Re: [Lynx-dev] Displaying a pdf live on the Fly?

[Jude DaShiell]

zless may be a better alternative since it does compressed data.  The
strings utility is in debian build-essential package. On Mon, 3 Jun 2019,
Mouse wrote:

> Date: Mon, 3 Jun 2019 23:21:56
> From: Mouse <address@hidden>
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [Lynx-dev] Displaying a pdf live on the Fly?
>
> >> Hi All: I am realizing it would be easier to have lynx display pdfs
> >> basicly like any other texts.
>
> This would be difficult; a few PDFs aren't text at all, and many more
> aren't just text.  How much you lose by keeping just the text can be
> anything on the spectrum from nothing to everything.
>
> >> Anyway we tried modifying my dot mailcap file, like this
> >> application/pdf; less "%s"
> >> Well, lynx said it may be a binary, see it anyway?  It was a mess.
>
> Yes.  Most PDFs in my experience have most of their data compressed, so
> they are "binary junk" when looked at with tools that don't understand
> PDF structure and the compression method(s) in question.
>
> >> So can [someone] please inform an easy way of doing this, or would I
> >> need an external?
>
> In full generality, there is no easy way.  You will need _something_
> that understands the strtucture of PDFs.  Even for just a "most cases"
> converter, you probably will need something that knows enough about PDF
> structure to decompress compressed content.
>
> There is a package, xpdf, which I picked up a decade ago from
> ftp.foolabs.com (I don't know whether it's available anywhere these
> days; I can make what I have available if it would help); it includes a
> PDF-to-text converter which works well enough to be useful in some
> cases for me.  There may well be something better knocking around by
> now; this is just the one I happen to know of.
>
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