Viewing PDFs

A PDF (Portable Document Format) file is an electronic image of a document. Red Hat Linux gives you several options for viewing PDFs.

An open source application called xpdf is included with Red Hat Linux. The xpdf tool is well-developed and easy to use. Right-click inside the screen to see a list of menu options. The toolbar at the bottom has navigational tools that let you move backwards and forwards through the document, as well as standard zoom, print, and find tools. The xpdf man page provides lots of useful information on xpdf options (open a shell prompt and type man xpdf at the command line).

To view a PDF with xpdf:

  1. In GNOME, go to Main Menu => Programs => Graphics => xpdf In KDE, go to Main Menu => Graphics => PS/PDF Viewer.

  2. Right click in the xpdf screen to display a list of options.

  3. Select Open to display a list of files.

  4. Select the PDF file you want to view and click on Open.

NotePDF Conversion
 

A quick way to convert a PDF to PostScript is to open a shell prompt and type:

pdf2ps input.pdf output.ps

input.pdf is the file you want to convert and output.ps is the new PostScript file you want to create.

Type man a2ps at a shell prompt to view the man page on the a2ps suite of tools. This gives you information on a variety of conversion options.

Adobe Acrobat Reader is not included in Red Hat Linux, but you can download it free of charge at http://www.adobe.com/.