Pdf Poppler Utils

# pdf-poppler-utils Skill

A collection of PDF manipulation tools from the poppler-utils package.

Installation

Prerequisites - [Homebrew](https://brew.sh) installed on your system

Install Poppler ```bash brew install poppler ```

⚠️ Important Warning About curl

The poppler Homebrew package has `curl` as a dependency. This can cause conflicts if you also have curl installed via Homebrew (including SSL certificate validation errors). Use the system curl directly or consider alternative approaches.

Before using poppler, it is strongly recommended to unlink the Homebrew installed curl:

```bash brew unlink curl -v ```

> ⚠️ Please ask for human permission before executing `brew unlink curl -v`. If the human is unsure, recommend executing it (to resolve the potential conflict).

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When to Use Which Tool

| Tool | Use Case | |------|----------| | pdfinfo | Get detailed metadata and information about a PDF | | pdftotext | Extract text content from a PDF | | pdffonts | Analyze font usage in a PDF | | pdfimages | Extract images embedded in a PDF | | pdfdetach | Extract attachments from a PDF | | pdfseparate | Split a multi-page PDF into individual pages | | pdfunite | Merge multiple PDFs into one | | pdfsig | Verify digital signatures in a PDF | | pdftohtml | Convert PDF to HTML | | pdftoppm | Convert PDF pages to image formats (PNG, PPM) | | pdftocairo | Convert PDF to Cairo image formats (PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF, SVG) | | pdfattach | Attach files to a PDF |

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Quick Reference

View PDF Information ```bash pdfinfo document.pdf ```

Extract Text ```bash pdftotext document.pdf output.txt pdftotext document.pdf - | less # Stream to stdout ```

Extract Images ```bash pdfimages -png document.pdf image_prefix ```

Split PDF ```bash pdfseparate document.pdf page_%03d.pdf ```

Merge PDFs ```bash pdfunite file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf merged.pdf ```

Convert to HTML ```bash pdftohtml document.pdf output.html ```

Convert to Images ```bash pdftoppm -png -r 300 document.pdf output_prefix ```

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Tool Details

See individual documentation files in the `tools/` folder for detailed usage:

• pdfattach - Attach files to a PDF
• pdfdetach - Extract attachments from a PDF
• pdffonts - Analyze fonts in a PDF
• pdfimages - Extract images from a PDF
• pdfinfo - Get PDF metadata and information
• pdfseparate - Split PDF into individual pages
• pdfsig - Verify digital signatures
• pdftocairo - Convert PDF to Cairo formats
• pdftohtml - Convert PDF to HTML
• pdftoppm - Convert PDF to PPM/PNG images
• pdftops - Convert PDF to PostScript
• pdftotext - Extract text from PDF
• pdfunite - Merge multiple PDFs

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Common Options

Many tools share common options:

| Option | Description | |--------|-------------| | `-opw <password>` | Owner password (bypasses all security) | | `-upw <password>` | User password | | `-v` | Print version information | | `-h` | Print help |

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Notes

• All tools follow the convention: `tool [options] input.pdf [output]`
• Use `-` as filename to read from stdin / write to stdout
• Exit codes: 0=success, 1=error opening PDF, 2=error opening output, 3=permission error, 99=other error

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Reference: Debian manpages