Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux?

From	William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca>
Newsgroups	comp.os.linux.setup, comp.os.linux.misc, alt.os.linux.alt.os.linux.debian
Subject	Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux?
Date	2016-03-07 08:56 +0000
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<nbjfno$dt1$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	<fNednWHCLYvwcUbLnZ2dnUU7-TVQAAAA@earthlink.com> <adKdnTPC4ur_qkHLnZ2dnUU7-f3NnZ2d@giganews.com> <hJSdnTSsr77xp0DLnZ2dnUU7-VPNnZ2d@earthlink.com>

Cross-posted to 3 groups.

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On 2016-03-07, Ant <ANTant@zimage.com> wrote:
>> > Is there a text-based PDF (view/read)er for command line in Linux 
>> > (Debian stable [Jessie])'s terminals like text based web browsers (Lynx, 
>> > w3m, eLinks, etc.)? I also don't mean a PDF converter too. I tried 
>> > "less" command that people suggested online, but it shows unreadable 
>> > garbages and XML codes. :(
>
>> pdftotext
>
>> part of the poppler-utils package
>
>> Not exactly a viewer, but will serve the purpose:
>
>> pdftotext foo.pdf - | less
>
>> Also pdftohtml can be used:
>
>> pdftohtml -noframes foo.pdf foo.html
>> lynx foo.html
>
>> (pdftohtml is also part of the poppler-utils package)
>
> Interesting. Less command by itself wouldn't work correctly, 
> but with pdftotext, it did work. Actually, this trick is good enough for 
> me. Thanks! :)

Less simply reads the text, including the formatting commands, etc.
pdftotext strips out the formatting commands and leaves the text. Of
course It cannot do anything for pictures, or text in graphics files
(usually jpeg)

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Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2016-03-06 02:38 -0600
  Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? Robert Heller <heller@deepsoft.com> - 2016-03-06 07:57 -0600
    Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2016-03-07 02:23 -0600
      Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? William Unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2016-03-07 08:56 +0000
        Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@invalid.es> - 2016-03-08 19:06 +0100
      Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@invalid.es> - 2016-03-08 15:02 +0100
        Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? ANTant@zimage.com (Ant) - 2016-03-09 13:04 -0600
  Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? The Natural Philosopher <tnp@invalid.invalid> - 2016-03-06 14:21 +0000
    Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? Lew Pitcher <lew.pitcher@digitalfreehold.ca> - 2016-03-06 09:49 -0500
    Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@invalid.es> - 2016-03-06 23:12 +0100
    Re: Text-based PDF (read/view)ers in Linux? Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi> - 2016-03-07 07:29 +0200

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