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Trying to view a text-only Russian pdf file on a laptop.
xpdf is slow.

I used to use svgalib to view things without X but it does not seem to 
work on LCD monitors (sometimes it works but only in plain VGA mode) 
including laptops.

Framebuffer mode works on anything with VESA 2.0 video (which excludes 
some older pentium laptops made by Compaq - 120MHz).  xfbdev displays X 
using framebuffer mode.  fbjpeg displays jpegs (no other image formats) at 
the same resolution you chose at boot time.  I could in theory convert 
pdfs to pbms to jpegs (100% quality) and view them that way, but the pdf I 
am trying to view is 100% text (Cyrillic).  I could extract the text with 
pdftotext but then I would lose the formatting.  (I would also need to 
load a Cyrillic console font).  Also when I tried this I got a 0 length 
file.

I can view the pdf file with less -r but I need to guess at the 
font. I don't see any mention of the encoding in the file but xpdf figured 
it out. Can xpdf somehow display the font name? Online instructions 
suggesting use Adobe reader to display the font name.

See the FB package at my site http://keesan.freeshell.org/bl/blfiles.htm

Mplayer has a direct fbdev mode that sometimes works on LCD monitors where
svga or vesa modes do not.  In theory links2 and netsurf can display
to framebuffer but I did not succeed in compiling them for that.  They
would use less resources and run faster than in X.

I downloaded source code for fbida, which requires libexif (found in SW11 
but not SW81), which views images with fbi and rotates them, and also 
views pdf files using gs and fbi. (I need to view some rotated pdfs and 
they are very slow with xpdf even at 200MHz - I am translating on the 
desktop and viewing on the laptop so I can use my 84-key keyboard, which 
does not work on laptops).  A 2.4 kernel is needed for SW11.  I had hoped 
for something that will work with BL3 at 100MHz with 24MB memory.

Another option is fbpdf, which is available as a 'git', some new sort of 
package format which is used by Debian.  I found instructions to convert 
tar.gz to git but not vice versa.  Also the source is found only at a 
git:// site, which even Opera cannot handle.  Any suggestions how to 
download and unpackage a .git file?

Sindi Keesan