If you’ve worked in Windows long enough, you have come across the .chm file format. This format is nothing more than a compressed html directory with an included index for easy viewing. Problem is, you can’t view these files in Linux without the help of another tool. And sometimes you want to be able view these files in another format.

If you want to Adobe Acrobat file size using command line you can use ghostscript. Ghostscript is used for PostScript/PDF preview and printing. Usually as a back-end to a program such as ghostview, it can display PostScript and PDF documents in an X11 environment.

Under Linux, you can view a CHM file with the xchm viewer. But sometimes that’s not enough. Suppose you want to edit, republish, or convert the CHM file into another format such as the Plucker eBook format for viewing on your Palm.

HE GROUP set up to push the Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF) is abandoning its support of that file format.

There are many ways to view files in GNU/Linux. One of the simplest command line tools for viewing files is cat. The cat command, short for concatenate, is actually intended for joining multiple files into one, but it works equally well for viewing text files.

This new extension brings PDF import to OpenOffice.org 3.0. Also the extension introduces dual-format PDF-ODF files combining portable presentation and editing capabilities in a single file. Will hybrid PDFs be the next threat to OOXML?

Adobe Acrobat was the first software to support Adobe Systems’ Portable Document Format (PDF). It is a family of software, some commercial and some free of charge. The Adobe Acrobat Reader program (now just called Adobe Reader) is available as a no-charge download from Adobe’s web site, and allows the viewing and printing of PDF files.

The 7z (7-Zip) archive format offers good compression ratios and is an open source format. This and the favored 7-Zip graphical file archive tool for Windows have popularized the format.

A new plan by Microsoft to allow its Office software to save and edit files in a rival format will face a probe by the European Commission.