https://www.marinlagace.ca/en/2020-12-06T14:39:00-05:002020-12-06T14:39:00-05:002020-12-06T14:39:00-05:00Marintag:www.marinlagace.ca,2020-12-06:/en/2020/using-less-to-view-pdfs.html

<p class="first last">Using 'less' to view PDFs directly in Vifm.</p>

<p>I love <a class="reference external" href="https://vifm.info">Vifm</a>. One of the features I like the most it that you can easily preview any text file by pressing the <span class="kbd">e</span> key. But I would also like to preview a PDF directly in <span class="app">Vifm</span> without having to start up a GUI viewer. The trick is to use an application that will output the PDF's text directly to the console.</p> <p>I started looking for such an application when I came across <a class="reference external" href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/9553096">this post</a> from <span class="app">StackOverflow</span>. It seems that good-old <span class="app">less</span> can already do that. So, I added the following line to my <span class="path">vifmrc</span> file.</p> <div class="highlight"><pre><span></span>fileviewer *.pdf \ less &quot;%c&quot;, </pre></div> <p>I can now preview PDF files in <span class="app">Vifm</span> and it works pretty well.</p> <img alt="Viewing Pdf With Less" class="align-center" src="https://www.marinlagace.ca/en/images/Viewing_Pdf_With_Less.png" /> <!-- vim: ft=pelican.rst -->