viewing PDF (Acrobat) files on Linux?

[Deepak Roderick Kumar]

> Is there any sort of viewer or translator that will allow one to view a
> .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) file?  I actually emailed Adobe many months back,
> and asked them about the possibility of a Linux port for Acrobat.  They
> [surprisingly] responded, and said that "there were no plans for one".
> Perhaps the specs for the format are published somewhere, though, and
> a non-Adobe program could (or has) been written.
> 
> Thanks,
> Eric
> -- 
> Eric J. Hansen .................................. mailto:eric at worldmachine.com
> Worldmachine Technologies Corporation ............ http://www.worldmachine.com

The "official" Adobe(R) Acrobat(R) Reader v3.0 is available at 
http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/lindnld.html
xpdf, a free pdf viewer is also available - I think it predates acroread v3.0 
though. It certainly is a lot faster. Here's the entry on xpdf from the linux 
software map (http://www.boutell.com/lsm)

xpdf

     Version: 0.5 
     Entered-date: 23MAY96 
     Description: Xpdf is a viewer for Portable Document Format (PDF) files.
     (These are also sometimes also called 'Acrobat' files, from the name of
     Adobe's PDF software.) Xpdf runs under UNIX or VMS and the X Window
     System. Xpdf is designed to be small and efficient. It does not use the 
Motif or
     Xt libraries. It uses standard X fonts. Xpdf is quite usable on a 486-66 
PC
     running Linux. 
     also: See also: 
     http: http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/usr/dn0o/xpdf/xpdf.html 
     Keywords: xpdf, pdf, acrobat, viewer, X11 
     Author: derekn at ece.cmu.edu (Derek B. Noonburg) 17347
     xpdf-0.5.README 115423 xpdf-0.5.tar.gz 
     Alternate-site: sunsite.unc.edu /pub/Linux/X11/xapps/graphics/viewers
     17347 xpdf-0.4.README 115423 xpdf-0.4.tar.gz 
     Platforms: X11 
     Copying-policy: Copyright 1996 Derek B. Noonburg. 

Note: Not all entries contain correct, complete filenames. FTP sites often refuse connections due to excessive traffic. If you have difficulty with the provided FTP links, open an FTP connection yourself.

Newer versions of ghostview supposedly support viewing pdf files. Conversion utilities such as pdf2ps (a perl script to convert pdf to level 2 postscript)
are available - look around with a good search engine.