Reading PDFs on the command line (with misc/lesspipe)

[Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff]

Since I use mutt to read emails on my server, I would like to
read PDFs on the command line. How can I do that?

I installed misc/lesspipe and -- as far as I can judge --
configured it properly.

$ echo $LESSOPEN
|/usr/local/bin/lesspipe.sh %s

However, if I run

$ less some.pdf

I still get an unreadable output of fancy symbols.

Has anybody got lesspipe running properly? Or are there even
better approaches for reading PDF on the command line?

Niklaas

[Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions]

Post by Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff
$ less some.pdf

http://www.manualpages.de/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-ports-9.0-RELEASE/man1/pdftotext.1.html
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/41362/view-pdf-file-in-terminal

I wonder how it is handled assumed "some.pdf" is just a scanned picture
of text converted to pdf ;).

[Martin S. Weber]

Post by Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions

Post by Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff
$ less some.pdf

http://www.manualpages.de/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-ports-9.0-RELEASE/man1/pdftotext.1.html
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/41362/view-pdf-file-in-terminal
I wonder how it is handled assumed "some.pdf" is just a scanned picture
of text converted to pdf ;).

It (pdftotext in.pdf -) just outputs a blank line for image based PDFs.

Regards,
-Martin

[Polytropon]

Post by Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff
Since I use mutt to read emails on my server, I would like to
read PDFs on the command line. How can I do that?

I'm using the pdftotext command, part of the xpdf package.
Its output can be redirected.

Post by Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff
I installed misc/lesspipe and -- as far as I can judge --
configured it properly.
$ echo $LESSOPEN
|/usr/local/bin/lesspipe.sh %s
However, if I run
$ less some.pdf
I still get an unreadable output of fancy symbols.

Probably there is no processing step included?

[Olivier]

Post by Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions

Post by Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff
$ less some.pdf

http://www.manualpages.de/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-ports-9.0-RELEASE/man1/pdftotext.1.html
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/41362/view-pdf-file-in-terminal
I wonder how it is handled assumed "some.pdf" is just a scanned picture
of text converted to pdf ;).

/usr/local/libexec/xpdf/pdfimages is installed by default by package
xpdf.

Olivier

Post by Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions
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--

[Polytropon]

Post by Olivier

Post by Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions

Post by Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff
$ less some.pdf

http://www.manualpages.de/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-ports-9.0-RELEASE/man1/pdftotext.1.html
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/41362/view-pdf-file-in-terminal
I wonder how it is handled assumed "some.pdf" is just a scanned picture
of text converted to pdf ;).

/usr/local/libexec/xpdf/pdfimages is installed by default by package
xpdf.

And then use ImageMagick to convert it to ASCII art. :-)

[Bertram Scharpf]

Post by Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions

Post by Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff
Since I use mutt to read emails on my server, I would like to
read PDFs on the command line. How can I do that?
$ less some.pdf

I wonder how it is handled assumed "some.pdf" is just a scanned picture
of text converted to pdf ;).

I do the following (from the shell, not yet from mutt):

- Forward X to the desktop machine:

xto() {
local h l d
h=${1:-desktop}
l=`hostname -f`
d=":0"
ssh $h "
export DISPLAY=$d
xhost $l 1>&2
xauth extract - $d
" | xauth -f ~/.Xauthority merge -
export DISPLAY=$h$d
}

- Run xpdf.

Of course, this requires xpdf and a lot of X client stuff to
be installed on the (anything but X) server.

You could also try to scp the PDF to the desktop and run
xpdf there via ssh.

Bertram

[Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions]

Post by Polytropon

Post by Olivier

Post by Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions
I wonder how it is handled assumed "some.pdf" is just a scanned
picture of text converted to pdf ;).

/usr/local/libexec/xpdf/pdfimages is installed by default by package
xpdf.

And then use ImageMagick to convert it to ASCII art. :-)

:D

[Niklaas Baudet von Gersdorff]

Polytropon [2016-06-29 14:03 +0200] :

[...]

Post by Polytropon

Post by Olivier

Post by Ralf Mardorf via freebsd-questions
http://www.manualpages.de/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-ports-9.0-RELEASE/man1/pdftotext.1.html
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/41362/view-pdf-file-in-terminal
I wonder how it is handled assumed "some.pdf" is just a scanned picture
of text converted to pdf ;).

/usr/local/libexec/xpdf/pdfimages is installed by default by package
xpdf.

Thanks for the second link. That made me realise that
misc/lesspipe uses xpdf's pdftotext to view the PDF. I thought
that I wouldn't need xpdf's utils if I had lesspipe installed.

Post by Polytropon
And then use ImageMagick to convert it to ASCII art. :-)

Haha. Great idea. However, I simply want to get a glimpse of what
is written in the PDF before I start downloading it with scp.

Post by Polytropon
xto() {
local h l d
h=${1:-desktop}
l=`hostname -f`
d=":0"
ssh $h "
export DISPLAY=$d
xhost $l 1>&2
xauth extract - $d
" | xauth -f ~/.Xauthority merge -
export DISPLAY=$h$d
}
- Run xpdf.
Of course, this requires xpdf and a lot of X client stuff to
be installed on the (anything but X) server.

This looks very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

Niklaas