pdfreflow [options] [filename]
Pdfreflow, in conjunction with pdftohtml, will convert a PDF into a reflowed HTML file. Pdfreflow operates on the XML output from pdftohtml (from the Poppler utilities), converting it into an HTML file. To get the XML input for pdfreflow, use pdftohtml as follows:
pdftohtml -xml mybook.pdf
The output of pdftohtml is in the file mybook.xml.
Pdfreflow is oriented for operating on ebook PDFs, text based only, with minimal formatting, the kind of formatting you would get reading a fiction novel. By default pdfreflow expects justified text, but you can specify the input is rag right with the following option:
pdfreflow --ragright mybook.xml
The output of pdfreflow is in the file mybook.html.
You might not want to reflow every page in your ebook. To specify which pages are NOT to be reflowed, use the following option:
pdfreflow --dontreflow="1-6,10,198-201" mybook.xml
The dontreflow option takes a comma separated list of page ranges. The first page in a book is page 1. Also, the page number is not the printed page number, but the page number that shows in the thumbnail view of PDF viewers like Acrobat, Preview, Evince, etc.
While pdfreflow does its best to remove page numbers, headers and footers, you may have to assist by specifying the cropping options, ‑‑top=TOP_Y and ‑‑bottom=BOTTOM_Y. To find the Y values of a header or footer, you need to look inside the .xml file and find line of text that contains the header or footer. A sample entry looks as follows:
<text top="36" left="203" width="209" height="11" font="0">Self Knowledge</text> ⋮ <text top="506" left="506" width="209" height="11" font="0">Self Realization</text> pdfreflow --top=36 --bottom=506 mybook.xml
In this example, every text line that has a "top" value less than or equal to 36 will be cropped, and every text line that has a "top" value that is greater than or equal to 506 will be cropped.
Pdfreflow does its best to detect centered text. Sometimes, especially with rag right text, it is hard to detect the center point. To improve the center detection, you can specify a line in your document that is centered by specifying the page number and line number of a centered line. For example, if the 2nd line on page 3 is a centered line, you specify this with page:line argument to the ‑‑center option as follows (page numbers and line numbers both start at 1).
pdfreflow --center=3:2 mybook.xml
To discover the line number to specify for the ‑‑center option, you can used the ‑‑print options to print out the contents of a page with linenumbers to the output.
pdfreflow --print=3 mybook.xml
It is also possible to only reflow a subset of the ebook by specifying the ‑‑first=FIRSTPAGE and ‑‑last=LASTPAGE options. This is useful if a book has sections with vastly different formatting. Create a different HTML file for each differently formatted section, and either concatenate the files together, or if you are creating an e-book, this step is not necessary as it is possible to specify multiple HTML files as input to ebook creation software.
pdfreflow --first=1 --last=100 mybook.xml cp mybook.html section1.html pdfreflow --first=101 --last=200 mybook.xml cp mybook.html section2.html
If the filename command line argument is specified, file suffix is replace with .html and the ouput is written to that file, i.e. an input file of mybook.xml has an output file mybook.html. If no input file is specified, standard in used as the input, and standard out is the output.
pdfreflow < mybook.xml > out.html
| ‑‑absolute | font sizes are the same as the original document (not the default) the default is to remap fonts to a relative size |
| ‑‑bottom=MAX | crop text whose top is greater than or equal to MAX |
| ‑‑center=SPEC | specifies which line is centered. SPEC is page:line, ie 2:1 means line 1 on page 2 is a centered line |
| ‑‑dontreflow=LIST | don't reflow comma separated page ranges, ie 1,2,4-9,100 |
| ‑‑first=FIRSTPAGE | starting page (default is 1) |
| ‑‑last=LASTPAGE | ending page (default is last page of the document) |
| ‑‑nonfiction | for books that use block quoting at the same inset as the paragraph indent |
| ‑‑ragright | text is rag-right, NOT justify (default is justify) |
| ‑‑shortlines | paragraphs end with short lines (only necessary for rag right documents with no paragraph indent and no after paragraph spacing. |
| ‑‑top=MIN | crop text whose top is less than or equal to MIN |
| ‑‑showdebug | print debugging options |
| ‑‑version | print current version |
| ‑‑help | print usage |
Options can be combined. An example using a combination of the options in the description section is:
pdfreflow --dontreflow="1-6,10,198-201" --top=36 --bottom=506 mybook.xml
While pdfreflow tries it best, sometimes it can not correctly reflow all documents. Here are some tips to get a better output document.
If your book does not have paragraph indenting or vertical spacing after every paragraph, too much text may be reflowed into each paragraph. You might try the ‑‑shortlines option. The argument is a percentage between 1 and 100. If 0 is specified, you get the default value (currently 80). This percentage is used against the longest line width in the document, and lines that are shorter than this percentage are considered the end of a paragraph
pdfreflow --shortlines=0 mybook.xml
If your input document is not justified, make sure you specified the ‑‑ragright option.
pdfreflow is configured to deal with fiction, which often has indented paragraphs and/or vertical spacing after a pararaph. If your book has indenting, but is not fiction with dialog, try using the ‑‑nonfiction option.
pdfreflow --nonfiction mybook.xml
If your book has vastly differently formatted sections, you might try look at the Reflow Specified Pages section above.
There are binaries for Windows XP, Ubuntu 8.04, and Mac OSX 10.5 (and later) at Mobile Read. The open source of pdfreflow is copyrighted under GNU GPL, and source is available at SourceForge
To get a copy of pdftohtml, without building it from source, here are some options:
| O.S. | Fetch from |
| Ubuntu | Use Synaptic Package Manager to fetch poppler-utils |
| Mac | Download Calibre for Mac. There is a copy of pdftohtml inside of Calibre.app under /Applications/calibre.app/Contents/Frameworks/
PATH=$PATH:/Applications/calibre.app/Contents/Frameworks htmltopdf -xml mybook.pdf |
| Windows | Download Calibre for Windows. There is a copy of pdftohtml inside of Calibre under C:\Progam Files\Calibre2. Make sure to add C:\Progam Files\Calibre2 and C:\Progam Files\Calibre2\DLLs to your path, ie:
PATH=%PATH%;C:\Progam Files\Calibre2;C:\Progam Files\Calibre2\DLLs htmltopdf -xml mybook.pdf |