man > ps2ascii(1)

PS2ASCII(1)                               Ghostscript Tools                              PS2ASCII(1)

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) 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), 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 AT theory.edu> made substantial improvements to ps2ascii.

10.02.1                                   01 November 2023                               PS2ASCII(1)