Just a note "Note that scanned PDF files, or PDF files produced from raster image formats like TIFF, cannot contain 'live' text data. And pdf2text is not OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software - it needs the text data to be present in the PDF file."
Depending on your distro, Xubuntu, just do an
#apt-cache search pdf
It should bring back some options, one of them will be pdf2txt, then install it
#apt-get install pdf2txt..if that doesnt work, here is a script from
www.comp.eonworks.com
#! /bin/sh
# #############################################################################
NAME_="pdf2txt"
HTML_="convert pdf to text"
PURPOSE_="convert pdf file to ascii text; write the converted file to disk"
SYNOPSIS_="$NAME_ [-vhlr] <file> [file...]"
REQUIRES_="standard GNU commands, ps2ascii"
VERSION_="1.0"
DATE_="2004-04-18; last update: 2005-03-03"
AUTHOR_="Dawid Michalczyk <dm@eonworks.com>"
URL_="www.comp.eonworks.com"
CATEGORY_="text"
PLATFORM_="Linux"
SHELL_="bash"
DISTRIBUTE_="yes"
# #############################################################################
# This program is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License
usage () {
echo >&2 "$NAME_ $VERSION_ - $PURPOSE_
Usage: $SYNOPSIS_
Requires: $REQUIRES_
Options:
-r, remove input file after conversion
-v, verbose
-h, usage and options (help)
-l, see this script"
exit 1
}
# arg check
[ $# -eq 0 ] && { echo >&2 missing argument, type $NAME_ -h for help; exit 1; }
# var initializing
rmf=
verbose=
# option and argument handling
while getopts vhlr options; do
case $options in
r) rmf=on ;;
v) verbose=on ;;
h) usage ;;
l) more $0 ;;
\?) echo invalid or missing argument, type $NAME_ -h for help; exit 1 ;;
esac
done
shift $(( $OPTIND - 1 ))
# check if required command is in $PATH variable
which ps2ascii &> /dev/null
[[ $? != 0 ]] && { echo >&2 the required \"ps2ascii\" command is not in your PATH; exit 1; }
# main
for a in $@; do
if [ -f ${a%.*}.txt ]; then
echo ${NAME_}: skipping: ${a%.*}.txt file already exist
continue
else
[[ $verbose ]] && echo "${NAME_}: converting: $a -> ${a%.*}.txt"
ps2ascii $a > ${a%.*}.txt
[[ $? == 0 ]] && stat=0 || stat=1
[[ $stat == 0 ]] && [[ $verbose ]] && [[ $rmf ]] && echo ${NAME_}: removing: $a
[[ $stat == 0 ]] && [[ $rmf ]] && rm -f -- $a
fi
done
use the -h switch to get the help for the script
Cheers
