pdftoroff

pdf viewer, scaler, converter (to text, html, etc.) by blocks of text

• hovacui: a pdf viewer for the Linux framebuffer and X11
• pdffit: scale a pdf file to fit a given page size with given margins
• pdftoroff: convert from pdf to roff, html, text, TeX

hovacui

The hovacui pdf viewer for the Linux framebuffer and X11 automatically zooms to the blocks of text. It is aimed at viewing files on small screens, and is especially handy for multiple-columns documents. Details in the hovacui web page.

• a screenshots of hovacui with the goto page dialog:

  

• the main menu:

  

pdffit

The pdffit scaler shrinks or enlarges the pages of a pdf file so that their text fits into a given paper size (e.g., A4 or letter) with a given margin. It can also be used to reduce or increase the margin in the document (the white area around the text).

The related program pdfrects finds the bounding box or the text area of the pages of a pdf file.

pdftoroff

The pdftoroff program extracts text from pdf files, trying to undo page, column and paragraph formatting while retaining italic and bold faces. It outputs text in various text formats: groff, html, plain TeX, text, or user-defined format. It is used by the included pdftoebook script to reformat a pdf file to a smaller page, so that it becomes suited to be read on a small tablet or e-ink ebook reader.

pdfrecur

The pdfrecur filter removes page numbers, headers and footers.

installation

Generic instructions:

make
make install

archlinux

This package is in AUR. Still, the PKGBUILD file is also accessible as an asset from github.

• go to the release page and download the latest PKGBUILD file to an empty directory
• in that directory, run makepkg
• install: sudo pacman -U pdftoroff...tar.xz

opensuse

If the latest release in the release page is for example 1.0.0:

• download sources: curl -L -o $HOME/rpmbuild/SOURCES/pdftoroff-1.0.0.tar.gz https://github.com/sgerwk/pdftoroff/archive/v1.0.0.tar.gz (replace 1.0.0 with the latest version number)
• download pdftoroff.spec from the release page
• make the package: rpmbuild -bb pdftoroff.spec
• install: sudo rpm -i $HOME/rpmbuild/RPMS/pdftoroff-version-etc.rpm

debian

• download the sources, unpack and compile them (do not install yet)
• make a directory somewhere/pkg/DEBIAN
• download there the control file from the release page
• check and possibly replace the field Architecture: in control
• in the pdftoroff source directory run make DESTDIR=somewhere/pkg install
• create the package: dpkg-deb -b somewhere/pkg .
• install: sudo dpkg -i pdftoroff...deb

what's new

• optionally show the current time (Sept. 2022)
• select only the visible part of the current textbox (Sept. 2022)
• night mode: show pdf in reverse colors (Apr. 2023)
• key 'G': move back to the position prior to jumping or searching (Apr. 2023)
• cache position and search string (Apr. 2023)
• key 'x' to position a cursor on the page (May 2023)
• some editing via an external script (May 2023)
• pdffit can try to ignore headers and footers (June 2023)