view png, pdf and txt files without downloading them

Question

[chictu]

I logged into the HPC using ssh -Y and want to have a quick look on the csv, png and pdf files before deciding which ones to download. What is the best way to open them? I have tried display for pdf files. It opened with X11 and imagemagick but it is very slow and the image is distorted.

display file.pdf

For csv, I know I could use column -t -s , file.csv. But is there a way to open csv in HPC using excel without downloading?

Basically, is there an efficient way to view files on the cluster especially for images? and files with many columns and long contents.

Thanks!

[GenoMax]

It opened with X11 and imagemagick but it is very slow and the image is distorted.

You normally log in to the cluster via a text terminal. You will need X-Windows to project the graphical output from your server back to your local computer. I assume you are using MobaXterm (for PC) or XQuartz (macOS), if the X11 window opened on your local desktop. If you have a relatively slow internet connection then this would work about as best as you describe above.

[chictu]

Thanks @genomax. Yes I am using XQuartz. Then, what do you normally do to have a quick look? Do you always download the files?

[Joe]

I don't think it will work for PDFs, but I used to use imgcat quite a bit for visualising images at the commandline. It's non standard though.

https://github.com/eddieantonio/imgcat

Answer 1

[Mensur Dlakic]

First, you may want to try connecting by ssh -X instead of ssh -Y.

A dedicated PDF reader will do a better job than display. One example is evince but it doesn't come standard with Linux systems. You may want to install it just for your user account.

libreoffice is an equivalent of the MS suite of programs (Excel, PowerPoint, Word, etc). It will open .csv files without a problem. Not sure if it comes installed on HPC systems, but it may be available as a module.