[SOLVED] Howto Read pdf in a bash shell???

[reloadedreiko]

well is there any utility to read a pdf file in BASH shell??? if anything exists do let me know!!!

[L4Linux]

You mean only to display the text inside the PDF in the terminal???
That would be a hard thing to do, since PDF has a ton of data other than the text inside. For an ODF file it would be easier I think, something like an xml parser that would retrieve the user inputed data. It all comes down to specifications. But it may be possible already (since PDF became an ISO standard), I am not an expert by any means.

If you mean launching the viewer from the terminal:

evince pdf_name.pdf

or

okular pdf_name.pdf

or whatever program you want to use.

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

If you want to read pdf files from the console, you could install pdftohtml and use it to convert the files, then read the files with a text browser such as elinks or lynx

[reed9]

There is fbgs, which is part of the fbida project, described on the website "A wrapper script for viewing ps/pdf files on the framebuffer console using fbi."

fbida homepage

fbgs(1) - Linux man page

[Rubberman]

And there is always Adobe's Acrobat reader, acroread. Version 9.1.1 for Linux is available and works just great in just about any X-Windows desktop environment.

[nopycckn]

To directly change a pdf to a text file, pdftotext, then you could read that using less or whatever ... don't know how well it works.

[Freston]

To directly change a pdf to a text file, pdftotext, then you could read that using less or whatever ... don't know how well it works.

Oh wow! Thanks! I had not even thought it was possible. But I see now it's part of xpdf so I think it'll be installed on most *nix boxen. It came with my distro (Slackware) and it's amazingly fast too.

[Rubberman]

All the tools in the Linux toolbox are truely awesome. It's kind of like a master mechanic - you can't just ask for a screwdriver because there are some many types; flat-bladed, phillips, posidrive, torx, hex, butterfly, magnetic, right-angle, left-angle (joke), flexible shaft, and on and on, not to mention all the above in various sizes. I have screwdrivers with blades so small you need a magnifying glass to see them, and ones so big that you can use them for serious sword play (I was a master mechanic before I became an engineer).

[reloadedreiko]

Hey guys thanks a lot!!! for ur replies!! I used pdf2text tool and it worked well!!!! thanks a lot once again!!!!!