view pdf & .doc without X
 

How to view .pdf and .doc in terminal mode ?

.pdf, not sure.

For .doc files use wv, which (if you've got it installed) converts .doc & .rtf files to html format.

Then simply use lynx to read the html files.

(admittedly long-winded, but I convert .doc to html a lot)

doesnt anyone know how to view .pdf

Try "pdftotext".

Thanks , pdftotext works great , but the output text isnt formated very well, what is the best way to view it? i tried 'less' and it was hard to read

I don't think it will format it well because of the way pdfs are made up. They are afterall supposed to be viewed graphically.

There's a program called svp, works using svgalib. It isn't perfect but it does work for pdf files. Also, fbgs -- which comes with fbi -- works using the frambuffer, but it isn't as good as svp.