PDF reader for the CLI

I don't know of anything better than using pdftotext, but that and less work in a pinch. There are other converters, too. Maybe pdftohtml and lynx/links/elinks/links2/w3m (textmode browsers) could "render" some stuff better.

All I can find is a number of rather hackish solutions that involve installing a tool called pdftohtml or pdftotext and then viewing the resultant files.

So make sure whatever flavour of linux you are using has pdftohtml then

pdftohtml ch.01.pdf

Followed by

lynx ch.o1.html

(Found at http://bassemreda.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/console-pdf-viewer/)

Googling for console pdf viewer only returns pages that state that there is no console pdf viewer and the best you can do is either convert it to html (as above) to keep the formatting or extract the text from it.

There's a project called fbida:

The fbida project contains a few applications for viewing and editing images, with the main focus being photos. The applications are:

fbi – This is a image viewer for the linux framebuffer console.

fbgs – A wrapper script for viewing ps/pdf files on the framebuffer console using fbi.

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