lynx-dev Convewrting PDF to text (was Re: Is Lynx still practical?)

[Michael Warner]

On or about 27 May, 2000, David Woolley
<address@hidden> wrote:

> > That's basically what I did--run the file through a filter to
> > pull out the ascii and pass it to a pager.  It's usable, but not
> > good, so now I just cut'n'paste the URL into NS.  My principles
> 
> You should run Acrobat Reader on the downloaded file, i.e. configure
> it as a viewer.

Except that that requires a graphical environment, right?  I
telnet in from a windows box--no X Windows or anything.

In the quote above I was expressing dissatisfaction with
ps2ascii, part of the GhostScript distribution, I think.  My main
complaint was that it ignored line breaks, and wrapped everything
at the edge of the screen.

A few days ago, I came across pstotext 
< http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/virtualpaper/pstotext.html >
which is a big improvement.  I think I'm reasonably happy now,
after limited testing, and can give it at least a qualified
recommendation.

DOWNLOADER:foo.pdf via pstotext to most:pstotext %s | most -w:TRUE

-- 
Michael Warner
<address@hidden>

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