Hello!
I am running Slackware Linux 12.0. I would like to ask whether there is a tool for viewing pdf files in terminal? (ncurses based or whatever).

Thank you.

You can convert the pdf to ascii with pdftotext, and view that. But it really depends on what kind of information you want to see in the pdf - pictures or text?

I would be glad if it could be possible to view the pdf as it is, inevitably allowing for deteriorated quality, of course. I just wondered if there is such a tool that I am not aware of.

You can view images and you can view text using svgalib.

So, here's something to try:
Use 'pdftoppm' to convert pdf to ppm, then use 'seejpeg' to view the ppm using svgalib.

I tried this but it does not seem to work right out of the box. When I issue in the terminal without X:
seejpeg opit.ppm-000001.ppm
I get :

svgalib: ark: Unknown chiptype 0.
Warning: you have not yet configured your mouse type. If you have no mouse,
setting the type to `none' in /etc/vga/libvga.config will get rid of this
annoying message.
svgalib: Failed to initialize mouse.
Cannot find a 32K/16M colour video mode
svgalib: Signal 8: Floating point exception received.

If I issue the same command in the kde konsole I get:
svgalib: can't open /dev/console

Is there somewhere a guide on configuring this to work?

Here is one: http://linux.bytesex.org/fbida/ . It compiles fine with src2pkg. Quality of images isn't too great, obviously.

Brian

Thank you very much! That is exactly what I needed

Well, you'll have to edit '/etc/vga/libvga.config', there are notes in there to help you configure it, also read 'man libvga.config'.