# man > PS2ASCII(1)

[_PS2ASCII_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/PS2ASCII/1/markdown)                               Ghostscript Tools                              [_PS2ASCII_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/PS2ASCII/1/markdown)

## NAME
       ps2ascii - Ghostscript translator from PostScript or PDF to ASCII

## SYNOPSIS
       **ps2ascii **[ _input.ps_ [ _output.txt_ ] ]
       **ps2ascii _**input.pdf_ [ _output.txt_ ]

## DESCRIPTION
       **ps2ascii **uses [**gs**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/gs/1/markdown) to extract ASCII text from **PostScript**(tm) or Adobe **Portable Document For‐**
       **mat **(PDF) files. If no files are specified on the command line, **gs **reads from standard input;
       but PDF input must come from an explicitly-named file, not standard input.  If no output file
       is specified, the ASCII text is written to standard output.

       **ps2ascii  **doesn't  look at font encoding, and isn't very good at dealing with kerning, so for
       PostScript (but not currently PDF), you might consider **pstotext **(see below).

## FILES
       Run "**gs -h**" to find the location of Ghostscript documentation on your system, from which  you
       can get more details.

## SEE ALSO
       [pstotext(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/pstotext/1/markdown), <http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/virtualpaper/pstotext.html>

## VERSION
       This document was last revised for Ghostscript version 10.02.1.

## AUTHOR
       Artifex  Software,  Inc.  are  the  primary  maintainers  of  Ghostscript.   David  M.  Jones
       <<dmjones@theory.lcs.mit.edu>> made substantial improvements to **ps2ascii**.

10.02.1                                   01 November 2023                               [_PS2ASCII_(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/PS2ASCII/1/markdown)