Most desktops have a command that's equivalent to double-clicking a file, e.g. on gnome:
has the same effect as opening myfile by double-clicking. xfce has a similar one that I forget (I map the open command to just 'o' on each system I'm on so I forget quite quickly) and I would be very surprised if there wasn't one for KDE.
To convert a pdf to raw ascii I suppose you could use:
Code:
<infile pdf2ps | ps2txt | less