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On Thu, 4 Sep 2008, baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I tried to install xpdf.tgz from Slackware 8,
> but it said i was missing some dependencies.
> Before i went any further, i decided to ask here.
>
> How can i view pdf files in BL 3.50?
>
> This is for my Toshiba T4800CT, which has very
> limited ability to do graphics. I am able to
> startx and get the desktop, but with limited colors
> and low resolution. The BIOS on this laptop will
> only give a maximum of 256 colors.

So you are probably using the SVGA X server.

> -monz

xpdf package comes with pdfimages and pdftotext, which will let you 
extract the text and images from a pdf file (and view them with other 
programs such as pico and xli).  Also pdftoppm, which converts each page 
into a large ppm image file. Pdftoppm requires some basic fonts to convert 
text to image.

/usr/local/etc/xpdfrc from xpdf package specifies which fonts are used. 
You can edit it to point at where you keep your fonts if it is not 
ghostscript.  I edited mine to require only .pfb and .pfm fonts starting 
in n, s or d (the smallest ones to save space and memory). See:

http://keesan.freeshell.org/bl/xpdfrc

xpdfrc by default looks in /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts.  You can 
copy the required fonts to that location from the Abiword fonts in 
Steven's package (or symlink to the Abiword fonts directory).


ghostscript itself can display pdf files.  Ghostview is a front end to it. 
I posted bmv and svp frontends, which require svgalib (libvga) and glibc.

The 1999 xpdf programs don't display pdf 1.5 and later.  I compiled and 
posted ghostscript 8.54 and 8.6 which do (glibc 2.2.5).

If you are short on memory, svgalib uses less than X and is available for 
Slackware 4.0.

Sindi