How do I convert a DjVu document to PDF in Linux using only command line tools?

Question

I've got some documents in DjVu which I'll like convert to PDF. Is there a way to do this using command line OSS tools?

Solution 1

djvu2pdf should fit the bill, it's a small script that makes use of the djvulibre toolset. If not, there are other methods that require multiple command-line tools.

Solution 2

The ddjvu program (which is part of the standard djvulibre package) will do this:

$ ddjvu -format=pdf -quality=85 -verbose a.djvu a.pdf

---

Warning: this produces large files (but PDF files made by Christoph Sieghart's script are of the same size).

---

I also wrote the following small shell script some years ago.  It does the same automatically. (Save this as djvu2pdf.sh.)

#!/bin/sh

# convert DjVu -> PDF
# usage:  djvu2pdf.sh  <file.djvu>

i="$1"
echo "------------ converting $i to PDF ----------------";
o="$(basename "$i" .djvu).pdf"
echo "[ writing output to $o ] "

ddjvu -format=pdf -quality=85 -verbose "$i" "$o"

---

The djvu2pdf script by Christoph Sieghart does essentially the same.

Solution 3

What about simply using DJView and export as PDF?

1. Goto Synaptic Package Manager (System - Administration - Synaptic Package Manager)
2. Install DJview4
3. Run DJview (Applications - Graphics - DJView4)
4. Open your .djvu document
5. Menu - Export As: PDF

Look at http://art.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1232038

Solution 4

$ djvups input.djvu | ps2pdf - output.pdf

In my case the output file was 10x smaller than with ddjvu. Both djvups and ps2pdf present in ubuntu repository.

$ sudo apt-get install djvulibre-bin ghostscript

I've found this method in man ddjvu, so always read manuals ;)

An alternate way to produce PDF file consists in first using djvups(1) and convert the resulting PostScript file to PDF. Which method gives better results depends on the contents of the DJVU file and on the capabilities of the PS to PDF converter.

Solution 5

If you don't care about colors and images you can get much smaller files if you drop the colors and use instead:

ddjvu -format=pdf -mode=black input.djvu output.pdf

Texts, codes and formulas looks perfectly, but most of the images are gone

View more solutions

Comments

[Grzegorz Wierzowiecki]

What's a pity that, currently there is not djvu2pdf tool in Arch repo and old ver in Arch User repo

[Geremia]

Is there a way to make OCR layer of the DjVu come through into the PDF?

[Plasma]

+1 for preserving any text layer in the djvu file

[Maxim]

The question was about using command line only, so this can be automated.

[Lxrd-AJ]

Mac users can also run brew install djvu2pdf to install the program and djvu2pdf file.djvu to convert. Homebrew takes care of downloading all its dependencies

[xdavidliu]

using ddjvu turned my 6.3 mb djvu file into a 1.7 gig pdf file.

[Maxim]

something is wrong. this should not happen. you can post here the link to the file.

[Kokizzu]

+1 for that apt command XD

[user313032]

This is the only one preserving the text layer. But increases filesize 10-fold for me.

[Admin]

djvu2pdf works although it produces a slightly bigger file than ddjvu with compression enabled. Other issue is that it doesn't copy the table of contents of the source document.